I was driving with my son the other night, listening to Joe Frank on the radio. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, Frank has been doing weird late-night audio pastiches for about as long as I’ve been listening to college radio. They used to seem more random to me. Now they make a lot more sense.

Anyway, the topic (if you can call it that) of this program may have been identity, since he had recordings of a lot of callers named Joe Frank leaving messages that summed who they were and where they lived: “I’m Joe Frank and I’m a butcher who lives in the Bronx…” “I”m Joe Frank and I’m a retired military man…” And threaded in between all of these will-the-real-Joe-Frank-please-stand-up moments was a recording of a talk by Jack Kornfield, one of my favorite Buddhist writers and lecturers.

Jack was telling a joke, as is his wont, that he had heard from a “recovering Catholic” friend of his: Jesus is walking around heaven when he sees a bunch of people gambling. He can’t believe it, gambling in heaven! Then he turns the corner and there are a bunch of people drinking! It’s too much. He goes to St. Peter at the gate and rips him: “What’s wrong with you? You’re supposed to vet these people and make sure they come in when they are ready! Until then they go to purgatory (or worse!)” “Sorry,” says Peter, “I do try and vet them, honest, boss.” “One simple task and this is the best you can do!” says Jesus, who won’t let it go (you know how He gets). Finally Peter says, “I keep turning these people away and your mother keeps letting them in the back door!”

Moral being pray to Mary, I guess, if you want forgiveness. I thought of this the next day when I was hiking by myself by the Pacific Ocean. I was by myself because my son, who can annoy me to no end, would not pick up the phone or answer his email — we were supposed to get together before I got on a plane to come home to NY. And rather than stew about him and his Asperger’s related problems I decided to hike somewhere pretty by myself.

And what was in the parking lot, at the Tennessee Valley Road trail head? A van full of autistic adults. And walking down to the ocean I kept passing them, some in worse shape than others, their minders calling after them — “Come on, John! we’re going to be late.” While John studied his water bottle, or some caterpillar crawling across the road.

And I recalled another hike I took many years ago when my son was an infant. I had taken ecstasy and wrote about it here; the big revelation, really, was that this was an ordinary day on empathy. Like Jesus had just ripped my chest open, or Mary had let everyone in the back door, crowding my little Eden, over flowing my heart.