by Kyp Harness
“Many of these people we visited have no one to come visit them,” Co-Dad explained when they returned to the church basement. “Many of them are alone, suffering from ill health and fading from life without anyone who cares. The one thing that unites them is the fact they are at the end of life—not the beginning. They are going where our parents must go and where we all must go.”
A screen was set up and a film projector began clicking. The teenagers were shown a film of a middle-aged couple and their son going to visit the elderly, dementia-afflicted patriarch of the family. The film concerned the upcoming transference of the grandfather to an old age home. As the family visited with the old man, flashbacks were shown of the times they enjoyed earlier in life, when the grandfather was still mentally fit and reasonably agile. These memories were starkly contrasted with images of the present, of the old man sitting slack-jawed, feeble and infirm, his family struggling to communicate with him. The family professed their love for him, but his eyes looked through them, staring without recognition. Tim recognized the actors from bit parts on TV shows, and the grandfather in particular he remembered from a hot dog commercial.
The film was over, and some lights came on. The room was still dimly lit as the adults silently made their way about the room, passing out envelopes to the teenagers. Tim watched, puzzled, as teenagers opened their envelopes—many of them being quite moved by the contents. He could see some kids begin to cry. He couldn’t remember the last time he had cried, and he feared he might not be able to. How would that go over with Sherrie? he wondered. Perhaps he could pretend, he thought, by licking his fingers and rubbing them by his eyes. As the envelopes were passed out and more teenagers seemed to be sobbing, he wondered what it was that could make them have such an intense reaction.
Tim took the envelope Co-Mom handed to him. He ripped it open and found several letters. He recognized the writing of his mother:
Dear Tim,
This is your mother speaking.
I am proud of you and I love you…
Next with a jolt, he recognized the overly careful, hard-pressed-down script of his dad on the paper beneath at the same time as he took in the first several lines.
Dear Tim,
You are an excellent writer while I am a terrible one, so please excuse my spelling. I love you and am proud of you…
Tears washed the words from his eyes in a rush as he bent over double. He heard himself utter a wail unlike any he had ever known himself to make. He was crying uncontrollably, in great spasms, liquid flowing from his eyes and nostrils.
Suddenly arms were around him, and through his blurred vision in the dim room he could tell that this time it was Sherrie. He locked his arms around her as he melted further into the frightening sorrow that had overtaken him. He had become unmoored from all that previously governed his emotions, flowing further into the awful cleansing truth. Sherrie held him close in the dimness of the church basement, weeping as well, making quiet exclamations of empathy as he shook, shattered and vibrating in her arms.
5. Freedom
Tim walked through the snow in the fenceless yard of one of the subdivision houses. Every morning he took this shortcut, usually running from the road into the backyard and through to the street on the other side. Once the owner of the property shouted from his window telling him not to cut through, but this morning Tim didn’t run, for now he didn’t care about getting caught cutting through. Usually he would also have been fretting about the time, worrying about being late for school, but today he didn’t worry. He strolled blissfully along, unconcerned about all that had troubled him before.
The sun shining brilliantly on the snow seemed to reflect his mood. The rich blue sky above the snow-capped suburban roofs, the band of grey trees on the horizon, were all still, quietly beautiful and as untroubled as he felt inside. He swung his binder under his arm, not quite sure if he had what he needed for school that day. It didn’t matter. It would all work out. Life was as pure and simple as the icy air he inhaled and exhaled. He felt a fresh wind blowing inside him, and he felt as though he was being blown by it, walking on air, suspended a foot above the earth.
Tim’s heart had opened and God had come into his life. Everything had shifted, and a vast expanse of space and light had been revealed. In the dark room, he had embraced and been embraced by his brothers and sisters. He had felt their love and he had known that love was the truth, the essential heart of everything. He had hugged his friends, the other teenagers of Charitas, the strong and the weak, the thin and the fat—he had hugged them all, with tears streaming from his eyes. He had hugged his co-dad, his arms stretching around the large, sweatered torso. He hugged his co-mom and his co-co mom and co-co dad. Tim knew now that all people were his family, were part of him. He saw that God loved him, that there was nothing to worry about. He felt that he had laid down a huge burden, one he had carried since birth. He had never imagined life without it, but now, without it weighing him down, Tim felt impossibly light, almost in danger of being whisked to the far ends of the universe.
After the crying time, when the adults had moved through the room distributing Kleenex boxes, the teenagers filed out for a meal in the gymnasium. There, by surprise, everyone’s parents were waiting. Tim’s mom had even brought her older sister, Aunt Maxine. All the teenagers had emotional reunions with their parents, and Tim hugged his mother for the first time in years. “Tim’s gonna be a preacher now,” said Dirk to Uncle Elmer, stabbing his cigarette in Tim’s direction when they got home.
Over the subsequent days, Tim felt the bright, fresh truth on him. He could not remember the last time he had hugged his father or brother or mother but he now hugged them frequently, to their bemusement. When his father lay on the couch at night, Tim would offer to make him a cup of coffee, or volunteer to change the channel on the TV for him. He tried to help his mother more around the house. At the variety store the customers were no longer annoyances but opportunities for him to express the love that God had implanted in his heart. At school, he serenely made his way to his classes; it was no longer a place of stress, heartache and isolation. He didn’t worry about his work or his grades. He knew it would all work out. He recognized his Charitas brothers and sisters in the halls and unashamedly hugged them all. His movements were no longer governed by fear.
