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writing/sawtooth/limerent-object/beats/01-agenda.md
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@ -114,3 +114,4 @@ I should go home and eat. I love my patients --- nerds, to the last --- and they
I should go home and eat.
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@ -108,3 +108,5 @@ I was not surprised, but I was, admittedly, disappointed. I try not to be disapp
I perhaps just wanted some guidance.
[^market]: I know that many of the more liberal bent are increasingly okay with interspecies relationships, but, liberal as I try to be, my upbringing and my time within the church seem to have set me on the straight and narrow path, here.
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@ -152,3 +152,4 @@ We talked for a bit longer on the subject, but as the time drew to a close, Jere
So I suppose that is what is on my plate. She and I talk every day, these days, and so I will have plenty of opportunity to do so. Perhaps I will aim to do so tomorrow, as I'd like to see how I feel when talking to her tonight without bringing this up, knowing that doing so in the future is a hard and fast goal for me.
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When I was in school back at Saint John's, I was met with a sudden cessation of chores. I had things to do, to be sure. Things that were repetitive and at times menial, but when you grow up on a farm, the concept of 'chore' goes well beyond simple repetitive, menial task. My callouses have long faded, but during my first months there in Minnesota, they still scraped against my notes and the pages of books every time I interacted with them.
Even when I was getting my undergrad at UI, I was regularly back at home and working. I spent the requisite first year in the dormitories, but went home every weekend to help my parents out. Summer was as full of work as it had ever been growing up, and when my second year rolled around, I stayed living at home, preferring the daily commute --- long though it was --- to central Sawtooth from the farm out past the outskirts.
My parents were pleased, of course. Help was help, and they certainly loved me.
In Minnesota, though, there was no farming. No hauling, no driving, no commute beyond the walk from my simple apartment just off campus to the campus itself. I quickly developed a walking habit to at least feel some of that energy expenditure as I had back home.
However, there is a difference of mindset between all the tasks involved in growing soybeans and that of walking. Those chores before may have been mindless at times, but they required an active enough focus so that one didn't mess up whatever it was one was supposed to be doing. It was goal oriented in a way that walking was not, and the undirectedness of action with walking became a form of prayer.
Well, not prayer, *per se*, but contemplation. It was something more and less than prayer. Sometimes I might begin with prayer, but before long, words would leave me, and I would be left with the sights and sounds, the presence of God. It was beyond prayer. It was beyond meditation.
I'd walk through the campus at night. I'd walk around the Arboretum. I'd walk along the shore of the lake to the smaller chapel, so like the parish back home, so unassuming next to the wildly flamboyant abbey on campus.
And while I'd walk, I'd talk to God. Not pray to Him, not meditate on His perfection. I'd send my mind soaring out over the reeds and the water and taste him on the sickly-sweet scent of honeysuckles. I'd tramp along the wooden walkway in the Arboretum and hear him in the thrum of the boards beneath my feet.
He would be in the bitter, biting cold of February, lingering on the fog of my breath.
He would be in the muddy slog of spring, the indecision of seasons a lazy finger on the scale.
He would be in the way the Minnesota night hung heavy around me, the air as loath to relinquish the heat of day as the year was to give in to autumn. Nearly eleven, the long hours of evening managing to pull away some of the warmth, and He would be in the breath of cooler air coming off the lake. Mosquitoes drifting lazily beneath the trees, and He would be in that high whine.
Sawtooth has nothing on that.
Here, I will occasionally take a bus or get a ride to the edge of town and walk and hunt for that same quietude that I felt before. I have come close a few times. I came close when I got out past the highway and into the farm lands and walked along the narrow shoulder of the road, watching the sky dip from blue down through salmon to purple, with that brief stop at red that bathed the soy and wheat fields in light like wine. At that moment, I lost all thought, lost all direction, lost all action and gave myself up to the contemplation.
For a scant few minutes, I was able to touch on that space once more and it was there that I was able to talk with God once more.
I did not ask Him for anything --- intercession is for the saints.
