God was certainly smiling on me when I moved to New York City to work at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Although my time, money, and the list of available apartments were all short, I managed to walk into an opening on a block straight out of “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” Flanked by Gracie Mansion and multimillion dollar high-rises, our one block of rent-controlled five-story brownstone walk-up’s was home to the most colorful cast of characters in the city. Tight knit, everybody knew and cared about everybody’s business. Our anchors were Honey Girl on one end and Crazy Louise on the other. Louise lived on the sidewalk because her apartment was crammed to the door with stuff salvaged from the block’s dumpsters. She was French-Canadian, orphaned as a child, and had a heart of gold and a voice like a fog horn. My son, a Cambodian war survivor, was a handful, spending most of his time in local psychiatric hospitals for PTSD. Louise could always tell when he and I were having a bad day or week or month. She would move over on her stoop, patting the step for me to sit down beside her. I would pour out my sorrow, and Louise would listen. “Take courage,” was her benediction. And then, lifting her 80-year-old thin bones to her feet, she would raise her fist and shout, “Prends courage!” Lowering her voice, she would whisper, “That means, ‘Take courage, ‘ but what the hell does that mean, ‘Take courage,’ ? Now, ‘Prends courage!’ That says it all!'” That really does “say it all,” when nothing at all can be said.
Now, “Courage” has my parents’ face. They had a glamorous life in the depression era theater, before the arrival of children called them to settle down in the much less glamorous setting of small-town Ohio. The world was different then. Young people today are freer to think in terms of what they’d like to do with their lives or even to put off such decisions until the way seems clear. But my grandmother was widowed about the time I was born, and my father’s duty was to care for her as well as his growing household. They started a family business of stage scenery, lighting and sound, but what put food on the table most reliably was dad’s second shift as a projectionist in the local theater. I asked him one time just before he died what his work life had been like all those years. “Well, it was exciting to have a hand in the development of talkies and Cinemascope, but the last few years it was just loading reels into the projector, nothing creative like the old days.” I admire his and my mom’s ability to make meaning in their work as long and as well as they could, and to care for us, too. Their courage helped them to create a home for us all, even on those days when that must’ve seemed pure drudgery.
Courage? I think of a group of inmates in rural Missouri prisons. My tiny inner-city largely African-American Catholic Church decorated the sanctuary with three large banners listing the names of “Our Members in College,” “Our Members in the Military,” and “Our Members in Prison.” Fifteen or so years ago I took up the ministry of writing to those on the third banner. In some ways, we have become family for one another. Velma sent me a paper flower she had been allowed to make in a craft class once, before the new warden canceled all such activities. She mused that at the age of 30, she had spent over half of her life in prison. She was terrified as her release date came nearer. I rejoiced with David when he got to exercise for one hour some days after many years in “The Hole.” Willy shared his poetry but despaired of ever getting his GED. Courage for these men and women means total subjugation to a dehumanizing abrasive racist system that aims to punish in every way possible, no pretense at rehabilitation. Their courage allows them to deal with guilt and shame, and also to be open to small glimmers of joy and hope.
I suspect that most of us can look back on days, perhaps even years, when there was little to keep us going accept the promises we’ve made. Courage is the virtue that gets us out of bed every morning, that opens our hearts to moments of grace, that leads us eventually to proclaim with Jacob (Genesis 28:16), “Truly, the Lord is in this place, although I did not know it.” Until then, “Prends courage!”