A Priestly Encounter

When I approached the priest in Terminal B at George Bush International Airport, he was eating an egg salad sandwich. A spot of mayo lingered in the corner of his mouth. 

I was in distress.

I was feeling vertiginous, adrift in unfamiliar space, as if there were gaps between my very cells. The ground beneath my feet had shifted in a startling way during a meditation retreat in a lush, five-acre garden sanctuary in Patzcuaro, Mexico. One minute I was present, gazing at a species of Tiger Lily during an exercise called "aimless wandering," entranced by stamen and pistil - then I wasn't, in a way that felt entirely unfamiliar. But, where was I? My sense of time and place had slipped. 


"How wonderful," someone said when I voiced my experience to the group. People smiled.


"Is it?" I wasn't feeling wonderful or even enlightened. I felt weak-kneed and rubbery. The feeling stayed with me for the rest of the week. Sometimes I felt anxious, like I had to put my head down and recite a nursery rhyme. At other times I relaxed and floated along, the tips of my fingers tingling, as if I'd just sucked a balloon's worth of helium into my lungs. 


As I waited for my flight to Boston at George Bush International, I leaned my head against the large plate glass window overlooking the docked airplanes and breathed deeply. I was standing in front of a Starbucks, lost in indecision between a skinny vanilla chai and a mocha soy latte when I spied my priest.


Oh, what the hell, I thought.


"Excuse me, Father," I began. "Would you happen to have a minute?"


An Irish brogue had suddenly transformed my voice as if I were Ingrid Bergman addressing the kindly Father Flanagan in Boy's Town.


The priest frowned and stood up.


"Yes?" he said.


"I think I've lost my place," I began. "It may be a question of faith."


"Are you a Catholic?" he asked.


"No," I answered. "I've been an Episcopalian and a Jew, but now I'm more of a Buddhist."

"I see," the priest said. His mouth became a straight line of disapproval.


"I feel a bit off, you see, Father."


The priest glared at me as if he thought I might be slightly more than a bit off.


"I don't really see how I can help," he said with annoyance.


"Would you have some sort of a non-denominational prayer for me, something that might help me right now in my, um, hour of need?"


"A prayer? I don't think so." He backed away.


I grabbed at his black surplice. "You don't have any sort of a prayer? What about the Our Father, Father?"

"You could try it, I suppose. Might work, might not. Maybe you just ought to go to church."

As a child, I had gone to church. I remembered reciting the Our Father with the line expressly directed to all the commuting Dads who worked in New York City: "...and lead us not into Penn Station." Even though some of them, like my dad, found religion on the golf course rather than indoors on countless glorious Sundays.


Then he was gone, vanished behind an adjacent Borders without a single, thoughtful proclamation of hope. No "Don't worry, my child, this too shall pass." Nada. Nix.

I was already laughing when I texted my friend, Kerry, back home in Vermont. 

"So much for the priesthood," she texted in reply. "Go get a latte." 

These days, when I experience that groundless sensation, that subtle shift that nudges me into the not known, a space that can't actually be defined or sought, I go with it.

I welcome it.