Blurring the us-them line

It is only when we make the journey to the margins that we can begin the work of blurring the us-them line that exists to varying degrees in most all of us. Few things will bring an attitude swing like a personal encounter with the poor.

As we prepared to visit a homeless encampment, participants at my parish’s Faith and Poverty study were asked to watch for signs of Christ where you would least expect to find them. As it turned out, to the surprise of more than one of us, finding Jesus in the poor was not the most difficult task we’d ever been given. Last week, we met a husband and wife in a homeless encampment just off I-45 in Harris County.

Sherry has lived on the streets for 25 of her 35 years. Her birth mother gave up her for adoption when she was an infant and she was passed around the system for most of her childhood years. She says she has forgiven her mother. Sherry’s husband, Paul, has lived on the streets for 15 years. He is visibly beleaguered, downtrodden at the life he wakes up to each morning.

Sherry bounced from family to family as a kid, and when she turned 18, she was booted out of the system and wound up on the street. “Has anyone ever taken care of you?” I asked her. She said no, without an ounce of self-pity or sorrow, just a matter-of-factness in her voice.

Paul and Sherry have a dog. They call her Princess Leia, because the dog’s ears reminded Paul of Carrie Fisher’s hairstyle in the early “Star Wars” movies. Princess never leaves Sherry and Paul’s campsite. And despite the bleakness of the living arrangements, the dog seems none the wiser. Let’s just say she hasn’t missed many meals.

“Princess always eats first,” Sherry said. Turns out St. Francis lives among the poor, too.

Tucked amid the empty water bottles and spent pieces of cardboard and sandwich bags in their supply cart was a cat, frisky and well cared for and, like Princess, not one to just up and leave the campsite. At the edge of the encampment sat a raked and recently cleaned litter box. Even if your home is a 10 x 10 patch of shade under a grove of trees, near a convenience store that serves as your bathroom, you still want it well kept.

Homeless maybe, but not without self-respect or the desire for cleanliness, which is next to you know what. The love of Christ … on full display in a homeless couple’s care for God’s creatures.

The couple pitches a tent on a street corner constantly abuzz with passing traffic. At the request of a nearby business, they take down the tent every morning, and re-pitch it at night.

Sherry’s arms and legs are mostly covered in insect bites. She and Paul pass around a stubby, filtered cigarillo and sit and visit with us, I would guess much like you do when a guest walks into your living room.

They’re sitting on a 6×8 piece of cardboard and it suddenly dawns on me that it is their bed. I look down and see the toes of my shoes on the corner of the cardboard, and suddenly realize how unhappy I would be if a stranger walked into my home and climbed up on my mattress.

They told us they had been shot at more than once, and were recently hit by BB-gun bullets fired by teenagers taking potshots at them late one night. Both have the marks to prove it up — physical and otherwise.

Someone asked the hardest part of living on the street. That’s easy, Sherry said: “Not knowing if we’re going to wake up in the morning.”

I’ve been asked too many times about who I think among the homeless deserves our help and who doesn’t. Frankly, I am amazed at anyone bold enough to think they can make that call. “They could get a job if they tried. They’re just working the system, y’know?” I hear.

On the other hand, given the proximity of Christ to the poor on the day we visited (and on any other day for that matter), and given the fact that our charge to keep the poor close appears in Scripture more than 200 times — I’m pretty comfortable discussing a homeless person’s worthiness with you.

Dorothy Day once said, “Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up. If we love each other enough, we will bear with each other’s faults and burdens. If we love enough, we are going to light a fire in the hearts of others. It is love that will make us want to do great things for each other.”

Some might call that wishful, foolish pie-in-the-sky thinking. Christ just called it the Gospel.

Vocations: God’s work, mercy, grace incarnate

McKINNEY — The man walked up to the young woman, unbuttoned his shirt and proudly showed off a huge eight-inch incision that ran from the top of his shoulder to the bottom. He told all who would listen about his shoulder replacement surgery, and said he once collected knock-knock jokes but now collects miracles. He said he had lately been praying for Lucifer to have a change of heart so that God’s master plan could be most effectively carried out, and then he asked everyone who would listen for their miracle story. He beamed as he talked. He had just showered, run a comb through his thinning hair and beard, and put on a clean shirt. He was as joy-filled as he had been since his last shower, seven days prior.

A dozen others had their own stories but they also all had one thing common: the look of radiant joy as they stepped from their shower stalls. For the homeless, regular hygiene practice is a luxury, not a given. I watched this scene unfold last weekend in McKinney, a suburb north of Dallas, where Lance Olinski runs Streetside Showers. Lance takes his shower trailer to seven locations in North Texas every week.

“When you go to the shower site, you know who’s running the show. It’s not me. It’s Jesus. Often, when people come out of the shower, they ask if they can pray with me. That’s God’s work. I just drive the trailer,” Lance told me.

