Warm Socks–Essay by Christina St. Clair
I moved hesitantly towards the imposing brick and concrete building of the Jesuit Retreat Center. Perhaps the size was meant to indicate the presence of God, or at least to imply the hope of awe. Clean, manicured gardens embraced the house and bright green fields stretched into the distance. I felt gratified to have brought my duck boots so I could enjoy walking these wet pastures of Pennsylvania. Once again. It made me feel somehow clever to have remembered the need for dry feet. In Kentucky, where I now live, I rarely venture out on wet days the way I once did. Before my divorce. Before the disruption to my placid existence that I thought was unending.
In front of the entrance stood a man-sized statue of St. Ignatius of Loyola, named the Pilgrim. The marker said he was the founder of the Jesuits. I ought to have known this, having been trained to direct Ignatian Retreats like the one I was attending. It occurred to me that during my spiritual direction program, my teachers, mainly nuns, had never mentioned that their spiritual leader had begun the order of the Jesuits from which they, as women, had always been excluded. They had been deposed too from their retreat house by a priest who had turned it into sumptuous offices for himself. It had hurt the nuns that he’d cut down their beautiful flowering trees for a parking lot.
In my small bare room, much like a monastic cell, containing a single bed, a small desk, a chair, and a wardrobe, it made me laugh to see twelve pairs of cotton socks spill from the wheelie case. I had no idea what had possessed me to bring enough socks to change more than once daily. Maybe I could double them to keep my feet warm.
I had come to the Center with the idea that it was the portal at the end of a long tunnel. I’d been groping and stumbling through a dark place of transitions. Everything comfortable seemed to be ending, much like that earlier time after my marriage had dissolved, and I’d had to start over. The emotions, the grief, the fear, the unknown all felt only too familiar. This time, my dog had died, I’d left my job as a pastor, I’d turned sixty, and my faith was wavering. My sustaining hope came from my sense that in this place I would somehow leave the darkness and move into the light. What the light held I did not know, could not even guess, except it was brighter than daylight, and so wide in breadth and depth that it would be like emerging into a photographer’s flash, one that never dimmed.
So here I was with my twelve pairs of socks as if my mother had packed them for me. I needed the love of my mother and I’d been seeking that in church too, a restoration of the Mother. I could no longer abide all the patriarchy, the women either invisible or holy and pure giving birth bloodlessly to the baby Jesus. I found herself unable to worship Mother God, unable to say Our Mother, who art in heaven and so on, because the language of the prayer, and of the whole Bible, and of the church, continued to promote the idea of God as male. It gladdened me that women in the West had risen above many of the chains of economic and gender oppression, but this had occurred in spite of the church, not because of it. Jesus represented gender-free spiritual principles, it was true, and I continued to hold him high, but I also realized I needed a feminine image of God if I was to mature spiritually. How else could I or any woman truly know herself?
At my first one-on-one meeting with my spiritual director, who was to give me daily scriptural meditations, grief shocked me, bubbling up and spilling from my eyes. What is this? I asked, not the director, but the universe, or perhaps even God, who I no longer saw as personal, discrete and accessible. What is this that rises to the surface? What, who is down deep trying to breathe? “I am an Englishwoman,” I said. “We don’t cry in front of strangers. I am so sorry to burden you with this. I don’t even know what it is I’m crying about.” The spiritual director, an imp of a woman, whose dyed hair was the color of autumn maple leaves, listened. It was enough. No rational discourse, no therapy, no words could help stem this flow of grief.
The next morning, brisk cold air greeted and enlivened my steps. I walked towards the sound of church bells and found myself in a cemetery. Everywhere, I was surrounded by the clamor of machinery. A mower wove back and forth amidst the gravestones. A truck pulled up and parked in front of me, leaving its engine running, while it unloaded a vault for a newly dead body. A crane with an attached tree-trimmer reached fifty feet in the air and sawed the top off a broken tree trunk. A military plane dipped overhead and boomed. The noise reminded me of the clamor of life, which in a way is always a walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I longed for a connection to the peaceful center, the stillness of the ineffable, where God could be met in the cloud of unknowing.
