Smiling Madonna - Chapter Sixteen

she could almost
hear a smile
on the lips
of the man’s face at the other end

Over dinner that evening, George told again about the blue Toyota.
“I got the first two letters of the license this time,” said George.
“Have you called them in to Officer Chang?” asked Stephen.
“Yeah, as soon as I got home,” said George. “I called and left the message,” George said with disappointment in his voice.
“I hear you,” said Stephen.

Barbara made another call to the pre-arranged number.
“Hello, Jimmy,” she said.
“Hi, again hun,” a man replied, whose voice revealed no particular age nor race.
“What do you think about the ongoing situation, Jimmy?” Barbara asked.
“I don’t know, hun. What do you want me to do about it anyway?” he answered.
“I know you can’t do anything yourself, but if you knew someone who could work something out for me, I’d appreciate a little assistance,” said Barbara, her voice remained lifeless, with no inflection.
“I know what you mean, but that is going to be even more difficult for me to initiate now that the first part’s still not completed.”
“Cut it out, Jimmy,” Barbara’s voice lost, if possible, any remaining sense of human interaction and became purely cut and dried.
“I hear your frustration, hun,” the last word was slightly more emphasized, a reminder that Jimmy was more to Barbara than a contact upon whose resources she was relying, even if she was paying for the service. “But you understand my situation as well. I have already committed myself to another schedule.”
Barbara paused. She knew she was treading on thin ice, even making another call to the number her nephew gave her. It was to the man who “kept the books” for a nationwide trading group. The trade was mostly in illicit supplies- meaning drugs and prostitution Barbara expected, from the rules that were set out by her nephew for contacting this number. She had looked up the area code and prefix. They led to some Minneapolis suburb called North Hudson.
“Jimmy, let me say it this way: I need a favor,” said Barbara. She had crossed the line. No turning back now. These people would be expecting payback from her. Hopefully they wouldn’t reach beyond her workplace.
“Well now, since you put it that way, we can talk some more about the details of your problem and see if I can spare someone to help you.”
Barbara thought she could almost hear a smile on the lips of the man’s face at the other end of the phone as she hung up. Her problem would be addressed. Someone would call her in the next couple of days to find out some details of the next step – the payment.

George went to see his spiritual director for his monthly appointment.
Sr. Estella greeted George with a warm cup of tea and an invitation to come and sit down in the ‘direction’ room. George didn’t know what to call it, because it was really too small for anything but a large closet or a tiny sitting room or office. The sisters had outfitted it for meeting privately in this sort of situation. There were two old leather chairs, not too comfortable, sitting at roughly ninety degrees from one another. Their arms were separated by an off-white marble-top wrought iron table that held a lamp and a small houseplant.
“How are your prayers, George?” asked Estella.
“Pretty good considering the situation,” answered George.
Sticking with the issue George had come to see her about Estella asked, “And where have you found the Divine in your prayers lately?”
George smiled slightly and stepped up to the challenge of sticking with the agenda of the meeting. “I have actually been really surprised with what I’ve been seeing in my prayers.”
“Hmmm. What have you been seeing in your prayers?” Estella caught George’s revelation, he was again seeing in his prayers. Much of George’s prayer life had been about words and emotions and memories, but in the last several months he had been describing visual experiences. Sometimes these were accompanied by sensations or even words, but the images were powerful enough to keep them occupied for an hour and a half discussion each month.
“Well, I’ve been trying to keep the pattern we have talked about in the past, but I’ve actually been having some trouble as I get caught up in the images,” said George.
As he looked at Estella, he saw the note of concern flicker across her eyes, and so he offered, “I know, I read at least one Merton book in which he says the lights and sounds are some of the easier distractions to transformation and more significant learning through meditation or prayer. I don’t think that this is what I’m experiencing. I also find that, as in other things in prayer, they come to a end every single time.”
“Okay. That’s a helpful observation, but let’s stick with talking about the images for now,” redirected Estella.
“After I do my regular settling in, I usually find myself sitting quietly and then there is the sense of someone beside me. Sometimes she is even holding me,” said George.
“You are sitting and someone is beside you, even holding you?” repeated Estella.
“Right,” replied George.
“What is her presence like?” she asked. “What is it like to be held by her?”
“I feel held.”
“What else can you say about what that’s like?”
“It’s as though my skin is held up; my head is held. My heart is held – I mean the organ inside of me – so that it is light weight,” said George.
“What is that lightness, or holding like?” Estella asked.
“It’s… I don’t know. I feel touched into my understanding, or the place where my emotions start from,” said George. “I think what is happening is that I feel carried up, almost out of myself.”
“But that’s more about thinking than noticing on a more open or contemplative level. Let’s try to stay there. How do you notice that you are in this place? Or, what do you notice first about being there?” said Estella.
“Oh, that’s the name of the Merton book, Contemplative Prayer,” George knew he’d be distracted trying to remember the name to Estella unless he blurted it out right away. Then he went on, “When I am sitting and meditating, I begin to notice I am not alone. That is what I realize first.”
“So, what is that presence like? What’s it like to be in that Other’s presence?”
George was silent for a while as the presence surrounded him again in his recollection.

