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The Return
by Glenn Currier
Over the past two months I have been "visiting" the community St. Francis Church in Lancaster, Texas. For many years I have been alienated from the Catholic Church. Helen and I had been very involved with loving people of St. Francis and the local Catholic community. Then God let me know that it was better for me to take leave of the church and to explore other spiritual horizons. Throughout my time "away" I have had many wonderful spiritual awakenings and experiences of forgiveness, peeling off layers of bitterness and hurt, and learning to love even myself, in my battered wholeness.
This past Sunday was a particularly emotional experience for me throughout the Mass. I could hardly contain my tears. I was full of joy and gratitude, and many other feelings that I am not even aware of, much less able to describe. I keep getting the image of a very ripe peach so full of juice that the peel is weeping the ferment.
I do not know what God has planned for me with regard to church, but for now, it seems like my Truth. The poem that follows is an attempt to describe my experience this past Sunday.
The Return
I am the prodigal
off squandering pieces of the inheritance
given by my Father,
but returning home
to my brothers and sisters
who have been tilling the fields
and harvesting the Father's seasons.
They are there with open arms,
smiling faces and joyful embraces.
I am Marco Polo
returning from foreign lands
where I found the richness
of alien languages and thought.
I am transformed
by their treasures within me.
I see through almond eyes.
I read in Chinese characters
and hear in far East syllables.
I am a wounded soldier,
returning from war
dressed in my finest
and my people greet me
full of hugs and smiles and glistening eyes.
I am John XXIII
always Catholic
but never definable,
always kin
but never hemmed in.
Ecumenical,
I witness the wisdom and love
of those "others"
who are really One
with us.
I am my Father's son.
He has been near,
standing always by my side,
guarding me from evil
even when I flung myself
into its darkness.
I am Mary.
My soul magnifies my Lord
and my Spirit rejoices
in God my Savior.
[I dedicate this to two other sons of my Papa-God… Richard Rohr whose voice has traveled with me over countless miles, and Joe David, my lion of a friend whose love and loyalty have been with me for 31 years of spiritual conversation. My heart is filled with gratitude for my many friends. A few of them are: Lao-tzu, Buddha, Wayne Dyer, Douglas Spotted Eagle, Billy Collins, Pablo Neruda, jadi, Anne Engelen, Joanna Jacobus (my very own medicine woman), Father Gale White who has indeed been a father, and most important, Helen Currier, my wife and life partner who has loved me in all my craziness and who, for 35 years, has accepted me as I am.
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