I did not tell Him anything --- He knows all I could ever possibly tell Him.
I do not share the same relationship with the Trinity that protestants do, but at that moments, I suppose I felt some of what they do with their personal relationship with God, with their idea that He dwells within them.
He passed through me, suffused me with His light like wine, and in that moment, knew me completely, and I could gaze on Him in faith, and I could sit in that silent love.
I stood a while in the gloaming, and as that moment left me, I let it go. What could I possibly do to hold onto God? What could a sinner like me do? How could I possibly hope to ask Him to stay with me? Me, a coyote, a farmer's son, a scraggly beast who failed to live up to his own dreams of pastoral life.
I walked home. No bus, no ride. I walked until the pads on my feet bled.
----
I had to stop, yesterday. I had to stop writing.
I don't know why that memory left me in tears, paws shaking too much to write. I don't even know why I decided to commit that memory to this journal. I started this project with the goal of trying to suss out my thoughts and feelings surrounding Kay, and yet I keep writing about this. I keep writing about God or the Church or leaving Saint John's.
I walked around the block afterward, trying to calm down, breathe deeply, be present. I did all the things I tell my patients to do when they panic, and I suppose some of it worked. I was at least able to look at the ground, look at the sky, look at the grass and trees and buildings and not feel this unnamed emotion.
If I had any doubt that Jeremy was right in suggesting journaling, I think it has been well and truly dashed by now.
This feeling, then. It is somewhere between shame and guilt. It has that bitter-savory flavor to it. It makes my fur feel clumped and matted. Why have I changed so much since leaving Saint John's that I cannot talk with God as I used to? I do not feel forsaken by Him, I really don't. So why do I feel so much less in His sight than I did before?
Today, though, I am going for a hike. Kay has a meeting or something at the university and we always knew that it would not be just constant time together when we planned that, so I am taking advantage of her absence to get a bit of walking in by myself, here in a new setting.
It turns out that the house I'm staying in isn't far from a patch of wilderness. I do not know why it is called the Military Reserve, but I am not going to turn down the chance at walking away from the city. Boise is so much taller, so much louder than Sawtooth, I feel hemmed in here.
It wasn't quite close enough to walk, but at least there's ride shares.
It's strange how easily I fell back into old habits. Per haps it was the writing I did last night, or perhaps it's the need to get away that drove me up into the hills, out on a walk, out to blister my feet and talk with God. It didn't seem to matter how unfamiliar the trail was. I just started walking through that scrub and brush, through all that brown and all that air, and not five minutes in did I feel my mind empty, as always it seemed to. The scrub around me, buffalo grass and sage and yarrow and bitter cherry, gained depth and clarity, stalks and crenelations arching up to me, up to God, assuming that is where the heavens live. The colors called out to me. The scents stung my nose, even the five-and-some feet up from my point of view. Bitter, aspirinic whiffs of yarrow. Stale shortcake grasses. Ungreen, but not unalive. The taste of dust lingering on my tongue, not enough to be gritty but enough to remind me that the earth was the earth and that I was separate from that. The air, the air itself pushed its way nosily through my fur, a breeze from the west, toppling down off the hills. The air and the hard-packed dirt of the trail beneath my feet knocking vibrations up through my shins. Soft padding, soft crunching, soft rustling; wind in fur, air wandering between tussocks; breathing slowing, calming. Rhythms on the scale of footsteps to seasons.
Even writing this, even sitting on a fence rail at the trail head, I can feel it still.
And through it all, the Lord. Through each and every step, dancing along every brittle stem and blade of grass, surrounding every grain <!-- is this the right word? --> of dust in a blanket of the utmost attention. His voice traveled along the breeze, His breath was the bitter yarrow and shortcake grass. And all of it I could feel and all of it I could hear and all of it washed over and through me and I bathed in it. "His light like wine", I wrote yesterday, and that wine filled me today, and I can still taste it.
There are no conclusions from God. There are no intercessions that I, a servant, could possibly ask of him. What would He do? Would He tell me what to say to Kay? All He has for me is grace and forgiveness. There is so much more than any other individual could ever offer me.
