Barry’s Bay Chronicle: Poverty

image: shiftingpixel.com

I think that the “Cross of Combermere” has something to do with detachment. It seems that this area was picked from the ice age as a place for the cross and thus a chance, a chance for detachment; for as soon as the glaciers scratched their way south, taking almost all the good topsoil with them, and leaving rocky hillsides and blue-eyed lakes, it became a potential place for poverty.

And so it was; when the white men came, these lands were the leavings. Polish and Irish suffered here and became tough in their strange lives of the beautiful and the miserable: and then Catherine and Eddie Doherty came, two people accustomed to wealth, who were now establishing a spiritual center for the ministry to the poor. Then their vision seemed to develop into a deep understanding of Christ and His choice to be poor with the poor. Catherine’s old Russian memories of the poustinikki, men and women who gave all they had to retreat into silence and poverty, began to develop in her soul and she understood that her early visions of helping the poor were just the beginnings. As she established her dreams of silence and union with God, she understood that it must be in the context of poverty: the poustinia of Madonna House, in my mind, are little gateways, chances for the individual to have a taste of the spiritual road to God: a road, where, “The Son of Man has no place to lay His Head”. Walking with the Man of Sorrows is must be on a lowly dirt road, a road empty in the night where one must look for a place to lay for the night, stomach rumbling, feet sore: but heart full.

And so I, with my half-heart: half materialist, half spiritual longing; I, with my torn heart, have played on the outskirts of the true life. I am driving on that dirt road, wondering if I can indeed park my comforts, get out, and walk with Christ. I have not felt strong enough, or worthy. And how I love nice things, love beauty; my eyes have not been blinded enough to the world to see the beauty of God. Here, under the Combermere Cross, I have been mostly afraid and angry. I don’t want to have to be afraid of every bill; I don’t want to have to go to shop at the thrift store. I remember shopping in San Francisco and New York and feel sick. I’ve had to work at not looking at our forlorn house and imagining what I would do with it if it were mine and I had some money.

However, something inside wants union with God: this has never really changed; and I understand now that it is because He wants this- of all of us. Love desires union. So I have, all my life, done things with half of myself, dragging the other half (which is screaming and threatening dire consequences) in search of the beauty which is beyond sight, of the love which is beyond the capacity of my heart. I believe, too, that this is the condition and desire of every human heart, and remains so. I don’t believe this desire can ever be fully expelled or ignored, but living a torn life causes disorder and unhappiness. A choice must be made.

I look now more closely at what the half which longs for God is doing; and it is easier to look at it here, under the Combermere Cross. No matter where I go, whether we are called to stay here in Barry’s Bay or not, God called us here to be under this cross, and to understand poverty by living in the beginnings of it. Relative to what I have seen around the world, we are rich. But relative to what we are used to, and God knows this, we are poor. We are wimps and God knows it and is merciful to our pathetic crying: but merciful enough, also, to keep moving us closer to the ideal.

I see St. Francis in my mind; the missionaries and saints, and Mother Teresa: and I see a depth of freedom in their lives and actions that is beyond what any king or dictator enjoys. Yet it seems that I am still watching them work out their salvation in Christ- from the car. When Father Terry told me in the beginning of my pilgrimage here, “Welcome to the Edge”- I felt that I was finally getting out of the car- but then I get back in; ride, back out; walk a few steps and get scared.

I finally understood one night, after tears of deep frustration, that it was about detachment. So I went to the church to pray- it was locked, Our Lord inside. I sat in the car, literally, but my heart was outside waiting for the Lord on the road. As I looked at the lonely cross outside the church, I asked Him to begin to teach me about true detachment; and I begin to understand that a person can be as owner-minded and thus prideful about being poor for the sake of the kingdom as he is about having human power and riches. “What a minefield along this road to God”, I thought; “-if I am going to be prideful, I might as well be rich and at least provide well for my children (and myself)!”

Pride is the deep enemy within ourselves against union with God. “He resists the proud”- and how often I have felt this resistance. Poverty, then, is essentially a thing in the soul- and it cannot be an end in itself, or it simply becomes another petty idol, a place of pride, worse than that of the rich because it is under the veneer of spiritual advancement. Poverty is about detachment, of treating nothing as if I own it- because if I own it, I begin to love it; it is a physical extension of myself (Divine Intimacy). I must be detached from things, and this journey along the dirt road of poverty must be essentially a journey where one puts more and more down along the side and continues with less and less (but with more and more room for Christ).

Detachment itself cannot be the end, because then we would be Buddists only, and God wishes more than nothing-ness for us, He wishes to give us Himself. Detachment is the condition under which God can come to us, when we are becoming places where the proportion of our self to His Self matches reality, matches heaven. When we are full of Him, we are most ourselves because we give glory to Him who needs none, but is Glory Itself: and thus, as St. Paul says, “We go from glory to glory.” Giving glory to God who needs none from us is really about changing ourselves into someone more like Him, who is Perfection.

