The Fiery Evening

As is the case this year, March 6 was on a Wednesday back in 2013, 6 years ago.  On that day, I was in eastern Nebraska on a service trip.  That evening, our group went to the small rural town of Rosalie to participate in the Sweat Lodge ceremony, one of the most intensely profound experiences of my life.

Lent 2019 starts today with Ash Wednesday, and I regard that a fitting coincidence as I reflect on this experience, doing so with this poem:

O Sweat Lodge,
The Place of Purification,
I entered into you
And there faced the intensity of the heat
As spiritual fire refines and purifies me.
The heat is difficult to bear,
And so I turn to prayer
Remembering the God Who aids me in perseverance.
As each round passes, my confidence builds.
I trust even more than I can make it through.
The heat is a fire that refines me
To endure all difficulties I face in life
And emerge stronger.
And I emerge from the Sweat Lodge
So empowered by the endurance I demonstrated.
I emerge anew, like when I emerged new from the womb.
And so I declare, "All my relations":
I am ever connected with the world around me,
The people with whom I shared this experience,
Just as I remain connected with the Body of Christ,
The Church on Earth and in Heaven.
I learned what it means to be human
From reading philosphers like Mencius and Aristotle,
From reading classics like Jane Austen and Virigina Woolf.
Yet now I embrace a new understanding of humanity,
How we persevere and endure.
Even if it seems that we might die,
We show we are strong,
And we remember that God strengthens us,
And makes us strong.
Indeed, our God brings us through what seems like death,
And in His redemptive power, He brings new Life.
We drove there nervous, we leave excited,
For we have been impacted by so unique an experience.
So I continue in life, remembering
The power this ceremony has brought me.
And the time of 6:30-8:00
On Wednesday, March 6, 2013,
In the town of Rosalie, NE,
Forever remains etched in my mind,
As something that touched me so deeply,
For I encountered a new vision
Of living the life of faith,
In heat and fire.

The Week of Service in Nebraska, in Photos

It's been 6 years since my mission/service trip to St. Augustine, during the first week of my Spring Break in my senior year at Valparaiso University.

And notably, the days I was on that trip, March 2-9, align in this year 2019 exactly with the days of the week on which they fell back in 2013.

This coincidence helps bring me in tune with that experience once again.

As I reflect, I share some photos from that trip.  Some were taken on my camera, and those that aren't I attribute to Mary Emery, who was one of the 4 drivers for our group.

When we crossed the Missouri River from Iowa and arrived in Nebraska at Decatur, we had to stop and pay a toll at a booth, which is no longer there.  While stopped, I couldn't help but notice this sign welcoming us to Nebraska, and felt the urge to photograph it.  What stood out was its use of an Aristotelian phrase, "The Godo Life".  Certainly throughout our time in Nebraska, we would encounter what the Good Life means as we rendered ourselves in service to others in the Name of the Lord.

Aroudn 4:18 PM CST on Saturday, March 2, 2013, we arrived at the St. Augustine Mission.  As we awaited where to park, I photographed the St. Augustine Mission Church.

We're just about to have our first dinner together as a group, on our first evening at St. Augustine Mission, in the mission school's kitchen.  The urge to serve was stoked in me, and led me to set the table for everyone.  Please note that my camera's time feature was set an hour ahead, so we we actually had dinner around 8:15-8:20.

It was a beautiful sunny morning over the hills of eastern Nebraska as we headed from our sleeping quarters in the school gym to walk the short distance to Church to attend Mass.  Below is the interior of the Church.  Above the altar is a crucifix that employs aboriginal American symbolism with the four kinds of people: black, white, red, and yellow.  It was a blessing to be there on March 3, the Feast of Mother St. Katharine Drexel, who founded the St. Augustine Mission.  It was a special celebratory Mass that day, with a buffet meal that followed.

Below is a close-up of the St. Augustine emblematic cross with the four colors of the four different types of people, with dangling feathers.  Aura Lee painted this in a room in the basement of the St. Augustine Church on Friday during our time painting that room.

After the meal, we went on a tour led by Dwight, a staff person at the St. Augustine school.  Across US 75/77 from St. Augustine is a development that has a collection of statues representing various symbols of the Winnebago.

Above is a photo of the Missouri River from near the banks.  Below is a view of the Missouri River from an overlook along US 75, just north of Decatur.

On Monday, March 4, the first day we did service work, I helped rearrange items in the museum in one of the school's outer buildings.  Sarah Black, in our group, took this photo of me looking at a Roman Missal.

I will admit that this photo was staged, but represents something I actually did: I got down on my hands and knees to scrub the floor of the St. Augustine Church.  It was a time when I thrust myself into work, stimulated by a spirit of service.  Lydia, our group's student leader, took this photo of me.

On Tuesday, March 5, we spent time over at St. Joseph Parish in Walthill.  The exterior of the church is above, and the interior is seen in the photo below.

Here I am with Oleta, appearing to the left close to me on the far left, and Lydia, appearing in the green sweatshirt to the right, as we go over the instructions to assemble shelving in the food pantry in the basement of the St. Joseph Rectory.  I attribute this photo to Mary.

 Above is a photo of one completed shelving unit, and below is a close-up of the detail of the pieces fitting together, in accordance with the work we did to adjust the pieces as necessary.

Here I am at St. Joseph, suited up to do work with a saw as we got the space arranged in the food pantry.  I don't remember who took this photo.

