The Death of the Lion and the Dream of the Jersey Shore: Maturity Seasoned In Time

In this enchanting tale, Fr Stephen takes us back to his Fishtown neighborhood in Philadelphia, where Kusheri’s and Fr Naum’s fantasy of soaring in the summer sky over the Jersey Shore is interrupted by a young couple in love and the recollection of childhood questions about the relation of God, man, and animals — about the relation of the childlike and the mature — and about questions of death and resurrection.

By Fr. Stephen Siniari

Even the stork in the heaven knows her appointed time; and the turtle dove and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but my people do not know the judgment of the LORD. Jeremiah 8:7

“Sometimes in the summer people forget about church.”

Naum wasn’t making excuses for folks when he and Kusheri Nastradin took a break in the shade on the side steps of our little Saint Alexander the Whirling Dervish Orthodox Church.

“The allure of the Shore.” Nastradin understood. “There’s something that gets you thinking about that one particular barrier island once you see the first robin and the weather starts getting warm.”

“Yeah,” Naum said, “Disconnected from the rest of the world, that island the one place our people love to go doesn’t have an Orthodox church, or even a graveyard.”

“I’m taking my two weeks right after Dormition Fast.” Kusheri said.

It was almost June and every tree in the neighborhood was vying with the bushes to come up with fresh variations on a new spring green.

The old Prifti Naum, and Kusheri Nastradin had as much egg-shell paint on their blue bib overalls as they did on the stucco side wall of the church. Both their hats tilted back, drinking Orangina and eating TastyKake Butterscotch Krimpets, finally warm enough to be outside, but still cool enough for paint to dry up and season without dripping down the wall.

Kusheri said.:“I can see myself, sitting, stretched out in the sand, ankle-deep in the surf. I can taste it. I can smell it too.” He closed his eyes and said, “I can see the whole thing so clear I could paint a mural of it, right here, right now, on the side of the church.”

Magic-carpet Nastradin set their compass heading, scooped up Naum in his reverie, and together they rode the prevailing winds to that hidden seaside garden. To that one particular island sculpted by the sea. The one with the curve and feel and color and smell of that once in a lifetime girl.

Dreaming Nastradin made them kites, summer-colored kites, kites without strings, dancing on divergent currents, free and lost aloft, two old dreamers spinning like dervishes just a few nautical miles over the horizon from Atlantic City.
Kusheri Nastradin held his fez to his head and told Naum, “Hold on tight.”

They swooped in low over main streets, spun north to south like seven mile icing ribbons along a cake of sand. Seaside cottages went criss-crossing by along pleasant avenues running east and west, tree-lined avenues a mile across at their widest point from beach to bay.

Old Naum was seeing a Kusheri Nastradin he’d never seen. Both children again. Both beguiled by contented childhood memories that set them longing for sandy paths, dune grass, fragrant evenings, brown shoulders, bare feet, coconut lotion, sound and surf, and swirls of crying gulls in motion.

Who would have believed that our revered neighborhood story-teller, who assured Prifti Naum and anyone else gullible enough to listen, that he, Kusheri Nastradin, could never be charmed, not by anyone, not even by two snakes intertwined and lifted up on a stick, would have spun himself and old Naum so enchanting a basket in his own hot-air balloon.

The side gate creaking and Jessica and Rubin walking up the brick path holding hands and smiling, was the only thing that landed the two old timers safely back on earth.

When Jessica said, “Father Naum,” Kusheri and Naum were both back in Fishtown, down on the ground.

“Oh.” Naum had forgotten they were coming.

“You forgot, didn’t you?” She said.

Kusheri Nastradin said, “I didn’t.”

Rubin put his arm around her waist and kissed his girl on the cheek. “Wedding, Father, July is only a few weeks away.”
It was twenty years ago the first time Naum had seen them holding hands. The two lived next door to each other on Tulip Street. They shared a back yard and a dog called they agreed to call Luan.

