I feel the ground melt beneath my feet. My hands tremble without command, and my heart races. I want to re-watch the last part of the interview. Instead, with no air in my lungs, I abruptly shut down the computer and run to the window. I look for a breeze to rescue me.
I lean over the parapet almost every evening around this time. It’s the moment I watch the dark silence enveloping my street. From there, my thoughts start to ease at the very first blow of the night wind on my face. It’s not only refreshing; it always has the power to lull my fears and invite me to bed.
Not tonight. My habit proves ineffective, and somehow the air won’t fill my lungs. So I decide to perform breathing exercises under a long cold shower. In, out. In, out. Slowly, and again and again. After countless liters of wasted water, when the anxiety is finally overcome by fatigue, I feel victorious for not having resorted to numbing myself with the by now expired medication left by my mother. I take the following thoughts to my bedside in this sequence: Every belief in an absolute truth should also contain a validity period; once outdated, a reassessment of the state of the soul, much like a follow-up medical appointment, is necessary. If the soul appears calm and serene, the prescription is repeated. Conversely, if it’s shaken and hopeless, the treatment is ceased immediately. An overdose of belief should be avoided at any cost, as it is as deadly as any other drug...
What a thought! I should have counted sheep instead. I know these animals hate to be alone and I should have counted them up to one thousand at least. I need a night’s sleep longer than the night, but it doesn’t happen. I watch each hour in its turn as it creeps by slowly, listening to the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway. At some point, however, I get lost in its rhythm, and by sunrise, as the clock strikes seven, I decide that it’s time to get up.
I look out the window and I see Elizabeth O’Brien, my incorrigible garden-keeper, tending to the cornflowers. She must have arrived shortly after six. I rub my eyes and watch the old lady as if for the first time. She murmurs to the plants, feeds them with organic fertilizer, and, as she kneels, I’m sure she praises nature’s efforts in the last days of spring. I have the impression that she is repeating one or two actions, but it might just be my heavy eyelids. The truth is that she’s been following her ritual with one eye on the plants and the other on the window.
Before my trip to Africa, she would enter my house without asking permission and surprise me with a generous breakfast. But with my cassock in storage, she probably thinks it’s inappropriate to enter a single man’s house without knocking. I’m a stranger to my old friend.
No, it isn’t the effect of a sleepless night. Elizabeth is indeed repeating her movements. Crouched in that position, her varicose veins must be begging for a truce. The plants, so energized by now, might actually survive a whole summer without any extra attention. Or perhaps they have been so overwatered, that they will wither before temperatures reach their peak. My friend finally turns and looks up. I wave at her, deciding not to make her wait any longer. I put on a robe over my pajamas and head downstairs.
“Mrs. O’Brien, I didn’t know you were coming today. I’d have woken up earlier.”
“Oh, David, this routine work of mine doesn’t require ceremonies. I gladly come in and leave without notice. But don’t worry; I’ve just arrived.”
“I hope you have time for a cup of tea, then. I need to tell you something.”
Resting my hand softly on Elizabeth’s right shoulder, I guide the smiling widow into my house.
“Tea will have to wait for another time, David. I really need caffeine this time,” she says, not allowing me to prepare it for her and naturally stepping back into the kitchen and the routine of the old days.
She returns to the living room with a tray holding two cups of coffee, a milk jug, a pot of sugar, and toast, and sits down beside me. As she pours milk into her cup and stirs in a generous spoon of sugar, her eyes scrutinize the furniture and the objects around it. It’s possible that after a year without visiting it, the room seems frustratingly the same to her, or perhaps she is happy to find the environment immaculate. I can’t quite grasp her gaze, so I believe she expresses a bit of both.
“It was a difficult night; my mind didn’t stop racing for a second,” Elizabeth said.
“Your uneasiness relates to the result of the referendum, doesn’t it?”
“But by the Lord Jesus Christ, of course, David!”
“If it’s any consolation, Elizabeth, my night was equally restless. Please don’t be so upset, my dear friend, because, in practice, nothing will change.”
