A Tale of Two Books: A Love Story in Doodles

It was the newest of books. It was the oldest of books. Or some kind of good Dickensian prose like that. 

March is always a tough month for me. My birthday is coming up. And that’s also the day I lost my Dad. So celebrating my 50 years on earth this year whilst also mourning the 36 of them without Dad. And now a year and then some without Mom. It’s so very weird being an orphan around birthdays and holidays.

Anyway, a wise priest told me years ago to learn to celebrate my birthday the way Dad would have. And I figure the same advice applies for Mom too. So I decided a trip to the bookstore  was in order. After all, neither of my parents ever passed up a bookstore. This trip, I came across a beautiful copy of A Tale of Two Cities. Gorgeous cover. Gilded edges on thick glossy pages. Nice heft to it. A little pricier than I’d normally drop for a book but I felt drawn to it, so I got myself a lovely early birthday gift. 

A Tale of Two Cities was one of Mom’s favorite novels. She read it every year. As she got older and her eyesight started to fail, I offered to see if I could find a large print copy or to download a copy to her Nook. But she said no. She liked her copy. She could manage with a magnifying glass. Honestly, I don’t think she really could but it didn’t matter much because she’d read it so many times she knew what it said.

I figured reading this story would be like having her reading it with me. By the way, she was horrible person to read a book with – always dropping spoilers like a toddler dropping Cheerios. I either had to read a book in it’s entirety before she ever started it or avoid being in the same room with her until I’d finished it. Unless of course I wanted to know how the love triangle ended up or who the murderer was or every other major plot twist that was waiting 50-100 pages ahead of wherever I was in the book.

I don’t know what made me pull her old copy off my bookshelf but somehow, before I started reading mine, I wanted to glance through her book. Suddenly, I understood why she only wanted her copy. 

Clearly this was a book she’d read for the first time in school. On the edges of the worn pages: Gene + Lou. All throughout the book were doodles: little hearts with her and dad’s initials, Marylou loves Eugene, Mr. and Mrs. T.E. Pelfrey. And inside the front cover? A love poem from Dad. In the back pages in a place to review the book – “Climax (point where interest is the highest): [in Dad’s writing] On The Flyleaves. Judging from the other one word notes in her writing and his, she was more of a fan of this novel than he was. I can just picture them sitting together and passing the book back and forth. 

Did I mention they were junior high and high school sweethearts? Yeah. Young teenagers in love is all over this worn little book and it’s just the cutest damn thing. For a little bit, it felt like they were sitting right here in the room with me. I think that was the birthday gift I was meant to receive: a reminder of the love that brought me into this world. 

God Help Me. I Forgot.

“Oh Sweetie, feelings aren’t real! Silly girl!” John took a sip of his drink, his eyes sparkling with mischief as he tried to lure me into yet another intellectual debate on the subject. It was one of our favorite topics to spar over. Pretty funny coming from the guy who once explained the odd organization of my CD collection to a mutual friend. “It’s simple,” he announced as he triumphantly pointed out each break, “Good Mood, Bad Mood, Bitch, Psycho Bitch From Hell. After that, it’s just alphabetical by artist.” It was so damn infuriating that he knew me that well and yet it’s the same thing I miss most. That and his ability to drag me into a debate simply but staking out and defending the one position he knew I would never concede. “Feelings. Ha! Not real. Nope. Don’t exist.”

“What do you mean feelings aren’t real?! Don’t give me that crap. The average kindergartner can tell you that their whole day was ruined because their friend broke their favorite crayon, even if they don’t have the vocabulary to name sadness, anger, betrayal, and frustration.” I’d fire back at him and then we’d be off and running on that topic for hours.

It’s funny now how those late nights of debating came back to me. I made the annual Week of Guided Prayer retreat roughly three weeks ago. I’d missed it last year, yet another of the many losses of 2020. It threw the whole year out of whack – or more precisely, even more out of whack – which is saying something considering the year I had. I went into it this year saying I needed a reset. I was a mess and I knew it. I’d known since my retreat in January that I had been left shattered by the accumulation of losses. I’d managed to drag myself back to my feet but I was punch-drunk. I rarely wrote. My once daily journal entries were now months apart. Seminary papers and assignments that should have come easily to me were a struggle. At times, I felt like had to fight for every sentence and I was getting tired of fighting.