Six hundred miles to the southwest, I met a woman twenty years ago who had set aside her job as a river and mountain guide in Big Bend. When I spoke to her she was making regular trips across the Rio Grande to teach the villagers in the small Mexican town of Boquillas how to quilt.

She would spend several days on each trip with the women as they handcrafted these works of art, then she would load them up and bring them into the U.S. and distribute them at stores in Terlingua, Fort Davis, Alpine and Marfa. She would return to Boquillas weeks later, but would first revisit each of those West Texas towns, collect the money on sales and take it to the Mexican women. She did all this after the border shut down following 9/11. The trip from her home in Terlingua to Boquillas was an hour away, but since there was no legal re-entry point at Boquillas, the trip home was 400 miles south to Muzquis then east to Ciudad Acuna, across the river to Del Rio and then over some of the harshest terrain of Texas, from Del Rio, through Langtry, across the Pecos, through Sanderson and back into Marathon and Alpine, then the final 80 miles south to Terlingua. The trip home was more than 700 miles, sometimes over one-lane, white-knuckle dirt roads atop mountain passes in the bed of rickety pick-ups or un-air-conditioned buses with billy goats along for the ride.

Working for the Diocese of San Angelo for many years, I met a man who was once offered a tryout for the national Olympic soccer team in his home country. To play for his homeland in a sport he excelled was his dream since childhood. But there was one problem: his tryout was on the same day he was to report for his first day of the seminary. My friend chose God, making the conscious decision to set aside ambition for a larger calling as a Catholic priest. His vocation.

Lance Olinski stepped down as a pastor in favor of providing showers for people who live in their cars and under overpasses. The woman I met in Big Bend gave her life to help villagers literally survive by seeing they received income from their handcrafted quilts.

We can’t all be priests, risk our life to bring life to others or provide essential hygiene to those most in need of God’s grace, but all of us can have a vocation. Some have already found theirs, others are still searching. Vocations are not narrowly defined. In a broad sense they are the act of doing God’s work, bringing his grace and delivering his mercy through helping others.

A vocation can be big or it can be small. Lance provided 13 showers on the day we visited his operation in McKinney. Tell those 13 how small his work is. Or tell the 11,000 who have received Lance’s dignity- restoring showers since 1998.

The woman in Big Bend gives her time to the people of a town whose population has fallen to as low as 60. Her sacrifice may be the most saintly thing I have ever witnessed.

Vocations are not about numbers. They’re not about how many but how much you can do. Opportunities for vocations are as numerous as droplets of water in a 10-minute shower. And just as life- affirming. Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. The perfect day to reflect on your present or future vocation.

What will yours be?

Why we left the church: a lesson in engagement

By Jimmy Patterson

SSJ Communications

   In 1994, our youngest child was born with a number of challenges — he was several weeks premature, needed multiple surgeries and, at six weeks, developed an infection that almost took his life. Karen and I were beside ourselves with fear.

   We were young at the time, and somewhat lacking in spiritual wisdom shall we say. We sat by as our baby suffered, waiting for the phone to ring with offers of pray, support and dinner, but those calls were few and far between.

  We began to struggle with just showing up for Mass, much less any of the opportunities our parish back in Midland offered. We were religious education teachers for our middle child’s second grade class and at one point, became so disenchanted with the lack of support from our parish that we would teach CCD and hop in the car and drive four blocks to the Episcopal Church for its worship service. I know — can you imagine?

   Teaching second graders seemed to us more an obligation to our child than to our church. We weren’t involved in anything else. We would simply show up to do what we had signed up to do. And then aimlessly wander to Mass, in those days before we had started to run down the street to read from the Book of Common Prayer. We would then go home and wonder why no one called us out of concern for our sick son.

   We ultimately wised up and one day finally figured out it wasn’t the church’s fault at all. We changed parishes and began attending a beautiful, warm church in town. We loved our priest and met many people we still call friends today. A few years later, our pastor died and we found ourselves again adrift. We spent a couple of Sundays at our original parish and soon returned full-time and finally began to get involved.

    By this time, thank God, we felt somewhat wiser. When we returned, someone invited us to a small faith-sharing group and others invited us to ACTS retreats. Before long, we became very active at the parish. Rarely did it seem a night went by that we weren’t involved in something going on at the parish. We became involved at the Family Fair, I joined the Knights of Columbus, Karen was in a women’s Bible Study and became a Eucharistic minister, and we both became lectors. Our son, a fully health teen by now, attended Masses with us and even began playing guitar in the youth choir. Any physical setbacks that had made him ill as an infant were gone. 

   And guess what else happened: our phone began to ring. And ring. And ring.

    People wanted us — just as much as we wanted our church home — and it was about that time we came to our ultimate realization: We had left unhappy many years earlier not because we had been wronged by our church, but because we had not made a commitment to our church. When we finally did, the whole world changed for us. Pretty soon, our life revolved around St. Ann’s In Midland.