I walked through wet grass to a fairly new tombstone, and stopped in shock before the smooth granite that was inscribed with the letters from my maiden name, Davis. Ignatian retreats typically lead a person through a time of crucifixion and resurrection. I wondered what ghost of Christmas past could possibly haunt me now. I had stopped being a Davis when I’d married my first husband, and I’d stopped using his name after I’d married my second husband. The issue, I realized, was of identity. How might I name myself?
Tiny yellow leaves rained from nearby trees, reminding me of teardrops and confetti. My feet took me down a trail where I came across another cemetery, this one for the Jesuits, a peaceful green alcove neatly lined with rounded white stones facing a tall wooden crucifix. A man wearing a shabby sweater and Birkenstock shoes wandered past me. He nodded politely, and then he knelt near one of the stones. He seemed to be crying. I did not want to violate his need for solitude, nor intrude into his pain and grief. I quietly moved away from the cemetery, away from any sign of people, and found a bench near a statue of Mary. Geese in a magnificent vee flew over in the cloudy gray sky, and the wind howled. The wooden planking on the bench was surprisingly dry, and its concrete frame, though mottled and covered with moss, was strong and sound. Below, the fresh-plowed earth of a cornfield stretched down to a plain white farmhouse. I could see a pretty village nestled in front of distant mountains.
A train rattled by, sounding like a beastly dragon. Unable to appreciate the richness of the overturned sod with its earthy smell, my body became the cup overflowing, not with joy, but with angst. Memories of my ex-husband gurgled to the surface, and how I had left England forty years earlier to marry him. He had been so much like my mother, personable and caring. It seemed I was always trying to please him. I later wondered if my inability to hold him accountable when he’d left for another woman arose from my need for my mother’s approval. Mum had not wanted me, had been depressed to give birth to a third child after World War II. This had been understandable, and we had eventually become the best of friends, yet her early rejection of me had had lasting repercussions. Wounds in the womb are not easily excised. I, like the ancient Hebrews led from Egypt, had spent most of my life in a sort of wilderness. I had been surviving, but had not yet reached the Promised Land.
The rain-washed statue of Mary glowed in the misty light. The pebbles placed around the base as offerings seemed appropriate for this iconic woman, one who deserved to expand the doctrine of the trinity to something grander, perhaps a doctrine of the four: the Father, the Mother, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. A silver cross at the end of a blue and white beaded rosary looped across the sandaled feet of the statue in supplication and hope.
A brisk wind blew into my face. I tucked the scarf knitted by my mother tightly around my neck. Mum had once tried to teach me to knit, but I had found it old-fashioned and tedious. I remembered Mum unwillingly sewing a nametag hand knit by Lily Davis into this scarf, embarrassed to have her work celebrated. The name tags had been specially ordered by a friend. Mum had seemed so kind and loving, but I remembered Dad calling her stupid. He always told me that I was his bright little girl who could do or be anything. Alas, his put-down of Mum resonated deep within me too, and I had no way to erase the damage to my psyche.
Through years of spiritual direction practice, I’d come to a sense of balance about my parents: both had been flawed; both had also been marvels of complexity. I wished I might experience their love again, but they’d been long dead. At times I could envision Dad as if he were still present and thought this ability came from the concept of God as Father. With no internalization of God as Mother, my mother’s memory and image had faded into nothingness and seemed impossible to retrieve.
At last, a cold rain forced me to leave this bench of memory and I plodded through clods of earth down to the farmhouse. My director had mentioned a novitiate house down here. Soon, I came upon a dilapidated concrete block building. The cement porch, cracked with age, grew ragged weeds. The door handle turned easily and I stepped into a big cold room. If ever there had been walls, they had been removed long ago. A raised wooden platform like the chancel of a church filled one end of the house. On it, a sagging cot covered by a threadbare blanket tossed upon a dirty pillow might have once been used by the young men training to be priests. A white enamel table placed close to the bed might have once been used to serve communion. In the drawer I found a hammer and beeswax candles.
