What's in a Name?

The manila envelope rested in a wire mesh basket that sits on top of the mail case at the Marian Helpers Center. The basket, with my name taped to the outside, serves as a mailbox.

My office is located in a charming, small, brown-shingled house located between the maintenance garage on Eden Hill and the convent of the Oblate Sisters. When the Marian monastery attached to the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Mass., served as a private residence - one of the famous Berkshire "Cottages" built in the 19th century by the rich and famous like the Carnegies and Vanderbilts - the building housing my office functioned as the children's playhouse.

Like most Victorian buildings, the "playhouse" wears a patina of age and experience, like the dark wood of a church after 100 years of soaking up sacred incense. A certain mystery and romance exudes from the walls, no matter how much sheet rock you put over walnut paneling. The playhouse has a past. Don't we all.

Where Orange Lizards Live
Some evenings when I'm on the Hill at night, alone in the house burning the midnight oil, I seem to "hear" children laughing. The stone-block cellar is like the set of a Vincent Price movie. Small orange lizards with back spots and glistening skin live down there. Alone, did I say? I take it back.

The playhouse's angled construction, the result of the initial layout partitioned by uncounted renovations, cuts sight lines to size, leaving plenty of corners where things go unseen. At night in the dark silence of Eden Hill, it's no place for the faint of heart, but there's no better place - anytime - for the hearty of faith. The playhouse is to "atmosphere" what Latin Mass is to the depth of antiquity. The Cottage - my name for the playhouse - makes a perfect place to write.

After the Marians bought the property in the early 1940s, the Cottage served as a recreation center for campers, novices, and seminarians. Later, there were classrooms here and work areas. Today it houses my office, the human resources department consisting of John Koldys and Donna Morawiec, the main office of Marian Press marketing director Gina Shultis, and storage.

A couple times a day, usually late morning and mid afternoon, I walk to the center for my mail. On this short walk, I often practice kicking "air" field goals, like I'm Stephen Gostkowski of the New England Patriots winning them another Super Bowl. I enjoy kicking like Gene Kelly, though without his acrobatics. I'm still working on my moves.

Keep moving, my 88-year-old dad advises.

If the maintenance guys are in, I say hello and get into a little light-hearted needling and joking. Invariably there's a laugh or two, like today.

"Big Joe, how ya doing?" I ask Joe Hughes, a bear of a man with the wiry beard and stocky build of a dockworker.

"Great," he answered. "I'm my usual mean and miserable self."

"Good to hear," I chime back. "If I find it wearing off, I'll come by and do something to tick you off." We laugh. Joe's that kind of guy, the kind you want with you in the foxhole when the lead is flying.

Laugh so as to keep from crying, as my 87-year-old mom says.

Mallo Cups, Capt. Midnight, and Teddy, Too
Upon reaching the "Employees Entrance" of the Marian Helpers Center, I fish into my left back pocket and take out my wallet. It's a black-leather folding job not much bigger than a credit card. My wife bought it for me at the New England States Exposition 10 years ago. It contains an all-access electronic security pass.

I hold my wallet to the sensor, and somehow it "knows" I'm friend not foe. I wonder if heaven employs a similar device to scan souls prior to entrance? Don't know, but I often ask St. Pete to leave the back door unlocked in case I have to sneak in after hours.

Once inside the Marian Helpers Center, I make my rounds, including a visit to Fr. Joseph's Special Gifts Office, where I restock the M&Ms and check in with John Foster. In the dreaded private sector, John and I were business partners for 18 years. We've ascended the summits and walked the valleys. Don't tell John this, but I love what he brought and brings to my professional and personal life.

Then I check my mail. Each day brings something new and different.

I've never lost my excitement over receiving mail - not electronic mail, which exists only as lifeless photons in cyberspace and drains the eye - but physical U.S.A.-grade postal mail. The price of stamps keeps going up, but 42 cents is still cheap for sending a first class letter anywhere in the country.

As a toddler, I used to ride in the large leather sack of Clarence the mailman as he made the neighborhood rounds. Clarence was a good guy, always smiling, and ready to tussle my hair or tickle me for the fun of it. Today, the same innocent actions might get him arrested. Tell me, when did the world start to go nuts?

Later, when I reached the age where I started getting mail, it used to feel a little like finding gifts under the Christmas tree. That was before I became an "adult," and the bills started coming. Back then, though, the mail brought neat things like an autographed picture of Ted Williams (enveloped postmarked May 15, 1960 from Boston), a free box of Mallo Cups for collecting enough coupons, and an official Capt. Midnight membership kit.

The Higher Math of 14 Million
Mail at the Marian Helpers Center isn't as much fun as decoder rings and baseball cards, but it matches the mail from my spent childhood in variety and interest. You never know what the new day will bring. It might be a letter from a reader who loved one of my stories ... or didn't. Maybe it's a package from book publisher, sending a review copy of a book. Or it could be internal mail.

The Marians of the Immaculate Conception produce and mail about 14 million pieces of literature each year on Divine Mercy, Mary, or related spiritual topics. There's no way to calculate the effect of this many books, pamphlets, tracts, flyers, newsletters, and prayercards on people's lives. That would be higher math on which I'm sure God has a bead, and why not: He's got the numbers of hair on our heads counted, a digit that in my case keeps diminishing.

This remarkable total of 14 million doesn't include the work of the web under the direction of Br. Andrew Maczynski, MIC, and web editor Felix Carroll. Brother Andrew is a living embodiment of a straight line, which means he is the shortest distance between any two points. He gets you where you're going quickly (not hurriedly) with a prompt approval or a decision and glace that can wither even industrial-strength red tape.

