Category: FAITH

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Anna – an Easter story

Easter is a season about what really matters: life out of death. My grandparents would credit Jesus for bringing life out of death for humanity at Easter. But for their own marriage, they would credit Miller Lite beer.

Each year they swore off beer for Lent. Their marriage would then be stress tested for the next 40 days. When they got home after the Easter service they would line up a 6-pack of cold ones on the kitchen counter. The moment the clock struck noon they would each shotgun a couple of beers. Marital bliss restored: life out of death. Thank you Miller Lite.

My friend Carl’s much more substantive experience with this mystery involves his daughter Anna. She was born in 1974 more than three months premature. Brain-injured at birth, she had cerebral palsy and was unable to walk, talk, or do much of anything for herself.  But she was smart, strong and charismatic – with a big smile and infectious laugh that drew people to her. Carl says, “She was my anchor and touchstone and I like to think that I was hers.”  Anna died unexpectedly and much too soon in 2006, back when Carl and I worked together.

Last year, Anna was honored at a neighborhood Day of the Dead party in Oakland. The party was held in an old speakeasy where the evening’s pass phrase was: “The Veil is Thin.” Anna’s photo (enclosed) was placed with those of the other departed on an elaborate, makeshift shrine behind the bar.  According to Carl, “It was an evening to remember with lots of laughter and tears flowing from the audience to accompany the beautiful, haunting music and storytelling.”

Days later, the host of the party contacted Carl to tell him how drawn he had been to Anna’s photo during the party, coming back to it again and again: “I want to know that woman,” he said. “I’m not sure what it was about Anna’s picture and the way that she looked at me, but it was captivating in a way that words cannot define . . . it was more of a feeling that touched my soul. Viewing her just captivated me . . .I wish I knew her.” Carl remarked that Anna still has that kind of presence more than 11 years after her death “. . . shining through the darkness and bringing light to our lives still”.

Carl is a real writer. He shared with me the following poem about Anna. I believe it is an Easter poem:

hungry we are hungry for connection

let me tell you about Anna

brain broken at birth

who had no stops

 

inhabiting a body that didn’t

work where words went in

and didn’t come out and all

was said with feelings

 

that shook you awake how

can you not open yourself to that

not hiding from the love revealed

in no words not capturing you

 

in her arms but penetrating

your defences with a look

insisting on your presence

her feelings like knives

 

cutting away half measures

to what you thought you knew

you never knew or imagined

that your time on earth could be

 

so simple and joyful for even just this

one moment in her presence eyes lit up

seeing you in a way never seen

or thought possible who are you

 

who are you now when will you see

yourself through her eyes

exposed revealed redeemed

in the touch that she could only give

 

if touched first what if you too

could put words aside

fiercely surrendering to her

hard-won state of grace

 

that would be something to celebrate. 

Such a hard-won state of grace and something to celebrate indeed. Happy Easter friends!

[If you know others who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

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Peace

The Jesuit training center where I attend a monthly course is normally filled with joy and peace. Not today. Today, there is a disturbance in The Force.

Some months back I came to the center to interview for a place on the course. I was anxious. My anxiety was put to rest the moment I met him. Well into his 80s, he looked like a leprechaun.  Short, trim, prominent nose, gray hair parted to the side. He held the door open and welcomed me to the center in a sing-song Irish accent. He wore faded cotton trousers, slippers, and a cardigan knit long ago by a loved one. He asked me my name. He told me he would pray for me. Then he ambled off down the corridor, humming.

He reappeared throughout that first day, popping up in random places. He didn’t seem to be working, but rather drifting peacefully through the training center on some invisible current, as a fish might do in a huge aquarium. Each occasion when we passed he would stop, clasp my hand, say my name, and remind me of his prayers for me. His eyes twinkled. He hummed merrily to himself as he floated away.

I learned that he had once been a renowned expert in the practice of prayer. He had been a sought after retreat leader and author of several classic works. In recent years he has spent his days padding around in slippers, praying for people and radiating peace. He is perhaps the most peaceful human that I have ever encountered.

For 21 years he lived on the second floor of the training center in a small bedroom between the elevator shaft and the utility storage closet. The room has a tiny window with a distant view of the Irish Sea. Today he is being relocated to another Jesuit community. I suspect he is being eased out to pasture.