Time was a chalice and Naum, twenty years younger, was taking his time consuming the Gifts after liturgy on the Feast of Saint Peter and Paul.

It was late June, warm, and peaceful, and pleasant. Both children came in crying.

Jessica told Naum, “Urata, our lion died.”

“A man hit him with a car.” Rubin wanted to know, “Does God take dogs in heaven, Urata?”

Naum couldn’t remember how they knew, Urata meant, “He who blesses me…” Maybe they just heard their parents calling the priest by that name.

But Naum remembered the story of Luan, the lion-dog.

Late May, and Edith, Jessica’s mom, and Rubin’s mom, Pilar, were walking the kids home from Adaire School through Palmer Burial Ground the last day of kindergarten. Maybe the kids were five or six.

Edith said. “I didn’t know he was the guy who had the old lumber yard at Howard and Berks. Long gone now.” Then she called out, “Don’t get too far ahead you two. Stay where we can see you.”

Pilar shouted, “Yeah, if we can’t see you we can’t save you if the bad guys come out from behind the gravestones. You know they eat kindergarten kids.” Pilar and Edith loved to use that line.

Jessica said, “We’re first graders now, Mommy.”

Both mothers waved and nodded.

Then Pilar said to Edith, “Well, that’s what Mister Bernoff, the vice-principal, told me while we were waiting in the schoolyard. This lumber guy Alexander Adaire made some money back in the day and decided it was a good idea to start night school classes for working people. So they named the school after him.”

“What the hell are they doing now, P?” Edith was looking up ahead at the kids stopped under a tree just past the cemetery gatehouse. “That kid loves rolling in the dirt better than the boys. I gotta’ get her home, feed her lunch, get her in the tub and cleaned up for dance class.”

“Petting a dog.” Pilar had to smile. “Puppy, looks like.”

The kids were coaxing a furry yellow puppy, screaming, “Mommy, mommy, can we keep her?”

Edith picked up the puppy and said, “It’s a him, not a her.”

“Maybe.” Pilar looked at Edith and said, “But only if he follows us home and he don’t belong to nobody.” She crossed her fingers and whispered to Edith, “He don’t have a collar, does he?”

“But if we do keep him,” Edith said, “you two gotta’ feed him, and take him for walks, and clean up the you-know-what.”

“And he’s gotta’ live in the yard,” Pilar said. “He ain’t living in the house, maybe just in the cellar in the winter if it gets real cold.”

“They’re a lot of work.” Edith said to Pilar,” “And I’ll be damned if I’m doing it. ‘Specially not once we’re down the Shore for our two weeks.”

The putty factory closed the same two weeks every year. Both their husbands got the same two weeks off. Everybody who worked there got the same two weeks, and that was half the neighborhood.

Edith, Lou, and Jessica, Pilar, Johnny C, and Rubin, the Tulip Street next-door neighbors, shared the same down the Shore rental property mid-July every year since the kids were babies.

Out in the Tulip Street shared back yard, Rubin wanted to name him Monster, but Jessica said Luan was better “’Cause it means lion, and don’t he look like a lion?”

Rubin had to admit, “He does, when he smiles.”

End of June that year, Rubin’s father, Johnny C, half dressed, was knocking on his neighbor’s door while it was still dark.

“Lou,” he said to Jessica’s dad, “Somehow that damn dog got out the backyard and some creep in a pickup ran it over and just kept on going.”

“You see who it was?” Lou said.

Johnny said, “I got my ideas.”

Both families were out in their underwear. There was a lot of crying on the way to the clinic. The Vet came out shaking his head. Everybody left the Animal Hospital feeling bad not knowing what to do.

Johnny C and Lou were on first shift and couldn’t miss, not if they wanted their vacation club bonus.

Pilar told Edith, “You know they’re at the church doing liturgy today. Peter and Paul. ‘Said in the online bulletin.”

