Humbled by their generosity.

Killed a bear, a mountain lion, rattlers too. Never killed for sport. Grandpa built a cabin in the middle of nowhere on a mountain overlooking everywhere. Grandma was handy with a gun too.

Their nearest neighbor was a monk. The old friar came from a Franciscan monastery. Grandpa joked that it must have been too much of a social life.

Old monk used to say - that is on the rare occasions when anyone heard him speak: “knowledge with humility is wisdom; add compassion you get love which is God... Strive to live free of shame by knowing and accepting ourselves... meet people where they are- do not need them to be where we want them in our efforts to control.” He taught me The Sermon of the Birds- and was a living memorial to gratitude. He had set it to music- voice, flute, cello, viola and bass. To my amazement Old Monk had in his younger days been a hard drinking jazz musician, before that almost a child prodigy on piano, later trading the ivories for a bass, later still for a soprano sax, winding up as a street musician playing hip hop and salsa on flute - till drugs got the better of him, eventually after a hospitalization he found religion. 

The grandparents added a room every year or rebuilt and enlarged a room -out of sheer bedrock mostly. Sold the debris for seed money. They planted apple and a stand of maple. Sold the syrup. Hired women. Grandpa never trusted men. Maybe he was afraid of- or competitive. Maybe he was afraid he’d kill someone. Had a temper, my old man too. Neither drank much; cursed infrequently. Fact was they hardly spoke. Maybe that’s why they got along with the monk.

 The grand-folks married for 60 years till he passed at 80. On the dot. Night after his big birthday party went in his sleep. A slumber party that’s what he said was the way he wanted to go; he did.

The women he and grandma hired had to have one kid. That was their rule- and be without a man. Grandma ran a school and a hospital for them. Simple plan. The whole thing was based on an old set of encyclopedias she picked up somewhere. The babies would learn the A words- and all the words that had anything to do with A things. Kindergarteners did the same with ABCs. By the time kids were 10 they had to do chores for pay, at first 30 minutes a day, more each year till when they were 18 they were working 40 hours a week plus their studies. Few of the kids hung around that long. Most hightailed it out of there around age 15, went to live with relatives down mountain. Some came back a year or two later. Not too surprising really. Grandpa ran a no-nonsense settlement. He was self-appointed mayor. Drinking was allowed, tolerated in moderation. Drunkenness got you evicted pronto. By the time he croaked had two hundred women and two hundred kids working, plus some kids who had grown up to be husbands in the community. Kind of cultish.

Grandpa and Pop had never heard of Japanese Quality Circles, but they used the same idea. Decision making was decentralized. One kid came up with the idea of using solar panels to heat the syrup making room. Another got the idea we needed to store the sunlight in batteries. That led others to figure out how to make the solar panels and batteries. Another got the idea to market them. The settlement grew into a mountain town, got incorporated as a municipality, the business went public. I hightailed it out of there. Had too much of Grandpa’s aloneness and found it not on another mountain but in the heart of lonely San Francisco. St. Francis, patron saint of ecologists because he loved nature and animals.

I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, parked at sunset. The expanse of water glistening golden-red reflecting the sky illuminated the bridge. I unpacked my gear. Not much. Just a sleeping bag to lean on while I ate my sandwich and thermos of chicken broth with vegetable chunks. Big wonderful carrot steaks a friend called them.

 San Francisco. St. Francis, The Golden Gate Bridge-

St. Francis, born in 1181, baptized as Giovanni suffered as a teenager from a life of excessive comfort and wealth. His father was a landowner and traded in silk and other cloths. His beautiful mother was French. Young Francesco left school at 14 to party, frequently ignoring the town curfew, learned French, archery, horsemanship and wrestling, was bored by the prospect of taking over his father’s business, dreamt of becoming a knight, soon got his wish

After claiming to hear the voice of god, led a life of poverty working to rebuild the Catholic Church. Inspired, yes. Dedicated, yes. Insane, or grotesquely deluded? Who knows? Perhaps his imprisonment had something to do with his change from drinking and partying - perhaps his waiting a year for his father to pay the ransom soured his outlook on his father. Perhaps he really repented and heard a higher calling. Perhaps he liked being sober. Perhaps he had post traumatic stress syndrome from fighting in the battles between Assisi and Perugia. He worked to care for lepers, probably got leprosy - people said he was the first to have the stigmata- visited out of the way churches, then preached, discovering he had the personality to attract followers.

