California Time

Away this week. Writing on the plane from Denver to LGA, about 2 hours out. I am on the Council of the Order, five members who advise the Superior and are empowered to make some decisions. Lots to talk about in our meeting this time. We had planned well before the fire to have it in Santa Barbara, and so it was providential that we were there. We were at St. Mary’s Retreat House, next to the Old Mission. It was founded in 1954 by the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity, in part to provide a retreat place for women because Mount Calvary did not then admit men. The Sisters have graciously welcomed our brothers and given them a temporary home.

A few days before the meetings began I visited some old friends who live in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles. They were among my California friends who visited me in East Harlem, and so it was a special joy to be with them. We did some fun things, including going to a movie props parking lot sale, a visit to the new Roman Catholic Cathedral and the new Disney Concert Hall, lunch at Philippe’s (a venerable sandwich joint in Chinatown). We went see the new Clint Eastwood movie, Grand Torino, which I liked a lot, at the restored Vista Theatre, which has a truly kitschy Egyptian motif.

On Sunday I preached at All Saints Episcopal Church, Highland Park, which is between Los Angeles and Pasadena. All Saints is one of the larger and more active bilingual congregations in the Diocese of Los Angeles, with a pretty good English language congregation at 10am and a larger Spanish speaking congregation at 12:30. The Rector, Tom Callard, is a wonderful priest who is in his second or third year there.

The Superior called Monday morning to ask if I could arrive in Santa Barbara by 11:15. The brothers were going to drive up to Mount Calvary to see the ruins. I made it, and we went up.

What can I say? I’d already seen the pictures, so I knew what I would see. But there is no substitute for a direct, physical experience. I walked through the remains of the front door, which have become iconic. I will tell you that I never really liked the repainting of St. John and Our Lady of Sorrows. I began to weep. And then along came one of the brothers and we just quietly moved around the edge of the building and I regained my composure and began to notice things. How odd stucco on wire mesh looks – sort of folded and draped. How the things that survived were the things that don’t burn – Duhhh you might say, but touching and smelling and walking on that truth, having known what was there and isn’t there any more, in fact, doesn’t even exist any more, is different than knowing it intellectually, different than having to reconstruct the past on an archaeological dig. How the still-standing parts were mostly the poured concrete substructures. The broken tiles. The occasional pottery that fire and water and decomposure cannot destroy.

And another thing. All the way up and back, Nick, our Prior in Santa Barbara, kept pointing to this house that burned and that one, right next to it, that didn’t burn. For no discernible reason. There’s an old joke about American Airlines, based in Dallas, which had (it was rumored) a policy of having two pilots on every flight, one of them a saved Christian and the other something else. Just in case. Of the Rapture. You never know. Well, here it was, right before our eyes. As Our Lord said, Two will be working in the field. One will be taken and one will be left.

I’ll write more later.