All the same, I listened for hope, for guidance, for the discernment than hasn't left me since I left St John's.
To ask that grace, that breath, that light like wine what it is to do is the wrong question. To ask from Him the worldly answers is to misunderstand the scope of things.
To say that He has no plan for me, no path, however, isn't correct either. He does, and that's why I talk with Him. It's perhaps less than Catholic of me, or at least of a more mystical bent than ought to be expected of me. I'm no Beghard, no Eckhart.
All I know is that words fail me, and that sometimes the Ground does not.
I don't know if that path leads toward Kay. I just can't see that far ahead on it. I don't know if it leads me any further into the Church. That's around some corner I can't comprehend. I don't know anything, it seems, but I needed this. I needed time with myself. I needed this walking conversation, this inside-out hesychasm. I needed out of Boise and away from Kay, away from the scent of her, away from the way she presses against my chest from the inside. I need
-----
All these little memories, all of them are coming back to me, and I'm not sure why. Nothing about this visit in particular ought to dredge them up, right? I mean, Kay and I have only talked passingly about faith, and sure, I attended mass this weekend, but there is little to suggest that this have anything to do with the flood of the small things from the past.
Or perhaps it's talking with God. Perhaps it's less Kay than it is the way in which I'm approaching this whole situation. She herself is not bringing these out in me, but I am recapitulating so many of the same patterns I went through during my discernment.
Today, it is the memory of that first night that I knew I needed to leave that hit me. And yes, the small things hit first.
I remember first of all the way I cupped my fingers over the bridge of my muzzle and pulled down gently while pushing my snout up. The isometric stretch served to highlight every bit of tension within my neck, and as I held the pressure, I closed my eyes, counting the knotted muscles. Pressed, pushed, and held until I could feel the lactic acid burn deep in the tissue, and then released. With my targets thus marked, I ducked my muzzle down and slid my paws back, fingers kneading along sore spots.
Not for the first time, I wished that I could simply disappear within the written word. Wished that I could relinquish the very idea of physical sensation and surround myself in successive layers of scripture, commentaries, notes. Wished, most of all, that I could wrap himself in the warmth of his faith.
If, at the end of time, faith and hope are to fade, there would be a final sense of completion, but until then, my faith was a comfort.
I shook my head to try to clear the clinging rumination, closing the book of Pauline commentaries and the notebook that I had been attacking with a highlighter and pen.
Standing from my rickety chair, I stretched toward the ceiling, claws brushing up against the off-white-towards-gray paint momentarily before I leaned to the side to loosen muscles in my back.
If there were any one place that I belonged, it had to have been there. There in one of the study rooms in the library. There were books here. There was the quiet contemplation of knowledge, the surety of faith, and the heady scent of aging paper.
And, of course, far fewer people.
I had five minutes until the library closed, which, I figured, was enough time for me to return the book and start the walk back to my apartment without needing to endure any encounters with security sweeping the stacks for lingering students. Sure enough, the only other person I encountered on my way out was the page who numbly accepted the book at the returns desk. A wordless exchange; no small talk, not even a thank you.
The Minnesota night hung heavy around me on that walk back. The air seemed as loath to relinquish the heat of day as the year was to give in to autumn, but now it was nearly eleven, and the long hours of evening had managed to pull away some of the warmth. Mosquitoes drifted lazily beneath the trees, leading me to keep my ears canted back, lest they take interest.
Saint John's University was a lopsided circle nestled at the north edge of a narrow isthmus between two lakes, a marble set over a gap it couldn't hope to pass through. It would be easy enough for me to essentially walk straight north to the apartments along the road that bisected the campus, but I preferred to put off walking along a road as long as possible. The noise --- even if the noise was only in the lights around me --- was too much.
Instead, I headed east from the library, walking bowered sidewalks for as long as I could. Past the utilities building, past the bookstore, until I hit the quad, that almost-rectangle of grass and trees and sidewalks pinned in the middle of campus. Only then did I turn north, walking through close-cut grass instead of along the sidewalks.