The crosses of life, whether they are Combermere Crosses, Santa Cruz Crosses, New York Crosses, or African Crosses, are gateways. They are chances by which we may begin to detach from the beauties and comforts of this life, in order to see God and thus to bring real beauty into the world, a beauty which glories in God and shows others His love: from simple flower gardens to solid family life, to a love of philosophy and literature; like the songs of St. Francis or a beautiful painting done by a happy child, or the halo of light that the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge saw when he visited Mother Teresa’s House of the Dying (Something Beautiful for God).

Barry's Bay Chronicle- One

Image from the Madonna House website

I have been here in Ontario two months, arriving timidly in the humid and stark days of August and now facing the sultry and mecurial weather of October. I am waiting for the cold, like a soldier in the trench looking for the first sign of movement out across no-man’s land.

Life goes slow here, with small “Combermere Crosses” laid on from time to time (Combermere is an adjoining town wherein lies the Madonna House). It is a place I want to run from one day and to embrace the next: just like the Cross. The town of Barry’s Bay is roughly in the shape of a cross: St. Hedwig’s at the top, near the lake; our neighborhood one arm, the lake area houses another arm, and the business district the bottom. All of this placement seems appropriate, too.

This area, about twenty or so miles square, seems like a spiritual powerhouse: it would look like New York City if the spiritual elements of life were truly visible. Sixty or more years ago, Catherine Doherty came here to start Madonna House, and her vision of people from all walks, including artists and scholars coming to this area is fulfilled. Families and single people are drawn here, some rather mysteriously, from everywhere to pursue a life of simplicity and spiritual poverty.

Catherine Doherty came here because it was most like her native Russia; but it is a strange little place with its own history of great beauty and great hardship. This was the area of Ontario least wanted by the first settlers- so the poor Polish were given it: the only place in the world where the bedrock is so close to the surface that it is visible almost everywhere. Good for enthusiastic geologists, bad for farmers. Some or other ministry of the Canadian government considers this place uninhabitable, even to this day. So the Poles built their lives one heartbreak at a time, and built out of that suffering very beautiful and majestic houses of God. Their lives were simple, and poor, and religious. Families were strong, and are strong. Perhaps their poverty of spirit drew the notice of Our Lord and He built the present apostolates upon it. Here it is as if the world is Catholic and the secular culture is trying to sneak in: exactly opposite of everywhere else I’ve been.

For me, I feel like a soft-bellied rookie here- these people are tough. They roll their eyes at me when I tell them where I am from(where am I from?). The Catholic immigrants, of the last sixty years, drawn like bees to the Madonna House spirit, are not tough Poles for the most part. But they are serious counter-culture and fighters- from a young mother in her bohemian-blue, solid cabin-farmhouse to a man-pillar in his ever-present joy. For me, this place with its wind-blown, misted lakes and deep forests is a visible reminder of the spiritual life on this earth, this place of exile- it is as if the spiritual realities of beauty and simplicity, suffering and exile are here more visible than anywhere else I have ever been.

I came here afraid of the winter, and the Lord is making me face a deeper fear: that of being a saint. Part of me does not want to get tougher on myself; yet I sense the real and lasting joys, also visible to me in the chance to teach and help something worthy grow- namely, the Academy. I am like a flimsy and flapping tent in the wind, comparing myself to the large, bulky stone houses that stare back at the lake and the wind and defy it in the Lord’s strength. When I begin to see the reality of the saints, their inner strength and deep love of God, mirrored in the landscape and the lives of simpler people here, I realize what a city ninny I really am, what a spiritual weakling, what a fearful soul.

Perhaps if I make it through the winter, the spiritual one, I will be a saint. One can always hope, but not in my strength- I’ve California blood for a Canadian winter, and a sinner’s heart for reaching heaven. It will have to be God. I always knew this, but it seems very real to me now: my anti-strength for the journey. There is so much to be purified in His fire.

I remember about ten years ago, when I lived in Virginia, I read about the Madonna House and a description of Catherine Doherty. It may have been described in the article, I am not sure, but a real inner picture of a large and large-hearted woman, a huge mother-figure, stayed with me, and I imagined myself walking up through some tall and dark pine trees, up a path, to a small cabin wherein I would meet her; and something about my death and my desire towards sanctity crept in at the corners; and sometimes it seemed I was her. It was like a dream one has over and over, except in my imagination during waking moments. A few days ago I walked into that picture, but in reality- I walked on a path through tall and dark trees to a small cabin where she had lived for many years. I felt at home there, as if I’d really seen it before. So I hope she can, with her large and strong soul, pray for me, with my small and weak soul. It is essentially a choice to let go and let God, as they say; because I’ll end up in a hell of my own making if I try to do it myself (which I have been).