My phone rang while I was walking through Arlington National Cemetery last week. It was Rita McConnon, a Massachusetts riding stable owner who helps children of all ages connect with something larger than themselves.
I had profiled Rita for one of my early posts on Finding Faith. She is what many would call a woman of faith, someone who sees each person as a “child of God,” someone whose lexicon includes the mantra: “Fear not. Have hope.”
I have news, she said. “I’m opening up a homeless shelter ... and it’s all because of you.”
I was speechless. It really wasn't me, of course. It was people I'd interviewed, people she'd never met but heard and read about.
I had told Rita about the Rev. Deborah Little-Wyman, a mere slip of a woman who had the guts to go wade out into the vast homeless community of Boston, armed only with sandwiches and socks and a vague notion of wanting to live the gospels like Jesus did.
I had told her about Jim Oldread, a homeless man the Rev. Steven Maki and I met in Back Bay, about how courageous I thought this man was. I had walked right up to him, introduced myself as a journalist, told him I was searching for the soul of America and that I wanted to ask him some tough questions on camera. What struck me was how honestly he tried to answer my questions, how thoughtful he was, and how even though he was living on the streets, he blamed his alcoholism, not God. With so much grayness and coldness of a Boston winter, this homeless guy was talking about finding beauty in Dali and in the stars at night.
I had told Rita that on the street faith seems real.
There are people like this woman, the mother of a soldier, who responded to the Vietnam Wall post.
“For a year you worry you pray. You check your e-mail a hundred times a
day, knowing there would be one about every two to three days. The
ultimate fear is when you get one that says I'm going on a field trip
for awhile don't worry I'll call when I get back. I learned to talk to
God more than pray watching the sun coming up over the mountains and
telling him another day you are trusting him with your most precious
position your only child.”
Here people are actually living their faith. No matter what you’re religious denomination or whether you even believe in God, there is a certain power in that.
One of the earliest people I met on the road, George Laye, runs the Guthrie Center in Great Barrington, Mass.
George is a wonderful man, a pacifist with an infectious childlike enthusiasm. He presides over a shrine to 60s counterculture in what was once a Protestant church. He doesn’t know if he believes in God. He says it’s not his job to wonder whether God exists; he’ll find out soon enough.
This weekend, I’ll be exploring a new part of the country. I’m on my way to Florida to find more people of faith and to explore Florida’s Afro-Caribbean religions.
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