One winter not long ago I began waking up early in the morning, the fragments of strange dreams – wrenched from past traumas - still frightfully alive. They always involved God. These dreams were often violent and turbulent. In the darkness, the bitter winter winds battered the windows of the bedroom, the menacing sound of uncontrollable forces swirling outside.
There is a certain quality to winter mornings in New England. They are forlorn, something that has always overwhelmed me with feelings of isolation and alienation, as if I were alone in a hostile place. For this reason, I always abhorred the very experience that plagued me these months. Some days, I would fall back to sleep. But there were other times when I would struggle in vain. In the spring I began to sleep normally once again. But the memory of these months still haunts me.
That year, ten days before Christmas, my days were being spent working as a legal aid attorney in one of the poorest cities in the country – Bridgeport Connecticut. The day dawned clear and mild, and the first snow was yet to arrive so there was a bleak bareness to the landscape. I got off Rt. 25 and merged onto Main Street, passing the once magnificent Savoy Hotel, four stories high, made of white granite, with full story arched windows surrounded with intricate brocaded stone work, now deserted, its street level boarded and covered with bright red, black, and orange graffiti in grotesque figures; the Ocean Grill restaurant, the long faded Art Deco letters barley visible above the entrance, a broken neon sign with the cover dangling off below; visible off to my left, stenciled on the side of a red brick building the name of former David Soos – slip covers, draperies, upholstery – the red color of the bricks breaking through the white letters, the roof caved in, the windows shattered and revealing black abandoned insides like the mouth of a gaping monster; a tattoo polar; An’s Fashion – we buy gold, best prices, Banker’s check cashing; and the burned out and boarded up shells of Lou’s Gift Shop and the Mechanics and Farmers Savings Bank. Sauntering along the side walk were an old men with white disheveled hair, stubbled face, and dead vacant eyes, an old women with stingy dirty hair, a ragged cotton dress faded and worn out, struggling with a small shopping cart filled with plastic trash bags and overflowing with empty plastic coke bottles and cloths from good will. Some times I could see African American youths with fiery and angry faces, base ball caps turned backwards, and black tee shirts.
I knew that later that day I would be visiting clients just beyond this in neighborhoods of dilapidated clapboard houses with pealing paint, yards overrun with crab grass and weeds and littered with trash, iron gates with broken hinges and corroded metal, tape over cracked grass windows. At night gangs roamed the streets and random shootings were common. In the past year a dozen people had been shot. The holiday lights and plastic Jesus’ in the windows and on some of the doors was the only reminder that hope was not completely dead. The few small businesses were housed in even more ramshackle buildings with hand painted or broken signs, filthy windows covered with grim, and no attempt at enticement. Vacant lots were overgrown with patches of dead grass and dirt and strewn with discarded car radiators, corrugated boxes, plastic cups, and faded newspaper. If you went further down East Main or the other way down Capitol you got to a number of public housing apartment buildings. Inside, mold and bed bugs, rates and cock roaches, predominated. This is where my clients lived, their waves of panic coming from disembodied voices at the other end of my phone. When I was young, something happened that caused me to be drawn to such dark and evil places. It was always a search for God.
As I relaxed with a cup of coffee and opened my computer that morning, suddenly my cell phone rang. It was an old friend, an Episcopal Priest named Christopher. “Have you heard?” he said in a slightly urgent tone. “Heard what?” “There is a shooting in progress at the Sandy Hook Elementary School next to your church.” My mind went numb with shock. I ran down to my car and turned on the radio.
Five years earlier, to escape Bridgeport, and needing an oasis of serenity after retiring from the Episcopal ministry, I had accepted an offer to come to the tiny parish of St. John’s on the weekends to be their minister. St. John’s is in a small village called Sandy Hook on the edge of Newtown, a peaceful New England town where the lacework shadows of large Winged Elm, Sugar Maple, and Sycamore trees hang over country roads lined with white clapboard houses with spacious yards and dogs that bark at passers by. Here people walk leisurely and linger often, and the concerts at Trinity Church and the Duck races along the tiny babbling river that runs through the center of Sandy Hook are packed with townspeople.
St. John’s, a small stone church is just up Washington Street from the village center. Its old memorial plaques made of cast iron and its stain glass windows depicting subtle but colorful scenes of the Last Supper and the baptism of Jesus, create a benevolent but haunting air of mystery and serenity. On Sundays, the ancient catholic liturgy is still a living experience that can be transformative in its ability to instill peace in the heart.
The center of Sandy Hook is lined with ramshackle wood framed buildings with slightly pealing paint in a variety of shapes and sizes. On one side of the main street is the Sandy Hook Diner, there since 1935, a sagging and slightly dilapidated structure with red doors, a small field stone chimney, and flyers pasted on the windows. It is attached to a similarly disheveled looking private living quarters. Next door is the Sandy Hook Deli with an artificial brick facade and little mental tables with red umbrella outside. Across the street from the diner there is a long two story green building with three gold hearts made of tinsel and tin on the front. It is lined by a wood railing with flower boxes perched on top containing yellow and white and pink mums. On the second floor there are small red awnings over the windows. Julies’s piano workshop, Family Fun Kids, and the Karate Academy with large windows filled with trophies occupy this building. On the second floor there is a balcony fronted by carved plywood lacework and stairs leading to the sidewalk. Filling other nicks and crannies of the street are a barber shop with a striped poll outside, a counseling center, a small grey house with bunting over the door, and a 19th century Methodist Church with a squat steeple and a sign for the spaghetti supper. It is a comfortable lived in place where all types of people come to feel they are in a warm and friendly place they belong.