Here, at last, I could look up and see the stars.
My steps were slow, contemplative. It wasn't a meander; my walk still had purpose. Instead, it was a putting-off of the inevitable. The inevitable time when I would rejoin walking along the road. The inevitable moment of stepping into my dimly-lit apartment. A delaying of engaging with the real, physical world as long as possible.
Here, at last, I could look up and see the stars, could drink in God's majesty, could forget that I was myself, that I was a coyote plowing through both my scholarships and degree on nothing but momentum. I could forget that I was Dee, and get lost in my total and complete insignificance.
I could walk and I could pray.
> Come, Holy Spirit, Divine Creator, true source of light and fountain of wisdom! Pour forth your brilliance upon my dense intellect...
It was here --- here in the open, and back in the library --- that was where I was most comfortable. Most myself.
Dee, the awkward coyote. Dee, who forgot to smile sometimes, who always seemed to say the wrong thing. Dee, with his nose forever in a book, forever in *the* book, reading and re-reading to tease ever-deeper meaning from scriptures he'd read a dozen times before.
> ...dissipate the darkness which covers me, that of sin and ignorance. Grant me a penetrating mind to understand...
Was that not why I was there, here at a seminary? To study and learn? To glean more from the word of God? To live in an ever more Christlike fashion? To help the downtrodden and the poor?
Could I not best learn how to do so there? Was that not why I was there?
> ...a retentive memory, method and ease in learning, the lucidity to comprehend, and abundant grace...abundant grace in expressing myself...
I couldn't do it. I couldn't go back to my room just yet. All it held was my bed, my books, my aging laptop. Too-yellow lights, fourth-hand furniture, chipped paint.
Instead, I let my bag slip from my shoulder to the grass, and then I settled down to join it, tail flopped limply behind me. I drew my knees up to my chest and crossed my arms over them, resting my chin atop my forearms.
My head was too full. Too full of words and feelings that language failed to express. Lines from the epistles I'd been studying somehow wound up tangled with an awkwardly-shaped despair, a despair founded in the fact that, although I continued to excel in my studies, remained at the top of my classes, I still felt as though I was failing.
*If you still dwell within my heart,* I asked. *Where are these feelings coming from? What is this disillusionment pointing to?*
God spoke to me, then.
As ever, His voice was not in words, but woven into the world around me. A breeze came up from Stump lake, bearing with it the scent of water, of rotting vegetation, and overlaid atop it, a sweetness I could not place. It was floral, yes, but also fruity, so sweet as to make my mouth water.
I bristled my whiskers, and breathed in deeply, my eyes scanning trees lit by the occasional yellow sulfur lamp, stark battlements against the night sky. God spoke to me in the way my eyes perceived the night to fade from a blue-tinged gray at the tree-line up to the star-stained black above me. He spoke in the feeling of the short blades of grass poking up through the bristly fur of my tail, and He spoke in the citrus tang of a confession forming in my mouth.
"I don't want to be here."
-----

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It would be incorrect to say that the hike I took yesterday in some way "solved" the anxiety that I felt after the concert. There were, as I constantly tell myself, explain and explain and explain, no words from God. There were no intercessions. How would there be? How would it be the case that He would step in and say, "No, Dee, don't worry"?
I am trying not to get down on myself enough to lose all hope. I want to say, "This is so unimportant that I really need to just give up on the prospect." I want to recognize the futility in striving for a relationship. I want to buy into the egodystonia. I want to find some way to turn off that part of my mind that craves Kay, that dreams about the feeling of her cheek against mine and perseverates about holding her hand. How childish! How immature! How utterly beneath me that I struggle so hard with this!
But whatever.
I can't just turn all of those things off, but I *can* go ahead and admit that this isn't going anywhere. I can recognize that she wouldn't be a good romantic partner for me and I wouldn't be for her, and, even if the feelings don't go away, drop any hope of pursuing them. We Catholics are so good at repression, are we not?