Edith said, “I got off.” She worked reception. “Doctor Baks ain’t due back till after the fourth, down Cape May taking his boat somewhere on the Chesapeake. They love them blue crabs, him and his wife.”

Pilar did admin for Philly PD down at the Roundhouse. She said, “I don’t gotta’ be in till four.”

Naum was consuming the Gifts after liturgy. Deacon Dionysios was reading the prayers of thanksgiving.

June twenty-ninth, warm, and peaceful, and pleasant.

Both children came in crying. Jessica told Naum, “Urata, our lion died.”

“A man hit him with a car.” Rubin wanted to know, “Does God take dogs in heaven, Urata?”

Nastradin took off his cap asked Naum, “How do you tell children?”

Everybody in the neighborhood woulda’ wanted to go easy on the kids. Everybody except Eddie Gjarper. He was a theologian. Eddie didn’t like nobody and wasn’t nobody liked Eddie.

Dude was slippery too, and mad all the time. As a kid he got the nickname, Slither. “People’re always looking for special treatment. Not me. Get in line. Take your medicine and quit your bitching. The rules are the rules and there’s rules for a reason. I follow ‘em, you gotta’ follow ‘em. Being a kid don’t make you exempt. Evil don’t discriminate. In this world, we stand with the rules or fall on our own.”

‘Course, five-foot, loaf-round, shiny-headed Eddie was one of the most religious guys over at our little Saint Alexander the Whirling Dervish Orthodox Church, taking up all the oxygen at study groups, never missing a chance to quote some Greek term he had trouble pronouncing from a theology book he claimed he was reading, always lighting candles, making big bows, prostrations to beat the band, and crossing himself so grand you could practically feel the seismic waves snuffing out your candle.

Only person smiled when he saw Eddie pulling up in his snakeskin truck was old Naum.

“But tell truth,” Little Harry said, “it ain’t always that easy ta’ tell if Naum was smiling or just lookin’ at ya’ sad, with his beard and everything.”

Eddie said, “They might as well find out about death and get with the fact that there ain’t no animals in heaven. They ain’t got souls, the animals.”

The mothers Naum sat with the kids at a table in the church hall.

Edith and Pilar got them seated and took their tea to another.

Naum and the kids had coffee and yellow cake doughnuts from Schmidt’s, extra fat doughnuts robed in chocolate.

Edith told Pilar, “The doughnuts’ll make ‘em feel better.”

Pilar told Edith, “I made sure all three of ‘em got mostly milk.”

Edith said, “And I made sure all three had plenty of crayons and construction paper.”

Naum started to tell the kids about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden.

Rubin said, “You know they were naked?”

Naum sat back and raised his eyebrows.

Edith and Pilar almost spit out their tea.

Jessica said, “Yeah. Just like dogs.”

Naum said, “Is that right? Adam and Eve?”

The kids thought it was funny when Rubin said, “Later they got leaves.” And held up his crayon rendition.

Naum said, “You ever hear about when God brought all the animals by for Adam and Eve to give them names?”

“No.” Both kids seemed interested, interested enough to stop coloring for a minute.

“When he brought the pigs,” Naum said, “Adam said, ‘Pork chops.’”

The kids laughed and said, “No…”

“When God brought the cow and said to Eve, ‘Give it a name,’ she said, ‘Cheeseburger.”

“No.” The kids were laughing.

“When he brought the chicken…” Rubin said.

Both kids yelled, “Nuggets.”

All three, dunking doughnuts and laughing.

Jessica said, “Why do the pigs make them that shape, Urata?”

Naum said, “Make what?”

She said, “The pork chops.”

“Oh.” Naum said, “We’ll ask mommy later.” He didn’t have the heart to tell her the pork chops were the pigs.

Jessica said, “Okay.”

Rubin said, “The animals were Adam’s friends.”

Naum said, “Eve’s too.”

“And they didn’t eat their friends, Urata.” Jessica said.

Naum said, “No. It’s like Great Lent before Pascha, when we don’t eat anything from an animal. You understand, right?”