On the radio one story was colliding with another. Reports ricocheted through the air as one person continually broke in on another and sirens and urgent incomprehensible babbling voices filled the background. Reporters at the scene, police officers, government officials, the fire chief, witnesses, all gave conflicting and unreliable information in a rapid and ever changing cacophony of voices. There was a shooting. Most were safe. A few people, some children, were shot. There was a second gunman on the loose. There were more children hurt. The gunman was still alive. The gunman was dead. As I tried to make sense of this, a steady stream of calls caused my cell phone to ring. A member of the parish called crying and hysterical. The Episcopal bishop called, shocked by initial reports and pleading for more information. Christopher called with updates. One thought kept intruding on my mind - how to respond. After consulting with other members of the parish, we decided to open the church and then do a memorial service the next day at noon.
I sat alone in our living room that night, struggling to make sense of what happened, trying even to comprehend it, wrestling with what I could say the next day. I was facing into the very reality of Evil and into the belief in a God who allowed it. The only comforting thought was that in attendance there would probably be only the handful of parishioners I had grown to know so well and who would be forgiving if my words were inadequate.
The next morning, as I approached Sandy Hook, the normally serine street into the center was clogged with hundreds of cars and trucks, many from the media. A mob of reporters and cameramen surrounded our small stone church. As I made my way from the parking lot into the side entrance, a tall young man with strong features thrust a microphone into my face, saying he was from Kazakhstan. After speaking with him a few minutes I parried toward the door when a woman, who said she was from Ottawa, grabbed my hand and pleaded for a comment. Her large dark eyes were filled with exaggerated compassion. Dozens of others hovered and waited their opportunity, aggressive but cautiously so. It was long minutes before I could claw my way into the church. As I made my way down the aisle where scores of shattered bewildered people filled the pews, many incoherent, some sobbing, some praying silently, some clutching my hands, others hugging me, others looking at me with pleading eyes, the front doors opened and a stampede of reporters and cameramen flooded into the church, rushing, jostling, pushing, setting up lights and cameras and tripods, testing microphones, focusing lenses, unpacking, plugging, positioning, yelling, chords, cases, power packs, jackets covering the floor and draped over the pews. I could see logs from every major national news organization along with those of new organizations from other countries.
Suddenly, as my watch said noon, I shoved my way into the church from the sacristy and started the service. A few minutes later, as I approached the pulpit, a profound silence enveloped the church. I looked out on blinding lights and big camera lenses focusing their eyes on me just a few feet away, waiting with great anticipation. Behind this, obscured from my view, were the faces of ordinary people stunned with grief, uncomprehending, desperately in need of comfort, also listening. The eyes and ears of the world were focused on me.
God was not always so troubling to me. When I was growing up, the Lord ’s Prayer was part of our nightly ritual. My mother and I knelt down next to the bed in the still darkness, folded our hands reverently, and shut our eyes. At certain restless moments, I would occasionally sneak a peak at her. In the streams of pale light coming in under the door, I could see her face intense and contorted as she carefully articulated the words in a voice softly imbued with passion. Though I did not comprehend the prayer’s true meaning, her fervor instilled in me a strong sense of peace and security. On a deep level, all was right with us and always would be.
At the time I was not old enough to know how her simple faith sustained her or how it gave her life a meaning it would not otherwise have had. Nor did I understand that it did the same thing for millions of other middle class women throughout the country, creating an invisible web that ran through their stable and traditional lives, often warding off a frightening sense of emptiness and depression.
Though my father did not share my mother’s fervor, he always followed her lead and dutifully attended church every week. What reservations he may have had he kept to himself. We were members of the Spring Glen Congregational Church, just down the street on Whitney Avenue. It was the 1950s and all the main line churches were booming. I remember sitting in the polished walnut pews, stiff and uncomfortable, in a starched white shirt buttoned tight at the neck and a blue blazer that confined me like a straight jacket. I would stare at the morning sum pouring in through the great clear windows and splashing over the vast unadorned white walls in great sheets of light. The bareness and sterility of the church always impressed me at moments like this. Absorbed in my thoughts, all the goings on were like ambient sound – the shrill grating of a soprano bellowing a tuneless anthem, the middle aged minister dressed in a long black robe delivering a folksy sermon, the clank of little plastic cups of grape juice forbidden to me – none of it making any sense at all. My mother loved it, however. This was clear from the radiant smile on her face and the gusto in her voice when she sang the rousing Protestant hymns. Somehow, I knew, there must be a connection with the God we experienced in the intimacy of our room at night but I did not know what it was and, at times, I would wonder what I was missing.
Then, as I began my adolescence in the early 1960s, just as the nation entered the agony of self doubt, something mysterious happened. I do not know the deep reality of her experience, but my mother too began to question all that she believed. And, as quickly as breath evaporating in a cold winter wind, she lost her simple faith. The Lord’s Prayer no longer held sway over her life. The terrifying emptiness and despair flood in. And her life crumbled into ashes.
When this happened, the strong sense of peace and comfort I found in her fervent belief also dissolved. Like so many young people, I would spend much of the next decade disillusioned, angry, rebellious, questioning, and ultimately searching for something lost, a spiritual foundation to life, something that my mother’s generation counted as its birth right. In a sense, our story is the story of a generation striving to recapture its soul.