God and I? Well, that was every bit like being stuck in a car on a cross-country trip with someone I didn’t feel much like talking to. And yet… I decided to make this retreat. Why? Because I’m an idiot. Because I couldn’t stand the silence anymore.

A lot of seemingly disconnected things came up during the course of the week. And yet, as disconnected as I wanted to think they were, there was a common thread: grief. And the messy feelings that come along with it. Oh Sweetie, feelings aren’t real! Damn it all. Feelings are very real and some of them are pretty ugly. There was no way around, only through the muck, exactly the way I really didn’t want to go. I asked God for a reset. What I got was a lesson in ‘be careful what you pray for.’ If you’ve ever had to reset your phone or computer, you know it takes time and patience and you don’t always know if everything you had is going to still be there when you’re done.

What started out as a week of sparsely worded journal entries from the Week has gone back to daily entries and at least some of them have to do with more than a run down of the things I need to accomplish in the days ahead or the annoyances of the previous day. I realized I was annoyed with myself for struggling. Not exactly an uncommon thing for me. When I had to spend four months on crutches, I threw them across the room more times than I care to remember. And had I not walked around on a fractured heel spur for two weeks before going to the doctor, I might not have needed the crutches for quite so long. But I digress…

I was able to start writing. Cool. But I’m definitely getting down on myself. Not cool. So being too lazy (sulky) to drag the box of journals out from under my bed and pick through them, I read back through my blog posts. I started with the posts of the past retreat weeks. Surprise! This is hardly the first time I’ve had a rough week. I read The Gremlin story again, which reminded me that it’s been a long time since I’ve taken a long ride by myself with the windows down and the radio up. It also reminded me that I hadn’t listened to the song Coma by Guns ‘N’ Roses or the album it came from in its entirety in years. A few days later, I found myself with an unexpectedly free afternoon and I took a long ride up the shoreline with the heavy metal of my youth blasting away. I’d forgotten how cathartic metal music can be when I’m mad at the whole world, life in general, my dead friends, God. Especially Metallica’s black album with tracks like Through the Never, Sad but True, Nothing Else Matters, and The God That Failed. Songs I haven’t listened to in years but still know every chord, every drumbeat, every word, and every wail by heart. I came home from that drive rather hoarse but just a little less ragey. I’ve had a few more drives since. The soundtrack has shifted a bit. Heavy metal gave way to Tina Turner (Better Be Good to Me) , Aretha Franklin (Think, Chain of Fools, Respect), and Janis Joplin (Piece of My Heart, Me and Bobby McGee). My ladies gave way to the more melancholic sounds of The Smiths (Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now) and The Cure (Lovesong – I Will Always Love You).

John points to the breaks – Pyscho Bitch From Hell. Bitch. Bad Mood.

Yeah okay. I own that. God and I? Still riding in the car. I still didn’t have much to say but I might not smack him for singing along with me.

I decided last night that I could use a good cry of a movie. I stayed up late watching Robin Williams in What Dreams May Come. One of my friends has declared that movie traumatic. I love it. When the wife dies by suicide after some unspeakable losses, her soulmate of a husband leaves the joy of heaven and goes to find her, right down into the depths of the hell of her own making. And when she can’t see any way out, he chooses to stay with her rather than to abandon her in that hell of her shattered dreams. That ends up being the redemption of both of them. (I’m sure it’s no surprise that my favorite icon is one of the harrowing of Hell, with Jesus pulling Adam and Eve up from their graves.)

While I’ve struggled to write much of substance these last few months, some stuff still trickled through. I made a margin note in a book about Mary Magdalene: Jesus didn’t come because we’re bad. He came because we’re good and we’ve forgotten.

I’ve forgotten. I’ve forgotten it’s okay to be human, to have feelings, even the big, ugly, messy ones. I’ve forgotten that God can withstand my furious silences and angry accusations. I’ve forgotten that God isn’t waiting for me to find my own way out of the hell of my grief. I’ve forgotten that God has sat with me in hell before and God is sitting here with me now. I’ve forgotten that I’m not really stuck here, that there is another side to this, one that isn’t quite so dark or quite so broken or quite so terrifying.

I forgot. God did not.

