an enduring thanksgiving …

Miracles are everyday occurrences, … 

                                                           recognizing them is not.

Years ago, while a seminarian in my only year of theology, one of my ministries was working with special needs kids in a town nestled on the fringes of the Appalachian hills.  Twice each week, I’d drive from St. Meinrad’s Seminary in south central Indiana to a small community school serving an area with a statistically high incidence of children with terminal conditions unfortunately linked to inner-family marriage.

      Ms. Cindy, a robust, jovial educator, introduced me to her rambunctious group as “Mr. Tim.”   Quickly, Ryan, a skinny seven year old wearing a converted bike helmet, staggered toward me ricocheting off a bookcase, colliding with chairs, and stomping through a tub of crayons.  I reached to steady him just as an annoying buzzer startled the little renegade to pause, gather his balance and continue into my open arms!

“I love you, Mr. Tim!” Smiling ear to ear, he steadied himself wobbling away.

 Cindy bubbled, “When the angles swept by sonic waves become too random, the sensor velcroed to the top of Ryan’s helmet buzzes causing him to freeze.  When under control, the alarm stops.”
“Doesn’t it irritate him?”

“Initially, he grabbed for it all the time, but it’s out of his reach.  He’s grown accustomed to it.  Ryan loves everybody,” Cindy frowned sarcastically.  The boy with a severe neurological disorder circled the room “staggering, falling” in love with some other unsuspecting soul.

August through October, I taught life skills as I grew to know the kids … reading stories, demonstrating personal hygiene, feeding some, changing diapers, exercising atrophied muscles through range of motion, adjusting walkers, playing games ….

Also integrated in time, academics went very well.  Having completed undergraduate degrees in chemistry and physics, I hoped, as I’d performed through college on so many natural phenomenon, to find some analytical system or algorithm proving a Creator’s existence.  However, I’d pretty much concluded the reality of God was wrought with many errors.  The foundation of which was existence. Quite a predicament if you’re a seminarian!  I’d resigned to return to my graduate studies at semester’s end.  Theologians emphasized I needed to commit to a full year to assist in answering many of my questions.  I found their lack of understanding in the sciences less than encouraging.  

Mid-November arrived with an invitation.  Special educators, Cindy and Anita coaxed me to chaperone their kids during a campout hosted by the Boy Scouts.  I knew not to ask many questions.  Simply do as I was told.  I convinced my roommate, Leo, not an outdoors kind of guy, to be the other male chaperone.  

As we loaded our yellow bus, Ryan greeted us at the door.  “I love you, Anita.” He embraced her thigh using it to stable himself.  While the girls secured the kids into their seats, Leo and I hitched pop-up camping trailers, one to the school bus and the other to his car.  (With kids’ breathing-temperature restrictions, trailers were essential. Where’d the girls find those?)

I drove our crew through the hibernating hills of Hoosier National Forest to our campsite.  Parking on a dirt logging road overlooking a valley cradling a large pond, I questioned why we were invited among scouts from Louisville, Indianapolis, and Evansville.  At the girls request, we remained on the road keeping a great distance between our camp and those of the scouts.

Because of dietary restrictions, I collected each child’s food sent by their parents.  As expected half came without food.  I assisted Rita, brown curls and all, unpack, hidden behind her dad’s upright army duffel bag.  Finally reaching into the bottom, I felt something bite me.  I immediately inverted the bag dumping its contents.  Out plopped a brown speckled chicken, one Rita informed us her parents packed.  Her tiny hands graphically illustrated separating the bird’s head from its body to prepare it for supper; hardly appropriate for our little people chasing the frightened chicken they'd endeared “Bobo.”

Though unusually pleasant in the low 60’s, Leo rounded the bus wrapped in his winter coat.  “What’s with the parka?” I scoffed.

“In Florida, anything below 65 is winter weather!”  he proclaimed.  “I’m making a Micky D’s run to pick up lots of hamburgers and nuggets,” he laughed pointing to our free-range Bobo.  “I’m saving you from plucking feathers for supper, tonight!”