There's nothing to be had but friendship, and I can aim for that, at least. Today, Kay took me to a used bookstore near campus, and we spent a good hour and a half there, digging through the shelves. She sold me almost instantly on the place with the explanation that this was the type of place that would eagerly buy up all of the weird and obscure books that students pick up in their studies. Not just textbooks, though they certain took some of those when the university bookstore would not buy them back, but supplementary materials and personal hyperfixation-induced deep-dive book purchases.
Kay spent most of that time prowling through the music section, and me digging among shelves of exegeses and commentaries. Occasionally, we would head back to the other to show them something of particular interest that we had found. At one point, she brought me a book on harmony written by some composer and laughingly read aloud a short section from the beginning, a scathing indictment of music critics, and we agreed that he must have, at some point, had a concert ripped to shreds in the newspapers. I brought her a whole stack of apologetics by C. S. Lewis and we reminisced over reading *The Chronicles of Narnia* as children.
I do not think I could come up with a more ideal bookstore, I have to say. Friends always talk about the scent of books being intoxicating, and while I've always been somewhat mixed on it[^scent], the scent of bookstores themselves are something that I am immensely fond of. It's not just the smell of the books that does it for me, but the shelves, the people, the lingering scent of those who might have handled the books before me. This book makes my whiskers bristle at the lingering scent of anxiety, that one was clearly loved and brought comfort. Whiskers bristle and I lose myself in the past of the place. There is something meta bout the whole experience: books and also readers of those books.
I left after spending a surprisingly small amount of money on a surprisingly large number of books. The problem of fitting them all into my luggage for the trip home is a problem for future Dee.
Following the bookstore, we walked a block to an Ethiopian restaurant. I had never tried such cuisine before and while it was not unpleasant, I am still trying to puzzle out the tastes.
The rest of the day was spent lounging at Kay's place, reading. She parked herself in her computer chair and insisted that I just use her bed --- those being the sole pieces of furniture within her apartment --- so I propped myself up against the wall with her pillows and poked through my haul.[^books] It wasn't the most comfortable of seats, and I had to dedicate a small portion of my mind at all times to ignoring the scent of Kay clinging to the sheets and pillowcases, but it was enjoyable arranging and rearranging the stack in what order might be best to read them in.
Kay, for her part was doing much the same, and whenever I would look over, she would be chewing on her cheek or a claw. She kept tapping out rhythms on the page of whatever page of a score she was looking at, humming arpeggios, and at least once I caught her nodding and tapping her tail about behind her, and when she looked up and saw me, she smiled bashfully and mumbled an apology.
It was a pleasant afternoon, all told, and we followed it up with a simple dinner of chicken that she cooked on her ancient stove and more shared videos, as has long been our habit.
Now I am back in the room that I'm staying in, surrounded by the non-scent of scent-block hiding whoever had stayed there before me, layered over with a thin darkness of my own scent.
I am embarrassed to admit that the change of scentscape has left me a little jarred today, in particular due to the fact that it had clearly been a few weeks since she had washed her sheets, and there was an unmistakable undertone of what I take to be sexuality clinging to those sheets. I do not doubt that she gets as aroused as any other healthy coyote of her age might, and now I imagine that she is no stranger to masturbation. This is in no way surprising and yet I was in a continual state of tense wariness and low-level arousal of my own that I desperately hoped she could not smell on me.
That, above all things is what I found myself needing to tune out. I buried my nose in book after book, and while that meant more than a mere whiff of mildew, it was less distracting by far.
I am trying to square my feelings about this. I am not immune to attraction, but the levels to which this complicates my feelings is uncomfortable. Here I am trying to convince myself to drop my attraction to her and my limbic system works against me!
I am not ashamed to admit that physiological response, but I am ashamed that I was unable to keep myself from acting on it --- it seemed necessary if I was to sleep in any level of comfort. I shall have a confession in my future, but then, I knew that already.
[^scent]: It can get rather close to the scent of mildew, which makes me quite uncomfortable. Scent is complicated.