After having lunch at the Winnebago Senior Center, we played a game that, to the best of my memory, involved tossing the small beads in the wooden bowl to gain points based on how the beads landed in the bowl.  I appear on the far right.  I attribute this photo to Mary.

Sarah Snake and Tunny, very involved members of the St. Augustine community, joined us for dinner on Tuesday to share the experiences of their lives and their elders.  The stories they shared were heartbreaking as we heard how the aboriginal Americans were mistreated at St. Augustine.  But there was also hope in the stories, hearing about how people there continued to abide in faith.  We posed for a group photo afterwards, taken by a member of the St. Augustine community.  I'm in the green shirt just left of center.  Behind me is Tunny, and to the left of him is Sarah Snake.  After this photo, during our nightly group reflection time, we offered affirmations of each other, tossing around a thing of yarn, which created a web, representing each of us plays an essential part in the group we form together.  And together, we shouted aloud our "Caw, caw; caw, caw" eagle call as we would throughout our week, after Lydia saw an eagle during our tour of the reservations on Sunday.

On Wednesday, we spent time doing service work in Walthill.  Later on in the afternoon, we went to a boxing gym started by Dwight to give the youths something positive to do.  There, we organized clothing donations, as you can see in photo above, which were in the boxes you can see below.  Dwight had made arrangements to get a new climate control system for the gym, and had the old one removed, only to have the other end of the deal fall through.  Whenever we went in the gym, it was usually much colder than it was outside, and so we kept our jackets on while working in there.

This photo shows the scene in the downtown area of Walthill, outside the boxing gym where we had been sorting.

Here's the view of the sunset over the hills as we ride to Rosalie to participate in the weekly Wednesday evening Sweat Lodge ceremony, one of the most profound experiences of my life.  We were all kind of nervous about the ceremony, and the ride was rather quiet--quite a contrast to the ride back in the dark of night, when we were all so talkative about what we saw was an amazing experience.

Above and below is photographic evidence of how much I sweated it out in the Sweat Lodge.  The front has more sweat on it because I pressed my chest and face up against the towel that was on my legs so I could relieve myself from the hot, stuffy, and humid air in the Sweat Lodge hut.

It was meaningful to wear this shirt from my time at Julian Middle School, which contributed significantly to claiming faith as my own during my early teen years, as I was in the midst of putting that faith into action with the immense zeal I summoned forth during my college years.

As I got myself ready for my day on Thursday, I saw this incredibly colorful sunrise from a hallway that looked out toward a glass entrance of the school.

We joined the St. Augustine students who came to the cafeteria in the Church basement for breakfast before school, and this shows what we typically ate each morning.

On Thursday, we went to Macy to drop off clothing donations we had sorted.  While there, we visited the Our Lady of Fatima (Roman) Catholic Worship Center, where noon Mass is celebrated on Sundays.  The building was also constructed to accommodate funeral wakes.  This photo above shows the interior area where the altar is.  To the far right is the ambo.  Many of the furnishings reflect natural themes, like the wood.  Below is a photo of the outside.

Here's a view of the sunset on Thursday evening.  The house in the photo is where the Benedictine sisters live who are on staff at St. Augustine.

On Friday, our last full day at St. Augustine, we painted a room in the St. Augustine Church basement for the use of the youth group.  In this, one of Mary's photos, I'm at work painting.

On Friday evening, we helped serve food at the St. Augustine Fish Fry, which was happening on the Fridays of Lent in the St. Augustine Church basement.  In this, one of Mary's photos, I'm serving a plate as Father Dave, to the left, and Lydia, to the right, look on.

Between the Fish Fry and dinner on Friday, I got this photo of Sister Agnes and me.  She was the first person to greet us upon our arrival on March 2, and was there to see us off when we departed on March 9.  She has since retired from her work in the St. Augustine office and has gone back to live at the motherhouse in Norfolk, NE.  It was a blessing to visit with her and other sisters there in Norfolk when I took a reconnection trip to Nebraska in late July 2018.  Rather than get someone else to take this photo above, which is my preference, I took a selfie, but this was before that term entered into widespread use.

After doing my duty at the fish fry, I went to the school kitchen to cook dinner, in this, one of Mary's photos.  Abby is to the right of me, also helping prepare dinner.  Our group split into two smaller groups and we rotated preparing meals and doing clean-up.  During this Friday dinner, as we prepared vegetable and shrimp stir-fry, I erred in the preparation of the rice, putting the rice in the water before it started boiling.  I realized my mistake, and dumped the rice out, but a handful of grains fell out into the burner area on the stove, which ended up starting a small fire.  It became an incident that we laughed about.

I found myself praying each night before bed near this Crucifix in a school hallway, particularly after one evening in which we talked about the struggles the aboriginal Americans face in their lives on the reservations.  Below is where I slept in the school gym.

Sarah took this photo of me in the van while we drove along I-80 in Illinois.  I would soon depart from the group in southern Chicagoland to make my way back to Oak Park.

It's amazing to see how the journey continues as I keep abiding in faith, with one amazing experience building upon another.  I note this as I reflect on my experience at St. Augustine 6 years ago, while in this present time am still reflecting on my JMJ experience that happened a little more than a month ago, and regard each as the experience of a lifetime that allowed me to engage with my faith in extraordinary ways.

Please note, if you are interested, please contact me for a copy of the original account I wrote about my St. Augustine trip soon after it happened.