Actions and Prayers -- Part 3

We arrived at the Missionaries of Charity. I was feeling contemplative. I surveyed the houses, noticed a statute of Mary, saw leaves and assorted toys on the ground. There was something very familiar about this place although I had never been there before. There was something venerable, something jovial, something mystical, something holy about this ground.

As I looked at the gray November sky, looked at the leafless trees, looked at the simple, inauspicious buildings, I knew that I had arrived at the place that my soul had dreamed about.

We walked into the building, walked down a short hallway and entered the kitchen. There were four boxes placed near the sink. We were instructed to remove our coats and put on aprons. I looked at this shiny stainless steel kitchen with its various sinks and countertops and cabinets and shelves. My mind did not capture any of the details of this kitchen, only the dedication and compassion of the Sisters of Charity. On one wall, there was a shiny poster with several prayers.

Almost immediately I received my first assignment and found myself submerging my hands into warm water, pushing big green collard greens down, puling them up and then pushing them down again. I smiled as I began to do this. I remembered watching my Grandmother do this when I was either six or seven, I remembered teasing my cousin about washing and cooking greens each year just before Thanksgiving.

And for a moment as I touched the water and the greens, that became my entire reality. That became my life’s task, my purpose. I focused all of my energy on those greens until I realized that my cuffs were getting wet. I stop, pushed them up.

And my ears were aware of the conversations going on around me. How easily our lives can be condensed into short sentences. On one side there was a man who had studied theology and converted to Catholicism while at University and then worked in Chicago for two years and on the other side of me there was a man from Belfast, currently in graduate school working on a thesis about Graham Greene. And they talked about monastic life, theology, becoming diocesan priests.

I was able to mumble a couple of sentences but was happiest not speaking, but listening. I was happy being thankful for this opportunity, this moment in this kitchen at this time. It was a moment when I could view an event through the eyes of an adult and a child. Memory and reality merged while I was rinsing greens and listening to talk about God and possibly serving God as a priest.

It was a sumptuous moment of hope. Feeling equal parts spiritual, giddy, and juvenile I stood there enjoying this interlude, enjoying playing in the water with the greens, enjoying the silent prayers that my soul automatically made, enjoying the camaraderie and Christian fellowship of this moment, enjoying and giving thanks for the work of the Missionaries of Charity that occurs in this South East neighborhood in Washington.