Rubin said, “Right. We only eat tomato sandwiches.”

“’Cause we don’t eat our friends.” Jessica repeated.

Rubin said. “And you know they could talk to them?”

“Adam and Eve could talk with the animals, and they could understand each other?” Naum said.

Rubin said, “Absolutely.”

Jessica was sad when she said, “Luan understood me. He came when I called him. He knew I loved him and I know he loved me, even when I yelled at him.” She had drawn a picture of her cleaning up after Luan.

Rubin said, “He loved us anyway, no matter what and we knew it without people words.”

Naum wanted to tell the kids that the desert fathers say a dog is better than a human because they don’t judge like people do. But right then, Naum couldn’t, he couldn’t find the words.

Rubin said, “Miss Raskova told us in Sunday school when Jesus comes back a lion’s gonna’ lay down with a lamb. So how’s this gonna’ happen then, if there ain’t no lions in heaven? So our Luan must be in heaven, right?”

Naum looked around the church hall and considered where they were sitting.

On one side of the table sat a maturity of relationships.

On the other, he hoped, the maturity of thoughts.

Naum had to be careful. He realized it was two against one and he had never known a way to live a relationship of one.
Two, or three, sparked the scripture to life. That had been his experience in the church.

Jesus invited a little child to stand among them. “Truly I tell you,” He said, “unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes a little child like this in My name welcomes Me.

But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

Naum was beginning to see that a child may actually have a better understanding.

…The kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

When it came to understanding

Jessica and Rubin were telling stories, one after another, about pigeons and sparrows and ladybugs and ants, squirrels stealing pistachios and dogs treeing squirrels, kittens chasing puppies and cats chasing mice, kids catching grasshoppers after supper in the park and jars filled with lighting bugs in the cemetery at night — Neighborhood parables so profound and full of symbols — Auditory icons colored in crayon so rich and complex in their pictorial simplicity — Naum had to put up a hand and say, “Wait. Wait. You two are too fast.”

Scriptural images they had spoken and scribbled came to life in his heart and jumped from Naum’s head. They danced in front of him on the table like kaleidoscopic holograms.

Everything that has breath praises the Lord.

How long will the land mourn and the grass of every field be withered? Because of the evil of its residents, the animals and birds have been swept away…

As for the sons of men, God tests them so that they may see for themselves that they are but beasts. For the fates of both men and beasts are the same: As one dies, so dies the other—they all have the same breath.

Man has no advantage over the animals, since everything is futile. All go to one place; all come from dust, and all return to dust. Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and the spirit of the animal descends into the earth?

Listening to the kids had Naum thinking:

If being is life, and life is communion with God, who is truly Life, maybe animals have being with life by their relation with the people who have communion with God.

Naum said to the kids, “You know the story of the Ark.”

They told Naum the whole thing, beginning to end. “All the animals.” Jessica said. “God told Noah to bring all the animals in the Ark.”

“You know the church is called the Ark?” Rubin said.

“Why?” Naum asked.

Rubin said, “Safe place when there’s too much rain, silly.”

“Yeah,” Jessica said, “’Cause it floats.”

The rigorist, Eddie Gjarper, sat down in Naum’s head, wet his finger with his tongue, licked up doughnut crumbs one at a time, then swept the dancing scripture from the table, and said, ‘Go ahead, Urata, do you duty. Explain the human soul to children, the essence and the energy, not dissolved with the body, but lives after the separation; a spiritual essence, even though it’s created… Explain the animal soul as a simple thing that dies together with the body.’

Thank goodness Kusheri Nastradin took Eddie by the ear and led him away while Naum considered Saint John Chrysostom’s caution about waiting to tell children certain things, like explaining to children that:

Having accepted the image but preserved it not, and because, also, evil shall not be eternal: Thou hast ordained remission unto the same, through thy love toward mankind; and that this destructible bond, which as the God of our fathers thou hadst sanctified by thy divine will, should be dissolved, and that his body should be dissolved from the elements of which it was fashioned, but that his soul should be translated to that place where it shall take up its abode until the final Resurrection.

