where i'm coming from, part 2: the hidden years

so, there i was, living a quiet life in santa fe.  i started a small congregation of the church of antioch, the church of holy wisdom.  we rented a beautifully perfect cubic room next door to a buddhist restaurant.  after mass we had coffee hour with the buddhists, who made very good scones.  we began to gather beautiful church swag:  hand-woven dossal cloths for all of the season of the year; our altar was made of a creamy golden local sandstone.  we used a simplified version of the liturgy of ss. addai and mari, and the new common lectionary, reading our lessons from the jerusalem bible with illustrations by salvador dali.  many of the communicants of holy wisdom had been raised roman catholic, estranged by papal politics, but there were also several sons and daughters of new age celebrities, it being santa fe.  on thursday nights we had a study group, discussing such topics as the celtic understanding of the gospel according to s. john.  on the great feast days of the church, we celebrated outside, sometimes in a rose garden, sometimes along the santa fe river, sometimes renting the courtyard of the unitarian church.  it was a good life.

but i felt that i was very much an import to santa fe who drank too much water.  if everyone who had moved there since world war ii would leave, there might be enough water.  so i decided to set an example.  when i would mention that i was thinking of moving, people would ask, ' from santa fe?  why ever would one leave santa fe?  where could you go?'  when i said, 'fayetteville, arkansas.,' as often as not they said, 'oh.  i want to go there, too.'  so in creswell, oregon, on the of the feast of the holy trinity in the year of our lord 1995, i was made a missionary abbot/bishop for the wilds of the ozarks.  i loaded up the van--yup, there was even a van--and headed east.

fayetteville was in the midst of a heat wave, but i set right to work, finding it not that unlike santa fe in culture and zeitgheist.  i found a house to rent, and began talks with another 'campus ministry' about renting their chapel on sunday evenings.  but before all of this began, i thought i should visit my mother on the other side of the state, in jonesboro.  the picture above is her house.  when i arrived, i found her health much much worse than i had known, and knew i needed to stay.  thus began one of the strangest, most unexpected, although also richest, periods of my life.

mother had no 'medical' illness:  she was just tired of living, and had begun to starve herself.  again and again the following scenario was repeated:  she would call me to her room and say, 'now, honey, i don't want you to worry, but i have [fill in some fatal disease].  i don't want to be treated, and i'm not afraid to die, but i just thought you should know.'  i would ask her why she was so sure about her self-diagnosis, and she would describe some symptom she shared with someone she knew who had died from that disease, usually something such as they both had grey hair, or both disliked avacados, something completely unrelated to the disease.  she had been a nurse for many years, so she had known a lot of diseases, and unrelated symptoms.  after a while, as she ate less and less, she would feel less and less well, and decide to go to a doctor for his diagnosis.  she had good insurance, so there were always a lot of redundant and often unpleasant, tests.  the doctor would say that she should eat.  she would decide she would, that there was no reason to die just yet, and she would gain back a little strength and dismiss me--for a few days or weeks.  i would head off with my kayak and cell 'phone, to explore a bit of the white river, usually, until the call came that i should go back

this pattern repeated itself for six years.  finally the toll of  repeated starvation had become debilitating enough that mother decided she should move to a nursing home.  it was the same one in which she had worked, and was for her a very good move.  she had friends there her own age, and she often thought she was still working there.  (there were occasional crises when she would want to run the charts, but the current staff were very considerate.)

now i had never told mother just why i was in arkansas.  she never much of a listener, anyway.  from time to time she would say to me that she regretted that i had never become a 'preacher,' and since she found 'my religion' to be something entirely different from the southern baptist sect of my upbringing, she was probably right that i hadn't.

for me these years were transformative.  the difference between living in the glamorous city of santa fe and the suburban blandness of jonesboro could hardly be greater.  the jobs i took in santa fe brought me in contact with artists and celebrities, and the people with whom i had coffee talked about 'spiritual' stuff.  the jobs i took in jonesboro brought me into contact with high school graduates and veterans, and the people with whom i had coffee talked about new pickup trucks.  and i learned a lot about my mother's childhood which had greatly influenced my childhood without ever knowing it.  and, without knowing it, i was becoming a hermit, of sorts.