The Shrine and Brother Matthew

Down the road a piece on 100 acres is a Catholic shrine to Our Lady of Czestochowa, a place in Poland. The "chapel" part is just open-air with a tin roof over it, plus some pews and banks of eight-day candles, usually deserted except Sundays. I go there occasionally on Mondays. I listen there for messages from God. I figure He hangs out there, listening to prayers. I must say that in Missouri, messages from God seem rather more common than they did when I lived in Boston, Mass.

Not far away is a path to a healing spring. Along the path were strewn and nailed up all sorts of signs, plastic flowers, photos of Pope John Paul II, stations of the cross, warnings ("Silence"; "Straight is the Way and Narrow is the Gate," nailed above an actual narrow wooden gate; "No Dogs or Horses") and all sorts of spiritual sayings as in the photo.

The path to the spring was once well-kept by Brother Matthew, a hermit from the nearby Franciscan community; it was he who painted, decorated, pruned, rebuilt, restored. Around age 70 when we met, he invited me to his hermitage one day. Brother Matthew had been to art school sometime in the 1940s, and the hermitage was full to the ceiling with canvases. All sorts of subjects, not just religious. Used to see him around, in his brown robe, occasionally in town; he was a presence and a character. He is gone now about four or five years, and the path to the spring -- flooded, vandalized, broken-down with time -- is about ruined, with no one to keep it. Here's a photo of something of what's left. There's been ads in the local paper looking to collect Brother Matthew's paintings. I wonder where they are now.

The Healing Spring

Down the road about a mile is a shrine to St. Mary built 50 years ago by a Polish monk. There's an open-air chapel at the top of the hill, but in the hollow is a 1/4-mile path into the woods that ends at a natural spring. It's at the bottom of a tall cliff of rock. A small platform has been built so pilgrims can kneel at the spring and pray and scoop out some water -- because this particular spring (plus prayers, I suppose) produces healing waters. Fortunately this is little-known, or the place would be mobbed, as the Lourdes spring, in Portugal, is.

Frogs live in this spring, and splash in and out of the water while you pray. They are cheerful. Especially if your heart is heavy with troubles, it is good to see their fat bellies and permanently smiling faces. They are always there in any season, any weather.

We are, of course, always praying for miracles to heal us from one trauma or another. But you have to smile at the frogs who have made their home in this holy place.

Of course the whole world is a holy place. All you need to find that out -- mighty quick -- is a clue that may mean that your time here is nearly up. One is healed of all other worries (about the credit cards; the bad haircut; the blown job interview; the President's decisions) right there. So it must be that death too is a kind of healing spring, hallowing everything.