 Francesco was obsessed - first with partying, then with the romanticized versions of battle heroics ultimately with finding spiritual perfection.

Parents: Pietro di Bernardone and Pica de Bourlemont.

Pietro thought of himself as a man of principle. He knew he was a man of the world. He had vision and exquisite taste, especially in women. He loved all things French. He had affairs on his business trips to France. It was on one of these trips where he met his wife, Pica.

Pietro had dreamed of his son taking over and growing the family empire of landholdings and textile trading. He dreamed of giving his serfs and villeins manumission. He pondered, wrote and debated with other landowners how this could be done without destroying their wealth and the social organization which was rapidly developing- moving from communes to powerful city-states based on the model of Ancient Rome.

Pietro believed himself generous and benevolent. So he was- on reflection- shocked by his actions after his son stole from him to help repair a dilapidated church.

Years later Pietro wondered why he was not instantly forgiving. After all he reasoned he had given to churches frequently. Then he realized if he had forgiven theft - even by his son - even for a good cause, he would be seen as an easy mark in the eyes of his countrymen. He feared the serfs would steal and rebel. Perhaps not unfounded these fears, nonetheless he was tormented by his imprisonment of his son.

True that incident helped turn young Francesco away from Pietro and towards the church.

Western religions never meant anything to me, but individuals such as Francis preached some good wisdom- if you could get past the god stuff.

There was just too much going on in my head. My girlfriend with whom I was desperately in love left me a few months earlier. Here I was a poor kid with probably a fair amount to inherit someday without formal schooling at the age of 17. 

I got a GED, enrolled in a community college, joined a Buddhist temple and kept a low profile. The Buddha, Siddhartha was also a child of privilege who came to wisdom and compassion.

Who knows why someone was following me? I studied mixed martial arts, hired a detective, called the cops. Success did not bring happiness to my family. Everyone was so dead serious... maybe I was the worst.

Perhaps I was lucky: my grandparents’ wealth - it was always clear it was their wealth not mine -was an inspiration rather than a curse. They had given most of the stock to their employees. I’d get something as an inheritance but that was a long way from now. My folks were young and healthy though never very interested in me. That was mostly good because I got to do whatever I wanted after I did the chores and schoolwork. Mostly I liked to read when I wasn’t hiking. I wasn’t exactly a loner but friends were few and far between.

I cleaned - that was my job at the temple. I ate at inexpensive restaurants- really rice and noodle shops in Chinatown. I studied Mandarin. My calligraphy surprised me, it wrote itself. I had never had that experience writing English where my penmanship was cramped and highly inconsistent.

 I translated The Sermon of the Birds into Chinese and the Eightfold Path into Spanish.

After a while I began to wonder if someone really was following me or whether I was just paranoid. Shrink said I wasn’t paranoid.

What could I have that anyone would want? If I was valuable for ransom, I would have been kidnapped by now. I wondered whether it would take my father a year to pay it. 

I missed community. So I made friends - really acquaintances-both at the temple and at school where I had another small job: Work study, setting up AV equipment for lectures which I got to audit for free. I was a promiscuous learner- my early curiosity was fueled by all that encyclopedia work.

More than anything, I felt lonely.

I had grown up in a great community, now had two little jobs, went to classes and a few parties, but I couldn’t get out of my head 

My parents and I texted once in a while, nothing of substance. The few friends I left on the mountain didn’t miss me much. It was mutual- no hard feelings just there was never much of a connection, except with Reneè, but we were history.

Rebirth, Renaissance- Pietro was almost a Renaissance Man before his time. He did almost everything right then his anger destroyed his family and caused him endless grief. Odd or perhaps not that he and his saintly son never made amends.

I thought about this a lot when I came to meditate near the Golden-gate.

***********

I had a recurring dream: a bear, a mountain lion and a rattlesnake block my path on a hike on my way back to my childhood home. I have no weapons. I start reciting The Sermon of the Birds. The bear decides to give me a lift on his back while the lion leads our little parade clearing the way. The snake stands upright offering himself to be my walking stick of wisdom. I am humbled by their generosity.