   It seems silly now, but we left the church because we felt it had left us when in fact — through no fault of its own — the church didn’t even realize we had been there. We were in the pews, sure, but we were out the back door before the “… and-also-with-yous” were done echoing off the walls. When we began to give our life to the church, the church gave right back: and it was just what we had been in most need of: the life we so desperately wanted.

    You cannot take full advantage of the community and life and love a church family can offer unless you first make yourself part of the family. The enriching experience of different people sharing the unifying love of Christ together as one is what is offered, but it must start in your heart first before it is allowed to grow.

   While certainly the most life-giving part of the Mass is the Eucharist, God offers so much through time shared with others on similar faith journeys it is difficult for many to not yearn for that. 

   As we emerge from this past year and begin to return to the pews, I would encourage you to become involved with the Sts. Simon & Jude community. There is so much to be learned, shared and experience; and so much joy waiting to be felt, and to be extended to others. As you discern your path to apostleship, open your heart for that daily bread you pray for every day. 

   As we learned so long ago, it is best received when first given.

    Jimmy Patterson is the editor of the SSJ bulletin and the daily Flocknotes.

A seamless, streamless Turkey Day

With an assist from our children, Karen and I decided against making a drive to San Antonio for Turkey Day last month. The kids convinced us it would be safer to hunker down for the holiday and prevent running a risk of any Covid spread to go with our Thanksgiving spread. It wasn’t an easy choice, but with two small grandchildren, a family member with potential lung issues and the two of us pushing the boundaries of insusceptibility, we felt it the wiser choice.

Given our sudden flood of free time, we thought a weekend worth of Netflix would help us get through the family-less weekend. After the turkey and Cowboys were both carved, we settled on the couch and reached for the remote.

Nothing.

“Try it again,” Karen said.

Nothing.

We tried several more times. We tried restarting the TV, re-entering the password, and I might have even walked up to the TV and shook it.

Still … nothing.

The only thing left to do was adjust the rabbit ears and wiggle the horizonal hold but, well, I don’t have to tell you how that went.

It soon became obvious we would face a weekend without our children, our grandchildren, Queen Elizabeth and a passel of Kentucky hill people. We broke out the books, talked, ate leftovers together at the kitchen table, went for a drive, enjoyed a brief hike in the woods and got back to what we vaguely recall life being like eons ago.

Sidebar: Simultaneous to our cable going dark – because of a cable line cut by construction workers – we also spent the better part of the weekend with no water service, also due to a localized dig gone bad. (And just so we can say we hit the public utilities snafu trifecta, our electricity actually went out for about 60 seconds on Sunday morning, just long enough for us to have to reset the coffee maker clock and the internet. Scratch that … no internet to restart quite yet.)

Coincidentally, this all happened on the thirteenth and fourteenth days of a self-imposed social media hiatus I gifted myself. My time away from the frenzied foolishness of all forms of opining; photos of feet, food and surgical stitches, and assorted rampant fake news feeds came after I picked up a book about how and why I should step away from Facebook and give more face time to God.

Admittedly, for more than 15 years I have been a devoted user of Facebook. Overall, it has served me well but it has also been a means for me to occasionally fling myself off the high wall of decorum; a tumble off my personal ledge of sanity. Lately, though, I have used it for what I hope to be responsible communication. I have relied on it as my only outlet for essaying and I have tried to use it positively.

This sabbatical, which, before it’s over, may turn itself into a rather permanent vacation, has been glorious, which is not a word I toss around willy-nilly. I can say with certainty that being away from the politics, the fighting and the insensitivity that comes with social media has led me to a serenity that has been liberating.

I would recommend this kind of hiatus to a couple billion other global inhabitants, many of whom were actually alive before Facebook and may actually be able to remember what life was like before it. Pre-social media life did actually exist in this era of modern man.

I have to think that this gift of no social media and no Thanksgiving-weekend streaming has been like a little grin from God. A little elbow in the ribs and a soft whisper in the ear that says, “See … you got this. You only THOUGHT you needed all this, but you don’t. You just need me.”’

And as always, He was right again.

Fr. Hubert Wade found joy where many would find no joy

  

    Two summers ago and a few hundred feet into our hike around the base of Devil’s Tower in Eastern Wyoming, I heard it. It was unmistakable. The sound of joyous laughter. And I knew that laughter. I had heard it many times before.

   Karen and I crested a rise in the trail, the giant tower on our left. And there, just up ahead, sitting on a park bench, staring up at the tower, was the source of the laughter.

    It was Fr. Hubert Wade (photo at right), pastor of St. Mary, Star of the Sea Parish in Ballinger, a small farming community up from San Angelo about 35 miles.

