Salvation and loss

Well, it looks like my pix and my documents have been saved from the old hard drive, but they can't seem to find my emails, which I really wanted. I tried to get my old external HD that I used for back up, but neither my new computer nor the little emergency one will recognize its existence. So my backup disk also failed. I look like a computer shop in here, hardware and wires and disks all over the living room. As the guy at Castro Computers said, "It's technology. In the end, nothing is safe."  At least with the Dead Sea scrolls you can put the goatskins in a jar and hide them...

Stuff like this used to make me crazy, but I have now understood that either with an upgrade or a problem, you are going to spend a lot, a lot, of time trying to fix things and some things can't be. At the entrance to the Computer Age should be written: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate. I operate in it col coraggio di coloro chi non hanno speranza nulla. Easier that way.

PS. Speaking of loss. Just checked the mailbox, the actual physical one outside my door. An old friend sent me a death card for a priest I knew when I was a young monk. He was a kind of hero and mentor of mine, but he made his turn to the Right far earlier than I, religiously if not politically. Our talks became more and more formal and difficult and he went from signing his letters "Frank" to "Father Frank" to "Reverend Francis So-and-So." It was the first time, I think, that I lost an older mentor's friendship. I had forgotten about it after so many years, but this is a season when I am pricked by any kind of loss and it makes me remember how puzzling and sad it was to me.

He was the first person I ever approached about my sexual feelings. I was only 19, maybe 20, and a fellow young monk and friend --whom I later realized I was in love with--had had an accident while playing basketball; he asked me to help him get undressed. It was only partial, but I had to be physically closer to him than I had ever been. We were alone. I did nothing, but my physical response to touching him was very clear cause-and-effect. Whether from wisdom or ignorance, Father Frank said that I was young and at my age all sorts of things and people would provoke that kind of thing and not to worry about it. That relieved me. Needless to say, however, the response did not diminish. Little did I know then that it would change my whole life.