We wake before dawn, beating even the newspapers to the front steps. Before I realized I was out of my bed, I had already showered, and was stepping out into the cold Indiana Air. I like Indiana, it’s more urban than some of the places I’ve been, where two cars on a road constitutes severe congestion and a traffic jam. It reminds me of where I grew up, those various cities I call home; D.C., Monterey and Athens. The van is dark and frozen. Catching your breath won’t help unless you like icicles, only nuzzling into your coat and scarf has any chance of saving you. Of keeping you dreaming long enough that you just might fall back to sleep.
The chill air is nothing new, but touching my hair I realize it has become frozen string. From now on, showers at night. The cold brittleness seems a bit apt. It’s like the dream on the edge of reality, ready to break full force into consciousness at the slightest disturbance, yet desperately holding onto its delicate moment of existence. The cold snaps. And back into existence, I crash. From my sweet dreams; “Yes, you’re really here, you’re really here in a van with 9 others, really a missionary and really awake.”
I’ve awoken to good and bad, to reality and something beyond. Only I seem to be aware of this, as the van shivers through the streets and roads, the highways and private drives. The scenery grabs my thoughts.
The sun has just peaked her head, as we pull up to a small city in the middle of Kansas. My mind slowly comes back. I must have been gone for a few hours. Grainfield? Weren’t we just here? No, I think that was Wheatsville… or something.
The town is small; one street has all the stores… actually one block and not even both sides of the street. Theresa and Mike, the team leaders, tell us we have some free time. There’s a slide over there. Jim comes with me.
It’s quiet, but Jim and I talk. How’ve you been? What do you think of the team? Of the girls? Of the team leaders? Are we going to make it? How are the retreats for you? What are you doing this summer? What do you miss? The conversation is continuous and rhythmic, but paced like the slow drip of water from a faucet in the middle of the night.
We start walking to check out the main street. It has a single store with a white rectangle for a sign. Painted in black, the words “The Store” stand almost as a joke but also as a commentary. This place is simple. And that’s okay. It doesn’t take itself seriously, and doesn’t need to. It’s happy.
Jim says it’s 9am, time to head to the church on the next block.
We didn’t have a retreat today. Instead we get to do spring cleaning on the church… a cavernous affair with stained glass streaming light upon the color treated cement floor. We divide into groups, cleaning pews, windows, confessionals, floors and various accoutrements. I choose to work the ladders cleaning the windows, as everyone else is scared of climbing them. I hate ladders. They wobble and I’m sure I’ll die falling off one; I’ve always had dreams of that. Jim and I move the ladders around he cleans the bottom of the windows, I clean the top, two to three stories higher than the slick cement below. The walls brace the ladder well, and after the first few, I’m not too scared, but no body would notice. I pace myself to seem natural. To seem composed.
As we finish, I look at the Crucifix hanging mid air above the altar. It’s dusty and seems to need the Good Friday cleaning that everything else is getting. Can we clean it? The Parish contact agrees, and we move the tall ladder precariously through the aisle, a few times almost toppling over.
The corpus is a beautiful bronze casting, two times the size of a normal body, perhaps more; majestic, silent, beautiful. I almost cry as I climb the ladder to clean it. My mind is transported back almost two thousand years, to the first Good Friday. I tremble every step I take. Not knowing what to do. What to say to a man dying on a cross before my eyes. What comfort can you offer?
I take the hands, as a medic would, carefully and gently cleaning the lacerations. I daub the feet with soft cotton, and embrace them in my hands. Kissing the memorial wounds. I’ve cleaned down one side, now I must go up the other. Wiping the dry sweat from the thighs straining to remain standing, straining for each breath.
I clean His chest, wondering what it would have felt like, strong, proud, to the very end or clammy and suffocating, fragile as a real human. I clean the broken arch of His back, ripped by whips into swatches of hanging flesh. I clean his crown, getting pricked and stabbed by the intermeshed five inch thorns sharpened to conical points. My thin hands can’t even fit through to clean his hair, the thorns so dense, so painful. I can’t even place my hand on his hair. I can’t even offer that small comfort and affection that I hold so dear.
I wish I was alone. I wish I could pour torrents from my eyes. Be overcome by the sorrow and joy. I wish I could rip the thorns off, and kiss His brow. I wish the bronze was the clammy flesh.
I descend to the call to meet in the church hall for lunch. Outside is bright, sunshiny and warm. The ocean air a light blanket that covers and cools.
The parish hall is next door.
Lunch is what I’ve heard will be standard fare on the road; lasagna. I guess it could be worse. At least I’ll be fed.