    What was Fr. Wade doing out here? And what, I wondered, were the chances of running into this man a thousand miles from our hometowns in a place where cattle outnumbered people?

    We sat and chatted for several minutes, Father Wade occasionally looking up to watch the climbers. Turns out he had traveled to nearby Rapid City, SD, for the funeral of his best friend, Fr. Bob Berndt. Rough weather in Dallas, through which he had to fly to return home to Ballinger, had prompted the cancellation his return flight, so he had taken a day to make a side trip to Devil’s Tower where he was thoroughly and joyfully watching rock climbers ascend and descend the tower, also called Bear’s Lodge by the native people.

   We parted ways, Karen and I eager to see what lie ahead on the trail, Fr. Wade content with remaining benched and beholding the climbers — and laughing, always laughing.

   Several minutes later, after we had stopped for a couple of water breaks, we looked up to find Fr. Wade and his cane bearing down on us as the trail circled back toward the visitor’s center. He was slow, but he wasn’t giving up.

   We paused to talk again even though he was less interested in stopping this time. He was more focused on completing his walk. And that’s when it got even more interesting.

    Fr. Wade told Karen and me that he hadn’t been getting around as well lately because his cancer had returned. He had first been slowed by it when lymphoma had invaded his bones several years earlier. At the time, he told me the cancer had already found its way into his bloodstream before it had been discovered. It would, for the next several years, come and go, and while it slowed him down, it never stopped him.

    He always kept his parishioners in the know. Whenever there had been a change in his condition, good or bad, the people of St. Mary’s were always the first to find out.

    Fr. Wade was from Virginia and had served as a chaplain in the Diocese of the U.S. Military. He entered the diocese after receiving approval from the Most Rev.  Joseph Fiorenza, who, at the time was the Bishop of San Angelo. Fiorenza was in Virginia as a visiting priest at the seminary where Wade was studying. Fr. Wade told the bishop once he had fulfilled his commitment to the military, all he wanted to do was to serve a rural parish in West Texas that had a rectory with a rocking chair.

   Years later, with Fiorenza having moved on to become Archbishop of Galveston-Houston, his successor, Bishop Michael Pfeifer, approved Wade’s request to serve a rural parish but told him he would have to bring his own chair. He did.

   Years later, Fr. Wade told me that his request was probably more like, “I just want to serve a rural parish in West Texas and be left alone,” meaning he didn’t welcome the thought of being transferred around the diocese. He wasn’t. For 24 years he served the Catholics in Ballinger and the rural area perhaps best known for its giant cross on the edge of town, funded by a local man who was the founder and manufacturer of Miracle-Gro.

   But here’s my favorite story about Fr. Wade, who always seemed to find joy, and then bring it to others, even though so often circumstances in his own life often didn’t necessarily go out of their way to nurture joy.

    Before the priesthood, Fr. Wade was PFC Wade, stationed with his company in the Vietnamese province of Phi Bie. There was no priest in the province and as a result Fr. Wade and the other Catholic soldiers did not receive the Eucharist. Having to go without the body and blood for two years, Fr. Wade said, served as the main motivation that led to his entering the priesthood. He later turned that absence of joy, brought by the absence of Communion, into joy for others by providing the body and blood his entire priesthood.

   Fr. Hubert Wade died October 16, 2020, four days after his 74th birthday. It was a stroke, not cancer, that proved his final challenge, one that was too much to overcome.

    A man with painful bone cancer in his knees hiking the perimeter of Devils Tower. A priest who brought the Eucharist to others because he knew what it felt like to not receive it himself for two years in a combat zone. Fr. Wade spent a lifetime finding and bringing joy to others, setting aside his own needs to serve others.

   Jimmy Patterson is the communications director for Sts. Simon & Jude Church in The Woodlands. He blogs at wordpress.jimmyleepatterson.com. and can be reached at pattersonj@ssjwoodlands.com.

How the Church can take a small step forward

By JP

I recently visited with a pastor friend who chairs a regional committee on ministry in his denomination. A part of his job deals with clergy misconduct. After we shared our concerns about this unspeakable tragedy – one which plagues all Christian denominations, not just Catholicism – it became clear that maybe there is one way we could move forward together through these difficult times as a church body. It’s not a move that would lead directly to a solution, but it seems a positive step that is doable now. It is logistically easy but not necessarily comfortable.

The Church would do its people a good service if it would simply allow parishioners an opportunity to simply come together and talk … while pastors and ministers, priests and deacons just listen. Allow those in the pews the opportunity to voice their frustrations and fears, their anger and lack of trust. Privacy concerns could be addressed beforehand and security would deter any unruliness, however unlikely in most settings.

Many parishioners would like to have an opportunity to make even a small difference. Ten reasons why an open conversation with the people in the church could mean a positive step forward for the church:

1. People want to be heard. Being denied an opportunity to express their concerns can lead to a silence that can be harmful to the body and lead to further ill feelings.