RESETTING… PLEASE BE PATIENT…

Mending, One Stitch At A Time

2020 was a year of losses. A much needed and highly anticipated trip to Cape Cod and Boston was cancelled. My long-awaited college commencement was postponed until May 2021, and is still not set in stone as the pandemic continues to rage unabated. I started the first semester of my master’s program while trying to juggle being a full-time student, a part-time office manager, and run the household during a pandemic which has eliminated nearly all of my favorite downtime activities. Remember movies? I miss the movie theater with the cushy chairs and overpriced snacks. I long for a good night out at the pub with the girls for a good steak and better bourbon. And most of all church. What I wouldn’t give to spend a Sunday morning in my parish for worship and coffee hour with all my lovely church friends. I miss our monthly craft circle spent chatting and working in the sanctuary.

But there were other, far bigger losses too. By the time the year was over, I had lost an older sister and two of my dearest friends in April, May, and then October. It felt like no sooner had I found my footing then I got knocked down again. The last one broke me. I found myself existing in survival mode, getting through each day in manageable blocks of time. If I just make it through the work day, through my reading for class, through making dinner, through this three-hour Zoom class, then I could go to bed. And get up the next day and do it again. I spent the last few months of 2020 feeling stretched and disconnected. I was not whole but a messy pile of parts that were somehow loosely related to each other. My body was in one space, my mind was over there, and my soul was way over yonder somewhere. Something had to give.

I managed to book myself a nine-day private, silent retreat at Ender’s Island in Mystic. I brought my needlework with me. I hadn’t touched it since October. I’d put it down to pick up a call from Roy, only to have his sister calling me from his phone to say she’d found him not breathing. For the next few hours, as I waited for word from the hospital, I stitched and I prayed. After he died, I couldn’t look at that half-finished yellow rose without crying. As I ran my hand over the rows of tiny stitches, over those 800 tiny little prayers, I could still feel his chest rising under the force of the ventilator that was keeping him alive. To pick it up again meant facing life without him and I wasn’t so sure I was ready to do that.

My private retreat ended up being exactly that. I was the only retreatant on the island. It was an unexpected pleasure to have the large dining room all to myself for meals. Other than staff, the retreat house was deserted. I spent the cold January mornings sitting by the water with my tea, with the sun on my face. I watched the gulls playing in the wind and the ducks paddling idly by. I watched a Norther Harrier hunting along the rocks then turning to glide inches above the ground and finally swooping up into a tree without ever making a sound. I spent my afternoons writing or stitching in my room. After a week, three months to the day after I answered that awful phone call, I started to work on the other half of the yellow rose. I started on the bottom edge of it, the darker side, and worked my way back towards the middle. Little by little, I filled in the empty space as hundreds of new tiny little prayers, ones that I could find a way to feel whole again, reached out and merged with the older ones.

Now it is nearly time to head home again. Back to crush of everyday activities and new classes on the horizon. It will take a lot longer than nine days to heal the heartaches of the past year. But taking the time to let my body, mind, and soul come back together to occupy the same space again is a step in the right direction. I will miss the wind moaning through the trees and the waves crashing outside my windows at night. They have proven to be a very soothing lullaby these last few days and they too have become a part of these roses I am stitching, one tiny prayer at a time. I hope now as I run hands across the stitches, I can feel the comfort that I’ve found here too.

Tell Him I Said Hi

Sunday, September 27th, I had a reservation for drive-in church. It would be the first time in months that I’d received Communion. It was one of those private little moments of joy that I shared with my friend, Roy, knowing he would appreciate the oddity of making reservations for church. Without fail, he immediately cracked the joke, “Jesus … party of two…” But he also appreciated the specialness of it and early that Sunday morning, he texted me, “Hope you enjoy your reservation with Jesus. I know I keep him busy. Tell him I said hi.”

I responded later with a photo of the individual Communion chalice I was given and the message, “He says hi back.”

I never dreamed that the next time I would be at a drive-in church service, only a few weeks later, Roy would be gone.

Today, on All Saints Day, for the first time since late February, I walked into my parish church for a Sunday service. There were many modifications made to maintain safety protocols, including continuing the use of individual Communion chalices. As I held it in my hands during the Words of Institution, it suddenly hit me that Roy was now the one with the reserved seat at the table and I swear I heard him whisper in my ear, “I’ll tell him you said hi.”

