The Sharing of the Holy People

While I was living outside Wausau in Rib Mountain, a friend of mine
and a varying collection of other people formed a dispersed community
for daily prayer. One member of the group would compose a guide for
a two week period of shared prayer, typically including both morning
and evening prayer time. Because the members of the group were living
in different locations and had differing work schedules, and often
were in multiple time zones, there was no set moment when all of us
were in prayer together. Nevertheless, both my friend and I felt the
common support of the group praying together -- when we all did. But
when some of the group gave only lip service to our common prayer, we
could feel the weight of their lack of sharing. This sense of the
community was small and nebulous, hard to pin down. One could perhaps
have argued that it arose from external data about the contributions
of the other people, but we both believed that we felt the support of
the community -- or its lack -- in a more direct and spiritual way.

Years later, my mother was nearing the end of her life and was in the
hospital. Because of poorly diagnosed pain, complicated by the cancer
which was also present, a series of analgesics had been prescribed.
One night I suddenly woke in the early morning hours and immediately
decided that I needed to go to my mother. I had no idea why, but the
urgency was such that I dressed hurriedly, put the dog outside, and
set off. When I arrived, I discovered that there had been confusion
about her medication orders, such that she had been improperly dosed.
I stayed with my mother long enough to reassure her and to convince
me that the error was being corrected.

During the same time, another friend of mine was also dying of cancer.
Some weeks after the incident with my mother in the hospital, I woke
again with the same suddenness. In this case, I did not have a sense
that I needed to do anything. I was very aware at the time of this
difference, so I simply sat in bed for a time, uncertain why I had
been awakened. Then I went back to sleep until morning, when the
telephone rang. My friend had died during the night.

I am well attuned to being a modern skeptic. I'm always prepared to
discount just-so stories. But I've also lived narratives which would
be comfortable in medieval hagiography, minus the customary visual
hallucinations and allegorical explanations. So I am convinced that
there is a truth that lies beneath the communio sanctorum.


                                                       January 2017