2. People want to know their church leaders are listening to their concerns. The clergy sexual abuse scandal is real and troubling. Regardless how small the percentage of credibly-accused, or whether it has directly affected your parish, we are all touched by it in some way. In the Church’s own words, the only acceptable number is zero.

3. Many need to vent. To be able to sit in a room with others and say, “I AM SO FRUSTRATED AND ANGRY!” is all a lot of people need.

4. Others need to cry. This kind of dialogue can bring positive shows of emotion by those who may not have any other avenue for channeling their grief. Seeing others with similar emotions is an important part of community.

5. Some need to listen to others. Many battle shyness in a group setting. Hearing others voice shared concerns can help two people. And likely more.

6. People want to see church leaders lead. Watching them listen can be a wonderful example of compassionate leadership. Pope Francis has told his priests to bring the grace of God to their people and said his shepherds should take on “the smell of the sheep.”

7. Everyone wants to see a church moving forward. These town hall meetings may not solve the core problem or the root cause or the prevailing evil of clergy abuse, but they would be a tangible example of transparency the Church talks so much about.

8. People want to feel good about the Church again. This step would provide parishioners the opportunity to know they are part of a caring, healing church.

9. Perfection not needed. People don’t expect their leaders to have all the answers on demand. Leaders may respond, “I don’t know,” and that’s OK. Questions can be answered later with a follow-up.

10. People often feel strengthened when given the opportunity to share and pray together.

Matthew 18 makes it clear that burying conflict is not the answer. The church, the body of Christ, should be included in conversations of how to help each other through the darkness until the light of healing is visible. Church leadership can’t do this alone. They need the help, the input, the ideas, and the honesty of the people.

“Courage is the mother and father of every great moment and movement in history. It animates us, brings us to life, and makes possible what has always seemed impossible.” – Matthew Kelly.

Our crippling crisis of trust

We often sit toward the front in church. It’s easier to hear and see and partake. Occasionally, someone very tall will sit directly in front of us and block our view. Most times we can compensate, swaying left and right while trying to catch a glimpse of the messenger. Sometimes, the guy can be really big and there’s just no seeing around him no matter how hard we try.

I can’t very well ask him to move or to slump down, because he’ll eventually just sit back up and block our view again, bless his heart, so I guess the only polite way of dealing with him is to move somewhere else, even though we’ve never done that and probably never will. So, I’ll continue to just sway right and left as if suddenly stricken with vertigo, causing everyone in the pews behind us to sway left and right, too.

We have come to that dreaded week on the calendar when Catholics across Texas will learn if someone who baptized them or gave them their first Holy Communion or has heard their confession or confirmed them or presided over their wedding or gave a family member the anointing of the sick has taken on a new name: Credibly Accused. This is a week that many have dreaded. A week that some have no doubt tried to figure out how they can just skip over and pretend won’t happen.

The Catholic Church’s clergy sex abuse scandal is like the really large guy that blocks our view. The church’s long-lasting shame has made it difficult for many of us to see and hear and properly celebrate the Mass. So I write this not to condemn the Church but because it has made such a profound impact on my life.

A pastor in the Houston area wrote in his parish bulletin last weekend that Thursday will be a dark day for our Church. But Thursday will just be the darkest day. As the news sinks in and the names are read and the “Who again?” dawns on us, there will be more to follow. I have a fear that the darkness will continue as February comes and goes and the bishops of America meet with the pope and nothing will change and it will all disappear slowly, shoved back under the rug from whence it came. Again. Some very discouraging advance reporting reveals that there doesn’t seem to be a plan that will bring real change. I hope for the sake of my Church and its future that those reports are wrong. If nothing real is accomplished the anger will only heighten.

On at least three occasions in the Gospel of St. Matthew, Jesus got mad. Once, in driving out the money changers desecrating the temple, he was especially ticked off (I find that story to be particularly ironic this week). Anger is OK but only if it is used to bring constructive change, does not hurt others, and does not consume us or separate us from God.

Here is a point that must be made: Catholics in the pews should all be angry while acknowledging and thanking God for the priests that have brought goodness to their lives. These men exist in the Church in plentiful numbers. My life has been enhanced by scores of wonderful clergy who have changed me for the better. Men who have counseled me, made me think, smile, cry and serve. I do not write this because I am trying to divert attention away from the Church’s crimes, I write it because it is simple fact: The good far outnumber the fallen, the ill, the criminal.

Please don’t confuse your anger with a crisis of faith. To lose your faith over these horrid abuses, the protection of those who are guilty, the seemingly endless cover-up and the falsehoods that have followed, is not fair to you as a child of God and it is not fair to those who have been victimized. This is a crisis of trust.

