There’s a saying in Ecclesiastes: “Who can make straight what God has made crooked” (Eccl. 7:13)? I talked about this insight in last week’s post. The idea is that there are “crooked things” in this world, things that appear to be evil. But even these bear the mark of divine grace and the wise soul will know how to contend with them, to take them in, to react to them.
As it turned out, I wrote that post less than 24 hours before a very crooked thing came my way. Crooked in external appearance, yet transcendant in substance.
Here’s the scene. I am in Charlottesville, VA, with my 14-year-old daughter. We are watching my oldest son, a Jr. at UVA, compete in a collegiate athletic event. UVA is up against the #2 team in the nation, but the real drama that day will unfold in the soul of my daughter. For several weeks now I have been teaching Maddie to practice more intentionally the method of Lectio Divina I developed for my high school students. It’s a trimmed down version of the 17-century monastic practice and I call it Biblical Exploration. I present it to kids using imagery of deep sea diving for coral or pearls.
I have been very moved by the progress my students – regular 15-year-old kids at a regular Catholic high school – have been making in the practice of Lectio Divina. As a consequence, I began encouraging my girls to be faithful to the practice. So lately they have been working their way through Mark’s Gospel.
In Maddie’s case, I refer to her practice as Theotokos work, a Greek term that means “God-bearer.” This is a title that the early Christian Church gave to Mary, in 431 AD, at the Council of Ephesus. The term describes her role as the bearer or mother of Jesus. I tell Maddie: “When you take the Word in your heart, you too become a bearer of Jesus. He himself said so in John Chapter 14: ‘If someone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him and we will come to him and make our dwelling place within him’ (Jn. 14:23).”
Back to UVA. It’s early Sunday morning. Maddie has worked her way up in Mark’s Gospel to the encounter between Jesus and the leper. We each read the story out loud; I do my part in the chant that is common in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Then we walk through the details of the text, verse by verse, noticing everything, restating the details in our own words. Then I ask Maddie to pick the central verse of the passage, the one that sums up or captures the essence of the scene.
She does so. She picks the instant of the leper’s healing encounter with Jesus, where he falls to his knees and implores / declares: “Lord, if you will it, you can make me clean.” Jesus is moved by this man’s faith and declares: He does will it. And then He speaks cleanness and wholeness into this man’s body: “Be clean.” (Mk: 1: 40-41). And in that instant the leprosy leaves him.
I ask Maddie to summarize this encounter in her own words. She does so, writing it down in her notebook. Then I ask her to write a prayer to Jesus about what she has just learned and how it applies to her life. Again, she carefully scribes her prayer into her notebook. I keep a respectful distance. I never saw what she wrote as her prayer.
That was the first act of our morning together.
Fast forward to the end of the day. Church has come and gone. Her brother’s team momentarily stood on the edge of an upset against their higher ranked opponent, but in the end they fall. Then we pack up the car and hit the long road back to Cincinnati.
We exit Virginia and hit 64 West, a winding mountain highway that crosses West Virginia. It’s a series brutal climbs for my 2006 Volvo, she with 200,000 miles already behind her. She was recently given a clean bill of health by my car shop, but, healthy or no, on this day, there would be one too many brutal climbs.
“Clunk!” went the unforgettable sound. It came with a sudden loss of acceleration. 65. 55. 45. 35. 25. The car is now puttering along an empty stretch of road near the small mountain town of Crawley, West Virginia. I am on the phone with my son at the time, comforting him after their tough loss. Next to me is Maddie, watching a documentary on the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. I don’t have the heart to tell either of them. Don’t want them to worry. Not yet.
Would we make it to an exit?
Happily the car – now sputtering at 20 mph along the shoulder of the road – has enough mustard to crest the hill we are on. From there we coast down a long, gradual decline. It is about 6pm. The sun is dropping in the sky, there are trees and mountains as far as the eye could see.
Lord, what will happen if we don’t make it to a gas station? How would Maddie handle such a disaster?
