Brother Jesse's Lamentations

[dave]

Contemplatives

I’m feeling better today. Some days I believe the two souls I left on the plane have probably forgiven me and I am the only one who has trouble doing the same. In a sense, I overstate my importance when I am unable to acknowledge someone's forgiveness. Michael from Albany wrote to remind me of that, and no, Michael, I do not mind you pointing out the obvious. It is one of the reasons none of us can live completely alone for very long and we need community. We need others to comment to us about how we’re doing and we should encourage them to do that. Our Chapter of Faults at the Monastery helps toward that goal, but even the rolling eyes or shaking of a head from someone close to us communicates that we might be veering off the path.

I’m a bachelor and I have always valued my role as a religious brother, but after my experience in Africa and the plane crash I found I could no longer continue in a dangerous ministry. A great force of self protection rose up from somewhere deep inside of me and almost instantly changed me from a relatively brave young man into a coward. Today we would say this strong urge to avoid harm is just one manifestation of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.) But I also began to doubt whether my vocation was a gift from an unseen power or just my ego telling me I was someone special.



We have no perpetual vows in our Order. Instead we renew for varying amounts of time. It’s like a contract, except we get only expenses when needed, no pay. I have known brothers who came in for ten years, went out for five and came back. My Novice Master had been at it for 35 years and was out twice, working as a ship’s radio man on freighters and cruise ships. I would have made my first renewal in 1972, two years after the plane crash, but I didn't . I wasn’t sure at the time that I should. The Gang of McFour in Ireland weren’t sure of me either, possibly because I sort of got lost for a year when I got out of the hospital. Not really lost, just not living in community and not answering the phone at the home of whichever relative I happened to be staying with that month.

And so in 1972 I left the order and went back to graduate school with money given to me by an insurance company. For a few of years I lived in the world until I wound up here at Our Lady of West Saugerties.

I seem to remember being on the road a lot. Or at least my heart was.

In case you haven’t guessed, I wasn’t really cut out to be a contemplative monk. But the only monk I’ve known who felt he was up to the task didn’t last long. Most contemplatives who successfully adjust to the life hope they are suited to it, but always entertain doubts now and then … every other hour or so.

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Bouncer told me he kept a bag packed for his first ten years, ready to leave. He stormed the gates of heaven with prayer, he said, hoping that his life as a monk would finally become second nature to him rather than such a chore.

“I fasted and prayed and did just about everything except wear a hair shirt,” he said, “trying to adjust to the regimen. After ten years it occurred to me to ask myself why I was trying so hard to be a monk when it was such a tough life. Why not just leave?”

“But you didn’t, evidently,” I said.

“You’re not listening, Ace,” he said. “Why would I keep trying for ten long years?”

“The retirement package?” I joked.

“I realized that I must really, really want this,” he said, “to keep at it for so long. I had never wanted anything so much in my entire life!”

“So you found,” I said, “that you had a vocation of obsessiveness?”

“Yup, you got it!” Bouncer said dismissively, as if he was finished with me and this conversation. But then he looked at me seriously and said, “I think you’re right. We have a vocation of obsession.”

Heaven On Their Minds

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Sacrifice

If I had married someone instead of becoming a monk, this morning the woman and I might have shared our …. 16,425th breakfast together. I wonder what we could have possibly talked about on over sixteen thousand mornings. “Pass the butter” and “How about those Yankee’s” 16,000 times could sour a relationship, I’d think.

I admit I’ve lusted over a St. Lucy’s ample figure. I’m just a man. My high school sweetheart, the women I dated in college, the girl at the library … in a sense, they're all the same. They’re what Jung called my anima, when he said that Man is predisposed to Woman just as he is to air, light and water.

So how am I supposed to change my biology? As many of us monks have in the past, I can deal with it. But not totally deny it. I lay awake some nights yearning for a woman to lie beside me. To talk to, share my thoughts and dreams and to tell my fears. To lay my head upon her … breast and listen to her heartbeat, to smell her sweetness. To feel so close to another human being, another soul. And to have planned a life together, to have raised children and to have sat on a Sunday afternoon after dinner on a wide porch in the soft sunshine and watched grandchildren playing on the grass. A woman to share my body on long walks in the woods and at night in the peace of our bedroom. To care for her in sickness and to hold her when she suffered pain or grief.

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This is what I gave up to become a monk. I didn’t fully appreciate my sacrifice when I decided as a young man to enter a religious life. I didn’t know I was going against every cell in my body in remaining celibate. I knew I could live without the young woman I was involved with before entering the novitiate. Leaving her was in some ways a relief. But I didn’t know that life without any woman would eventually become a hell of loneliness.

