SUNY-Binghamton – Fall of 1988. At the edge of campus there’s a path that leads down a hill, through a hundred of feet of trees, and over a creek into the backyard of a mid-century split ranch house. White on top, half-story of brick on the bottom. This house could not be more generic and non-descript. I’ve seen houses like it a hundred times before and since.
I don’t know why I walked down that hill in the first few weekends of the school year: maybe homesickness and I needed a sense of continuity. Maybe my roommate being an observant Jew exploring his own relationship to his faith gave me a little push. Maybe just my RA (Mike Pagan) asking if anyone wanted to go to Catholic Mass. I don’t remember, and I’m not sure I’d have recognized the reason at the time. I would NOT have counted myself a religious person at 18, and while my family went to church weekly, it was a mild obligation, like regular dental visits or skimming the leaves off the pool.
It’s likely the first time I walked down that hill was with someone, but in my memories, I am alone. So many of the times after must have been with other people, often my best friends. It doesn’t matter, because that transition from grass and blacktop of campus, through the shadow of the trees and over that little brook is internal, and somehow solitary. The chapel, as it was in the first years I was there, is frozen in amber. The bottom floor and garage had been converted years before into a long, shallow, low ceilinged room. Each bench was a six or eight foot log sawed in half, with pegs jammed in for feet, the way a kid might stick toothpicks into half a potato before putting it in a dixie cup of water to sprout. The wall was lined in rough boards, and the altar was another big-ass tree split in two halves. It’s more suited for a boy-scout meeting room than a church.
When does it change? When does it make sense, and become a home, a holy place?
When he speaks. Not HE. Not G-d. (Besides, G-d’s not a he – don’t @ me). Little ‘h’ he. Father Bob Sullivan. Fr. Bob. Do you have a dentist? Or an accountant, maybe. Can you picture someone bland, and generically mid-sized, white and unassuming. Can you picture a Toyota Corolla as a person? Then you’re picturing Fr. Bob. But now listen… In this low little room, with the autumn light going golden with sunset and moving toward dark. Listen to this sonorous, resonant, instrument of a man intone.
The first time Janice Joplin went on stage in California in 1967, people saw this mousy little hippie-white-girl walk out, and then transfigure into a powerful, soul-filled siren, and the crowd was stunned. Imagine if James Earl Jones’ voice came out of Pee Wee Herman’s face. Imagine he’s asking the Lord for mercy, or for the forgiveness of our sins. Don’t imagine that. Imagine a better version of that than I can write, because if your throat isn’t choked up while you read this, then I haven’t got the skill I want so much in this moment.
Imagine walking back up the hill, toward your brick and glass dorm, a few days after you’ve moved away from your friends and family, and how different your world must be.