Maddie is beside me, ear buds in, eyes intent on her documentary. She doesn’t look up from her screen. I hang up with John Paul and keep the Volvo huffing and puffing along. 1 mile, 2 miles. Then, God save us, I spy an exit sign. The car still has legs. We’re gonna make it. I ease the car off the exit: she’s quaking. I turn right toward a roadside Exxon, pull in and park the car. Expect to see fumes. Anticipate a convulsion. There isn’t one. Further evidence that it is the transmission.
I break the news to Maddie. Tell her she can keep watching her show in the car while I figure out what to do. I make the initial calls to AAA, get a lay of the land, start to weigh our basic options, call and chat them through with Katie. Then I take some time to pray, walking in a few loops around the gas station, praying monastic hymns and psalms and Scriptures from memory. It’s an old monk trick I learned many years ago. I’m walking head down, psalms raised, kicking up dirt and dust, not caring in the least what the locals think of me. I am seeking wisdom in the midst of this crooked thing. I know, from Ecclesiastes, that this thing flows from the hand of God. But, O Lord, how? What? I am asking God to help me uncover his wisdom hidden – even in this unstraight thing.
I finish my prayer. I ask Maddie, for safety reasons, to gather her things and come inside. Then I start making final preparations for where I will have the car towed and where we will spend the night. I decide Charleston is the best bet – best garages, best chances Maddie and I might find something fun to do while we wait. I put in the request to AAA, hang up and hope their local team comes through. The designated local towing company calls me 20 minutes later. They say no to Charleston (too far for them); best they can do is Beckley. 35 minutes away.
“And we can’t get to you for 2 hours,” they say.
That’s about 15 minutes before our Exxon stationed close. That’s cutting it close!
But at least we have a plan. Now it’s time to make it fun. I buy Maddie a Starbucks pink drink (her first in the plastic version they sell to gas stations) and a special chocolate. I pull up a chair next to her, borrow one of her ear buds and ask her to explain what’s going on with this documentary. Let’s watch together!
And so there we are. One ear bud per person, one Starbucks pink drink per viewer, cheering on Reese and Charlie as they compete for the few remaining spots on the 2023 Cowboys Cheering Squad. We are stranded in West Virginia. We pause at one moment to pray that our tow truck might arrive before the gas station kicks us out in the cold. We’re poor and hopeful as poor can be; huddled up against the existential cold; heads occasionally touching; laughing at the comedy of the film; pulling for the heroines. In retrospect, it was probably one of the top ten tender moments I have ever had with my daughter. It was raw and we were together.
It ended earlier than we thought. Around 10 pm, I get a text from the towing company. They are on site. I go outside, give him my details and then, with a tilt of a mighty flat bed, a hooking of cables, a neutraling of the Volvo, a grinding and reeling in and up: the car is now ensconced on an open-air stretcher and we are headed to Beckley. I am in the middle, without a seat belt; Maddie is buckled beside me. 35 minutes, eyes faced forward, chatting a bit nervously with the tow truck driver as we lumber ahead and he plugs various chunks of info into his ipad while driving. There’s something refreshing about mildly risking your life, I think to myself; it’s like a cold shower for the soul.
Anyway, this cold shower has a happy ending, for we reach our destination safely: a Hampton Inn on Harper Park Dr. in Beckley, WV. We pull in around 11:15 pm, lugging our bags; we put on our jammies, and then decide (Maddie’s idea) to watch another episode of DCC (Dallas Cowboy Chearleaders). It was a foolish thing to do, given the tall order that awaited me the next day (more tow trucks, researching garages and getting a rental car) . But it was part of my conscious decision to keep fun and togetherness at the heart of this adventure. So I go down to the lobby, buy some popcorn and head back for our slumber party.
Alas, dear reader, you might think this adventure is now coasting downhill. But, in fact, the drama is about to peak. Maddie and I go to bed around 12:15 am. All is at peace in the car stricken kingdom and I drift off to a much-needed rest. I would need my wits and energy and an 8 hour sleep before facing the challenges of the day.