When I go up on the roof and look out over the valley I feel close to something that’s feminine. I can’t say why. It may be the lush fruitfulness of a summer afternoon as the haze rises from the river that runs through the valley to nurse the trees and grasses. It may be the wind whispering to me, calling to me, wrapping its arms around me.

The one time I came close to joining the spirit on the horizon … stepping off into her arms … it happened after a rainfall. A storm had thundered down the mountain and pounded the Chapter House with blasts of wind and a torrent of rain. When it ended and the stained glass window of St. Lucy lit up with rays of sunshine through her colored glass, I went up the roof ladder hoping to see a rainbow. I popped my head out the trap door and swung my eyes west toward the late afternoon sun. There on the horizon golden clouds blazed, pink and green against a pale blue sky. I made my way along the peak toward it, to the edge of the roof. It frightened me to suddenly feel something pull in my chest. A woman spirit seemed to be calling from over on the horizon, a place where we might live forever.



When the time came to leave the roof, I backed down the peak to the trap door. Then I backed into the roof hole, closed the hatch and backed down the ladder. I backed down all the way. I'm always backing down.

I Can't Get Started Wth You





END of ST. LUCY

[dave]

If you're still with us, it's time for Number 3. We'll start tomorrow.

1. The Roof

2. The Night Chapel and St. Lucy

3. Immy, Jesse's childhood girlfriend

4. Sally, woman he met in the woods, who he believes to be his guardian angel, and who becomes his real estate broker. I know ... it's confusing.

5. Fathers

[dave]

Immy, Brother Jesse's old girlfriend


Brother Jesse is just a man, after all, with the same thoughts, temptations and transgressions to not be too proud of, just like any other man. In one post on Monk In The Cellar, he says he doesn't believe he's unique. "I grew up thinking about girls, dated one or two, went to college, got drunk, played in a band and became a Religious Brother."


One of the last things I did before entering religious life was to call Mary Immaculata O’Toole, the girl I dated in high school and occasionally in college. Immy was my only serious love. As I look back, I’m sure I was never more than a date to her, but she wasn’t just a date to me. At one time I thought we’d spend our lives together. But in the summer after high school just before I left for college, Immy told me we were through. The news wasn’t a surprise, but it hurt. Later, when we were both home from college in the summer we occasionally went out together, but with the understanding we were only friends. At least, that was Immy’s understanding.



It was my college spiritual director who suggested I have one more meeting with Immy before I pursued the life of a Brother.

“What the hell for?” I blurted out.

Bert looked at me as if I were dense, surprised at my reaction. “Call it closure,” he said. “After all, the young woman obviously meant a lot to you.”

“That’s the past,” I said, “when I was a kid.”

Bert peered over his glasses at me and then shifted around in his chair and looked out the window, across the college’s quadrangle of lawn and sidewalks. He was a large man, a Lutheran minister and a former Army Chaplain who didn’t suffer fools easily. He was not of a pastoral bent, but was rather more directive. The sun was streaming in through the glass on a short early winter afternoon. He probably wanted to get outside and frankly I was finished with this conversation.

“Do you realize,” he said after a moment, “how many young men of antiquity found the love of their life and fathered the girl’s children before age 18?”

“I didn’t do anything to father any children,” I said, sort of smugly.

Still …” he said. “Let’s be realistic. Do you think a 16 year old can’t have an important love? Even a life-changing love?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“Go see her,” Bert said. “Don’t tell yourself you don’t love her, not until you see how your emotions react when you’re with her for an hour. And then if you’re still not sure, well … just be sure you can live without her. For five years, anyway.”

Think It Over

[dave]

When I went home at Christmas, I made the call. It was a tough task. I didn’t want to start that memory in my heart beating all over again. And also, I didn’t look forward to telling Immy I was going to be a Brother. I had revealed my plan to a few casual young woman acquaintances in the 6 months prior and received strange reactions, not the encouragement I would have expected. If Immy looked at me like I was less than a man, I’d feel terrible. Truthfully, I often felt like a very strong man when I thought of the dedication this life would require.

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I dialed Immy’s number and her mother answered. The lady who had been so nice to me in high school didn’t bother to act like she remembered me, but I’m sure she did.

“She’s here. Wait a minute, please,” said the housewife who had just plummeted to the bottom of my favorite older woman list.