[^books]: I picked up a few commentaries, a few more pop-theology and a few that were dense and reminded me strongly of my time at St. John's to the point where I could almost smell the study room I spent so many hours in, the scratched desk and rickety chair. I also acquired a books on psychology that I'd heard about from colleagues and had been meaning to read. Of note were two books on shame and vulnerability. How appropriate.
-----
I know that I stopped writing of a sudden yesterday. I ran out of words, and didn't know what it was that I needed to say that I needed. I just sat for a while, closed my notebook, grabbed another ride back to town, and sat at that coffee shop I visited a few days ago, drinking an ice tea and looking at nothing, and then I went back to my room and sat on my bed and read for a bit. I'll meet up with Kay tonight, I'm sure.
I got my notebook out to see if I could finish what I started, but I couldn't. It's just not there anymore.
Instead, I just dived back into memories. I wrote before about certain embarrassing things sticking in the mind of the one embarrassed. We Catholics, we are so good at that. We're so good at picking the embarrassing things and hanging them up on the wall, admiring them, and then inviting others to share in the embarrassment with us. Our confessors are the witnesses to our shame. All we can hope is that they provide relief, and yet perhaps that is why so many confessions stick within the mind.
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last confession, and I accuse myself...I accuse..."
Other than the soft sounds of breathing and the barest hint of vulpine beneath the scent-block, nothing made its way from the other side of the screen, familiar even so many years after the fact, even long after I left St John's
"I accuse myself of the sin of doubt."
"You know that doubt is not a sin, my child."
"I guess, but my doubt is in my vocation."
"I see. Do you doubt in God?"
"No, no. Just...I find myself doubting, uh...I find myself doubting my upcoming role in the Church."
"What about the Church do you doubt, if your faith is solid?"
"I can't put my finger on it."
There was a quiet sigh from the other side of the screen.
"I guess my sin is that I am doubting my ability to actually serve God like I'm supposed to."
"I see."
It was my turn to wait in silence. Eventually, I bowed my head and said, "That is all, Father. For these and all of my sins, I ask forgiveness from God, and penance and absolution from you."
There was a pause, and then, "Alright, I will ask you to say three Our Fathers for doubting the path that God has laid out for you. It could be that you are still discovering this path, but doubt will only hinder you from carrying out His works. However, my son--" The priest rushed to forestall any response, and I remember hearing a smile creeping into his voice. "Outside of your penance, I would also like you to talk to your advisor. As your confessor, I can only offer you spiritual guidance."
I splayed my ears, chagrined, and bowed my head. "Thank you, Father."
With the final *go in peace* still ringing in my ears, with the tips of my fingers still humming from crossing myself, with the hot flush of embarrassment still pulling at my cheeks, I stepped from the confessional and blinked in the sudden light and space. I took two quick, grounding breaths, and then walked from the chapel.
*I do not want to be here.* The thought had become a mantra.
Outside, I walked slowly to one of the concrete blocks that served as benches and sat, resting my face in my paws. If I could not see the stars, if I had only concrete and paving stones before me, then if I wanted to pray, I had to block out my sight. It was all too much. I would find myself tracing the paving stones or the catenary arc of the contemporary entrance to St. Francis Abbey if I left them open.
> Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Let yours ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications...
I was not ready yet. Not ready for my penitential *pater noster*. Not ready to go see my advisor. I didn't feel ready for anything.
Most of all, I realized I was not ready to admit to myself that not wanting to be here implied the possible solution of leaving, of *not* being here. I wasn't ready.
> ...If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you so that you may be revered...
I didn't even feel ready for this prayer, for this call out to God. What iniquities faced me? I was privileged to be able to attend such a school as this. I was loved by God and the church and loved them in turn. I was lucky to have been born with a mind so expansive, a body so healthy.
Perhaps the iniquities were within. Perhaps it was something about myself, within myself, a core aspect of myself. Perhaps the privilege was undeserved. Just a coyote, right? Just a farmer, right? And yet here I was, languishing at a renowned seminary.