But at 2:30 am, I am jolted awake, cruelly yanked from needed sleep by a 14-year-old child, standing, 5 feet from my bed, convulsing. Head lurched back, then forward, chest rocking, dry heaving, guttural choking. I have never seen anything like it. I hop up. Well, I have already hopped up. I am standing next to her. Waiting for the vomit to flow like a river, half expecting to be hit by it. I guide Maddie to the bathroom. She’s dry heaving above the toilet, next to the shower. I’m waiting for the vomit it to hit the wall. I’m thinking to myself, “How do I get her to an ER when I have no car and it’s 2 am in small town West Virginia? Where the hell is the nearest ER anyway?”
“Maddie, get on your knees,” I say with some firmness, “Get on your knees.” She begins to comply, bends down and then the spickets open: now comes the throw up that even a med school drop-out could have predicted. Again and again: it goes on for some time. As it abates, I have her move left, clean up after her, wait several minutes, then gingerly move her to her bed.
And then this happened. This strange thing. This non-crooked thing.
I have this deathly sick, depleted, terrified little girl beneath me, on her bed. Her head is on her pillow, her face gaunt, her spirit broken; I have her settled for now. I take a breath. I feel a near certainty that the previous scene will repeat in 10 or 15 minutes, maybe twice, before I will have no choice but to find some unfindable way to get her to the ER. I should have been terrified. Should have been panicking, at least a little.
But somehow I didn’t. Somehow I step to the side of her bed, put my hand on little Maddie’s forehead, and then I find myself, in spirit, right back where we were together, first thing this Sunday morning. Not at the kitchen of a friend’s in Charlottesville, but in Galilee. Huddled with the disciples, watching Jesus: stilled before the plight of an earnest leper; hearing his prayer; touched by his faith; and then responding with a ‘Θέλω, καθαρίσθητι – thelo katharistheti! I will it. Be healed!’ (Mk. 1:41)
I suddenly remember the scene Maddie and I had prayed about the previous week, where Jesus went to the bedside of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, who was gripped by a brutal fever. He reached out his hand, touched her, and the fever left her. I place my hand upon Maddie’s forehead. I remind her of these two stories in an improvised prayer. I tell her Jesus can do this now for her. I pray that He would do this now for her. That he would take her by the hand, and cast this fever out, that she might rise and follow him, as Simon Peter’s mother-in-law did.
And then I close the prayer and go to my bed. I am, I’m obliged to report, braced for the worst: for the next convulsion and all the difficult decisions that would attend to it.
Only it never happens. Maddie sleeps like a baby through the night (though I do not). I rise around 7, begin my research early, checking on Maddie every so often. I welcome her back to the land of the living around 10:45. The hotel is next to a Bob Evan’s. I take her there for breakfast. I am seated across from her as she ravenously devours 4 blueberry pancakes and am suddenly reminded of the disciples’ experience of the storm in the boat. In the 4th Chapter of Mark, 35-41. Jesus leads his disciples out into a boat. A horrible storm arises that night, the worst they have ever seen – and they are fisherman. They’re convinced it’s a death sentence and, somehow, Jesus is there sleeping. They awaken him, panicked; He arises, calms the storms and says to them: “Where is your faith?”
“Jesus led them out into that boat, Maddie,” I tell her. “He wanted them to experience that storm. It seemed like he was sleeping in the midst of it; seemed that he was not responding to their plight. But really he was waiting for them at a deeper level. He sent that storm to carve out a place in their hearts. A place where they could discover a deeper need for Him, and a place from which they might discover more deeply who He is. That He has power even over the wind and the sea and the storm.”
Maddie took this in, while devouring her pancakes with a voraciousness of appetite I have never seen from her before and which told me her storm had surely passed. We go back to the hotel. I do what I can for the car, procure a rental (I would have to come back to get the volvo), gather our things and hurry home.
Four hours later, we enter our kitchen. Maddie re-tells Mom the outlines of our story and I unload the car. By the time I’m finished, I pass the kitchen counter again and see Maddie has placed her Theotokos journal there. Curious, I pick it up to see what she had written during our prayer time on Sunday morning.
“Jesus cares about the leper and He has the power to heal him and He does. Dear God, I kneel down before you and pray to you. Please show me, like you showed the leper, that you care about me and you can heal me. Amen.”
And suddenly the crooked thing seemed straight. And the rough places plain.