Looking at Jessica and Rubin had Naum thinking:

This could be a little too much too soon.

Timing, Naum, timing. Maturity seasoned in time.

Twenty years.

Rubin said, “Father, We’re so happy you’re the one doing our wedding. You know us.”

“You were kind when we were kids.” Jessica said.

“You want some help painting?” Rubin said.

Naum said, “No. You two got stuff to do. Besides, gives us old guys something to do.”

Kusheri liked that. He said, “Where ya’ going for the honeymoon?”

Jessica said, “You oughta’ know, Kusheri, the island.”

“Two weeks in July?” Kusheri said.

Rubin said, “Yep. Same house we always rented.”

Looking at the young couple, Naum considered how faithful they had been all these years. Rubin and Jessica rarely missed, even when their parents slept in, they were there, singing in the choir, her, and him, serving in the Altar, even when Johnny C, Rubin’s father died.

Something had kept these two close to God, close to one another and participating in the life of Christ in His Church.
Somehow they had come to a maturity of faith beyond concepts when it came to facing death.

Naum was pretty sure it was Saint Gregory Palamas he quoted at Johnny’s funeral:

Whether man abides near or far from God depends, as it does for the rest of the reasonable beings, in his will, which means that it is a voluntary, not a natural condition.
 
He is receptive of contrary spiritual qualities, goodness and evil, and may turn towards either. Abiding in goodness means preservation of the divine spirit and of participation in God. Turning towards evil means moving away from God, and such a movement is equal to the death of the soul. God neither created nor caused the death of the soul and of the body. Death is the fruit of sin which was produced by the will of man.

Rubin said, “You know what it was, right, that kept us in the church? When Luan got hit by that guy in the pickup.”
Naum said, “Kind of.”

Rubin said, “Saint Peter and Paul day. When you sat at the table with us coloring and eating doughnuts.”

“Partly what you said,” Jessica said, “Partly the way you said it. Kept us close to God. Even when Rubin’s dad died. It ain’t easy, Urata.”

Naum said, “I just remember being with you two. You actually remember what I said?”

“I do.” Jessica said, “Something like, the devil was the first one to move away from God, and so his spirit died, and he tricked people trying to get their soul to die too, and everything else with him, animals included, ‘cause God gave the animals to people so they could learn to be kind to each other by being kind to animals. You told us, so the way we think about it when animals die…Remember you told us to make the cross when we saw an animal that got hit in the road? The way we think about and treat animals when they die is gonna’ put us either with the trickster and the way he thinks and values life, or with God.”

“Naum said, “I said that?”

She said, “You did.”

Rubin said, “You know Jess has one of those eidetic memories. She keeps quoting you to people. But what sticks with me is when you said, ‘You know how Jesus comes back, right, Rubin, you remember?’ I started hopping in my seat when you said, ‘Riding a horse.’”

Naum smiled.

“Yep. I don’t know how you knew I loved horses. And then you said, ‘And if there ain’t no animals in heaven, where’d he get the horse?’ That did it for me.”

When the kids left Kusheri opened his wedding invitation.

Reception to Follow: Island Grand at the Shore.

And there was Magic Carpet Nastradin, summer-colored Kusheri, flying up and away from the church, a kite without a string, dancing on divergent currents, free and lost aloft, spinning like dervish just a few nautical miles over the horizon from Atlantic City.

“Sometimes in the summer people forget about church.”

Naum wasn’t making excuses for folks when he and Kusheri Nastradin took a break in the shade on the side steps of our little Saint Alexander the Whirling Dervish Orthodox Church.

He was just trying not to forget the stork in the heavens, the turtle dove, the crane and the swallow who observe the time of their coming and not forget the appointed time and the judgment of the Lord.