> ...I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch the morning, more than those who watch the morning.
And so I waited.
I wished it were night. I wished I could sit in the quad and look up at the stars, or down at the grass and try to differentiate the shades of green, there in the dark where color eluded me, to find in that liminal state some sensation of the Lord.
At least I could get up from where I was and away from this edifice of concrete and glass. It was, I had been promised, beautiful in its own way. But behind the Abbey, toward the lake, a small path wound through the woods, and there, between the trees and beside the water, stood the statue of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the only other canonized coyote I'd ever come across, and the saint most venerated by my father back home.
> ...O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem...
I was not the farmer my family was, had few enough ties to her patronage of ecology and environmentalism, but in her I saw at least a face like my own. In her, I saw something of a people I could belong to, though she was from far to the east of my home in Idaho.
Home.
Home was back in Sawtooth, for Saint John's would never truly be my home, and that in itself was telling.
> ...It is He who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.
*Redeem Israel.*
Israel, who struggled with God.
I envy, as I always have, the Jewish tradition, that eternal argument about who God was, what He meant, in which God was an active participant. Perhaps here, I could wrestle with Him. Tumble with my faith. Get all scuffed up.
But Catholicism only offered him so much leeway, and this school even less.
"I don't want to be here," I confessed to the statue. I remember that. I remember the kindness in the stone, in her smile. I confessed, then sighed, knelt, and began my penance.
-----

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It had been a long trip home, from St John's back to Sawtooth.
I was hardly run out of the campus the moment of my decision. I was given the remainder of the month to wrap up my affairs and attend to the task of packing my meager belongings in order to move out of my room and bus back to Idaho, to Sawtooth. To home.
It was more than enough. My stuff was packed into two file boxes within an hour. After all, all of the furniture in the room belonged to the school. What had I besides clothes and books? Clothes, books, and my rosary.
I carried it with me always, then, my fingers marching through the decades of beads as words tumbled through my mind, spilled from my mouth without a sound. Over the next two weeks, I prayed the Rosary dozens of times. Hundreds of *Hail Marys* and *Our Fathers*.
I knew not what drew me to begin this litany of prayer. I strove to pray the Rosary every day, as a rule, but now, I needed that reassurance of faith. I needed some sign --- whether to myself or to those around me I wasn't sure --- that this decision was one of vocations, not of faith.
With my possessions packed away, I had little to do beyond pray and spend as much time in the library as I could before it would no longer be available to me.
"Technically," Borenson had confided when providing me instructions for those last few weeks. "You shouldn't have access to anything but the refectory, the chapel, and your room for the remainder of your time on campus, but I don't think anyone will begrudge you access to your beloved books."
The library and the woods, the quad, the lakes, the sky.
The Saint Bernard was waiting for me, sitting on the stone and cement bench by the statue of St. Kateri Tekakwitha. The dog had rested his shoulders on his knees and clasped his hands, and was looking down between his feet through the opening this had created. Or, well, not looking. Father Borenson was not looking at anything. He had the absent expression of thought or prayer.
I had been making a round of all my favorite spots on this, my last day, and my final stop was here. A statue, a stone bench, a lake. Trees and heavy air.
I stood awkwardly by the statue, unsure of what to do with my advisor --- my old advisor --- present. This had always been a place of solitary engagement for me. Were it anyone else, I would have left and aimed to come back a little later. I still had an hour before I needed to head to the bus station.
"Afternoon, Mr. Kimana."
"Father. Sorry if I disturbed you. I can come back later."
The dog shook his head and leaned back against the bench, patting the spot next to him. "I was waiting for you, actually. I was hoping I'd catch you before you left."
After a moment's hesitation, I accepted the invitation and sat down, paws resting in my lap. Conversing sitting side by side like this was a mixed blessing. I didn't feel obligated to maintain eye contact, which was always a relief, but I was also left with the disconcerting feeling that there was a place I *ought* to be looking, that it ought to be at what whoever I was speaking with was looking at.
