Me and the atheist

When I arrived home from work, I saw a package marked U.S. Postal Service Library Mail waiting for me on the kitchen table. I glanced at the return address with its familiar square lettering.

“Frank has sent me another book,” I told my husband. “I’ll open it after supper.”

I had first become acquainted with Frank 14 years ago when I became religion editor at a large city newspaper. I’ll never forget his first words because they became a part of my weekly conversations with him.

The phone rang like clockwork the day after the newspapers hit the streets, and I would answer: “Newsroom, Linda Andrade Rodrigues speaking,” and I would hear: “This is the atheist,” which would be followed by probing questions about the subject of my latest story.

While attending a religion journalist convention in Salt Lake City, I stayed with Mormon friends, former missionaries back home. After I wrote a column about the experience, Frank showed up in the Newsroom, and I met him for the first and only time, face to face.

That day I was covering for the editorial page editor, and he marched into her office and plied me with questions about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

As we were walking back to my cubicle, he said, “You’re much prettier in person than in the paper.” These were the first kind words he had ever uttered to me, and I did my best to remember the compliment when he was raking me over the coals, tearing apart my stories and what he conceived were misguided beliefs.

But over the ensuing years, Frank’s fury mellowed and was replaced by genuine inquisitiveness, and I started to look forward to his calls. He mailed me religious books that I used in my research, as well as envelopes filled with incendiary stories, written by atheists and secularists, that I immediately pitched into the trash.

When I left the newspaper, he continued to send clippings to my home, as well as an annual Christmas card and accompanying book.

So when I received the package three weeks ago, I perceived it to be an early Christmas gift from an old friend.

I tore open the package and read the note clipped to the book “Muhammad and Jesus – A Comparison of the Prophets and Their Teachings” by William E. Phipps:

“October 2017

Dear Mrs. Rodrigues,

My brother Frank who passed away September 23^rd wanted you to have the enclosed book. My husband finally found it among Frank’s many books.”

It is my sincerest prayer, dear friend, that you have reached the Promised Land; and all your many questions have been answered. 

My stormy life in journalism



Twilight near Old Stone Bridge, Tiverton, R.I.

The truck tires dig in the sand and come to a stop near the curiosity that is Old Stone Bridge.

Once a mighty fortress, all that remains are two stone sections still attached to land, one on the Tiverton side, the other on the opposite shore in Portsmouth.

During the onslaught of the 1938 Hurricane, one of the worst to ever breach these shores, hurricane-force winds and waves damaged the bridge. Repaired, it was a mainstay until Hurricane Carol in 1954 inflicted the fatal blow.

It is twilight, and I am tired. I have come to the water to RUMInate.

During the past year, I have held down two jobs, working about 50 hours a week.  

According to Rumi, the thirteenth-century founder of Sufi mysticism and one of the most widely read poets in the U.S., I have been “Tending Two Shops.”

“You own two shops, / and you run back and forth. / Try to close the one that’s a fearful trap, / getting always smaller. Checkmate, / this way. Checkmate, that. / Keep open the shop where you’re not selling fish-hooks anymore. / You are the free-swimming fish.”

Throughout my 30-year journalism career, I have worked for 15 newspapers and magazines.

I began as a freelance piloting my own row boat in calm seas. Then I boarded bigger vessels, jumping ship and climbing the ladder.

Sometimes I lost a foothold as I yearned to soar from the crow’s nest.

But a new digital era was dawning, and from my perch I watched the winds of change batter my profession.

Three times I went down with the ship, when two of the magazines folded and one of the newspapers went bankrupt.

Through the years I clung to the rocks, while advertising dollars and circulation plummeted and services outsourced.

I prayed to the Lord to quiet the raging seas, but the powers that be were unrepentant.

And the skeleton crew kept rowing upriver against the tide...

Hanging on for dear life, I went from full-time plus overtime to a handful of hours with no benefits, while I took another job as a business manager in the safe harbor of health care to pay the bills.

A few days ago I walked the plank in the company of some of my shipmates, including my captain who had welcomed me aboard more than a decade ago.

Panting, I floated in with the tide, landing on this beach in the shadow of Old Stone Bridge.

Rescued, I realize I am now a free-swimming fish no longer hooked to a dying industry.

Tomorrow I will tend one shop.