Chicago

Another pre dawn start meant that I saw the glow of unrisen sun light up the sky in the first hour of walking.

I realised as I turned around to the sunrise that this has been the theme of my Camino - that I am looking back to see the beauty that I have walked through, and then look ahead to keep going forward.

And while the landscape is becoming quite repetitive: another vineyard, another farm, another small town in the distance, it is the time of interior remembrance and thanksgiving which has become so rich. 

Today I am remembering my year in Chicago from 2007-2008 which surely counts as one of the best of my life. 

Bishop David asked me to find a course to equip myself to come back and be able to form our seminarians, so I went to the Institute of Religious Formation at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. 

I was one of 22 priests and religious from 15 countries, many of whom were being sent to become the first native / local formators and leaders of religious orders which had been established by missionaries. We were from Nigeria, Congo, Vietnam, China, Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines, Senegal, and a few from the US, and there some truly remarkable and heroic people in the group. 

My close friends however were the Lutheran seminarians. 

In the first week I went to an ecumenical gathering and I spoke to a young woman named Michelle wearing a T-shirt which read "God is not dead, just embarrassed" which was a sure fire conversation starter. My friend Thomas and I sat with her and at the end of the gathering she invited Thomas and I to come for a poker game which her friends were having nearby. I had not played much poker but I was keen to try new things so we said yes. 

Thomas and I turn up to the address and the door was opened by a guy who said "Michelle's not here, but I'm Todd, so come on in." And from that moment of such hospitality to the two random guys who turned up at his apartment, some great friendships developed. Thursday night poker at Todd and Jason's place with 20+ people ever week became the centre of my social life (it was $5 for the whole night so not really about the gambling). 

Todd and Jason and Eric and the crew were Lutheran seminarians, post grads who were living in 2 and 3 bedroom apartments in a block owned by the Lutheran seminary and its theological college which was attached. 

Thomas and I were welcomed with open arms into their community (the only outsiders) for their parties and bar crawls, their prayer services and their end of year week at a beach house in Myrtle Beach South Carolina. I would often walk 1.6km on snowy nights to their chapel for evening prayer. I wish had grandchildren so that I could tell them that back in the day I walked a mile in the snow to go to church. 

 All of this was important for me because my young adulthood was somewhat truncated by going to seminary at 19. I never really had the partying years which define many people's early adulthood. 

But more than this, the year in Chicago was a chance to re-discover myself. Who am I when I don't have the role of priest and leader? It was like taking the lid off a shaken bottle of soda to see what might come up. 

And what I discovered is that is that, when there are no expectations and no rules, I still want to pray, I want to be part of a church, I want to go to daily Mass, and part of a community, and I want to serve. 

I had thought that I would be a church tourist and go to many different churches on weekends, but instead, I attended and became a parishioner at my local parish. I learned the view from the pews again. I got my friends together for prayer, with some of us praying the Divine Office one morning a week, and then others of us having an 11pm informal gathering on Sunday nights. Jason (top left with glasses in the photo above) and I decided to do Lent together by fasting for 24 hours each week, praying the Stations of the Cross together and then breaking the fast with the Eucharist. I had never had such an intimate and wonderful experience of sharing prayer with someone.  I wanted to find a ministry which wasn't liturgical or sacramental, so I joined a food pantry where every Saturday morning we boxed and distributed food to the many many homeless and struggling people of South Chicago. 

At the end of the holiday at Myrtle Beach my friends dropped me to Charleston airport to make my way home to Sydney. After all the farewells I went into the airport and cried and cried with a mix of sadness but also gratitude that a truly wonderful chapter of my life had been, and now ended. 

Two years later I went back to Chicago to attend everyone's graduation and to go for another beach house week. It was nice, but not the same. 2007-2008 had been a unique moment in time which I was so blessed to be a part of, and now that whole group were moving on with their lives and off  to their ministries around the United States. 

But in that week one friendship did kick up a gear with Eric and his new wife Nicole. Eric and Nicole are the only people with whom I've stayed in touch to this day, and I've been to visit several times. Eric is now a pastor in Seattle and I very much admire his pastoral and preaching ministry, having visited his church and seen him in action and also watched him online. It was wonderful to see how Eric presides at Sunday worship with his wife in the front row, and sometimes one or two of his children on his lap at various times when they were toddlers. It shows me what diaconate for married men in the Catholic Church could look like.  

So today was a particularly strong day of remembering which brought some happy tears this morning. Perhaps because the Chicago year was such an extraordinary time, but also because that process of getting out of role was so important to me, something which I was able to do again on sabbatical in Omaha, and again now on Camino.