Smiling Madonna - Chapter Ten

He opened the
door and the sound got louder
red light spilledinto and across

The four had gone down into the basement sitting, or ‘games’ room just for a change of scenery and so as not to have to heat the entire large, high ceilinged ‘great’ room. Jack was getting into the second presentation on St John of the Cross.
“As I began this morning, the two poems, the Spiritual Canticle and Dark Night of the Soul, provide a place to just begin a whole realm of prayerful study, not to mention study of Spanish poetry. The Ascent of Mount Carmel, though, is even more useful for us as we continue to figure out individually, and for the life of our community, what it means to pray. It could even be helpful to use the Ascent of Mount Carmel as a way to talk to people who are thinking about becoming part of this community, not the visitors, but serious inquirers and postulants.”
“A discussion of what St. John vehemently points out as being against the God-ward life, is like the premarital counseling conversation we ask a couple to have based on the questionnaire of things-you-might-talk-about-now-so-as-to-get-it-out-in-the-open. In our situation, how a person views their body, their bad choices, and God’s involvement in the world…”

A half an hour into the discussion, Stephen left for a minute and came back. A moment later there was a loud and annoying buzzing sound which began and did not stop. Stephen got up again, this time Jack paused and the others all looked down the hall to where Stephen was standing. He opened the door and the sound got louder, a red light spilled into and across the hall.
Jack, whose experience of working in a shelter meant that he had many different skills in making stuff work a little longer, or get fixed without making investment decisions, came over to look.
“I have no idea what it’s for, but it looks like there is a pump that is not working.”
“Is that what that noise is?”
“Apparently it’s an alarm, to tell someone that the pump isn’t working.”
“Can we-“ Tim asked, as George leaned over and pressed first one and then the other buttons. The second button stopped the noise, but the red light kept shining.
“There,” George said redundantly.
“We need to call Sally?” asked Jack.
“Actually there is a local number for problems. Let me go call now. Why don’t you finish up what you were saying, Jack, and then we can take a coffee break a little early,” said George.
“That’s sounds good. I’ll make an amendment, though, that we’ll go do an exercise when we ‘finish’ the coffee break, so we don’t have to come back together until 3:45.”

“Hello, is this James? Hello, my name is George Anderson and I’m over at the Horse Ranch this weekend.”
“Hello. Yes. I heard from Sally Ames that you’d be there. What can I do for you?”
“Well, it seems there is a pump just off the basement bathroom that isn’t working.”
“Oh damn that thing. I knew it would act up again, as soon as I got it fixed,” said James.
George was amused to hear the man swear. He probably didn’t know what group was in the house. Most people who didn’t know a professional religious person believed that they never swore, or that it even hurt their ears to hear it. Why else were there apologies nearly every time that useful four letter words were breathed?
“You know what? I’m going to call the plumber and have him come over and fix it and stop messing around myself. The Morrisons will just have to deal with it. I’m going to call John over at Foothill Plumbing. He ought to be able to come over in the next little while.”
“Is there any way you can supervise him? We really need this time that we came to do some work here.”
“Yes. Yes. I will tell him to call me when he’s coming over and I will look over what happening. Can you meet upstairs. Sally said something about you were a smaller group, right?” said James.
“Yes. We can do that. There isn’t going to be too much noise is there?” George asked.
"No, no, shouldn’t be much, if any. I don’t think you will even be able to hear it upstairs.”

The frustration continued in that the noise was loud enough to hear, and James did not do a good job supervising the man, he kept going in and out of the big house. Needing tools is not an unexpected thing, but each time he went out, a wind ran around the house like a bunch of ghostly four year olds spilling chill all over the rooms. Finally, the exercise completed early, the brothers tried to gather in the great room… and then the drilling began.
It was decided to suspend the rest of the afternoon’s work. Maybe the community would take it up again that night.
For now they would go up to town for a visit to the local grocery store and prepare their supper of appetizers and soup. There was enough of everything except bread. Perhaps they were spoiled, but it was a way to connect with people, to go into town and find out what kind of breads were available.
Of course the name of the next nearest town was more interesting, so they had to go to Index, Washington. Now, if the plummer would be done by the time they got back, past the logging trucks at the end of their day…