I visualized Immy and her mother sitting across the kitchen table from each other and that was confirmed by Immy coming on the phone almost immediately, except for a slight delay while I imagined Mom holding the phone away from her ear and rolling her eyes in disdain.

“Hello?” said Immy. “Oh, Hi! Where are you? Here in town, really? Uh huh. Uh huh. Oh. Well … I’m not home for very long, so I’m really busy most nights … every night, come to think of it. Ha ha!”

“How about Saturday morning?” I said.

“Well … OK,” she said. “I guess. Where? I’m on a diet.” That meant she didn’t want to get stuck with me through too long of a lunch.

“How about St. John’s Church?” I said. I was reacting sarcastically to her avoiding lunch with me, but decided as I spoke that St. John’s was probably appropriate. I’d been to so many funerals there.

“Are you serious?” she said.

“Sure,” I replied. “I’m not in town for very long either. It’s my family church and I’ve been wanting to visit.”

“Wow,” she laughed, a real laugh. “What a date!”

“Ten o’clock OK?” I said.

“Two hours to pray before lunch?” she said. “Is there so much to pray about?”

“OK, then between 10:30 and 11:00,” I said. “I may get there a little early.”

“You probably need the prayer more than me!” she said, brightly

“I’m sure that’s true,” I said.

She hung up.


Pray

[dave]

On Saturday, I rose and looked out the window at a wonderful world of white swirling snow. Maybe I should have called to confirm our date, but I got dressed and borrowed my mother's car and drove to St. John’s. I had to park a block away. The rotten weather could not spoil the first snow of the winter for me.

Outside the church, a gusty squall was churning up snow in the slushy street. The wind nudged me in through the huge brass plated doors, past Holy Water bowls the size of bird baths, and down the long nave into the old church. Walking among the pews, I felt the immensity of the structure as small sounds echoed about me to accent the silence.



On this day, as the snow outside sifted up against the stained glass and I waited for Immy, the church was cold and dark and empty. I sat and thought of the young woman who had meant everything to me just a few years before. And I thought about our futures. I did not know which missionary field I would serve in the future, but I prayed for those placed over me in the Order to have an anointing on them when they made decisions for me. And I said a prayer for Immy’s future, whether she married a boy provided by her Italian mother’s army of aunts and cousins or if she chose a dumb Irishman like myself from her father’s Hibernian lodge. If she showed up today, I would frankly be surprised. Something in her voice on the telephone told me that before today she would decide to not come. I think Immy knew we weren't right for each other, but did not have the words to tell me. Her sense of the world was much more practical than mine and I suppose she didn’t want to spend her life pulling my head down from the clouds. Romance and hormones can often rush toward a union that proves disastrous for two young people. The lucky couples survive it. And I was lucky to avoid it, but I felt anything but blessed. I had understood little when I felt my world end at her goodbye four years before. And now a young man of 22 years, the sting of it was still with me as I sat in the cold church that Saturday morning.

As midday approached, the pews began to fill with people. I had forgotten there was a Mass at noon. Soon, a crowd of worshippers began to assemble behind me as they prepared themselves for the Advent service. Since I had sat down at the very front, I had no idea who was behind me. I wanted to turn around and scan the congregation, but I didn’t.

Immy never came to the church. But that was OK, because I had the answer Bert had asked me to seek. I still loved Immy. I could feel the loss of her affection nagging me. But I could survive. I didn’t know how long I would carry the loss with me, but I somehow knew I would go on with life and find my way.

Raining In My Heart

[dave]

At St. John's that morning, I happened to look to my right at one of the smaller altars along the side wall of the church and I noticed a new statue. I stood and shuffled sideways on the kneeler past the Asian man and woman who had sat down next to me. Exiting the pew, I walked across the church to the statue. A small sign on its base said the image was of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks.

I remembered reading about her life among the Mohawk Indians in Central New York State. She had been disfigured by small pox and while growing up was the butt of jeering and ridicule by the adults and children of her tribe. But when she grew to be a young woman she became known as a wonderful storyteller who loved children. The little ones followed her around asking for stories and she kept them entertained, but her adult peers still persisted in their mocking. She became a Christian and legend has it that when she died at a young age in April of 1680, moments after death her face was wonderfully transfigured into that of a lovely young woman.

