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clerical shirt, and collar. In Mark's breast pocket was a small
leather church calendar in which he kept, in a round, scrawled
hand, dates for meetings on the pages marked with the names of
martyrs and saints. On that calendar was a meeting on "human
sexuality," scheduled for June 11, a feast day for St. Barnabas,
an
apostle.
As Mark settled
in, a stranger with dirty clothes and a stubbled
chin walked unevenly into the church and sat down in a
shadowed pew. He had "homeless" written all over him. Probably
drunk. Mark motioned for him to come up to the altar area.
He staggered slightly as he climbed the steps. When we stood for
the Gospel reading, he reached for Mark's hand and held onto it,
his fingers knotted with Mark's like lovers, for the rest of the service.
Ann Jaqua,
a laywoman, gathered up her notes and headed
for the lectern. The theme for her homily that night was
"Mysticism 101."
"Here
at the end of the twentieth century, we have difficulty
with anything that is neither apparent to the senses nor obvious
to the intelligence," Ann began. "We are caught in a restricted
way of knowing that the scientific world has given us. And, as
Huston Smith says, the scientific method only measures those
aspects of reality we can control, leaving out all those aspects that
are beyond our ability to control. All things that exceed us in
freedom, intelligence, and purpose, things that cannot be pinned
down."
After the
sermon and the peace, Anne Howard, the priest
who was celebrating that night, held her palms over the bread
and wine. She said, "Breathe on these bodily things."
People asked
for prayers: for my daughter who has eczema
on her hands; in thanksgiving for my sister who, so far, is enduring
chemo, her hair has not fallen out; I asked for prayers for the
soul of my brother, Kit, and stood in their midst shaking with
tears. They held their palms like light wings over my back and
10
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Excerpts
from Practicing Resurrection ©2003 by Nora Gallagher are used
with permission from Knopf Publishers.
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