by
G David Schwartz
Grode is dead. If I tell you how he died, you would say, "Ahhh, another day in the life of the big or medium size city." Ahhh, you would be right. But if I told you about the amazing last year of his life, you would either call him foolish or dedicated. If he was foolish, he is now enshrined in the dedication of those who love him. If once dedicated, he is now dead.
Grode did not have time to write an auttobiography. He was not that kind of individual anyway. He would have discouraged biographies, saying they were reports upon reports, and therefore merely secondary. Supposedly the first report would be the events the individual being discussed lived. If so, and I have neither the expertise nor the reason to doubt that this is the case, Grode's life was not much about which to write.
Grode was born Maxwell Purcell Grode in May, 1950. His young days, as he explained them to me, were uneventful. He was not particularly successful in school, and can remember no outstanding memories. He said once, when he was ten years old or so, he was bit by a strange insect. The only reason he remembered this incident was because the scab became infected and eventually left a deep mark on him in a position, right in the crook of his arm, which made it uncomfortable to move his arm for several years. While not using this as a excuse for inactivity, it may be the case that the pain was too much to allow movement or activity.
Grode went to a typical, not outstanding public school, served in the army and, upon discharge, worked retail for a bait and tackle shop in Brookville, Indiana. I have had numerous conversations with Grode, yet am chagrinned to report that little or nothing is known of his earlier days. One might almost say that Grode popped into existence in that amazing year of 1989.
And amazing it was! Grode was either a Roman Catholic or a Southern Baptist. It is not yet clear; and as you shall see, it does not make a difference. While he claimed to be committed to his religion, he did not, as it were, lord it over others. He was strickly against such behavior in others as well as himself. He claimed to be devout, but not in a better-than-thou way. He behaved in a respectful manner toward "every place where God might be." His devotion did not prevent him, as he said, "when it was necessary," to utter the apparently most blasphemous lines. "God," he was fond of saying, "either understands why I said what I said or does not. If God does understand, then God will forgive me. Indeed, God knows there is no reason to be forgiven. If God does not understand, then God is not God."
Grode claimed that his "astonishing reversal" occured in 1986. The truth is, no one heard of him until April of 1989. I personally think '86 was chosen for its mystical significance. In April of '89, Grode came upon the scene and changed the lives of everyone who met him. Before this date, as mentioned, Grode was an apathetic man. He had no political convictions, no pet social projects, and few, if any, commitments. The changed occured, as Grode put it, "over night." Grode had no pretensions of becoming an author. He read, he said, little. Yet in April of '89 he began circulating a tractate on human relations which he claimed was simmering in him for a number of years. Thereafter, over the next eighteen months, Grode wrote and published twenty-four essays on a number of themes, each related to the issue of human relationships and the deity. Had he been allowed the time to perfect his craft, and the consequential intellectual developments which we might have expected from his devoting coscious thought to the issues, who knows what marvelous papers may have come from his pen.
Grode told me, a few days before his death, that the purpose of life was to become simple. I asked him, foolishly perhaps, if he meant that one was to become modest, which would explain why he so often claimed to be confused when he was in fact not. He looked upon me lovingly, as a father might look upon the innocent errors of a young child. He explained that if one were simple he or she could afford to be confused, because the confusion would not be debilitating. He explained that simplicity was required to be totally honest, and if one were totally honest, he or she would begin every assessment of phenomena with he knowledge of personal confusion. If one stated at the outset that he or she was confused, there would be no reason for dissimiltude or wasted effort. One need not obfuscate or pretend. One may not become a lie.
Grode was a simple man. Yet I have heard him discourse brilliantly on a number of subjects. He could turn Saki into a great philosopher, and show why Russell was a mere novelist. We shall miss this light into the world. While never verbally praising God for his abilities, his very actions left no doubt that Grode was a thankful man; and according to his definition of simplicity, thankfulness was a necessary component. But so what that which was on the verge of blasphemy.
While never a joiner, beginning in April of that fateful year, Grode became involved with two literary clubs, an ecumenical council, and three current events discussion groups. He read voraciously after his astonishing reversal. He digested everything he could lay his hands upon. He espoused articulately about the cerial boxes he read at breakfast. Nothing escaped his scrutiny, his tender, compassionate gaze about the entire human world and his immense inner need to relate that newly discovered world to all of what was.
Grode was frequently called upon to lecture different organizations in the city. He never carried notes with him. He would begin with an observation about that mornings headlines, a witty remark about a woman in the front row, anything which struck his fancy. He would go on from there to weave everything which seemed relevant or important at the moment, from the creation of Adam to the choice of color for a particular car in the parking lot. And the conclusion„ of each of his talks addressed the identical line to his listeners: now you go out and do the same, now you investigate and report upon your world until your find God everywhere, now you speak until your thoughts weave you into the kind of human being who would make your grandmother proud, now you act and in acting be and in being seek a vocation and in vocation create and in creating imitate and in imiating worship.
Grode had an absolutely wonderful sense of humor. If we needed a single assessment to explain his life, we would have to say that he joked everyone toward truth. The finding, he claimed, was their own. Further, he said, every finding was different.
But his time among us was too short, sadly shortened. The newspaper told the whole story, for the story was absurdly simple, as Grode would have liked, as he lived his life. A "booster for human understanding," a rationalist recently reluctant to espouse reason as the be all and end all, a man who claimed to be a man and not a mystic, nor a romantic, nor an idealist, empiricist or religionist, Grode was a talker. He told me once, "every form of life attracts its opposite." For months I thought he referred only to death. But he was talking about the very form death takes. Perhaps he knew; who knows, I do know the facts. Wilber Barry, a loner who espoused nationalistic sentiments, shot him dead in October of 1990. He silenced the holy voice of wisdom and active reason. His words to the press at the time of arrest tell us everything we know about Wiber Barry. His justification was that Grode was out to "pervert" our "beautiful world." Perhaps Grode would have liked my next remark: each form of inversion calls for its own opposite inversion.
Today we gather to remember our friend, Max Grode. Ahhh, Grode is dead. Another day in the life of the big or medium sized city...
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