12
Orest Walks with Orest
Letters to Ascended Master
St. Padre Pio,
Monday, August 15, 2011
6: 30 A. M.
Dear Padre,
Sitting at my writing desk, I can look out the window to my left that looks onto the main stretch of our street and yesterday morning as I was writing I turned to look out and saw Orest walking very slowly towards our house.
I got up to check and make sure it was Orest, and it was; so I got dressed (I had on a pair of shorts and T shirt, which I always wear in the summer when I’m writing), and went out to the front deck and yelled to Orest in Italian: “Bon jorno, Oresto! Aspeta!”
I went upstairs and woke Penny up to let her know where I would be. “I’m going for a walk with Orest,” I said, and laughed.
Orest is a friend of Eugenio, who has a cottage just down the street that he comes to half a dozen times a summer, and Orest and his wife had come up for a visit and he was out for an early morning walk. When I saw him walking down the street I just had to go for a walk with him because it was a coincidence fraught with so much symbolic meaning that I would never forgive myself if I didn’t go for a walk with him.
The chances of going for a walk with a man called Orest were astronomical. In fact, Orest S. (his surname even has the same initial as mine, and our street is called Stocco Circle, the same as my surname) was the only man I had ever met with the same first name as mine, so I knew that this was divinely orchestrated. So, Padre; I know that you planned my walk with Orest yesterday morning, and now I have to explore the reason why…
Penny came into my room for her morning coffee and chat this morning, as she always does, so I had to put my letter to you aside; and then I had to do my morning chores (today is garbage day, and I had to take out the garbage and blue boxes for recycling), and after I fed all the critters—our goldfish, cat, and seeds and peanuts for our outdoor critters—I was free to continue with this letter.
Over coffee, Penny and I were talking about my writing. She felt that I quoted too much. “Good God,” she said, “you should be confident in your own voice by now. I just think that all those quotes get in the way. I feel like you keep grinding your point, and I come away exhausted. I love your writing, but it’s exhausting. That’s what my sister said about your novel My Unborn Child. She said the novel kept calling her, but it exhausted her. You don’t want to exhaust your reader. You want them to walk away feeling inspired. I think you should just write with your own voice. You don’t need all those quotes.”
She’s right. And this is what you tried to tell me Sunday morning when I felt compelled to go for a walk with Orest.
I listened to Orest talk about his life, and it was so engaging that it took two and a half hours to walk around Stocco Circle, which normally takes less than ten minutes; and after talking with Penny this morning I think I finally got the point—that my life is no less interesting than Orest’s life (he was born in Calabria, Italy where I was born, and he immigrated with his young family to Canada because destiny called him), and I don’t need to lean upon other authors to validate the integrity of my own life and voice.
And this, believe it or not, is exactly what a psychic old me several months before My Unborn Child was published last summer. She was at Mountainview Mall in Midland, and she gave me a reading (twenty minutes for sixty dollars), and told me that I should just write about my own life, tell my own story, that I shouldn’t quote all those authors that I like to quote because they just got in the way of my story. “The story of your life is going to be your most successful book,” she said.
So there you have it, Padre; but it wasn’t until Orest went for a walk with Orest yesterday morning that I finally got the point! But what was it about Orest’s life that fascinated me?
If I had to distill his life story, I would say it was his integrity that defined him. It was obvious from the many anecdotes of his working life that he shared with me that he hates cheaters, liars, and hypocrites (he told me he was Catholic but didn’t go to church because of his experiences with priests), and I related to everything he said; perhaps that’s why you orchestrated our walk yesterday morning—to set me free to write about my own life without depending upon other authors and let my life speak for itself.
But did you have to orchestrate a walk with another Orest born in the same part of Italy as me and with a defining steely integrity for me to see myself in him and learn to trust in the integrity of my own voice?
I don’t know what to think, Padre; especially since I lashed out at you Friday afternoon when I came out of the dentist’s office with one less tooth that made me so self-conscious that my vanity almost kept me away from my spiritual book discussion class in Orillia the following day. God, was I angry!
“Thank you, Padre!” I lashed out at you in disgust as I drove home from my dentist appointment. I invited you to be with me during my appointment, hoping you would see to it that everything went well; but I never thought I would lose my tooth. I thought the worst scenario would be a root canal, but the crack from the cherry pit that I bit into was too deep and it had to be extracted and it shows when I smile!
Now I have to get a partial plate because it’s much too expensive to get bridgework (three thousand dollars). Even a plate is an expense we don’t need at this time. We just got news that the bearings on our lawn tractor deck were ceased and have to be replaced, plus a new belt, which is another expense we can’t afford at this time, not to mention the expense for the muffler on my van this week. I was not happy when I came out of the dentist’s office, and I don’t know how I was able to manage my anger as I did. I wanted to scream, but all I could say was, “Old whore life” sure screwed me good this week!”
I have to stop writing. I’m still too angry.
I remain,
Not a very happy camper,
Orest
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