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).