Silas Harvey Passarella, my daughter Valerie and Mark’s son and five-year-old Harriet’s little brother, arrived on our side of the veil on Tuesday morning at 9:30 a.m., right on schedule. The family of four were home in Yorba Linda by Thursday afternoon so Silas could pick out his room and learn how to use the remote.
The second photo shows Silas with Lindsay, Valerie’s sister, who looks like my late mother, Jean. He’s Kathy’s and my third grandchild. By the grace of God, number four arrives this summer in New York, the first child of Michelle and Kathy’s son, Dan. In charge of the entire operation is seven-year-old Frannie, who lives down in San Diego with Meaghan Ellen, PJ, and pug Walter.
I want to be a good poppy more than anything and never imagined having such a broad canvas for attempting my masterpiece. I started #frannieshere the day she was born, ditto #harrietshere. #silasishere wouldn’t work with a conjunction. The idea was to say before, they weren’t here, and now, wonderfully and miraculously, they are, making the world totally different from what it would’ve been otherwise, creation writ small again and again and again.
We are beside ourselves with joy and thanksgiving. Like her sister, Silas was born at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Orange, co-managed by Providence and the most excellent Sisters of St. Joseph. Its Clinical Pastoral Education program a quarter century ago helped introduce me to my authentic self, joys, shames, and all, thus activating my priesthood.
When I’m there, God and I are in constant conversation. I feel the good in the walls and see it in the faces, from the nurses and doctors rushing from place to place to the fellow running the Starbucks in the lobby who, all morning while we waited, greeted everyone with a smile and warm hello. When I went to the chapel to pray and offer thanks, the Bible was even open to Psalm 34 for Silas:
Come children, hear me…
Turn from evil, and do good;
Seek peace, and follow after it.
Silas got my middle name, which was my dad’s first. So I already owe him one. How Val and Mark picked Silas is their story. But it is fair to say that we do meet one of his namesakes in Acts’ account of Paul’s adventure-packed visit to Philippi, in Macedonia. Paul, Silas, and their friends meet Lydia, an important leader in the church and Europe’s first convert. They liberate another woman whose enslavers forced her to tell fortunes for money and, once she’d been freed, hounded the missionaries into a beating and imprisonment. Freed by an earthquake, they baptized the jailer and his family but refused to slip away quietly, insisting instead on appearing before the magistrate and hearing his official apology.
Val and Mark are brave, loving people, and they gave their son a brave, loving name. Bible Silas and his friends helped the church live more fully into the imago Dei and stood up to corruption and the abuse of state power. Our Silas was born in a time that may well need him desperately for just that kind of work, and on the 112th anniversary of Rosa Parks’ birth to boot. This is Poppy, signing off and reporting for duty.