Over the years, Roy and I shared many a deep conversation and equally as many moments of laughter and silliness. But what I treasured most were times of comfortable shared silences. It is a rare gift to find a friend who was so comfortable with stillness. This year has been a year of losses and sadness and, yet, Roy always managed to find a way to make me smile. While my phone no longer pings at random times with check-in messages or funny memes to brighten my day, those shared silences are still there.

As I pray the office every morning, I sense Roy’s presence. I often told him I envied him because I didn’t have his discipline and he would always smile a knowing little smile and say, “Oh don’t worry. You will.” And now, when prayer is quite literally the only thing keeping me afloat, I can hear him saying, “See? I told you so. Be still. Listen.”

So as I celebrate this All Saints Day and remember those I’ve lost this year, I am reminded that those bonds of friendship and love are not broken by death. Rather, I know that those I loved, who have joined the great cloud of witnesses, continue to walk with me, pray with me, and guide me.

On Love – A Sermon

This is the sermon I wasn’t ready to write for the service I wasn’t ready to lead to honor the friend I wasn’t ready to lose.

For John

We’ve come together today united in our love for John, to share in our grief, and to find comfort in the presence of each other. I’m not going to sugar coat this, grief sucks. Grief is like a form of arthritis. Somedays, it hurts so bad, you can hardly stand it. And other days, it’s not so bad. But there’s always a level of aching that never quite goes away. Some days are harder than others. Some seasons are harder than others. But over time, we will gradually heal. Our fond memories will be good medicine as the days and months and years go by. The love and light and laughter that John brought into our lives has left us forever changed.

Let us find solace in love. When I say love today, I’m not talking about some sweet, sentimental, frilly, foofy kind of love. And I’m not talking about some high-minded, ornate, abstract theological frippery kind of love. I’m talking love at work. Love that is messy. Love with some dirt on its hands. Because that is the kind of love that John shared with all of us. John lived love as a verb. His religion was praxis over proclamation, action over spoken creeds. What do I mean by that?

John and I were in New Haven one night. We’d gone to an AA meeting and were walking towards a restaurant for dinner when a young homeless guy came up to us and asked us for money. John immediately said, ‘Yeah, hang on a sec.’ He fumbled around in his coat pockets digging for his wallet and in the process, pulls out a full pack of of cigarettes and hands them to me to hold. He then pulls out his wallet and hands the guy $20. The guy saw the cigarettes and asked if he could also bum a smoke. John smiled that big, disarming smile or his and took the pack from me, lit two cigarettes, kept one in his mouth and passed one to me, as he so often did, and then handed the guy a nearly full pack of cigarettes and then gave him the lighter besides. John wished him a good night like he was an old friend. It didn’t matter that it was dark. It didn’t matter that there weren’t a lot of people around. It didn’t matter that this guy could easily have intended to mug us both. It didn’t matter how he was going to spend that money. John saw another human being in need and responded with kindness, with generosity, with compassion and without hesitation and without judgement. He said to me over dinner, ‘I’ve been that guy. I know how it feels to be on the other side of that interaction and, Sweetie, let me tell you, it’s not fun.’

And that, my friends, is the kind of love that I’m talking about. That is love at work in this world. Even in the midst of our pain, even in the midst of our struggles, to act with compassion towards others and to recognize their full dignity as fellow human beings, that is the kind of love that will bring us solace and comfort. That is the kind of love that is light in the darkness. That is the kind of love that sets prisoners free. That is the kind of love that should come to mind when we hear that God is love. God’s love is specifically love at work.

God loves each and every one of us. God knows the secret things we struggle with, the things we don’t talk about, the things we manage to cover and still get through our days. And God is at work in those struggles. In the economy of God’s Grace, nothing, absolutely nothing, is wasted. Not one day is unimportant. Not one moment goes unnoticed.

As many of us experienced in our relationships with John, John had a gift for seeing the good in us even when we couldn’t see it in ourselves. John learned each one of our soul songs and he would sing it back to us even when we’d forgotten the tune. And he did that even at times when he couldn’t see the good in himself. That is love at work. That is the love of God shining through this beloved child of God.