“But how could it not? Everything will change: our beliefs, our traditions…”
“What I mean is that a change in the law doesn’t change any reality; it never has and it never will. One exists before the other,” I say it softly in an effort not to upset my friend more than the circumstances already have. “If today’s reality seems unfamiliar and distant from the traditions you recognize, then it’s because they already changed some time ago, and you and I, my dear, just didn’t realize it. The emergence of a law is only the recognition of a new set of values within society. And this only proves that…,” I lower my voice to an almost complicit whisper so as not to wound her to death, “…by ego or ignorance, Elizabeth, we have somehow refused the truth. One way or another, it’s totally irrelevant, isn’t it?”
I consciously choose to use the technical and legal approach, sharing her drama in the plural second person out of respect for a lifetime dedicated to the profession of faith and the sacredness of her convictions. My opinion, if any, is worthless.
It works like a miracle. Elizabeth barely feels the blow and smiles back. Then she sighs and sits still for a few seconds, her eyes fixed on mine. Suddenly, a hearty laughter bursts from the depths of her soul. I welcome the blessing, answering with my own laugh.
With watering eyes, Elizabeth places her hands on my knee, indicating that she is ready to listen to what else I have to say.
“I haven’t gotten used to being called David yet, not by you, at least. But I want you to keep doing it even after hearing what I will tell you.” I take a deep breath: “I’m going to Limerick today.”
The simple mention of the county’s capital makes Elizabeth intuit something that quickly colors her face and dilates her pupils.
“I will be having a final conversation with the bishop. Yes, Elizabeth, I will return to the priesthood!”
She squeezes both of my hands as tightly as she can. As the clock strikes eight in the background, Elizabeth dissolves into tears and hugs me.
“I love you, David. I’m sure this is the best decision for you.”
After my announcement, two things happened. One, wholly expected, was that the news reached every single ear in town at the speed of light and lessened the investigative looks. The other was that the days now dashed by as if they had no real business to deal with. On the outside, nothing changed. I kept running in the mornings, meditating by the river, and helping my uncle at the pub while he searched for a new chef. Uncle John had gotten used to spending most of his time talking to his costumers, moving from table to table, and so he would rather retire than go back to his previous station behind the counter.
My decision to return to the priesthood caused him immediate logistical constraints, of course, but he had even more reasons to be distressed than when I had told him of my determination to attend the seminary many years before. He was a man of few convictions, but one of them was that reversing past choices was foolish and a trace of weakness. He saw life unfolding in clear linearity that did not allow backpedaling, even if reason and emotion consensually demanded it. That was his most apparent and maybe only extreme thought.
“I hope you find purpose in what you’re doing,” he said. “Maybe the kitchen work helped you. The mind rarely finds peace if the hands are not busy.”
I remembered those words on a sunny Sunday morning, just a few minutes before my second début at the Immaculate Conception Church. Standing by the main entrance, I pressed my uncle’s aging palms together with my hands as obsequious faces paraded in silence. They followed a ritual that started long before stepping into the church, as if the hours before Mass required both holy attitude and thoughts in order to gain access to the house of the Lord. Perhaps they had even more reason to dress up in their cloaks of obedience and servility that morning, since, as in Luke’s parable of the prodigal son, they would witness God celebrating their pastor’s return.
From the altar, my pulpit confronted the good ladies of the Tea Club lined up in the first row. The seats were almost all taken, except for some inexplicable voids between the front and middle rows. Perhaps it had always been like that, and the vicinity to the priest was deference to the most devout among the faithful. The back rows held a more figurative, hesitant, or rotating audience. Not by chance, they housed new faces, like some regulars of the Old Boys’, long absent from the sacred pews. There were also some young people who I often bumped into during my morning runs.
At nine o’clock, I began the Mass. For Catholics, it is nothing less than the fulfillment of Christ’s commandment to do what the Messiah himself did at the Last Supper, and thus to perform the divine gesture of receiving the body and blood of Christ in the form of bread and wine. And it was Sunday. In our Church’s liturgy, this is the day when Jesus resurrects.