Many have lost trust in our leadership and it is time our leaders lead us. It is time they comfort us, acknowledge our anger, and encourage us to talk about this without fear that we are bringing up a forbidden topic that many either won’t address or talk about only in the most hushed tones. These things must happen for the church to go forward with integrity.

Do all that is necessary to retain your faith. But grapple with trust however long you need until you see reason to believe positive steps are being taken. If they are not, change seats and come out from behind the large imposing presence that blocks your view of God.

Pray for the victims and for the families of the victims. Pray for parishioners once served by men who are now among the credibly accused. Pray for the credibly accused. Pray for the victims. Pray for the church to pray for itself. Pray that the church gives you reason to trust again. And pray for the victims.

 

–jp

DIY Marriage Retreats

Several years ago, Paul Harvey did a radio show called “The Rest of the Story.” He applied the title to a brief segment he would voice about a subject everyone thought they knew all there was to know about. And then the big reveal: a piece of the story that no one else had ever heard about. It was a great bit.

Last week, I wrote a little something about peace in the wake of some RV problems Karen and I were facing.

Many of you enjoyed that article, and for that I thank you. But let me tell you the rest of the story …

I used to be a believer in marriage preparation retreats. Y’know, those weekends where couples grow close to each other by journaling and sharing and long walks around lakes and longer looks into each other’s eyes. They can be expensive, and needless amounts of emotion can be expended that could otherwise be used on sporting events, Westerns and Andy Griffith Show reruns.

Quite by accident, Karen and I stumbled on a surefire economical solution to the get-to-know-one-another-better weekend. For the inexpensive price of parts and labor on a broken slideout on our RV, we created our own home-brewed DIY marriage retreat. For three days and three nights, while waiting for our rig to be fixed in Billings, Montana, we (along with our two smelly dogs) were confined to our 8×10 bedroom while we waited for something called a spur gear, a simple, inexpensive part that, when installed, would again allow us to open our slideouts and have access to our fridge, our TV and our Pringles, which were lonely, as isolated from us as we were from them, hopelessly trapped in our pantry, begging to be eaten.

Three days and three nights in a bedroom the size of Kim Kardashian’s makeup drawer with no access to the rest of the RV. Being stuck in bed for that long was a lot like a John and Yoko peace protest, only with more protest and less peace. I’m ordering t-shirts for both Karen and me. Mine says, “I survived three days and three nights alone in a bedroom and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.” Karen’s shirt will have an arrow on the bottom of it that pointed in my direction, under an inscription that reads, “I survived three days and three nights in a bedroom with THIS GUY!!!”

Every little noise my stomach made, every creak of my knee, my ankle, and my shoulder became amplified and served as a needless conversation starter (“You should see a doctor about that”. … Is that your STOMACH?” … “What’s that smell?” … “It was the dog, I swear!”)

God must be on Karen’s side on this one. How else can you explain being stuck in a bedroom with no place to go during the season premiere of “This Is Us?” I had two choices: I could watch it and run the risk of TV-induced sugar diabetes, or I could cover my ears and eyes and yell “lalalalalalalalala” for an hour. I frankly didn’t think I was capable of the latter, but the body can do amazing things when necessary.

Karen and I have driven almost 24,000 miles since we started this fulltime gig in January. We have, on average, driven 600 miles or 15-20 hours a week together in our truck. As if that wasn’t enough togetherness, with this broken slideout, we have proved that we are able to drive long distances, stop, get out, and go into an RV bedroom for long periods of time and be together even longer. It is not what we planned when we set out together ten months ago. And it is likely not the recommendation for a cure for relationship difficulties that marriage counselors would prescribe.

Martha Stewart had more room, and more pillows and a better mattress in her jail cell. And she was alone and could privately enjoy the sounds of her own gurgling stomach without fear of judgment.

We went from “Excuse me” to “Could you move please?” to “Outta the way” in the first three hours. When the slideout was finally fixed, I swear I heard a choir of angels sing and a rainbow spread across the Montana sky.

Some couples love each other so much they are buried together when they die. We did it the other way around: We were entombed together while we’re still alive and still love each other.

Now that we are free, we can open our slides again and life can go on as normal.

“Honey, did you eat this WHOLE can of Pringles in one sitting?”

And now you know … the rest of the story.

God’s Sistine Chapel

Yellowstone saved its best for last. In the week we lived here, we were given snow, rain, cold, clouds and the most exquisite creations we have ever seen. It was so foggy on the day we arrived it was impossible to see over the edge of the mountain on which we drove, near the park’s north entrance. Given my extreme fear of heights and winding, twisting, droppy-offy mountain roads, it felt like yet another gift from God that he would shroud his beauty in a gray blanket to keep me from having a full-on nut panic as we pulled our 15,000 pound home-on-wheels behind us.