No wonder I wasn't cut out for this.
Borenson was the first to break the silence. "Dee, do you know what discernment is?"
"I'm assuming you mean in regards to figuring out one's calling?"
"Mmhm. Discerning whether you're heading toward married life, ministry, hermitage, whatever." He shook his head and laughed. "Sorry, this is one of those last-day conversations, and it's kind of difficult."
I nodded numbly. This was already wildly outside of my normal interactions with Borenson. Less academic, more informal, emotional.
"We don't really tell our students because we want you to come in feeling devoted, but there's a whole set of guidelines already in place behind the scenes to deal with this. Has been for centuries, really. It used to be, you'd be whisked away before you had the chance to even say goodbye. We'd box up your stuff and send it to you. It was a different church back then.
"Now, we see it more like a process. Discernment is something that takes place over time. You're in your twenties, you're not going to have it all figured out, much as you might sometimes imagine."
I frowned. *St. Kateri Tekakwitha,* I prayed silently.
> Favored child and Lily of the Mohawks, I come to seek your intercession in my present need. I don't know what to do...
"It's a little clumsy, but the analogy I always use is to think of these first few semesters of your degree like dating. You and the Church --- the Church as an institution, not just a faith --- like each other, and want to maybe get closer, but you're going to try things on for size for a bit. See how it works out."
Outwardly, I nodded. "That makes sense. It's not a divorce, just a break-up before it gets serious."
Inwardly, I was doing my best to let go. Let go of this place. Let go of my study. Let go of the idea that I had built up over so long a time of what life would be like.
> I admire the virtues which adorned your soul: love of God and neighbor, humility, obedience, patience, purity and the spirit of sacrifice. Help me to imitate your example in my state of life.
"Right," the Saint Bernard nodded. "Just turns out you and the Church get along better as friends than in...well, the metaphor breaks down somewhat here, but you can see how ordination is rather like marriage."
I smiled weakly. "Yeah."
"All this is to say that I think you're doing the right thing, because no one wants a bitter priest. Some folks might think ill of you, but don't worry about them. You've got your path ahead of you still, and God needs saints more than He needs priests."
> Through the goodness and mercy of God, Who has blessed you with so many graces which led you to the true faith and to a high degree of holiness, pray to God for me and help me.
I stared at the statue of the coyote. I knew that if I were to try and look at Father Borenson, to engage with this conversation any more directly, I would not be able to keep from crying.
"I'll leave you be, Dee, but before I do, I'm curious. What will you do after this?"
I worked on mastering the lump of emotion swelling in my chest before replying. "I'm going to go home, stay with my parents. Work on the farm for a bit. Then, um..." I swallowed drily in an attempt to sound less hoarse. "Then I think I'm going to transfer to University of Idaho and get my masters in social work."
Borenson perked up, his tail thumping against the concrete and stone of the bench. "A therapist, hmm?"
"Yeah. I really do want to do good in the world, I just...well, perhaps a different kind." I let my shoulders slump. "I can't...I can't lead a congregation, but maybe I can manage something one-on-one."
"Of course," the dog laughed. "I can certainly see you excelling at that."
I smiled gratefully.
Standing up and brushing off his slacks, Borenson offered me his paw. It dwarfed mine, surrounding it in soft pads and softer fur. It made me feel uncouth, coarse, common.
"Mr. Kimana, it's been a pleasure."
I stood as well and turned the helping paw into a shake. "Thank you, Father."
"I wish you the best of luck. You're always welcome to come visit." The dog relinquished his grip, turned to the statue, crossed himself, and walked back toward campus.
Alone again, I turned from the statue and stared out over the lake. One final time, I asked if I was doing the right thing, and one final time, God spoke to me in the gentle lapping of the water at the shore, in the quiet hum of a bee in flight, in the sweet taste of surety in my mouth.
I stretched, crossed myself before the statue of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, brushed my fingertips over her stone paws, and then began to walk back through the campus.
It was a long trip home.
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