We met this morning in the stairwell. He did not recognize me. He held a box of paperclips in his hand. He told me he was cleaning out his small room and wanted to be sure the paper clips were put to good use at the reception desk.  I spontaneously gave him a bar of chocolate that I had in my backpack. I told him how grateful I was for his peaceful presence. His eyes welled with tears.

This afternoon I watched from a distance as the small group of remaining Jesuits escorted him to the taxi. They held him lovingly by the elbow as they walked together. Everything he owns fit into a garment bag and a single suitcase.

Headlines of predatory priests and politicians get me down. Today, however, I was reminded of the legions of truly great people who never make the papers.  These anonymous heroes make the world go round by quietly going about their life’s work.  As this gentle man has done his whole life, sowing peace.

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The Nuns of St-Loup

Deep joy flows from them like a breaking wave. It surges through withered hands as they greet you. It twinkles in eyes gleaming behind thick spectacles. It spills over in easy laughter.

They are only a remnant now. Perhaps 30 or so remain from an original strength of hundreds. For over a century they ran The St-Loup hospital located on the Via Francigena, a 1,000 mile footpath connecting Canterbury England to Rome. But they are too old and too few now to run a pilgrim hospital. So instead they care for the infirm at the nearby hospice, and they welcome modern pilgrims to their retreat house.

Our retreat group is invited to join their mid-day meal. We file silently into the simple dining room. We are shown to long tables. The center seats at each table are reserved for a nun, one facing another across the table. These two sisters pass the food, always counterclockwise, in simple tin serving plates. The nuns take their portion last. This ritual is orderly, meticulous, and a source of obvious delight.

When everyone is served one nun sings the first line of grace in French. The chorus then joins her in rich, four-part harmony. The hair on my neck tingles as they sing. The woman seated beside me weeps quietly from the beauty of it. I pass her my napkin. I won’t need it: my shirt usually becomes my napkin.

The meal is taken in silence. It consists of simple vegetables from their garden, polenta, and overcooked pork chops. The nun at our table is well over 70 and weighs perhaps 90 pounds. She whistles through her nose when she breathes and she eats more than I do. Each time we make eye contact she stifles a giggle. I suspect it is from the food slopped on my shirt. Dessert is homemade yoghurt with honey, the best I have ever eaten. The dessert spoon is silver.

The cleanup is equally choreographed. Cutlery is collected in red plastic sandbox pails wrapped in wicker. The aged nuns then shuffle out to bring light into the world and to wheel the infirm around the flower garden.

The wifi password at the retreat center is “Proverbes4:23” – Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]image002

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Easter

 

Our family had a moment of divine intervention over Easter.

We arrived in Paris late in the afternoon and after settling in, we set off on foot to make something of the remaining daylight. We crossed the Seine to the cathedral of Notre Dame. We stood staring up at the heights of the cathedral, taking in her grandeur: the stone carvings over the doors, the gargoyles, the bell towers. We ambled through a park as the sun set and the temperature dropped.

A meandering route home took us through a tangle of small empty streets. We found ourselves walking behind a stone church, unmarked even in our guidebooks. The cathedral of Saint Gervais sits tucked back, overlooked in the shadow of her more famous neighbours. Being curious, we walked up the church steps as the first of the homeless people began bunking down there, sheltered by the alcoves and pillars from the night wind.

Saint Gervais

The church was completely dark. The only light came from an alcove halfway down the length of the cathedral. There, an unseen choir was practising the Pope Marcellus Mass by Palestrina (I only know the piece from a CD we were given). As we stood there adjusting to the gloom, the soprano’s voice soared high into the recesses of the church, floating there alone, sustained, with the clarity of a bell. Then the choir’s voices swelled to meet her, joining together and tumbling like a stream of sound splashing off the stone walls. We, all of us, were completely transported. We sat on wooden stools in silent wonder, hardly breathing, as the music rang out into the dark void of the church.