Felix is my sidekick and I'm his - Roy Rogers to his Gabby Hayes, the Lone Ranger to his Tonto, and the other way around. He's got newspaper journalism in his blood, as I do. He's a writer as I am. He questions vigorously without being the cynic I can be (although remember that cynicism is an optimist's penultimate refuge). Felix prods without being pushy. Before giving you the shirt off his back, he'd wash and press it. He'd housesit your car if you asked him. That's the kind of guy he is.

Felix is also cool in the clutch, something he proved in Rome last year when we were covering the World Apostolic Congress on Mercy with balky Internet connections, no sleep, great food, lots of vino, and 10 pounds of stories to cram into a seven-pound sack. He knows no Italian but can write and shoot pictures in any language, if you get my drift. He also digs Vita-Mixes, Churchills, and Guinness. He even ran away from home to join the circus - a boy's boy and a man's man.

Mail Call
The Marians maintain a mail department headed by Joyce Bourgon. Neither wind, rain, hail, nor broken postage meter will keep Joyce from her appointed rounds. Today, Joyce's crew has delivered to my box a DVD on the life of St. Faustina (Polish with English subtitles), a couple of Marian mailings, a copy of Sojourners magazine, and one of those holed, manila envelopes with "Interdepartmental Delivery" printed in thick, bold type at the top, with this line underneath: "Note - Cross out entire line when received and re-use until all lines are full."

Yikes, an anonymous order in the imperative voice. I feel I need security clearance before I look inside, that's how starched and official the envelope looks. A white string that wraps around two cardboard circles secures the back flap. There is, though, one laid-back and thankfully humanizing aspect of the envelope that makes me laugh: the names scribbled in slots.

There are 30 horizontal spaces on each side of the envelope, theoretically room for sixty internal uses. The official information for each line tells you to enter "DATE, DELIVER TO, DEPARTMENT, SENT BY, DEPARTMENT." Right.

No one fills out the envelope this way. Each of the five spaces of the line is used for a recipient name. This expands the potential use of the envelope from 60 to 300. If I were fanciful, I'd tell you it's one of the ways we try to keep costs down on Eden Hill. The truth is that it's faster to write only a name. Our machines and technology have made us not this lazy but this time-starved.

A Quilt of Names
The effect is a quilt of names on the front of the envelope in different colored pens, various sizes, some printed and some written, some within the lines and some not.

The names provide an important clue about Eden Hill. The employees here feel part of a larger effort. They know each other by name and by the character that fleshes out the name. If you write "Dale Zavater" or "Mary Flannery" in a box, you don't need anything else. The mail gets there.

I won't snow you. As with any other workplace, people here come in many varieties. Some are loose and some tight. Some are friendly and some distant. Some you'd want to tip a beer with. Some you'd just as soon not. Some are here because they believe in the mission and others because it's "just a job." Regardless, everyone has to some degree bought into the "Three Musketeers" one-for-all-and-all-for-one philosophy. That's what keeps this place alive and humming, especially in a tough economy.

The particular internal mailing I received today came from Dave Came in Editorial. It contained additional color page proofs for Marian Helper magazine. What interested me more, though, was the trail of names on the envelope, starting with the most recent:

"Dave Came ... Dan Valenti ... Dave Came ... Fr. Kaz ... Dave Came ... Dan Valenti ... Dave Came ... Dan Valenti ... Dave Came ... Fr. Kaz ... Dave Came ... Fr. Kaz ... Bill Popp ... Br. Ken ... Oblates ... Br. John Byrda ... Fr. Martin" and so on. Either "Dave Came" writes a lot of memos or he's one busy hombre.

There were other 32 slots filled in with names, beginning with "Fr. Walter Dziordz, MIC," for Provincial leader who left Eden Hill for a parish assignment in the Midwest almost three years ago. That shows you how long this envelope has been on the job.

As much as this envelope has been around, however, 80 percent of its service life looms ahead - if the paper holds up that long and if Armageddon can hold off a bit longer.

Breadcrumbs Laid Down in a Cave
Tracing these names back is like following breadcrumbs you would leave if exploring a cave. The unbroken chain speaks of the solidity of this place, Eden Hill, and in an associative way of the porous endurance of God's goodness, which brought us here in the first place and keeps us here until it's time to bid "adieu."

The names resemble transfers in a relay race, several individual actions that spur a team victory. This interoffice "genealogy" represents a "family tree" of work on behalf of spreading word of Divine Mercy, as Jesus reportedly asked St. Faustina to do.

She agonized over the seeming impossibility of this task. How could she, an unknown nun cloistered in a remote Polish convent, communicate to the world? Little did she know. This envelope, in its small way, is doing the work.

This grand relationship brings to mind the great Eastern spiritual concept of "interbeing." Interbeing means that everything on this earth and in the universe is connected by a life force that we in the West call "God." Much of the East dares not to name it but know it just the same.

When I look at this internal-mail envelope, I see the sun. How so? Through "interbeing." The envelope is made from paper that came from a tree that absorbed decades of sunshine. There's the sun. The envelope also contains the logger than cut down the tree, the family he supports, their family trees ... you get the idea. I can trace this envelope back to Creation itself.

I look at the names on this envelope. I see a great chain of being that ends with God, and God is Love.

No wonder getting mail is so much fun.

Dan Valenti writes for numerous publications of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception, both in print and online. He is also the author of "Dan Valenti's Journal" for thedivinemrcy.org.
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