you are
a despicable person
you've no right
to shake my hand
“You are a despicable person! You have no right to come up to me and shake my hand. You have behaved abominably and with malicious intent. I do not recognize your presence.”
“I was standing in an aisle in a big beverage store near the Seattle Center.” The previous speaker was talking to someone else, while she was pushing his shopping cart with a small child in the seat facing her. George realized it was a parishioner of his who was doing the talking. Then he recognized the child, it was a girl George and Travis had baptized a few years back. The person that George knew was not in the habit of speaking that way. Kay always seemed very measured in her interactions. The situation slightly alarmed him, what would cause such an outburst of ill description to pour from her?
Then all of a sudden George was the person standing at the shopping cart. And it was his child sitting staring at him in wonderment at the words and language he had used.
The last thing he remembered before waking was that he had avoided making eye contact and was relieved to see the antagonist leave the building. Then he pushed the cart ahead, talked with his daughter and slowed in front of a display of holiday foods. Then George woke up.
He looked at the clock, the red lights showed 4:23. George couldn’t throw off the feelings of the dream encounter. He had seen the actual store before, had walked by it, but had never gone in. What was that about: a sticky, broken nutshell texture in the heart of the emotions against that man in the store? George felt his stomach tightening, and sweat on his neck turning cold, even as he woke, revulsion and something else.
Returning even more to his room, George’s body creaked and did actually crackle as his feet reached for the floor, He was thankful that the community had agreed good beds would make them better monks - and human beings – at least as far as being able to live together.
George dressed and went down to the chapel, knowing he would not be able to get back to sleep. Since he had a whole hour before his regular schedule, he brought his prayer beads. An old friend, who had joined a monastery in England long after they had met, had rolled the clay into large pea-sized salmon colored balls, pierced and strung them for him, unfired. George spent the next hour inhaling to the words, “Have mercy on me,” and exhaling “Jesus Christ, Son of God,” dropping one bead after another through his increasingly dusty fingers.
“Tim, that is… I’m sorry you feel that way,” Stephen said.
Jack jumped into the fray, “I understood we were here to talk about the death of a friend the other day.”
“I am here to talk about everything that led up to that!” said Stephen, his face turning red and an artery almost looking like you could see it pulse, standing out on his neck.
“What?” Tim and George both asked, while Jack sat up in his chair at the end of the table and opened his mouth and left it hanging there.
“I mean… I want to talk about,” taking a breath to calm himself, said Stephen, “how Henry was always trying to help, and how he was part of our whole community – not this one, but Green Lake Lutheran. Henry was always involved, not like Ted, who’s only gotten involved recently. And Ted is only around to grouse and complain. Henry was one of the people the whole ministry is going to miss.
“There are whole lists of things that no one else knows how to do at the church, groups that met and Henry unlocked the door, meetings that enjoyed coffee that Henry made, things that the janitors didn’t have to worry about because Henry took care of it!”
George imagined the waves the murder was wreaking on the church community. They were spreading out further than he’d first thought.
“Stephen, you are right. There are going to be long term adjustments that will have to be made, just for the church to be able to function… Is there anything else you want to mention?” George asked when Stephen did not seem to be going further.
“No, really. I just wanted to make sure this community, this house, at least was prepared for what this murder really means for us and the people of the congregation. I am a little worried about how the synod is going to view us after this.”
“Mmmm,” said Tim. “Yeah, I didn’t think of that.”
“Yeah, well my status as a rostered person is up before yours unless our community is recognized somehow,” said Stephen.
George, finally began to see where Stephen had been coming from – his concern about ‘falling off the roster-‘ not being recognized any more as a pastor. They hadn’t heard from the bishop in all of this. George wondered if the bishop’s office had heard from anyone.
There was some more discussion about how to handle the situation, the “this” that hung over like a cloud heavy with lightning and rain. Finally, it was Jack who suggested one way to help the brothers be better able to handle things better.
“What if we were to move up our quarterly retreat to two weeks from now?”
“Whoah!”
“What? How can we do that?”
“Before you immediately discount that option, look at your schedules. We’re going up to the Horse Ranch on Highway 2, so it’s a matter of finding out if the big house is being used during the week in the pre-ski season. It might be open and Sally Ames, the manager has been really helpful in making things welcoming for us. She might be able to get back with the information about if it’s even possible within a day. We could ask and find out if the site is open, while we check our schedules.”
“This must be something that comes in handy with the shelter, Jack” said Tim.
“Flexibility?” Jack asked.
“That, and coming up with out of the box options,” Tim was the first one to smile out of the whole discussion.
“I am not sure if it’s going to be possible for all, never mind. I’ll check.”
“What were you going to say, George?” asked Stephen.
“I was thinking in terms of the congregation. I forgot for a moment that I was free to take time off where and when wanted to,” he said.
“Okay, then, I’ll find out and we’ll check our schedules,” said Jack.
“Thank you, Jack. Would you be prepared to lead a program on the first day, with some of the material you were going to present tonight?”
“Sure, I’ll look forward to it.”
“Then we will have something to look forward to working on, not just separate meditations, or our own perniciousness to occupy ourselves,” said George.
“Good. Yes,” agreed Tim and Stephen.
“George, how are you doing?”
“Good, Estella.”
“Have you been using the things we talked about since last time?”
“Yes, but it’s been hard.”
“What about the exercises have been difficult?”
“No, it’s in the rest of my life.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, you’ve perhaps heard about the woman in whose garage a man was killed the other week?”
“Yes.”
“He was a parishioner of mine, and she is a close friend – the benefactor of my community, actually.”
“Oh. I can see how that would disturb your prayers. So what did you do about it?”
“About the disturbance you mean? “
“Yes.”
“Well… I guess I chose to focus on the activities I felt I needed to get through in order to make it to today.”
“And how did that work for you?”
“It was less than what I hope for regularly.But I was able to include some of my dreams in the meditations.”
“So you did pray, and you did some of what we talked about?”
“Yes.”
“So let’s focus on that today.”
“Okay. I especially enjoyed the time I spent on the Jesus Prayer with the meditations on the images of the Divine…”
After the spiritually renewing and relaxing meeting with Sr. Estella about his life in prayer, when George got home, he was utterly unprepared for the phone call.
“Hello, Community House, how can I direct your call?”
“Hello, is this the pastor who walks the dogs?” Not even waiting for complete confirmation of the right person, she plowed onward, “I was at the store this morning, and I heard a man talking about how he was terribly upset with how you were handling the situation in the parish – about the murder. You know I was the one who called about the red truck that other week…” There was a slight pause.
“Anyway, the man was saying how he was going to make it his business to get you and your community out of the parish. He said he was angry about your whole involvement in the life of the congregation and he-“
George interrupted, “Excuse me. Excuse me! I need to ask you if there is something you want to tell me. I cannot keep listening to your side of the story. I lay myself open to all kinds of things, including accusations of gossiping! I will not be party to that, or any other destructive group behavior.”
“I… I just want to say watch out at the retreat.” Then she hung up.
“How could she even know that the dates of the retreat had been changed? Wait, she didn’t say that. She said watch out at the retreat. She didn’t necessarily know anything about any change in dates, or the location of the event, just that such a thing was happening,” George mused to himself. “Still, it was weird. People who got the parish newsletter already knew about he retreat. They just didn’t know it would be happening earlier than announced – even more reason not to worry about it, since it was now an unexpected event.
next week: more dreams and a meeting
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