The day.

Early morning

We wake before dawn, beating even the newspapers to the front steps. Before I realized I was out of my bed, I had already showered, and was stepping out into the cold Indiana Air. I like Indiana, it’s more urban than some of the places I’ve been, where two cars on a road constitutes severe congestion and a traffic jam. But I’m not happy here.

The chill air is nothing new, but touching my hair I realize it’s frozen. A cold brittleness that seems apt.

Morning

Kansas?

Late Morning

We didn’t have a retreat today. Instead we got to do spring cleaning on the church… a cavernous affair with stained glass streaming light upon the color treated cement floor. We divided into groups, cleaning pews, windows, confessionals, floors and various accoutrements. I decided to work the ladders cleaning the windows, as everyone else was scared of climbing them. I hate ladders. They wobble and I’m sure I’ll die falling off one; I’ve always had dreams of that. Javy and I would move the ladder around he’d clean the bottom of the windows, I’d clean the top, 2 to three stories higher than the slick cement below. The walls braced the ladder well, and I wasn’t too scared after the first few.

We were done, and I looked at the Crucifix hanging mid air above the altar, it was dusty, and I asked the overseer if we could clean it. She agreed, and we moved the tall ladder precariously through the aisle, a few times almost toppling over.

The corpus was a beautiful bronze casting, 2 times the size of a normal body, perhaps more, majestic, silent, beautiful. I almost cried as I cleaned it. I took care of the hands, as a medic would, I daubed the feet, with soft cotton, embracing them in my hands, and kissing the memorial wounds. I cleaned down one side and then up the other. I cleaned His chest, wondering what it would have felt like in real life, strong, proud, to the very end or clammy and suffocating, fragile as a real human. I cleaned the broken arch of His back, ripped by whips into swatches of hanging flesh. I cleaned his crown, getting pricked and stabbed by the intermeshed five inch thorns sharpened to conical points. My thin hands couldn’t even fit through to clean his hair, the thorns so dense, so painful.

I wish I was alone. I wish I could pour torrents from my eyes. Be overcome by the sorrow and joy. I wish the bronze was the clammy flesh.

Noon

Lunch was what I’ve heard will be standard fare on the road; lasagna. I guess it could be worse. At least I’ll be fed.

It’s been raining outside the past few days, but now it’s a vibrant sky and low 80’s. A few of the friends I’ve made at training have decided to renew our after lunch ultimate Frisbee game. So I clip my flip flops to the back of my belt with a red caribiner that I keep for such opportunities and walk barefoot across the squishy-pine coned camp to the lower fields. The lower fields are lush green, a foot or two higher and surrounded by a horseshoe lake that turns a glance into full trance and meditation on the beauty of God. Only to be awakened by the call “Game-on!”

The field is flooded two inches or more, but we play on. Slides from catches distract us and the game becomes about gnarly grabs and sweet slides, we forget score. Body surfing now dominates, as does mud caked wetly on our skin. Bystanders are pulled in and a mud war erupts. Cool, sticky brown orange mud beneath a light and warm atmosphere. I could lie here forever.

The call for showers rings out. I don’t want to leave. But I must.

Afternoon

My shower is quick and thankfully warm. And now I’m rushing out the door. Most days are crazy, I feel like I’m being pulled from one spot to the next. Dragged like an anchor by my own will and compelled by my leader’s whip. I knew this would happen. I knew it back in Indiana. But today my asthma is acting up, and so is my rash, so I’m heading to a doctor for more meds.

The doctor’s office is a block from the beach in lovely San Diego, California. This guy’s office already seems like that of a quack… obscure location, and by a beach, great, maybe he’ll listen to me and give me the drugs I need to not die. Forms are filled, and a bit later I’m called in. It seems a small operation, with only a few narrow clinical rooms. Moments later a twenty something beach bum with a lab coat enters. Great. I tell him as plainly as I can that my asthma is acting up, so I need something for that, and my rash is acting up, so if he could hit me with a steroid shot, it’d get better.

His short brown hair keeps its light bounce despite his client’s self diagnosis and prescriptions that are subtle innuendos about his lack of qualification. He takes a moment and asks an obscure question. “When does your asthma act up, you seem fine now?” I stumble with mutterings, which eventually evolve into coherence about maybe being around my coworkers. After a few more obscurities, he asks something almost personal. “When was the last time you were happy?”

I left the office dazed. I have eczema? Is that what this year and a half old rash has been? The other diagnosis? Yeah, he’s a quack and I don’t believe him, but I’m not telling anyone about it, just in case he’s right. What would it change anyway? They’d think I was trying to get out of work or trying to hide from the ever and all important TEAM. Individuals don’t matter, unless they’ve been assimilated. And how true is a concern based on a new description? Am I to be more pitied and cared for because of a diagnosis, and not because I’ve been in pain the whole time? You don’t care about me. Stay the hell out of my life.

I pop the first pill after I’ve escaped on a brief “walk.” I’m going to keep this quiet. No one will know. It won’t matter anyhow.

Late Afternoon

The van arrives to pick us up and we pile in. I get in quickly to grab my favorite seat, the back left corner, away from the team leaders in the front. Texas is so nice this time of year, before the first frost. It distracts me too much to answer their questions quickly. Yeah, I’m excited, sure, I can’t wait. Real home-cooked Mexican food, wow. Nope never had it, never cooked it for myself, or had to eat only beans, rice and tortillas for half a month because I was so poor, nope. Never.

White people amaze me. Thank God I’m back in Texas. Yet for some reason, when she talks I’m now listening. Just two weeks ago, I despised her. Absolutely annoyed by any words from her mouth, but now instead of being as sarcastic as I realize I could be, and really crave to be, I smile genuinely. And tell her about all the food and spices that we eat, and try to tantalize her taste buds and attention. She’s pretty. I noticed that before, but now she’s really pretty, no longer “pretty but annoying as hell.”

YG prayer mtg.

Evening

Dinner

Night

I’ve been struggling with my team leaders. Though really its only one that leads and she astonishes me. Last week we were in St. Louis on our way here and she yelled “My authority comes from God.” Hoping to cow me into submission. I don’t cow. Earlier that night she approached a dialogue with me by these words “Lets talk about this [problem] so I can hear your concerns.” What she really meant became evident in her next breath. “We’ve already decided your punishment.” She didn’t want to hear my concerns, I knew that. She didn’t care. The authority structure on Net is defective. Pretenses about caring. They listen and have already decided. No one cares. They just like to feel as if they did.

Late Night

I head to the Eucharistic Chapel to pray.

It’s cold outside in Gary, Indiana and I’m finishing off my day.

It’s 2am and we wake in 3 hours.