An old record player, empty trunks, and garbage bags full of straw, possibly used as seats, formed a semi-circle in front of a large stone fireplace that dominated the main living space below the platform. I hunted for matches and opened the drawers in the metal kitchen cabinets that lined one wall. In one, a gray mouse darted into a corner. Several pink babies lay helplessly in a nest of shredded paper. The mouse stared at me, its whiskers quivering, its eyes alert. An old pad of matches lay nearby. Gingerly, I retrieved them, and then gently slid the drawer shut. Since there was no stove, I wondered how the priests cooked, unless they fasted. Dead bugs filled the crevices and lay on the countertop. There was no sink, no water and no plumbing of any kind. Through the window of a back door, I noticed an outhouse at the edge of an unkempt lawn.
On the walls yellowed photos depicted foxes and birds and landscapes. A crude twig cross tied with string hung from a rail around the platform. Sermons, no doubt, were once spoken here. A dove of peace, cut from white paper and mounted on curling cardboard, sat high upon the brown wall paneling just below the tiled ceiling. The whole place seemed dirty and isolated, perhaps a metaphor for the unhealed state of my soul that needed a broom and soap and water.
I pulled an upholstered red chair across the concrete slab floor over to the hearth, swished the bugs off with my hand, and cautiously sat down. All around on shelves, statues of Mary, like goddesses, guarded the fireplace. A baseball bat in a glass case caught my attention. Something in me wanted to seize it and bash the statue of Mary, but all at once I realized this statue was not of Mary but was of Jesus with his heart bared and with nail holes in his hands.
Suddenly I understood that I had been burdened for forty wilderness years with a sense of being unworthy and of being second class. I knew in my brain that I had never been stupid, and that my mother had never been stupid either, but at some deep experiential level, I had accepted her status as a person without much value. Perhaps that was why I’d always blamed myself for the failings of my first marriage. I looked at the Jesus statue and saw the mother and the son entwined. Without the mother there was no Jesus.
I tore a piece of newspaper from a pile lying near a stack of firewood. I scribbled my hurt and my innocence in the margins and in the clear spaces between the columns. I scrawled on every inch of open space and finally my writing wound across the newsprint obliterating the typed words. It seemed an act of heroism. At last, I crumpled the paper and laid it in the hearth. A small flame from the first match ignited the tip of her paper. It burst into hot white and blue fire and then quickly died, leaving only smoldering ashes. I felt as if some heaviness within my soul had eased.
That night I awoke as if someone had entered my room. An overwhelming but gentle presence as vast as the night and as deep as the ocean surrounded me. In a moment of grace, I looked into the dark shroud and through the veil I saw Mum’s smiling face. Love filled all the nooks and crannies of my life leaving no room for old wounds. I laughed out loud, just as I and Mum used to laugh together, Mum clacking knitting needles and I pouring hot tea.
I too like my mother must weave for others. She knitted sweaters and scarves and blankets. I will tell the experiences of my life through the work of my hands. My stories will be the socks I knit to give comfort. My socks will be woven from angora and jute, cashmere and string, rope and cotton. Some will be blue with orange stripes, and others will be green with gold polka dots and tassels. I will pearl knee highs and crews, ankle socks and footies, some for trousers, some for boots, and some for dresses. My socks will warm cold feet on winter days. They will cool hot feet on summer days. I will launder them in soap smelling of lavender and peonies. This I will do to because I am a woman, and it is good to be a woman.
The End
Afterword
Ignatian retreats like the one I attended are silent times amongst a group of people who are seeking an experience of God. The retreatee meets daily with a spiritual director who guides her and gives her three or four scriptural meditations to do each day. These scriptures are read contemplatively often following the practice of lectio divina. The retreatee describes her meditative experience to her director who discerns what comes next. The goal of an Ignatian retreat is to ground the participant in God’s love, move her into journeying with Christ, and ultimately ease her through a crucifixion experience, which finally results in some sort of resurrection. The individual gains insight, freedom, and an experience of the holy. Not everyone goes through all the stages. It depends on the spiritual maturity of the individual.
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