Rags

As she stepped into the room, she stooped a bit from the years piled upon her shoulders like bricks on a wall, but the smile on her face was as sincere as a child’s. She betrayed her years as well with her hurried speech, words tumbling out of her mouth like a spilled jar of jellybeans. She was, I thought, one very alive nun.

Although her exterior radiated the warmth of the sun on everybody stepping into her eyesight, her interior carried a sadness that weighed heavy on her soul. It was a secret that she had locked away in her broken heart, a secret she had carried with her for so many years that it had melded with her flesh and could be pried apart only with the greatest patience and with an almost surgical precision.

She had come to me because it was time to unburden her soul. Her body had whispered for a while now that her time was short and the whispers had turned into occasional shouts. She wanted to free herself of the weight on her soul, if she could, and she yearned to think that God might forgive her, if he could, of the wrong she had stored away in her soul these many years. It was now or never and she knew it deep in her soul.

So, she told me her story. And soon the rush of words that had greeted me at the start became a slow drip as the seconds moved on, as if the river of life had run dry in her and now only a parched pathway remained. I waited because I saw that each word was weighed carefully, as a butcher might do with meat on the scale. And I also knew by the expression on her face that each word was a slice through her tender flesh as she opened her soul to me.

Her story began many years in the past, long before the years had stooped her shoulders and turned her hair gray and made her steps less secure. She spoke to me of her work in prison ministry, a work she took to be true to her Lord’s command to visit those imprisoned. And I thought what a brave nun she was, steeled by the divine precept to enter into such a cruel and cavernous place where condemned men cursed behind bars, away from the light of day and away from proper and polite people.

Still, even with the ugly sights and the obscene sounds that can come only from men reduced to their animal natures, she spoke to these men of a God who loved them where they were and how they were, and she prayed with and for them to the same God who cared for the castaways of society more than he did for the high and mighty.

She told me how she led these men in the study of those sacred pages where stories of sly snakes and prodigal sons and roadside bandits and forgiven thieves were told with the same recognizable plots and with the same familiar faces as if they were present-day events and not ancient narratives about a long lost place and a long ago people. She brought the pages to life, as she did most everything around her. And I believe–although I did not see for myself–that she may have turned the hearts of more than one of these hardened criminals toward a gentler and a kinder path.

As with any teacher, she came to know her students, some better than others, only because some came more often to her study of scripture and some spoke more than others about the stories that she told from the Bible. Still she loved them all because Jesus loved them all. That much she was sure of because that was her life. She was, after all–in the old school of thought–a bride of Christ.

As she slowly set the stage for me–a dark stage broken by bits of light from Bible stories of hope and forgiveness and redemption and second chances told to men who thought all their chances were used up–I sensed a deeper darkness coming as she looked nervously into her wrinkled hands and twisted the gold band on her finger that she had worn all these years as a sign that she was wedded to her Savior. Again, I waited, unsure of what sentence the string of words she spoke would form, and what I would feel after I heard it finally spoken aloud. I knew in my gut it was a storm brewing in the west.

Her breath caught somewhere deep inside her and her eyes filled with tears as she continued this surgical removal of the secret in her soul. She found the strength–somehow–to pry open the heavy door to her heart and I could see the resolve it required and I could see imaginary fingers bloodied and bruised as she fought to pull open those cast-iron doors. The strength necessary to do it was surpassed only by the need to have it done once and for all.

She looked at me and looked away from me, timidity and anxiety filling her chest cavity, knowing the next few words would change everything. Once spoken, the words could not be returned or refuted. And what danger or damage they would do once the seal on her lips was broken was unknown and unpredictable. Did I urge her on? In all likelihood I did not because this was her battle and all I could do was demonstrate respect for the person and for the process by a silent openness to whatever awaited me.

After a while, she told the last of the story. One of the men inside the prison had been released. He had been one of her students in her Bible program in the prison. She remembered him well as any good teacher would. Some short time after his release, he contacted her, as she had shared with them where she worked, and he asked if he could continue to talk to her as he had when he was in prison.

