A Dark and Stormy Night

"It was a dark and stormy night..." I heard a rhaspy voice say into my ear from behind, as I quickly whipped around. I was taken by surprise when I discovered the narrator to be a street person I did not initially recognize. When he realized he succeeded in getting my attention, he repeated his refrain once again: "It was a dark and stormy night... on SHUTTER ISLAND" It seemed as if he were whispering and yelling at the same time. What did this man want from me? Was he a former author, now wandering the streets with no home and no money, desperate to tell his story?

He was a short, stout, hooded figure with small, piercing blue eyes and a mouth that moved crookedly off the side of his leathery face. I could smell alcohol on his breath as he spoke just inches from my face, intent on making his stare as frightening as the story he wished to relay. His tilted smirk told me that he was more entertained by his telling it than I might have been.

So I bought into it, laughing softly and trying to look curious to hear the rest of the story. But he seemed to be caught on that phrase, repeating it over and over again, each time dragging it out in a different way, or interjecting with "did ya hear?...It was a dark and stormy night!"

Finally he stopped, and moved immediately into a new story, this one based in reality. He told me how as a young man he used to spend the night sleeping under the pews of Trinity Episcopal Church in downtown Boston, and how each night he would hear the "crazy man with the keys running around locking all the doors." He told of being kicked out of that church years later when he marched into the sanctuary in mid day, defying the sign that posted the prices for entry: "self-guided tour: $5; guided tour: $7." Walking boldly down the aisle, he was stopped by the cashiers that ran after him.

This wasn't his only scarring experience. At another church accross from the common, there hung a banner over the front steps reading "All are welcome", and below there was a yellow cone in place with a sign that read "No Trespassing", an attempt by local law enforcement to keep the homeless from camping out on those steps at night.

Something should seem wrong about that...

And that's not even the worst. On one occasion he was at a Christmas service at another traditional church, listening to the sound of Christmas hymns rising from the great organ up front. He hollared from his seat, a few rows back "How about playing 'O Little Town of Bethlehem?'" When he didn't get a response, he walked up the aisle to find no one behind the organ. "it was a ghost organ" he claimed (I'm not sure if those actually exist but that's besides the point). And as he walked back to his seat, he was stopped by a woman who worked at the church. "We can't have you yelling in the sanctuary," she told him as she then moved to escort him out the door. "How dare you!" he exclaimed to her. "You wouldn't know Jesus if you tripped over him!" his voice echoed in the vast cathedral as he walked out.

"So why are the doors locked?" He asked me now, filled with a hint of rising anxt. And suddenly I recalled where I had seen him before. I knew why he looked familiar, and why I smelled alchohol on his breath. This was the same man who approached our group several months ago in a drunken rage about how the Church is full of a bunch of phoneys (see blog Jan 19). It was also the same man I met at the very beginning of the year, on a rainy day that forced us to gather on the shelter of the church steps mentioned above, where he once told me these same stories. His stories awakened my memory and reminded me of the gloomy predicament our church is still in the midst of. So why are the doors still locked? And how will we unlock them?

"They say He'll come like a thief in the night," he said, "knocking on all of the doors- knock...knock...knock. So that's what I'm gonna do, I'll go around like a thief in the night, just knocking. But no one will ever be there to open those doors, except of course the crazy man with the keys running around locking them all."

Slowly his story faded back into the haunting prose it began with. There he went again: "It was a dark and stormy night... on SHUTTER ISLAND." His eyebrows raised at the end of each reprise. "Have you ever been to Shutter Island?"

When I got back, I decided I should do some research on this "Shutter Island" he kept referring to. I found out it was a novel written by Dennis Lehane and published in 2003. The storyline focuses on a character named Teddy who is sent with a partner to Shutter Island to avenge the death of his wife and find to the murderess who supposedly escaped from a mental institution there. In the end however, he learns that he himself was the murderer and the island was a false reality under surveillance of a warden who was holding him there and planning to give him a lobotomy. (rough/incomplete summary).

I did some more research:
"The rocky isle from which Lehane takes his title is supposedly one of four located immediately outside the busy harbor of Boston, Massachusetts... In Shutter Island, what should be nourishing is not--and what appears to be reality is not, either. This is a book replete with deceptions... Like the mental patients being treated on Shutter Island, this story veers sharply from reality, offering truth without the opportunity for healing." [Anthony Rainone, Island of No Return]

Hmm...shutter island, eh? Well although it's a great deal spookier, and a bit far-fetched, I can see some sort of parallel with our Church- at least the bit about "offering truth without the opportunity for healing".

I asked Kennie (the man I've been talking about) if he still had faith in spite of the problems he's seen in the Church. His answer shocked me when he said "No, I'm done with all that. I tried it. The way I see it, I don't owe anybody anything- not the big guy above or the man below. Nope, I'm done."

Despite my feeble attempt to convince him that God is much different than how we portray Him, I don't know if Kennie left the common that day with a changed heart. All I could do was pray that the Christ he may have seen in me would look different than the one he'd seen in the stained-glass windows. The Church to him had been a place of propogated, stubborn, lifeless "truth", that slammed the doors at the sight of his homelessness and alcoholism. It had never been a place that welcomed him in to be healed.

At one point in the story of Shutter Island, Teddy reflects on the love he had for his late wife, before any of the mess ever happened:

Teddy had leaned into the cab and spoken to her in whispers and what they talked about, even now, he couldn't bear to recount even to himself. Because it was pure. It was the purest he'd ever felt.

He thought: so this is what it feels like to love. No logic to it--he barely knew her. But there it was just the same. He'd just met the woman he'd known, somehow since before he was born. The measure of every dream he'd never dared indulge.

When will we wake up from this false reality, and return from our own "Shutter Island"? When will let the truth of Christ break open our doors, and His love bring us back to life? We go to church claiming we want to meet with Him, but I wonder if we would we say the same if we found he was a smelly homeless man (which he was, actually). Would we even know Him if we tripped over Him, perhaps as we're walking up the steps of our own church?

...I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. 2Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. 3Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. 4Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. 5He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels. 6He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches...

7These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. 8I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut...

20Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. [Revelation 3]

*Fun fact: Part of this passage was highlighted in a Bible that was placed by someone in the door handle of one of the doors to our chapel recently. At the time, the door was lying on the chapel steps, after being blown off by a violent wind storm that hit our campus several nights ago.