I can't say I believed the stories of those who had touched her relics and were healed, but I knelt down and said a prayer to her, or to the spirit she represented, the spirit that fills the universe, the spirit that we can only perceive as one person at a time, be it our unique version of God himself, Mother Cabrini, Mary, St. Francis or (for some) Elvis. Without further defining a theology and wrapping it around her, I asked her to be my friend. To look out for me and to help my guardian angel, who is also of the same spirit (but is better looking than Mother Cabrini.) I have felt a special kinship with Kateri ever since. But it would be years before I realized we had both survived an airplane crash.

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Everything That Touches You

[dave]

I've had a lot of time to think about Immy over the years, and not just about taking her for a drive and parking in a lonely spot, something she allowed only once that I remember. Thank God the girl protected us both by refusing my advances when they went too far for her sensibilities.

About twenty years ago my mother told me she was proud she and Dad were able to send my brothers and I to Catholic schools when we were kids. In a familiar manner of loving derision I said nothing but began to pick my nose, which always got her laughing.



“Well, it’s true,” she said. “And certainly as a Brother you can tell me at least one thing your Catholic education did for you.”

With a twinkle in my eye, I said, "Well it limited me to dating girls who wouldn’t put out.”

“You think I didn’t know that?” she said.



Immy was a strong young lady who knew what she wanted from life and it didn't include getting pregnant by some numbskull who would be forced by the society of his time to forfeit plans for an education and instead get a factory job to pay the rent on a cold water flat.

Immy was smart and she knew it, and had been encouraged from an early age to go beyond her mother's horizon ... by her mother, among others.

My Mom continued to send newspaper clippings to me each time Immy was featured in our local newspaper, which was often, due to her mother's new hobby as a PR agent. Mom must have thought I would fondly remember Immy as I might boyhood friends George or Frank. Why she did not sense my hurt is beyond me. Mom was not a mean person.

Anyway, according to the articles Immy became an attorney in Washington and rose to high levels in the government, eventually taking political clients with her into a law partnership that became very successful. She married twice and mothered twin daughters whose weddings were featured in the society news for days on end. Not once did I entertain a fantasy about being her successful husband. Neither the first nor the second.

Life is a Highway

[dave]

That ends the Immy segment. Oh ... I forgot to mention Maria. Her presence was unforgettable, even though we never met her.



Black Dress

Women show up frequently in our story. In fact, the feminine is what Jesse finally began to realize had been lost from his life. This figures in the next post, where a guest at the monastery from a government agency that’s using Our Lady’s as a safe house agrees to abide by the house rules, but is later caught with a cell phone.

Jesse writes…

“I’m sorry,” Julio said to me, “but it’s a good thing I had the cell … to talk Maria in … when she got lost on these roads up here.”

“You had your girlfriend up here to the monastery?” I asked, incredulous.”

“Don’t worry, not in the house. In the garage. She brought a few bottles of wine and we …. said goodbye …in the SUV.”

“You’re a real Casanova,” I said.

“And I’ll pay for the cassock I took from the back of the chapel,” he said.

“You took a cassock?” I said, wondering what he would do with the long black vestment worn by altar servers.

“Maria thought it was kinky when she wore it, unbuttoning all the way down the front and …”

“OK, enough, Julio,” I said.

“She’ll send it back,” he said.

“Tell her to keep it,” I said.

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When I told Bouncer about this later, he laughed.
“That explains the girl in that terrific car,” he said.

“Really!” I said.

“A gorgeous young woman in a Jaguar, a bright yellow sport convertible. She drove up Thursday and asked if this was Our Lady’s House. Then she left,” he said.

“And,” I said, “probably came back that night.” I couldn’t help myself and I asked, “So-o, What did she look like?”

“She was the most gorgeous sight I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Beautiful curves, luscious upholstery, and a snappy set of headlights.”

“Are we talking about the girl or the car?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Jesse, at my age one temptation is as good as another.”

A week later the UPS man brought a package. As I opened the box and saw the cassock, I was overwhelmed with the powerful smell of orange jasmine perfume, strong enough to knock a good man down. The only way to describe the smell is to imagine someone mixing orange jasmine and Aqua Velva. The vision of Maria in nothing but a loosely unbuttoned cassock had taken a week to begin to fade in my mind, but now it was back full force and I wondered when women discovered the effect of scents. Soon after leaving the Garden of Eden, I presume.

Without thinking, I hung the cassock with the others in the back of the chapel. But Maria's perfume was terrifically potent, like an evil spirit. Soon all we could smell at our prayer services was orange jasmine. When I saw the monks close their eyes in meditation, I had to wonder what they were meditating on. Only Bouncer had met Maria, but her scent would guarantee none of us would ever forget her.