When we act out of compassion, out of kindness, and with generosity of spirit towards others in the world – even when we may have our own struggles – we allow God to work through us. We allow God who is love, God who is love at work, to work through us. And as that love moves through us, it not only changes the world around us, it changes us as well.

Some churches don’t have much tolerance for a gay man. Society certainly doesn’t have much tolerance for an addict. But what we saw in John was so, so much more than who he loved or what disease he wrestled with. What we witnessed in John was an everyday kind of holiness. What we witnessed in John was what Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber would call an accidental saint – a paradoxical person who doesn’t fit the typical rigid religious stereotype of a holy person but nevertheless, is indeed a holy person doing the work of God who is love.

John is no longer here with us. His work here is done. Now it’s up to us to carry on. John saw something uniquely good and wonderful in each one of you. As you sit with your memories of John, remember what he saw in you. Know that what John saw only in glimpses, God sees with perfect clarity the truth of your goodness. I would challenge you to live out of that goodness in whatever way you can. Be love at work in the world. Get your hands dirty bringing the love of God into this world. God knows this world need it.

Resurrection Unbound

Reading for Easter Vigil

With churches closed for the last few weeks of Lent and also for Easter due to the COVID-19 pandemic, churches of all sizes and denominations have scrambled to find ways to stay connected. At a time when we need each other most, we cannot gather – at least not in person. Clergy on Twitter and Facebook have reached out to each other with suggestions and support, everything from hosting Zoom bible study to sharing cringe-worthy stories and videos of when things went sideways. The English rector who lit his sweater on fire during evening bible study and calmly patting out the flames on his shoulder before continuing his meditation was a prime example that it’s okay for things not to go perfectly. No one needs perfect right now. We need what is honest, heartfelt, and genuine even if it’s messy, awkward, or clumsy.

As we all realized that churches would be closed for Easter, and likely beyond, there was almost an immediate knee-jerk response from clergy and laypeople alike that Easter would be celebrated the first Sunday our congregations could gather. That quickly shifted to discussions of the need to celebrate all of Holy Week together as many people would be grieving losses and would need the journey to the cross, the darkness and grief of the tomb, and then, and only then, to celebrate the victory over death. It didn’t take long for the liturgy police to point out that Easter is the first Sunday following Passover, which follows the first full moon after the vernal equinox and thus, is a feast which absolutely cannot, must not be moved. To quote Doctor Who, ‘Fixed point in time. So sorry.’

I was, and still am, pretty solidly in the camp of celebrate Holy Week whenever we can gather again, even if it’s July. Why? Because somehow I have a hard time accepting that God is bound by our calendars or our sense of timekeeping. God rested on the seventh day – so for the sake of argument, what if God started creating the world on a Wednesday and we’ve been celebrating this Sabbath on Sunday thing wrong all along? Just as the Sabbath is about remembering to take time to rest with God, so too our remembrances of the events of Holy Week and the celebration of the Resurrection are about taking the time to retell the stories and celebrate the promises of God which have been fulfilled in Christ.

Of all the days on the church calendar, the Easter Vigil is far and away my favorite as we tell the stories of God’s promises throughout the generations, waiting in the darkness for the light we know will come. This year, it was a little different. For the first time, I had the opportunity to read for the Vigil. I read not in a church but in my sons’ bedroom because it was the quietest room in the house. I read not in the darkness of evening, but in the brightness of mid-morning, waiting patiently for the young football player and his father to finish working out on the field to their hype music with it’s window-rattling bass. I read not to the familiar faces of my congregation but to a stuffed dog who propped up my iPhone so I could record with a steady camera angle. I read not on Holy Saturday but on Monday morning so that I could email the recording to our choir director, turned tech guru extraordinaire, who would have to splice together all the readings, songs, prayers and sermon that would make up our Easter Vigil. I spent Easter Vigil not in my lovely church but in my bedroom, not at 7:30 but at 9:30, not with others but alone, and yet – not alone. The end result was beautiful and moving in ways I could never have imagined. Each from our own homes, we came together and yet did not gather, separate and yet united.