Eventually, we returned to this world courtesy of a playful churchmouse scurrying across the floor. The children followed it as I wandered over to the door. There, I was transported for a second time by the sheer weight of history as I glanced up at a plaque listing the names of the priests that have served Saint Gervais in an unbroken line since 1278. Here we were, in a place where a church has stood since at least the 7thcentury. Then she humbly served boatmen and fishermen. Now she shelters the sleeping homeless, an unseen choir, we few tourists, and a churchmouse.

Finally we stepped out into the cold and dark. As we picked our way around the sleeping bodies of the  homeless, I had an Easter thought: in a City full of showpieces, this is exactly where the risen Christ would be – huddled alongside forgotten people on the cold steps of an overlooked church, while a choir inside pours out His glory in song. What a gift. Happy Easter everyone.

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

The song for Palestrina is available as a link here

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Church – 25/02/2018

A Nazi, two humping dogs, and a drug user: it sounds like the opening to a standup comedy routine. But these are all things I have encountered in church.

The priest of my childhood church was a Nazi prisoner of war. He was conscripted into the Wehrmacht as a chaplain, captured, and then shipped to Canada. After the war there was nothing to go back to, so he stayed.  Each year he read the Easter passion aloud sounding exactly like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Once, as the narrative approached the crucifixion, I whispered to my family in my best imitation accent, “Don’t vurry. I’ll be baaach”. It was so inappropriate that the entire family got the giggles. And you know how that goes, when you’re trying to be discreet in a crowded church pew…

Our church in Uganda met in a ramshackle school building with tin roof and open walls. On one occasion during the sermon, two stray dogs wandered into the front and began to mate. This was of course hilarious and distracting. It was also typical of a church where a shared experience of the absurd drew together people of vastly different belief, nationality, and race.

For instance, communion there once consisted of stale hot dog buns and apple juice served in a plastic Manchester United cup. Afterwards some folks rightly suggested that changes were needed. Someone volunteered to get little individual plastic communion cups next time they travelled out of Uganda. Instead they unintentionally (?) returned with 100 shot glasses. Thereafter, people from dozens of different countries and backgrounds celebrated communion together with glasses raised.

I once experienced a very different sort of communion. I spent the weekend visiting a farm in Canada where Jesuits had a halfway house for men getting out of prison. Ex-convicts could stay at the farm to get back on their feet. At their Sunday service, communion involved circulating a loaf of bread around a bare kitchen table. We were to tear off a bit, then pass the loaf to the person beside us along with a word of blessing.

The bread came round. I turned to the stranger seated beside me. His hands trembled. My gaze moved up to his exposed arms, covered with needle tracks from injection drug use. As he reached for the bread I began to mumble the blessing. He squeezed my hand, and I finally looked up. The man held my gaze and quietly whispered through tears, “thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you…”

Church has many faults. But I am richer for having joined there with people of every possible background in a shared experience of laughter, brokenness, hope, and mystery.

 

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

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Special Christmas Advent Appeal – 4/12/2017

Africa: December, 2003.

They thought she was dead when they first found her, half-buried in the excrement at the bottom of the outhouse.  Certainly that had been the intent. Born unwanted in the night and lowered into the latrine by a desperate African mother, probably herself barely more than a child. She was a day old at most, lying silent in the filth, vermin crawling from her nose and ears.

But she was not dead. Someone fished her out, cleaned her up, and took her to The Babies Home.

Even the most seasoned hands at the orphanage were shocked by this little one’s circumstances. A staff member there remarked that the child was not alone in the tragic nature of her arrival. They noted that Christ himself had likewise been born into this world by way of a dung-heap, long ago arriving into the filth of a barn floor, care of an impoverished mother who was herself barely more than a child.

I found this statement to be cold comfort at the time. Its meaning has become more dear to me with each passing December. I think of that little girl as each Christmas approaches. I wonder what has become of her, and of the amazing things she may have done with the gift of her life.

Befitting the season, the orphanage named her Grace.

This true story is dedicated to BeadforLife. Founded in 2003, the year that Grace was born, BFL is the most effective organization I know of helping African women to permanently lift themselves and their families out of poverty – 46,000 individuals to date and counting. Please consider visiting the BeadforLife web site this holiday season and sharing this story with others. With our support, BeadforLife can help even more women like Grace and her mother to transform their lives, forever.