God had thrown almost every kind of weather at us during our week in Yellowstone — except for what he saved for us on getaway morning: Abundant sunshine, blue skies, the occasional cotton swab cloud that slow-motioned across the canvas above. It was as if God was saying to us, “You sure you wanna leave today? Well, check THIS out before you go …”

I tell people Big Bend is my home park. Nothing, no matter how grand, will ever dislodge it from the corner of my heart it occupies. The Grand Canyon will literally rob you of your breath and bring tears to your eyes with its majesty, and Yosemite Valley’s granite peaks and thunderous waterfalls will cause a tremble within. Acadia’s jagged coastline, the Rockies’ snow-capped peaks and blue lakes, and the Smokeys’ serene sheets of mist and multi-colored blankets of yellows and greens and oranges are unforgettable. But Yellowstone … Yellowstone seems to have everything all those parks have and more that they do not.

The opportunities to catch a glimpse of a Grizzly or a wolf, an elk or moose, a herd of bison or a flock of swans or osprey is where Yellowstone just begins to set itself apart and above all the others. It is a living, breathing, science-project on the fragility of life itself.

When we were visiting, a news organization published a story about how the park is an enormous volcano that erupts every 600,000 years and is 20,000 years overdue for another big blow — an eruption that would be so massive it would wipe millions off the earth and those left would either starve or freeze to death, scenarios that would dampen the enthusiasm of a World Series repeat for the Houston Astros and bring to an early end any hopes of a college football championship for the Texas Longhorns. Maybe it is time for the world to end. 🙂

Like Big Bend National Park in Texas, Yellowstone has the unique ability to make a visitor feel like a tiny speck, yet supremely loved. There is that famous scripture passage in the New Testament that tells of God taking care of sparrows, and if he can devote his time and attention to detail to such small creatures that are everywhere, then he will surely take care of us, too, right? It’s one of the first things we learned in Sunday School.

On the third day, a couple days before sparrows flew and trout populated the Snake River (the fifth day), God made Yellowstone (along with the plains of Kansas, the desert Southwest, the Great Lakes, the frozen Dakotas and even Outer Mongolia and Cleveland). In this northwestern corner of Wyoming on that same third day, he picked up some cosmic sidewalk chalk, a few paint brushes and sculpting tools, pick axes and buffering cloths, skipped lunch and began his career as an artist. If he gave so much attention to the splendor of this 3,472 square mile God-hewn masterpiece, then think of all the attention that he gave — and gives — each of us every day. Are we not mightier than forests, mountains, meadows, rivers, and the abundance of sparrows that inhabit this park? It’s just as easy to feel among the blessed as it is to feel the profound smallness of self here.

Poet/naturalist/National Park lover John Muir (the original Ed Todd) said of this remarkable place: “However orderly or aimless your excursions, again and again amid the calmest, stillest scenery you will be brought to a standstill hushed and awe-stricken before phenomena wholly new to you … Spend the night among the stars. Watch their glorious bloom until the dawn and get one more baptism of light. Then, with fresh heart, go down to your work, and whatever your fate, under whatever ignorance or knowledge you may afterward chance to suffer, you will remember these fine, wild views, and look back with joy to your wanderings.”

Yellowstone has been called the crown jewel of the National Park Service. THE crown jewels, the ones kept in the queen mum’s hat in England, are worth a mere $4.4 billion American dollars, so, at today’s rate of exchange, Yellowstone deserves a more fitting nickname. Part museum of science and history, part art gallery; both wildlife refuge and American Serengeti; natural cathedral and sublime temple of creation, Yellowstone is God’s Sistine Chapel.

We visited here during one of the worst weeks in American political history. The rancor, the infighting, the brutal hatred that threatens to destroy us all broke out from sea to shining sea. The images, the words, were impossible to avoid for millions of Americans for even a moment.

Not here.

It is quiet here. Peace abounds. Either by choice or remoteness, TV screens are often darkened and silent. Even more than all it has to offer, Yellowstone is a safe haven from human brutality. At first, I thought it might be good if somehow this park could be covered by a giant, geodesic dome so that visitors could be quarantined from all politics, all division, all struggle, hate and hurt. But after a week here, it was clear a dome is unnecessary. Perhaps through some unspoken, divine proclamation, Yellowstone is free of the tumult that threatens us all. It’s as close to paradise as maybe we can get down here.

Taking it one step further, it makes me smile to be able to tell you that since we set out on this journey almost a year ago, we have not yet run into anyone eager to engage us in the politics of the day. We’ve notice only a smattering of bumper stickers on cars about the country, four or five maybe, and it seems many people — if left unprovoked — simply want to go about the business of their daily life. If you don’t engage, others won’t engage you. And that has been most everywhere we have been. Most certainly that is the way it is here, in this sanctuary, this earthbound heaven that wakes up each morning with a new wonder to behold, waiting to be adored.