Time feels strangely fluid in these odd days we’re living in right now. We have to remind each other what day it is. Most of our social obligations have been cancelled en masse, for how long, no one knows. And where is God in all of this? God is beyond all time, unencumbered by our human record keeping and calendars. The victory over death happened over 2000 years ago, it happens now in this moment, in this breath and in the one we are about to take, and it will happen until the end of time because in ways we will never be able to fathom, the resurrection is unbound by time.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

We Are Church

What strange days we find ourselves in right now. The news from all over is ever more concerning. Cases of COVID-19 have appeared in two schools near my home and a friend for the university was exposed to it at their internship. I started to prepare a couple weeks ago by buying paper goods, hand soap, Tylenol, and cold medicines. Still, I was profoundly shocked to walk into the grocery store Thursday afternoon, right after the announcement that schools were to be closed indefinitely, to see the meat case nearly empty. Saturday, I was able to go early in the morning to get meat but the vast array of produce I’m used to so casually picking through was mostly empty. Instead of rows upon rows of colorful fruits and vegetables, there were only empty black bins. It struck me in that moment how spoiled I have always been. I’ve never in my lifetime walked into a store and not been able to buy everything I need for several days worth of complete meals to feed five of us. I have never before seen entire grocery store aisles empty – totally and completely empty – of bread, eggs, milk, juice, meat, frozen vegetables, and fresh produce. In any other time, I’d probably crack jokes: hashtag first world problems, hashtag toilet paper famine, hashtag where’s the beef. But this isn’t like anything I’ve ever faced before and, for once, my dark gallows humor is failing to keep up.

Then the churches started to close.

I have watched and talked on social media over this past week with many of my clergy friends who agonized over whether it was enough to warn those considered vulnerable to stay home or whether they should cancel services altogether.  How do we share the peace? How do we share in communion? How do we keep people safe? How do we best minister to anxious people in this frightening time of crisis? In some cases, bishops made the call for them but many others had to make the best decision they could for their own congregation. Many decided that, for right now, love looks like an empty church.

This morning, I scrolled through social media and I saw church after church after church had found ways on very short notice to connect via livestreams, recorded videos, posted reflections and emails. Pastors preached to empty churches. Organists and musicians played on without their choirs. People shared links to services and reflections from all over the country, across all denominational lines. And there, my friends, is the Body of Christ in action. Right here, right now. Maybe we’ve gathered a little differently this Sunday, but make no mistake, we are still church and Jesus is in our midst. There is no shortage here. There are no empty shelves. There is no worry about what will be restocked or when. There are no quantity limits.

It can be easy to fall into a routine of receiving communion every week in the same way that we pick up groceries. I got the grace I need to get through the week. I can come back next week and do it again. But here’s the thing, Jesus is so much bigger than that. The gift of our Lord that we receive so blithely, so routinely is so far beyond anything we can ever hope to understand. The grace given to us in the sacrament is boundless, infinite, and endless. The grace we receive never runs out. So no matter how long we have to wait to receive communion again, Jesus does not leave us wanting.

For now, let us keep finding new ways to connect safely and let us hold fast to promise of Jesus in the Eucharist.

And may God hold you in the palm of his hand, until we meet again.

Saint James grads, I know y’all sang that last line.

Hashtag we are church.

 

Simple Question

There are times when everything seems to hit all at once. Good, bad, exciting, devastating, enlightening, frustrating and everything else on the spectrum has been coming my way over the last months. Lately, all of the conflicting emotional stuff of life has left me reeling, lacking the words to begin to explain it all, even to God.

Yeah. I know. God needs no explanations. But I do. When I can’t find words for what I’m experiencing, it’s gets harder to pray for what I want and need – because I don’t even know what I want and need. When I shy away from my journal but inexplicably burst into tears driving to the food store, it’s time to stop being too busy to feel the things I can’t (won’t) even take the time to name.

Friday, for the first time in a very long time, I had a day off. I took a box of tissues and my prayer notebook, went to the beach, and wrote God a rather long letter that, after a couple pages, had at least put names to some of what I was feeling. The short version of it all came down this:

God, I feel like I’m caught in a riptide, being sucked out to deep unknown waters and I’m scared.

I closed the book and set it aside, having cried myself out in the process of writing. As I sat there, all the answers I needed came in the form in the simplest question.

Have I ever let you drown?

No.

It’s just that simple.

Am I still caught in a riptide, sucked into deep unknown waters? Yes.

Am I still scared? Also, yes.

But I’ll go wherever this takes me and I will not be left to drown.