He hugged Sherrie as well in the halls at school. In that mutual embrace was contained all the intimacy of what they had shared over the weekend. Tim felt joined to her more than ever. When they met each day at school their eyes held each other in total understanding. This sense of being bound to Sherrie by the events of the weekend, of the looming inevitability of their union, was a factor in the new faith he felt. It seemed that true love had come to him and in knowing that love, he was able to believe in all love, was able to see the ruling, infinite love of God manifesting Himself everywhere.
In the envelopes the teenagers were given at the retreat were letters from their friends at school as well as from their parents. Tim received a letter from Sherrie—in it she revealed that she was not a first-time Charitas participant. She was one of the helpers, teenagers who had been through the retreat before and were now going through to help other kids have a successful experience. Tim was taken aback by this, but then allowed himself to be moved by the thought that she was so concerned for him as to take a personal interest in his spiritual health. As was the case with all the letters, she expressed the hope that he would come away from the weekend feeling that it was a positive experience.
I hope Charitas hasn’t made you too weirded out, she wrote. For me it really helped me understand about God and love and helped me to see God in people. You are funny but at the same time you are gentle, following the form of the letters by praising the recipient and encouraging them. You try not to be sometimes, but you just can’t help but show it. I know that if you are not challenged by something you’ll get bored and move on. I hope you’ll get lots out of the weekend because you’
re a great guy with lots of potential, she wrote. There are a lot of people who care about you very much, and one in particular who loves you.
Tim could not determine for certain if the beginning letter of one in one in particular who loves you was a capital O or small o. It looked a little too big to be a small letter, but he held out hope that all that made it appear large was a sizable loop at the top. As much as he tried to convince himself that Sherrie wasn’t talking about Jesus Christ, he could never entirely believe that she was making such an open declaration of her love for him. After all, it wasn’t really the place to make such a confession, and she hadn’t yet broken off with her boyfriend. He spent many hours studying the size of the o trying to ascertain whether it was a small capital one or a large small one. He peered deep into the grain of the paper and inspected the way the blue ink bled into it.
This was all immaterial, however, in view of the great truth that had been revealed to Tim, and the incredible metamorphosis that had taken place in their relationship. He had achieved an intimacy with Sherrie that would have been unimaginable a week before. He almost felt sorry for her boyfriend—surely her relationship with him now seemed paltry and shallow in comparison. Bruce Ferguson had no idea how limited his time was—for it seemed to Tim that in an essential way, Sherrie already was his girlfriend, and the external recognition of that fact would be merely a tedious formality.
It would all work out, Tim thought as he approached the school, walking through the grey haze of the smoking area to the side door. Before, he would have felt as though his heart was in a steadily tightening vice as he approached this door. He would have been frightened by the sneering faces, the possibility of violence. Now, all the forms around him seemed to flow and dissipate as if composed of mist as he advanced, solid and true with the love he felt inside him. Moving through the halls before, he had suffered as each gaze looked past him; he had walked feeling more alone with every moment. Now he walked through the school with ease, feeling a peaceful equanimity. He made his way to Sherrie’s locker and bent to embrace her small, welcoming body. Looking past the strands of her golden hair, he saw the skeptical face of her locker-mate, Mike. Tim was not bothered by this, either. If Mike didn’t know now, Tim thought, he soon would. A Biblical passage ran through Tim’s head, likely remembered from his Charitas weekend: He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
“I’m not really the hugging type,” Russ remarked, and neatly sidestepped out of Tim’s reach. “I’ve got to say, though, that your weekend sure seems to have had an effect on you.” Russ peered at Tim with surprised, interested eyes. “There’s something different about you—in a way, everything’s different about you.”
They were in art class. Their teacher, Mr. Kosinski, was an artist himself who periodically showed his paintings in galleries around the county. He was a tall, lanky man with a goatee who played in rock bands in the sixties. Since the friendship between Russ and Tim had begun to blossom, the two boys were far more interested in talking and laughing with each other than working on the projects they were supposed to be completing. “Alright guys,” Mr. Kosinski would intone, hearing them cackling from across the room, “enough of the funny stuff—you’ve both got projects to complete.”
“Well, that’s just it—it opened my eyes,” Tim said, still barely believing what had happened to him, barely believing he was saying the words he was saying. “It just opened my eyes—to love,” he said, shrugging. “That’s what Jesus is about anyway, isn’t He? Love.”
Russ shook his head, then looked at Tim deep in the eyes again. “Are you serious?” he asked. “I mean, I don’t know… I never know when you’re joking.”
“Of course I’m serious,” Tim said and laughed. “You’re the guy who was talking about Jesus, right? Well, that’s what I learned at this thing—or more than that, felt. That beyond all the crap, the real message is love—that that’s the only real truth, and that’s the only real way to live.”