There is a small church in West Yellowstone, a tiny gateway community on the park’s northwestern edge. A stained-glass window in Our Lady of the Pines Church says it plainly: “Let the field exult, and everything in it. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy.” (Psalm 96:12).

There is joy to be found here, to be felt here, to be loved — and to love — here. The trouble and the rancor of our time can be turned off. Feeling love and giving love can be found not only in a place of beauty like Yellowstone, but also in our hearts. Some hearts pump it out freely, and in others it is more deeply buried.

But it is there.

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Photo: A pine tree grows through a boulder in the foreground as an elk grazes in a meadow adjacent to the Madison River in Yellowstone National Park.

Peace in the Valley

The sun slipped behind the mountain and with its disappearance came an almost instant coolness and a hurried farewell to the light of another day. It was the last night of summer, though fall temperatures had arrived in Northeastern Wyoming several days earlier. A rustic Tom Petty tune filled our campsite gently so as not to interrupt the quietness of the early evening, although most campers seem like they’d welcome a louder “Lonesome Sundown.”

A peace descended with the eve. Pervasive, it was. The best kind. The kind that not only encompasses the day and night but also the soul. Peace had been seeking me out for months, tapping gently on my shoulder as I brushed her away. I finally turned and welcomed her. She’s persistent, peace. She never gave up on me.

Flash back. A week earlier.

When we left Rapid City, South Dakota, September 18, a potentially serious problem arose with our RV. A tidy sum and a half-hour later the problem was bandaged and we moved down the road to the sacred valley that is home to Devils Tower, or Bear Lodge, as the Lakota prefer. When we landed, I found myself concerned that the problem that had only been patched and not fixed would again rise up and slow us down as soon as our next camp tear-down came. Worry brought discomfort. Peace walked out on me, taking refuge in the shadow of the mountains. She was still close by, but we no longer hung out. One day passed, then another. Worry had outsized her. Again. As has been the case for most of my adult life.

But this time I decided, finally, instead of worrying again, I would try something different. This time, I decided to instead pray, and breathe. Not exactly an original idea. But it seems to work for hundreds of thousands of others, so I figured, let’s give it a go.

I did not pray for God to fix our broken camper (he wasn’t able to fix my Chevelle’s O-rings the night of senior prom, or any other mechanical problems I have ever had in the years since, so why would he start now?). Besides, it just didn’t ring true to tell God I’d get him a crescent wrench and a socket set and a palm full of grease if only he would just lay on his back under our trailer for a couple of hours so we could drive on to see more of the beauty of his creation.

This time, my prayer was that God would bring me peace. If he couldn’t fix our camper, maybe he could fix me. Fixing the RV might be easier for him, but fixing me may be better for the body of Christ. So I prayed for peace every time I worried, and I prayed for peace if tear-down day came and our camper was still not working right.

Flash forward. Five days.

Tear down day came. Peace did too. But our RV was no better. When it came time to move on from Devils Tower last week, the problem only worsened. But the peace I felt made me realize all would be well – maybe just not on my precious time clock. But eventually it would be OK.

As we ventured around Billings, Montana, looking for help to get our rig fixed, we met some of the finest people we have run into since we left Texas in January. BTW, if you ever break down in Billings, go to Jim and Tracy’s Alignment Shop. They’re the best. On another day as we waited for our part to come in, the family of a friend back in Midland, people we’ve never met, offered us their home and a place to rest during our downtime. The neighborliness of Montanans has been humbling to two West Texans. I am no longer surprised at the goodness of people, though I will forever remain in awe of that goodness.

Aside from the kindnesses that have manifested themselves before us time and again this year, the biggest take away has simply been the peace that is in me that wasn’t there before.

If only we could all learn how to more readily call on peace, ask for it, rely on it — especially during our most difficult times – the more we would come to know that it is always there, even when we are not paying any mind to it. All we have to do is ask for it.

One thing I should mention: I am not an accomplished pray-er. I have never been good at it. I have dreaded it, been bored with it, felt it unnecessary, been indifferent, wondered what good it does and what it all means. I have struggled with it all of my life. I lose focus. Interest wanes. I fall asleep. What good is*my* laundry list? Praying by rote for this and this and this and that. Who am I anyway to pray for the world’s leaders, sick people who are friends of friends of friends I’ve never met? And why would God stop his busy schedule and tend to my needs and my petitions for others? People have tried to teach me how to pray and I have not learned. I have read books on how to pray and remember little. I have listened to speakers and, while fascinated to see how it has worked for others, I am still left with an emptiness. I have never had a close personal relationship with anyone because of prayer. Here or elsewhere.

But, by praying for peace, a better way of praying cake. And so did peace. And this time she hasn’t left. It’s been like walking through a door I had never tried to open before. Or a door I had never seen before.

So, try peace. Pray for it. Live it. It’s something you and God can work on together. Once you ask for it and he delivers it, what follows will be, if not easier, at least easier to handle.

jp