EconoLodge

Joplin, Missouri

 

          The alarm rings. I yawn and stretch, then get out of bed. The room smells of stale cigarette smoke. I take a shower, brush my teeth, comb my hair. The TV screen, sensing my rejection, glowers from wall.

          Soon, the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee fills the air. I take a seat in the easy chair and make the Sign of the Cross.

          O Lord, open my lips and my mouth shall declare your praise. 

 

          I arrived in Joplin the previous night around ten o’clock. The drive from Ohio unfurled like a flag flapping in the wind: wave upon wave of corn fields, soybeans, weathered barns, small towns, steers and church steeples.

          The Midwest. My home. My heart.

          A humble, contrite heart, O God, you will not spurn.

 

          Memories of childhood mew like kittens in a straw mow: slopping calves, bedding stables, stacking hay on a flatbed wagon, hunting rabbits in the winter, the hum of window fans in the summer.

          May altars in the house and milking machines in the barn. Long johns. Overalls. Grits for breakfast. A dog named Skip.

          Such was my boyhood, a life measured out in fence lines, wind rows and back roads to fishing holes.

          I’d be less sentimental about it all if I hadn’t I left home at age fourteen. But my calling to priesthood arrived early and, back then, this meant packing a suitcase and heading off to a high school seminary in Indiana. I’d return each summer to work on the farm, but a hole opened in my soul and its emptiness echoes to this day.

          Though the flocks disappear from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet will I rejoice in the Lord.

 

          Years of pastoral ministry pass swiftly—like mileage signs on I-40. Glancing in the rearview mirror, I see two dioceses, three states and eight towns that I called home. Yet I’ve known only one true home: a small farm with a red barn, two silos a house with a tin roof.

          The older I become, the tighter its hold. The further I travel, the more alluring my return.  

          As the sparrow longs for home…so my soul longs for you, my God.