Smiling Madonna - Chapter Fourteen

some disturbing things
happen lately
I want to
check inwith you

Thursday could not have happened too soon for several reasons. George was going to see a counselor he had been seeing for a long time, but finished up with several years ago. Tim and Jack’s commitments had shifted slightly, so that they had arranged to help Stephen get to and from his meeting downtown, and all this in the same space as a big preparation meeting for a national assembly of ‘religious,’ people who lived in committed communities, mostly from the Episcopal Church USA (CORAL). Next year, Seattle would host the national meeting of representatives from (non-Catholic) religious communities. Tim had gotten placed on the planning team for this event through his contacts in the Spiritual Direction network. That afternoon and evening meeting was going to take place on Capitol Hill.
All this meant that Jack could pass his car to Tim, picking Stephen up along the way, so everyone could use a car after all. George passed his on to Jack for the afternoon work.
George’s morning is worth hearing about though.
After prayers, breakfast, the morning meeting, and dressing for the outside world, George left for Mercer Island by 9:30 am. His appointment was for 10 am, and he arrived at Susan’s office ten minutes early, having driven against the rush hour traffic.
“George, it’s been a long time,” said Susan. “What brings you over here at this time?” Dr. Susan Snelling’s long brown hair was beginning to streak with gray. She wore glasses and looked as though 20 years ago she was every bit the librarian who would let her hair down outside of work. She was distinguished and clearly in her fifties. George knew that Susan was at least seventy, had worked with several other protestant ministers and specialized in working with adults with child abuse circumstances in their background.
“Susan, I have had some disturbing things happen lately. I want to check in with you to see how I am doing, hearing what I am thinking about and my situation.”
“Sure, I can be in that role again. Maybe it would be helpful to tell me about what has been going on in your situation.”
“Did you hear about the murder over near Green Lake about a month ago?” asked George.
Susan nodded, allowing George to fill in the details about which he wanted to talk to her.
“First, that was a member of my congregation, of Green Lake Lutheran where I am one of the pastors. Second, it was supposed to be me walking the dogs that morning. Third, I (and some of the other brothers) think maybe there is someone trying to hurt us- the community as the motive for this murder.”
“Wow. George, that’s a big list. What can you tell me about what the police are saying?”
“It was the police who suggested that it might be me that the man targeting someone was trying to hurt, I mean murder,” said George.
“So which of the things you have mentioned do you want to talk about right now?” asked Susan.
George sighed and began, “You know, I guess I want to check with you on the perceptions that I have been having that otherwise seem paranoid to me.”
“What do you mean?” Susan asked.
“I mean just the other day I was out on a community errand and forgot something I needed at home and I remembered just a few minutes away from home, so I turned around and went back the same way I had come.”
“Yes...” said Susan, encouraging George to go on.
“And when I did the u-turn a blue Toyota was behind me and let me pass. I looked in my mirror a few minutes later and the blue Toyota was behind me again. I decided to test my anxiety, thinking maybe they just happened to need to do the same thing – turn around. I decided to go home another way – a little further on, not as convenient, but sometimes I have driven that way. Anyway, I slowed down and made the turn and the blue Toyota followed me to within three blocks of our house,” said George.
“Hmm, is there anything else?”
“Yes, well, two things. I have gotten two phone calls from a woman who seems to have seen and heard something about what at least one man had done. The first said there had been a car in the neighborhood watching me take the dogs out for walks on Tuesdays before the murder. The second call said we ought to be careful on the retreat we just returned from this past weekend and she had overheard someone saying he was going to get me and the community out of the congregation.”
“That sounds either like something to be concerned about or rubbish,” said Susan.
“Yes, I agree. But as I heard somewhere, ‘Usually paranoia is not caused by people wanting to hurt you, and sometimes it is, or something like that,” said George.
“You said there were two things that made you wonder about actually being followed,” said Susan.
“Yes. The second one is from the retreat this past weekend,” George began again. “We had scheduled ourselves some time to get away this fall, but weren’t going for another couple weeks or so. But with the news we got last week from the police, when they interviewed me, that perhaps I was in fact the target of the murder, we decided to get out of town to get our bearings and maybe some space from the situation. It was a good event, I suppose. Our time was interrupted by a plumbing problem at the place we had rented. We still got to study and pray and worship all together. Now it seems like too great a buildup for the next thing, but Sunday morning when we were packing up, the two tires on the right side of the rental van were flat – not ‘popped,’ but flat. Someone came out and pumped them up and then we drove home.”
“George,” Susan said quietly, “What do you think about all this now that you’ve spoken it out loud to someone outside the situation?”
“I… I think that there is something to be concerned about. I think I have been careful to measure my responses in almost every interaction around this. The reason I thought to call you the other day was that I had a twinge of some of the same feelings of anxiety I used to have around the feelings of being abused. I was standing in the kitchen finishing the dishwashing when I heard the news about the tires, and a few minutes later it hit me the impact that had on our schedule. I felt the edges of the abyss, and depression, and total loss of control that I used to feel.” George glimpsed them again as he spoke to Susan now.
“You are in another place now, George. You are in control of your life choices,” Susan repeated statements she and George had come up with to encourage him live into a wider sense of personal safe space long after the situation in which the abuse had happened had ceased to exist.
“Still in that new place, George, I would think you ought to make sure the police have all the information that you just told me. Perhaps they already have other information that this would add to and help clear up the question – whether or not you or the community ought to be concerned,” said Susan. In her head she chose not to mention that she was worried for them, especially her patient –and not because of his struggles with historic issues. “I hear you using good reasoning to check things out, not jumping to conclusions, and checking in with someone who knows about your past struggles. I’d say you are smart and a deep thinker, who has a serious faith which you are working out in your life choices. Unfortunately, right now, circumstances are giving you a challenge most people never have to face.
“Your mental health is just fine. I want you to do what you need to do to be safe in other areas of your life,” concluded Susan.
George drove away at the end of the session with the sense that he was first of all, not crazy. Second, he had reason to be anxious about his safety, he wasn’t exaggerating in his mind or reporting. Finally, he had determined that pursuing the police in this matter was a good course of action.
As he drove away, George did not see anyone following him in a blue Toyota.