Slow Down

You know that sinking feeling you get when you’re driving along and all of the sudden, the Check Engine light comes on? And then you drive with one eye on the road and one eye on the light and wonder if this will turn out to be a simple sensor or something really expensive, say like a fuel pump. Yeah, well, my body’s Check Engine light clicked on three weeks ago and I decided to ignore it and try to make it to the end of the semester then deal with whatever was leaving me doubled over with stomach pains. That turned out to be a pretty stupid idea.

After three days of pain and chills, I decided that I would suck it up for one more day, get through my day at work, then go see my family doctor and see what was going on. All I had to do was make until 2:30 or so on Thursday afternoon. Instead, my mom took a tumble before my alarm even went off Thursday morning and I ended up in the emergency room with her. Thankfully, her injury wasn’t anything catastrophic – a broken arm but nothing requiring surgery. I spent most of the day Thursday and good chunk of Friday at the hospital with her, arguing to get her admitted to evaluate her heart condition, while in agony myself and not telling anyone. Finally, Friday afternoon, the chills were so bad, I had to go home while my sister stayed with Mom. I took a hot shower and still couldn’t stop shivering. My teenage son brought me two blankets and the thermometer. I’d spiked a fever of 102.2. I finally had to admit I was sick. I went to the walk-in clinic Saturday morning and they wanted to put me in an ambulance immediately and send me off to the same emergency room where I’d just spent two days with Mom. They suspected colitis or something similar and said the ER could keep me hydrated via IV fluids, run some tests, maybe give me some antibiotics. I refused to go, knowing it would just mean long hours of being ignored in the hallway, cold and miserable, when I could keep myself hydrated at home and wait to see my family doctor on Monday. Probably not a brilliant choice but oh well, I’m still here.

I spent the rest of Saturday and all day Sunday on the couch. Monday, my fever was lower but not gone. My doctor made sure I could keep fluids down, told me to stay away from solid food for a few days, and to rest. E. Coli from eating raw cookie dough or diverticulitis were his two prime suspects. Given the way things played out, diverticulitis was the final diagnosis. I missed a full week from work and school. I ended up coordinating Mom’s move from hospital to a nursing home for rehab from my bed. I lived on nothing but Gatorade and water for 8 days. Care to guess who does all the grocery shopping and cooks Thanksgiving dinner? Yup – yours truly.

Turns out spending a week completely flattened and another ten days feeling like you’ve been hit by a truck will give you a whole new appreciation for the words Slow Down. I spent a lot of time crashed out on the couch. Bed time got backed up to 7 or 7:30. Visits with my mom were only a couple hours at best before she’d kick me out for looking too pale. I still managed, with help from my younger son, to pull off a fancy Thanksgiving dinner for the two of us. But he has spent the remainder of the long weekend hounding me to sit down and rest.

This morning, as I settled down at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and a copy of John Pavlovitz’s Advent devotional Low. I read the following:

“Life comes with the collateral damage of living, with failed plans and relational collapse, with internal struggle and existential crises, and we carry these things into this season. The good news is we don’t need to discard our messiness to step into this season, and we couldn’t even if we wanted to. Bring every bit of your flawed self and all your chaotic circumstances to this day. Welcome the mess.”

from Low by John Pavlovitz

And as I sat there, gazing out the window and contemplating this, I realized that I am the mess. And trying to force myself to keep going at full power “just a little bit longer” isn’t working. My bad habit of trying to make sure everyone else is taken care of first also isn’t working. It damn near put me in the hospital. And so maybe this Advent, instead of spending half of it trying to get through to the end of the semester with my A average intact and the other half trying to make sure everything is ready for Christmas, I may actually have to slow down and take care of myself. I may actually have to accept that I don’t need to pull off a miracle of getting it all done and coming out on top. Because the Christmas miracle isn’t mine to pull off and it never was in the first place.