She agreed because she was a person who saw goodness where little of it existed and because she believed people could change and become better than they were. And for these errors in judgment–although how could she think otherwise and still be a nun– she would pay dearly. She met with the man and he raped her.

Yes, she wept the words, he took from her what she had promised to the One she loved and lived for, the man of Nazareth who also believed the best in people and who also paid dearly for his errors in judgment. She had worn his wedding ring and she had vowed faithfulness to him alone and now her ring reminded her of her infidelity and her vows evoked guilt every time she thought of them.

As she spoke to me, now her body almost bent in half with her head so low and her voice equally low, she asked me how she could meet her spouse, her Lord, with broken promises and a broken body. How, she asked, could he accept her as his pure bride when she was no longer pure and how, she asked, could he love her when her gift to him had been taken by another man. How? That was the question that she asked me again and again.

I knew enough to know there are no easy answers to anything and there are no answers to some things. But I told her then and there a beautiful story that I had once read by the beautiful writer Wangerin about a beautiful man he called the Ragman. This Ragman, as Wangerin told the story, was young in years, strong in body, as he walked through a city like any other city because it was filled with cries and crimes, sins and shameless acts. The man, said Wangerin, stood tall and his eyes seemed to see deep within a person. At first sight, said Wangerin, the guy looked like he was in the wrong place. Nevertheless, the Ragman did the ugly work of pulling a cart through the city streets, asking people to give him their dirty rags and he would give them clean rags.

As Wangerin told his story–and I could not even then and do not even now do it justice in my own telling– as the young man traded his clean clothes for ragged clothes from the world-weary and worn-out souls he met on the way, he seemed to take on the burdens of the person at the same time he took from them their rags. As the day moved on, Wangerin said, the Ragman became old and stooped and unsteady on his feet. With the last of his strength, he struggled on the road to the city dump where he lay down and where he died.

Wangerin’s story, like the Biblical drama of the Galilean carpenter, did not end on the trash heap, but ended instead on a Sunday morning when the Ragman rose up, scarred for sure, but made new as were all the rags he had worn upon his body. Now he stood tall and his legs were strong again. I continued the telling of Wangerin’s story as the nun listened and as she wept, so deep was her understanding of dirty rags. Now, it was only a question of her being able to entrust the rags she clutched in her soul’s grip to the Ragman of Nazareth.

I begged her with all my might to see that the Ragman wanted her rags because he saw in them, not the dirt but the distress, not the blots but the burdens. Did he not say, “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy-burdened and I will give you rest?” Would he not do for her as he had done for so many others?

And that is how I ended this surgery on her soul, with the promise that the Man of Galilee would take whatever clothes–stained and soiled–she had and he would give to her soft and stain-free clothes that shone like the sun. He would–I promised her–restore to her the purity and the perfection she once had. I like to think she believed me. With no more than that story and with no more than those words, I saw her out of the room.

In time, when our paths chanced to cross again, she told me she had come to believe the story. And I, for my part, thought I could see her shoulders less stooped and her walk less slow as she moved towards her meeting with her Lord. Perhaps it was a hope on my part, but I think it was not.

I know this much. Some few years later I attended her funeral. And at the start of the service, I watched as a pure white cloth was draped over the simple casket that held her now soulless body, a cloth placed there as a reminder of the baptismal gown worn by those who give themselves to the Lord, and I felt in my heart that the pure white cloth that rested there was so much more.

I swear I could see, if not by sight then by faith–that nun standing now before her bridegroom, he with a smile upon his face and she with a white bridal dress, and I saw him take her into his arms and bring her close to his heart. And he spoke to her these ancient words, “You are beautiful in every way, my bride, and there is no flaw in you!” (Song of Songs 4.7). Then, he and his bride walked through heaven’s gate, where, I like to think, all rags and all ragged persons are made new.

— Jeremy Myers