It’s been raining outside the past few days, but now it’s a vibrant sky and low 80’s. A few of the friends I’ve made here at training have decided to renew our after lunch ultimate Frisbee game. So I clip my flip flops to the back of my belt with a red caribiner that I keep for such opportunities and walk barefoot across the squishy-pine coned camp to the lower fields. The lower fields are lush green, a foot or two higher than and surrounded by a horseshoe lake that turns a glance into full trance and into a meditation on the beauty of God. A trance only to be awakened from by the call “Game-on!”
The field is flooded two inches or more, but we play on. Slides from catches distract us and the game becomes about gnarly grabs and sweet slides, we forget score. Body surfing now dominates, as does mud caked wetly on our skin. Bystanders are pulled in and a mud war erupts. Cool, sticky brown orange mud beneath a light and warm atmosphere. I could lie here forever.
The call for showers rings out. I don’t want to leave. But I must.
My shower is quick and thankfully warm. And now I’m rushing out the door. Most days are crazy, I feel like I’m being pulled from one spot to the next. Dragged like an anchor by my own will and compelled by my leader’s whip. I knew this would happen. I knew it back in Indiana. But today my asthma is acting up, and so is my rash, so I’m heading to a doctor for more meds.
The doctor’s office is a block from the beach in lovely San Diego, California. This guy’s office already seems like that of a quack… obscure location, and by a beach, great, maybe he’ll listen to me and give me the drugs I need to not die. Forms are filled, and a bit later I’m called in. It seems a small operation, with only a few narrow clinical rooms. Moments later a twenty something beach bum with a lab coat enters. Great. I tell him as plainly as I can that my asthma is acting up, so I need something for that, and my rash is acting up, so if he could hit me with a steroid shot, it’d get better.
His short brown hair keeps its light bounce despite his client’s self diagnosis and prescriptions that are subtle innuendos about his lack of qualification. He takes a moment and asks an obscure question. “When does your asthma act up, you seem fine now?” I stumble with mutterings, which eventually evolve into coherence about maybe being around my coworkers. After a few more obscurities, he asks something almost personal. “When was the last time you were happy?”
I left the office dazed. I have eczema? Is that what this year and a half old rash has been? The other diagnosis? Yeah, he’s a quack and I don’t believe him, but I’m not telling anyone about it, just in case he’s right. What would it change anyway? They’d think I was trying to get out of work or trying to hide from the ever and all important TEAM. Individuals don’t matter, unless they’ve been assimilated. And how true is a concern based on a new description? Am I to be more pitied and cared for because of a diagnosis, and not because I’ve been in pain the whole time? You don’t care about me. Stay the hell out of my life.
I pop the first pill after I’ve escaped on a brief “walk.” I’m going to keep this quiet. No one will know. It won’t matter anyhow.
The van arrives to pick us up and we pile in. I get in quickly to grab my favorite seat, the back left corner, away from the team leaders in the front. Texas is so nice this time of year, before the first frost.
I normally zone out when I get in the van. Yet for some reason, when she talks I’m now listening. Just two weeks ago, I despised Kat. Absolutely annoyed by any words from her mouth, but now instead of being as sarcastic as I realize I could be, and really crave to be, I smile genuinely. We had a day off together last week, where I learned she wasn’t who she seems. Where I learned of a beautiful soul who loved quite and simplicity. A smiling face that was content to smile.
Now I talk to her and try to grab her attention, try to learn more about this sweet and kind face that seems to glow when I turn my eyes towards it. I’ve always known she was beautiful. But now I see something much deeper, a beauty that resonates from her soul outward, something 10,000 times more beautiful and attractive than her soft face.
The van slows as we stop at the restaurant. It’s dinner time, and our host families have decided to take the whole team out for Italian food. I never expected to see Italian food in the middle of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I also never expected to see snow in early October.
We’ve been on the road for only a few days. And so far it’s been pretty nice. Host families are amazing! Every day we travel to a new parish to do a retreat for their youth, usually 5-6 cities in one week. And every night we get to meet some of the most amazing families, each of whom open their homes to a pair of us for the night. Five parish families taking in ten young adults for the night, feeding us with food and giving us rest on their best beds, but most of all offering us comfort from the road. Offering us family affection that affirms we’re of value, that we’re people, and that we’re loved. Every night is a mini celebration, a welcome home party of sorts. And every night we are home.
The Italian food is actually amazing. But I can’t decide if it’s the people or the food. I suspect it’s the people, but amongst the laughter and smiles, the joy and stories of faith, I really don’t care. It’s good to be alive. It’s good to be here.