Sneaky Jesus

A few quiet moments alone in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit

This has been one of *those* weeks. You know the type when absolutely nothing goes the way you planned. Monday morning started out with me tripping up the stone steps of the back porch whilst juggling the morning Dunkin run (my tea, mom’s coffee and doughnut) and managing to save the combined 24 ounces of very hot liquid for the price of a couple of colorfully bruised shins. Tuesday and Wednesday weren’t much better. Thursday started at 5 AM, making PowerPoint slides for a group presentation – have I ever mentioned how much I detest group presentations? – followed by Dunkin royally screwing up my order. I got home with mom’s coffee and doughnut but instead of my simple black tea (hot water, tea bag – not hard), I had a medium coffee with 6 creams and 7 sugars. Yes – you read that right – 7 sugars. And because I was already running late and caffeine is a thing necessary for functioning during short-handed busy seasons at work, I drank it anyway and was twitchy most of the day. After work, I had to drop my younger son to the bus for his after-school mentor program and remind my older son that he was in charge of picking his kid brother up later. That gave me about an hour at home to sit down and contemplate whether or not I really, really wanted to drive down to the university in rush hour traffic, in the dark, on a cold, raw, drizzly November evening when I did not have to be in class. And here’s the thing – that was a long hour. I came up with a laundry list of excellent reasons to stay home. Top on the list was that I was already exhausted and I had to present in class on Friday morning. But Sr. Helen Prejean was speaking at Sacred Heart and I have admired her work against the death penalty since I was a teenager. How many chances was I going to get to see her speak in person?So I dragged my sorry self off the couch earlier than I needed to because I figured it would be better to sit and wait in the chapel than to hang out at home, thinking up excuses to change into pjs and stay home all cozy and warm. Inertia is, after all, a dangerous thing.

My efforts were rewarded with a half an hour in an empty, quiet chapel – a rare luxury these days – interrupted only by a pair of texts assuring me that my sons had managed to connect with each other and arrive home in one piece. The crowd and Sr. Helen arrived soon enough.

I was blown away by the energy and humor of this feisty 80-year old nun from Louisiana. She spoke about her new memoir – now neatly added to the stack of books I Will Not Touch Until After Finals, So Help Me God – and about how she came to find herself sitting in the death chamber on the night of the first execution she witnessed. Before Vatican II, she said, following the will of God was found in obedience to your superiors. There was no independent thought involved. But after Vatican II, in the midst of all the changes within her order, she found herself trying out a number of different ministries. She soon found herself working in a literacy center in a poor, urban area. And it was as she was leaving the center one afternoon that she encountered Sneaky Jesus. She was invited to write a letter to an inmate on death row. She said that seemingly innocuous invitation was the way Sneaky Jesus flipped her whole life upside down and she found out that doing the will of God sometimes means being in over your head and learning things as you muddle your way through. Honestly, I have heard Jesus depicted in so many ways by so many different people over the years but none of those descriptions made me really sit up and say, “Hey – I know that guy!” – until now.

I know Sneaky Jesus quite well. Sneaky Jesus shows up and says things like:

“Hey Chris…

I think you should come to the Week Guided Prayer.

you want to come to the healing Mass with us?

you want to be part of this discipleship group working on how to live out your God-given strengths?

you want to teach kids in the school how to keep a spiritual journal?

you’re going to be a Eucharistic minister tonight. Yeah, I know you aren’t trained.

you want to come over and watch this documentary, Pink Smoke Over The Vatican?

you want to come over for dinner and liturgy with this lady priest?

well, what’s stopping you from going back to school?

I think you need a silent retreat.

We’re going to pack bags of food and sort coats. You want to come along?”

All these small, simple invitations that have turned into so much more than I ever expected. And those are only some of the ones that came through other people. Sneaky Jesus shows up in all kinds of other ways, always when I least expect it.

I had the chance to have Sr. Helen sign my copy of her memoir and she looked up at me like she’d known me my whole life and asked me, “So what are you up to these days?”  When I told her, she smiled like she’d already known the answer and nodded, saying “Sounds like you’re on the right track.” I told her I knew this Sneaky Jesus guy she was talking about and she laughed and said, “Yeah – I kinda figured you did.”

I stepped out of that university chapel into the cold rain and walked back to my car, physically still exhausted but revived in spirit. I’ve spent the last five years in over my head and muddling through and somehow, all along the way Sneaky Jesus has managed to get me right where I needed to be, right when I needed to be there.

I survived my crazy week. I made my very last presentation at Sacred Heart on Friday. I have 3 weeks left of actual classes, then finals, and then finally, I will have achieved the impossible. At least until the next leap of faith…