There was, however, something much less liturgical in the Lord’s house that morning. Some faces—without hiding behind handshakes and the guise of welcoming smiles—suddenly wore inquisitive stares and conspiratorial lips. Their looks murdered without knowing that, from the altar, nothing escaped my scrutiny. I also noted that, like borders in the Middle East, the packed church hosted some irreconcilable seats.
I could read the mutterings clearly at least in the front row. Teeth were grinding in repudiation for I had broken a practice instituted by Father Duane: to discuss the subject of the homily with the ladies of the Tea Club prior to Mass.
Aside from this matter of order, I religiously followed the itinerary prescribed in the Roman rite, with the liturgy of the Word and the Eucharistic liturgy. I knew these rituals so well, and I handled them so automatically that—from time to time—I had an uncomfortable feeling of mimicking a shaman. A sad imitation, though, for I could not lead the faithful into a state of trance, nor perform divination or healing. I could only rely on my words to justify my role that morning, and perhaps that was precisely why the audience was so skeptical to my presence.
Conversely to my last Mass a year before, however, my hands did not shake, and my skin was dry. I transported myself to the top of a Kalahari mountain and watched the skies. The stares and muttering grew silent, as I read a passage from Micah’s Prophetic Book in the Old Testament:
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
And a verse from Peter 5:5:
All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because
“God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.”
After reading the Gospel, I looked at my friend in the first row, and she launched back an apprehensive smile as if wishing me luck. Then I began the homily, undoubtedly the most awaited part of the Mass.
“The Bible is full of warnings against self-appreciation because of man’s inherent desire to be worshiped. And the forces of darkness have convinced the young in particular that happiness is achieved mainly through the satisfaction of their egos. But believe me, it’s an impoverished ego devoid of depth, through which we cannot perceive ourselves as an inseparable part of the whole that composes existence and that indelibly unites the absolute totality of animate and inanimate beings. So, we turn our backs on the divine presence in all that exists. Brothers and sisters, I don’t see a more visible face of the serpent which removed Eden from beneath our feet than the dark and devilish face of ego…”
A few steps from the altar, Elizabeth’s countenance was now that of a serene angel. She was the only one, besides Uncle John—comfortably exiled by the front door—to understand that I began my familiar conversation with the faithful not about my whereabouts, nor as a justification for my deeds; I was merely a mouthpiece for my inner change.
“During the last Mass I officiated,” I continued, “I brought great discomfort when I stated that I was not a good Catholic...” Oddly enough, the remembrance of my public confession did not raise any eyebrow this time. “I may indeed not be a good keeper of the traditions and ritualistic guidelines. I’m afraid they may serve their noble purpose as much as they host a golden nest for our self-image. But what I am today, more than my commitment to that sweet theatricality, should assure me the word from this pulpit and the priesthood…”
The Mass was heading to the end when I looked at the congregation as if my eyes were once again gazing into the vast horizon of the desert. I saw my child running towards Marie; his arms open, his little legs stiff with excitement. The image in my mind was as vivid as the faces kneeled before me. It was awfully painful; but without sorrow, how could we dignify the braveness of our choices?
“For most of you, the story of Adam, Eve and the serpent is no more than a beautiful fable. Maybe you don’t even believe there was ever a paradise. In turn, you are certain of this insane world that victimized our dearest Karen. Why so? We’ve accepted a world that corrupts childhood, violates women, discards the elderly and devastates nature. We refuse to believe in a dream, but we lay our entire faith on a nightmare…”
“Well, about a year ago….” I went on, leaving the altar and coming down to the aisle, “I started my own journey to find out what went wrong with humankind. I was focused on the so-called human condition and its immutable set of detracting elements. My random field experience, however, made me realize that the biggest issue is rather our inability to see the whole—or to perceive it in ways that do not betray our dreams.” I paused, giving space to an astonished first row. “A skilled shaman can make us conceive a reality that is not poisonous. To what better purpose could I serve?”
Back at the pulpit, I didn’t expect everyone to absolve me. I pocketed the pipe I received from Mrs. Schwartz—which served as a bookmark during the Mass—and concluded the liturgy, saying, “Go in peace, and may the good Lord accompany you.”