I’m supposed to meet with Theresa and Mike after dinner, and they finally call me upstairs. I’ve been struggling with my team leaders. Though really it’s only Theresa that leads and she astonishes me. We’re in St. Louis right next to Saint Louis University staying in one of the houses SLU has set aside for its faculty. The owner is an old NET team member and current professor. National Evangelization Teams. NET and Netters. It’s my life lately, and I’ve done it long enough to be called a Netter.
Two weeks ago I asked to go see my family for Thanksgiving, instead of the weekend I got the day before. Though I wanted an escape longer, I was okay with it. I asked all the questions and got all the permissions. After morning mass I was allowed to leave. I was to be picked up by my best friend who would drive five hours that day to bring me back to my homes. I’d head to Austin first to see the “family” I chose, and then to San Antonio to see the family I was graced with by birth.
Everything seemed mystical that morning I was to leave, I had been separated from my families since late summer, and though this group wanted to replace them, their feet were too small to fit the shoes. My friend arrived on time and prepared to leave when Theresa said I couldn’t leave! What? I have permission! Mike, the other leader arranged it through the office! My world was spinning. I asked Mike to support me. But he turned tail and hid behind his training to support the other leader regardless.
After failing in my attempts to get a hold of the office and verify that everything was cleared, I left. Upsetting Theresa’s sense of authority.
Tonight we’re supposed to sit down and talk about it. I was ready, I had a list of things that I was upset about, and had prepared myself for some give and take, prepared myself for a discussion. It started off well. “Lets talk about this [problem] so I can hear your concerns about the situation.” Good. She wants to discuss and I’ll get a fair trial. “We’ve already decided your punishment.” WHAT? You just said you want to hear my concerns and my side of the story! She didn’t want to hear my concerns. “How can you say you want to hear my side when you’ve already judged me?” She mumbled some words that were meaningless. She didn’t care. And I was appalled.
We talked for a while, two different ideas conflicting in a discussion that was incomprehensible. I wanted a give and take. She wanted me to give.
It became a sermon about why I was wrong. There was no concern for the list of problems and injustices I wrote down. And when she realized I had a list, annoyed, she asked me to read it off, then dismissed it entirely. She asked “why won’t you obey.” I responded, “you have not the authority.” I had rights and one is to be respected. An impasse.
“My authority comes from God” suddenly rang out like the dying shriek from a mortally wounded animal. Shocked, the whole room went silent as aghast I didn’t know whether to laugh or run. Did she really just say that? Is that the substance of her argument? Is that it?
Yes, she was serious. Her face distorted by the elongated shadows from a single light that hid the ends of her lips and eyes. She was serious. My reasoning based upon Catholic tradition, based upon the catechism and Aquinas, the Popes and the Fathers, was met with the only thing it couldn’t defeat.
I’m going for a walk.
The cold air comforts me. The rhythmic thud of my shoes on the quiet pavement takes me elsewhere, to a deep thought that I only catch when I walk. I’ve always been cheered up by a frozen wind attacking head on, it has always invigorated me, always reminded me that I stand. I may do nothing else well, but standing against wind I can do, even when tears are in my eyes.
There’s something about walking to the Eucharist that gives me a sense of profound focus and direction, all my fears can be answered, all my hurts healed, all my anxieties calmed. I used to be an atheist. I say that so many times these days… every retreat telling my story of faith. I used to think the Eucharist was just a piece of bread that would taste better with some peanut butter & jelly. But then some girls tricked me into liking them… and I followed them to a Eucharistic chapel. Months later, I had an experience. I can’t describe it except in acting out the tensions in my soul. I can’t touch what happened with an accounting of thoughts and actions. I can only touch the power of it by saying things that may not have happened, but really really did.
I sat there reading a book. Something interesting and educational about the Church I wanted to prove wrong, but also wanted to give a fair hearing. Just reading in the chapel. By myself at 4am. Quiet. Peaceful. Content. Alert. Golden light filling the room after being filtered by false windows. The Eucharist sitting on the altar, in the center of a gilded monstrance, a sunburst sitting atop a candlestick base. Two angels knelt beside the altar, holding stone vigil.
I looked up for no reason than to look.
No other reason.
I looked and yelled.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING THERE?!”
“WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?”
“YOU’VE BEEN THERE THE WHOLE TIME AND DIDN’T TELL ME!”
His sweet face smiled at me as I raged desperately in the last fits of faithlessness.
He smiled.
I was overcome and tears poured. He was in the Eucharist and I could no longer be an atheist. I was a Catholic and I no longer had any choice in the matter. He had made that choice for me.
It’s cold outside in Gary, Indiana and inside the chapel is warmth. I have a minute and then I need to sleep. It’s 1 am and we wake in four hours.