Russ began chuckling, then let out a sharp bark of laughter.
“What’s so funny?” Tim asked.
“Nothing!” Russ said, shaking his head again. “It’s just that I guess you must be serious, since I’ve never seen a person change to the degree that you have. It’s amazing.”
“I certainly feel happier, that’s for sure,” said Tim.
“It’s not just that though,” Russ noted, looking at Tim through squinted eyes. “It’s something else, something bigger” he said suddenly. “You’ve lost your fear.”
“What’s there to be afraid of?” Tim asked matter-of-factly.
Tim’s apparent nonchalance set Russ to laughing again.
“Hey, you guys!” said Mr. Kosinski, his goateed face appearing from behind the canvas he was working on. “Keep it down over there!”
At the end of the day, Russ and Tim stood talking where the school fence opened up onto the empty lot by the subdivision, where they daily lingered before parting in their separate directions. “I guess I was unfair to this Charitas thing,” Russ noted. “I mean if it’s had this effect on you it must be a good thing.”
“Well, it just makes everything so clear,” Tim tried to explain, gazing off into the frozen sky as though he was trying to define it for himself as well. “It changes you inside because you see what the real truth is. Sure, some parts of it were kind of hokey,” Tim allowed. “Needless to say, I hardly think that singing along to Cat Stevens songs was the apex of my spiritual life”—he rolled his eyes—“but you look at the intention of the whole thing, and it’s about people accepting each other, loving each other, without all the crap that gets in the way.”
“You’re just trying to get a hug out of me,” Russ joked, chuckling as he pre-emptively shrank back from Tim’s touch.
“No—but anyway, you know what I’m saying,” said Tim. “There was something else there at work.”
“And there was your friend,” Russ observed pointedly. “Sherrie.”
“Well, yeah,” Tim said. “I went on the weekend mostly because of her at the beginning, sure. I wanted to get to know her better. And I did get to know her better. But as time went on, I got to know something else too. I got to know that God is real,” Tim explained, still in wonder at his own words and feeling. “And it really feels like I’ve been set free by that.”
Russ stood for several moments in silence, staring down at his feet. He then turned and began walking across the field. He stopped just as he was about to reach the next fence. “Congratulations!” he called back.
Tim cast a glance back at Russ’s receding figure as he moved on down the subdivision street that led him to his road. As he kept in his mind the image of Russ shrinking into the snow, Tim began to feel sorry for his friend. After all, Russ had not had his experience at Charitas, nor did Russ have a girlfriend like Sherrie as Tim soon would. Russ always seemed to be trudging through the snow alone—a sad, proud figure.
Though they shared the art class, Russ was a year younger and a grade beneath Tim, as Sherrie was. In spite of his relative youth, Russ’s concerns and interests were adult, far more sophisticated than any of his peers including Tim. He shared Tim’s tendency to use words he had read in conversation without being entirely clear about either their correct meaning or pronunciation. He was more sophisticated than Tim as well in terms of his sexual experience. He had told Tim about an incident which had occurred when he was at an art camp a few years ago. The week at the camp was the prize Russ had won in a drawing competition.
“The camp itself was no big deal. Just a bunch of art classes up in the woods. It was okay. But there was the one instructor there: she was older, and a big woman. And I knew that she was interested in me. She would always come up and find some way to brush against me. And any time she had an opportunity to meet my eye, she’d really hold my gaze with these significant, meaningful looks, you know. So one night after supper she comes by my table and drops a not
e: Slip out after lights out and meet me at the rectory.
“There was an old rectory they used for an art studio during the day. So I wait till I’m pretty sure everyone else is asleep in the cabin and I slip out. I make my way to the rectory and find the door’s unlocked—I go in and feel my way down this pitch-black hall into the main room where the light from the moon’s coming in across the floor. I’m there for a minute, then I hear her slip in. We laid down. I think we might have kissed some, but we didn’t make out. Her hands were all over me, and she grabbed by hand, opened up her pants, and stuck it down there. I didn’t know what she was doing at first, but then I realized that she was masturbating herself with my hand.
“I thought, My fingers are in her vagina right now—she’s masturbating herself with my hand. After a while, she started moaning and shaking around, and I thought, She’s having an orgasm right now—my fingers have masturbated a woman to orgasm.” Tim had observed Russ’ abstracted expression as he told the story, his almost clinical relation of the event, and he found another cause to envy his friend: not only had he won the drawing competition, but this victory had allowed him to have a mature sexual experience far beyond the ken of anything Tim had known. If only he had won the competition instead of Russ—as he should have—then perhaps it would have been him instead of Russ masturbating the woman on the floor of the rectory, Tim had thought bitterly.
He didn’t think that way now, though, as he walked through the slush at the side of the road. Now that he had been awakened by Charitas, now that he would have Sherrie, he didn’t envy Russ anymore. Russ was cold and couldn’t connect emotionally. It was all understandable—he was hiding behind the shield of his intellect, using that as something to take pride in. But because of that, Tim thought sadly, Russ would never be able to make the leap of living Jesus’s law of loving others as opposed to just talking about it, and he would never know the bond of trust formed by opening up to a girl like Sherrie.