PETER

Dear Harry,

I think you'll like this Easter Day story, Did I ever thank you and Peggy for giving me my name?

So there was little Luka, 10 years old, our youngest grandson, sitting with us at the breakfast table on Easter Sunday. I have long since abandoned the Christian faith--I'm more of a Buddhist these days--but still it saddened me to see Easter reduced to a big bunny, egg coloring and searching, and of course chocolate eggs. I wanted to tell him something meaningful, something he might even remember my telling him in later years, sitting at the breakfast table in our Laguna Beach cottage here in California, so far from the village where my family celebrated Easter when I was his age.

So I told him the story of Peter, my namesake, because I was born on his Feast in the Anglican calendar and my parents deemed it proper for me to have his name. The story of Peter the "fisher of men", liberated by Jesus from his labors on the Sea of Galilee to become his faithful disciple; Peter who, on the night of Jesus's arrest, thrice denied knowing him or being his follower; Peter, who went on to preach the gospel in the pagan Roman Empire and was imprisoned for his pains--and released from his chains by the "angel of the lord"; Peter who wad persuaded to escape the dangers of early Christian Rome, was accosted on his way out of town on the Appian Way by Christ with his cross on his shoulder; who asked, famously, "Quo vadis, Domine?" (Where are you going, Lord?) and was shamed by the response: "I'm going to Rome to be crucified a second time"; and turned around to continue his dangerous work in the city; who was captured again and himself sentenced to crucifixion, but denied the honor of being executed in the same way as his Lord and asked to be crucified upside down (see that powerful painting by Caravaggio!); and who was chosen to become the first Bishop of Rome, into whose shoes every Pope has stepped ever since and crowned in St. Peter's Basilica.

That Peter. As I told my grandson, I'll admit it, tears came to my eyes without my quite knowing why, except that I'm now an old man, an old Peter, who was often reminded in the course of his life about the origin of his name--especially at those moments when he failed to live up to it: Peter, the Rock; and was reminded of the singular honor of being blessed with that name.

Remembered with love, Peter