Where or When

[dave]

Sally


Just to keep us all in sync, Monk In The Cellar is essentially the story of Brother Jesse, a man who is afraid of getting old and who worries that what he thought was his life of sacrifice has actually been an excuse for not taking responsibility and living the life he might have made for himself. He is also very lonely and wonders if his monastic life without a woman was a mistake, and whether he should have led a secular life of marriage, children and a regular job. Jesse has also talked himself out of most of his formal religious beliefs, having thought intensely and analyzed them for so many years. He finally comes to understand only that God has always taken care of him, that he must trust his creator. For Jesse, all the rest is superfluous and beyond his understanding. He sees the Spirit witnessing itself time after time in our lives as "manifestations of God, personalized for my feeble mind," be it an angel, the Blessed Mother, or any of the other artifacts we stumble across and think of as miracles. He doesn't think God cares how we see Him, since we'll never get it right. Jesse refuses to accept a formally argued theology or nail down a personal version. But he wonders if God really has a plan for the world that is fixed, or if it isn't more a dance that circles and changes like a kaleidoscope, in which all God really wants is for us to get up and join the dance. Jesse envisions this life of faith as akin to learning to dance while sensing the gentle nudges from an expert and loving teacher.



Brother Jesse in his "agonia" is finally presented with problems he has to act upon and finds that he must stand up and take action. He also finds he has to make decisions that might be terribly wrong, but comes to trust that God will understand and forgive him, and he believes that to make no decision would be worse.

Part of the story involves his meeting a young woman who he thinks is his guardian angel. He never admits it, but he falls in love with her. Neither he nor the reader are ever sure exactly who she is. In the end he wonders if in fact we are all each other's guardian angels, because The Dance includes more than just God and himself. It includes everyone.

In telling the story with excerpts about Sally, I will need to add a couple of other posts to explain the context and keep the reader in sync with the story. But let's start in the woods.

Down In The Woods

[dave]

Never Been Kissed

It’s nice here tonight. That awful wind has stopped. We had gusts and blowing snow on the mountain beginning Christmas Day and it really whipped up yesterday. Kickstart said a few shingles blew off the front porch roof, but I told him to stay away from any part of the porch … roof, floor or steps. It’s all rotten, I think. Looking at a joist under the porch deck the other day stained green with mold reminded me of what I call the “surprise picnic.” Not a picnic with food. Well … I found a picnic table in the woods and … I guess I’ll have to tell the story.

When I was writing of women a few posts back, I failed to mention one in particular. I’m not supposed to even think of her, because the consensus of my fellow Brothers and the professional staff at the hospital was that Sally was a figment of my (somewhat) thwarted imagination. The episode took place while Sparky was the abbot here.

Sparky was a good old guy. He had so many age spots he looked like a Dalmatian puppy, hence the nickname. I think he secretly believed my story, although I understood that as my abbot he could not agree an apparition had taken place, not without concurrence from higher-ups. "Irishmen don't see apparitions," said Sparky. Yes, I know, I was thinking the same thing but didn't say it.

“You know, Jesse,” he said, “we’re all a little worried about you. You sometimes forget where you are!”



I have never forgotten where I am. Sometimes when I’m on my way somewhere I forget where I’m going. Doesn’t everyone do that?

And it wasn't as if I'd seen the Blessed Mother. Far from it! Sally was more earthy than I would expect from the mother of Jesus, although I think we do a disservice to Mary by assuming she was totally bland.

My vision in the woods seemed to take years off my attitude. Afterward I felt young again, but also greatly confused. Maybe the two go together.

[dave]

I have walked the trails through the woods up here for years. It’s true I have a lousy sense of direction and don’t always know where I am. The very same glens in the woods can look different from week to week. And the exact same stand of hemlocks is often unrecognizable later in the day when the sun’s angle has changed or if you walk into it from a different direction. In short, the forest can be tricky. But this isn’t the Great North Woods and there is always a way out, despite the number of people who get lost up here each year and try to call 911 on their cell phones. When I am lost I walk straight downhill and always come to a road and recognize where I am. Or I follow a creek down the mountainside to civilization.

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In any event, I was not surprised to find myself one afternoon a couple of years ago at a Y in the trail with not the slightest idea which leg I should take. I realized I didn’t know where I was, so I chose the left path and started down it. After a few hundred yards I came to a small clearing I’d not seen before and that surprised me. A small picnic table had been somehow transported up the mountain and placed in the middle of the clearing. Inspecting it more closely, I saw hatchet marks. It had been hand hewn and assembled right here in the woods.