Parka Boy disappeared as I proceeded to level the pop-ups and adjust their heaters.  Soon, from the timber’s edge, I heard Cindy’s voice yelling for help.  Anita appeared gasping, “We need your help!  We need help now!” She returned as I raced trailing her.  

Our disturbed, aggressive nine year old Jerome had mysteriously deer wrestled a maturing doe to the forest floor.  Cindy already in negotiations drew Jerome’s full attention.  I quietly circled behind the entangled couple.  Lunging around a stressed child, I unclasped his hands and lifted him away from her head plunged into decaying leaves.  The doe lay paralyzed, in shock momentarily before struggling as if from a drunken stupor to her feet.  She faded deep into the forest.  

The aroma of iron-skillet cooking over open flames saturated the valley below eventually rising to engulf us.  Twelve year old Joey living in an eight year old’s body chuckled at Bobo pecking his way through the kids mess of bread crumbs.  Lacking any musculature, Joey rested in my arms.  I supported his head upright while feeding him puréed vegetables basically Gerber’s baby food so that he did not choke.  Like a beacon of hope, Joey always broadcast a genuine smile, a joy to be with us.  He dreamed of fighting fires some day.

With all their dietary restrictions, I have no idea how the children survived Leo’s hamburgers and fries.

A cold front drifted in casting a foggy cloak over us and veiling the valley below.  After settling the kids in their trailers, I paused to thank a God I didn’t think existed for surviving the day and to ask for sleep in the night.  Instantly, I knew if there was a God, he had a sense of humor as Bobo ran across my chest.  Either I or the chicken needed to go outside.  The kids choice, Bobo stays!  I glanced around the trailer.  Parka Boy was no where to be found until I discovered him sawing logs in the back seat of his car.  I cursed my lack of sleep returning to the trailer.  

Lunch concluded the morning.  Taking a break, I wandered away deserting the chaos I helped inject into the forest.  Teetering on a log wedged on a steep hillside overlooking a pond, I contemplated the ills of our children.  I questioned … where was this loving God I was to believe in?  And that wasn’t enough, what was God doing about the Appalachian poverty let alone the world’s?  Oblivious to the forest, self-absorbed, I began to slide into a depressed dimension.

Suddenly, without warning, a missile struck, blowing me from my seat, tumbling, reeling, trying to recover down the steep bank.  Frantic, I came to rest facing him a few feet away.  Ryan’s helmet clung to the side of his enlarged head, buzzer still attached.  Eyes bugged through one lens of glasses catty-wompus across the child's face.  He stared playfully unaware he’d startled me or that I might strike in my defense.  

Innocently, unconditionally as Ryan always did, he blurted out.  “I love you, Tim.”

I reached, corrected his helmet and leveled his glasses.  Up and staggering, he raced to rejoin the chaos.  I froze watching from a place psychologically, spiritually from which I needed to hear those words.  Others who might have heard them, heard simple repetitive utterances.  To me, they were real.  Though an incredibly small slice of what was to come, they sustained me to keep searching, not to be so resolute in my determination of a fictitious God.  Far, far more emerged from these events.  Ryan was my buzzer, one I could not reach, could not turn off.  I stumbled through my journey, ricocheting off of proofs and theorems, colliding with various viewpoints, stomping through academics ...  Ryan applied brakes to my acceleration toward an erroneous conclusion in a relationship yet to develop.  I returned for the spring semester with a great deal of wrestling … wrestling that still continues today.  

To Ryan and the bunch, saints Cindy and Anita, I hold an enduring thanksgiving ….

PS.  On many postings, Jim, Ben, Fred, and Sean have written many occasions of thanksgiving.  On behalf of the entire PX-90 group, we invite you to an ever enduring miracle in Holy Infant’s Eucharistic Thanksgiving celebration!  Reserve the date!  Not a Mass you want to miss!  Need more info?  See January 2014 blog “Thanksgiving” for a reflection.