“Blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.”
— Matthew 13:16
The Eucharist is a constant reminder that the most important things happen on a level we can’t see.
The concept was brought home with peculiar force during a recent encounter at the Exposition Park Rose Garden down near USC.
It was the Fourth of July and the whole area was pretty quiet.
I’d driven down to visit the California African American Museum. Afterward, I thought to wander over and walk around the Rose Garden, a 7-acre treasure known as one of the city’s best-kept secrets. The garden’s usually open during the week, but today it was closed and locked. Okay. Oh well, I figured, I would walk around the perimeter and enjoy the park that way.
A few families were about, knots of mooning teenage lovers, lone guys with bikes scrolling through their phones, a group of shirtless young bloods. Nobody met my eye. Nobody smiled.
Nobody, that is, until I ran into a friendly-looking middle-aged Latino guy toting a large plastic Target bag. Jeans and a T-shirt. A lanyard with a few keys hanging from his neck. Our eyes met and we both smiled. “Gorgeous day!” I remarked. “Yes!” he agreed. He must work here, I thought. I guess he’s a groundskeeper or a security guard keeping his eye on the place.
I passed him again on the other side of the park and this time he stopped me. “Are you visiting?” he asked. “Kind of,” I said. “I mean, I just visited the museum over there for the first time in a few years and I also wanted to see the rose garden. But it’s closed. Do you work here?”
“No,” he replied. “But I come down here every day.”
Turned out he lived with his brother in San Fernando, had immigrated to the U.S. in 1983 from Central America, loved it here (except for the current president, ha ha), and showed up every day (holidays apparently included) to pick up trash.
By this time, we’d exchanged names — his was Rafael — and shaken hands.
Amazing! How many such informal guardians of the city are roaming about, performing their labors of love? I wondered. How many secret lives of service, not only in LA but in the world at large? How many with a private mission to which they are invisibly faithful?
Plus, Rafael loved it down here! “Look at all the tall buildings going up all around!” he exclaimed, a prospect that struck terror to my own solitude-loving heart but which delighted him no end. The glass! The sun-blocking height! The imported plants and gleaming lobbies and beautiful people that would inhabit such places!
“I just hope they leave the rose garden,” I smiled.
He smiled back. “LA has it all!” he said. “So much!”
“Absolutely,” I agreed, thinking of the birds-of-paradise and bougainvillea and lemon trees, the eucalyptus and sycamore, the wild fennel and sage, the views of the mountains, the churches, the light…
“Universal Studios, Disneyland, Magic Mountain!” Rafael enthused.
Rafael and I may have had different aesthetics, but I felt sure — or wanted very much to believe — that deep down we inhabited the same realm. After all, you have to be a special kind of person to be happily wandering around Exposition Park by yourself, for whatever reason, on a holiday that is built around the notions of barbecues, outdoor parties, fireworks, and fun.
Afterwards, I drove to Immaculate Heart of Mary in East Hollywood, a humble neighborhood church whose website had said was open for 5 p.m. Mass that day.
But the church, like the rose garden, was locked up tight.
Driving on by, I pictured the plaster statues of Mary and Joseph, the banks of bright flowers, the glittery mosaic of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.
How I loved it! Innumerable times over the years the Vespers Mass there had saved and succored me. Afterward, the daily communicants spontaneously launch into the Salve Regina, a few Hail Marys, the guardian angel prayer.
Again, I thought of Rafael. I can’t speak for him, of course, but for my own part, as St. John of the Cross observed: “Since the immense blessings of God can only enter and fit in an empty and solitary heart, the Lord wants you to be alone.”
Those who have learned that his kingdom is not of this world, who have accepted their earthly exile, tend to cultivate child-like hearts. And a childlike heart loves glitter, gleam, silvery shine, however that may manifest. The childlike heart longs for a King and a Queen. The childlike heart yearns for an angel hovering near, protecting, guiding.
The childlike heart works up a way to serve and praise and love the world, even if the world utterly ignores it. Maybe that’s picking up trash. Maybe it’s a conscious decision to walk through the world noticing, receiving, praying, sharing the observations through painting, or writing, or music.
And the childlike heart inevitably exults in a rose garden.