I raised my foot and pushed down on the seat board to test its strength, then sat down with my back to the table's surface. I heard a noise behind me and turned to see a woman seated opposite me on the other side of the table, although strangely there was no longer a table. I will swear to her appearance for as long as I live. It happened just like that! I suppose I could have dozed while she walked up and sat down, but no woman I’ve ever met would quietly sneak up on a man asleep at a picnic table in the woods and sit down across from him. Of course, Sally was unlike any woman I had ever met.

“I am Sally,” she said.


Your Guardian Angel

[dave]

“I’m Brother Jesse from the monastery,” I replied. Maybe I did, but I honestly don’t remember connecting the Sally in front of me with the Angel Sally from my imagination.

Suddenly I began to talk. Words flowed from me as I told Sally everything about myself, from my childhood through my teen years and then on to my vocation. All the stuff about Africa … much of it I had sworn I’d never speak of … my guilt, the plane accident, my time away from the Brothers, my sins and transgressions and my fears and … I didn’t leave much out.



I did all the talking. She offered nothing about herself and gave me only a slight smile. Sally had a lustrous ivory complexion. She was a natural beauty with deep, surprisingly blue eyes. A fine figure showed through her dress, which did nothing to rein in the movements of her body beneath the thin cotton. She was one of the most stunning women I have ever seen. Her presence was very intense. I found myself uncomfortable and I sat back, as one might lean away from a hot stove. I never stopped talking, but I couldn’t keep my eyes from roaming over her features. I felt embarrassed and hoped I wasn’t leering at her. In time my nervous monologue stumbled to a stop. I looked down at my hands and then back up at her face. Her expression of polite interest hadn’t changed.

With a smile on my face, I said, “But I suppose every guy you meet tells you the details of his entire life in the first … fifteen minutes.” I looked at my watch and realized it had been two hours.

“I was there for all of it, David,” she said.

Astounded, I asked, “How can you know my name?”

“Because …” she said, and then hesitated.

“Because why?” I asked.

She didn’t answer.


Can't Find My Way Home

[dave]

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It was then I made the connection between this woman and my angel. She half stood, leaned over the table and brought her face very close to mine. Pursing her lips, she gently blew a sweet breath across my brow and the light in the forest seemed to brighten a little. I instinctively leaned forward to kiss her, but stopped myself. For a moment I was lost in her eyes, recognizing something that even now I cannot put my finger on. Then she kissed me on the lips quickly. She did not kiss like the Blessed Mother. Nor were her lips hot and forceful. She kissed lightly, but with the energy of a thousand stars burning somewhere off stage in the universe. Sally left the table and walked away. I got up also. I was in shock. I did not want her to leave, but I was speechless. She walked up the path a bit and turned to look at me. The low sun was behind her and showed through her thin dress, revealing her legs. I don’t know how long I stood gazing at this so obviously female apparition. And then she was gone. In my eyes there was nothing but sunlight and tears.


She's So High Above Me

[dave]

Visitor

From Terd, Jesse finds out that Agnes has enlisted a woman real estate saleswoman to sell the house. One day she drives up the road to the monastery. He's in for quite a surprise.

She came to visit the other day … “Agnes’ woman,” the real estate broker. And yet she can’t be a real estate broker. It’s impossible.

Kickstart and I were working on the foundation of the front porch when we heard a car come up the long driveway.

“The FBI is here to arrest us,” said Kick.

“Not the FBI,” I said, “Not in a Lincoln Town Car.”

”Darn,” he said, “and I always wanted to meet J. Edgar Hoover.”

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The auto pulled into the circular drive and like a huge dog nosed it way along the gravel until it stopped right before us, almost touching our legs as if it were sniffing for us. A woman in her mid thirties got out and walked down the length of the hood to the front of the Lincoln. She wore a gray business suit and a simple pink silk scarf around her neck. Her blonde hair was tied up, loose and not quite business like, her figure slim. She carefully picked her way toward us, head down choosing each step carefully to avoid getting mud on her beautiful shoes. When she finally crossed the obstacle course of mud puddles and raised her head to address us, a sweet smile on her hauntingly beautiful face immediately changed to a look of fright. It was matched by my shock and we stood not four feet apart staring at each other. She was Sally from the woods, my Guardian angel.

Kickstart stood mute, as if he was transfixed at the sight of a female and had no idea women populated half the earth. Finally, the woman spoke.

“I’m Sally Prendel, here to see the Abbot,” she said.


You Stepped Out of A Dream