Sister Florette’s Mustard Tree

This past Monday afternoon during my daily walk through Mount Horeb I decided to rest at Grandma Foster Park, like I normally do if the walk is long. There are evergreen trees for shade, a pavilion, and under that pavilion are two tables, one in the northwest corner and another in the southeast corner. The tables are not especially suited for resting since the benches attached to the tables have no back, however you can lay down on either the table or bench itself. On this particular day however, I sat upright at the southeast table, nursing my latte which was now lukewarm, with the milk possibly going bad. I was staring at a squirrel crossing Washington street, coming towards me, running for its very existence as the A+ Plumbing truck went over it without snuffing its life. The squirrel jumped up on the northwest table across from me and stared in my direction. I made eye contact, thinking it would just scurry away, since they tend to be skittish creatures, not unlike some people I know. We continued to stare at each other until I went into a half daze, thinking about what the squirrel might think of me, as if I meant something at all to the squirrel. As we stared at each other an old woman with a cane, dressed as a nun, sat down with her back towards me at the only other table at Grandma Foster Park, the one where the squirrel was sitting. While I didn’t really feel like talking I at least said “good morning,” and continued to stare at an angle towards the back of her habit and side of her face. The nun did not reply with a greeting herself, nor did she make eye contact, but simply said as she tilted her head toward the east, “that squirrel is always here and I think it has problems.” I responded with a polite chuckle, but made it clear that I did not want to engage at this time. Still, I thought the comment was unnatural, and I also thought it unnatural that squirrel did not move, especially given its skittish nature. She pulled an envelope out of her bag, placed the contents on the table before her and started reading, but I could tell that she was struggling since her ample nose was almost pressed against the paper. After about 15 minutes of silence she got up from the table, seemingly exasperated due to her poor eyesight, placed the papers back in the envelope, and gently balanced it on the RIM of the trash can to my left, the one in the southwest corner of the pavilion. She left the table, heading east toward downtown Mount Horeb. The squirrel was still on the table. I thought it queer, not just about the stationary squirrel, but that she placed the envelope on the rim and not in the can itself, so I got the sense, as anyone would, that I should read the contents, which was probably her intent for whatever reason. At least I hope that was her intent and that I’m not sharing this ‘out of school.’ Sister Florette 310 East Main Street APT 2 Mount Horeb, WI 53572 Dear Sister Florette, This is your old friend Raoul from Braga, now residing in somewhat nearby Springfield. Certainly, and obviously, much has transpired since we last conversed at the café near The Garden of Santa Braga, and I hope to call you at some point to catch-up if you would be okay with that. In the interim I would like to ask for your prayers for my soul, however, before I pass away I thought it would be prudent to share a story with you since you may find some use for it, and if not, just consider it a source of spiritual amusement. The church I attended when I arrived in America, Christian Church, with pastor Chris Smith, was not large but not small either, and looked more like a large Quonset hut than an actual church building, but it wasn’t unattractive as you might envision one of these WW2 era structures. I have been a member for over 50 years, and was pondering the history, thinking back to when I first arrived. The congregation size had hovered around 100 to 150 souls each Sunday and for 30 years it had not grown very much, if at all. Then, in 2020 or so something changed, not drastically, but almost unseen at first. One of the individuals in the church, a farrier by trade, started engaging one of his neighbors, which may seem innocuous at first, but every Wednesday he would cut the woman’s grass and every Thursday he would cook a meal for her and her two sons. He had started these activities a couple of years prior, but would never miss a week, and if he were to be out of town for whatever reason he would always find a replacement. Now the woman, Glinda, who lived in the house was not a Christian at all, more of a Pagan than anything else, and the farrier, Ivan Popovich was a marginal Christian. His parents were from Odessa, but Ivan grew up here in America near Springfield. Nothing special about either Ivan or Glinda, except that one afternoon at the grocery store near the avocados, Ivan saw Glinda who lived in the neighborhood. After some initial pleasantries Glinda mentioned to Ivan that she was just so tired since her divorce and wished that someone or some organization would provide a meal service to tired moms. At that moment Ivan told Glinda that he would provide such a service, and that Glinda would be his first ‘customer.’ Bewildered and pleased, she said “ok,” and headed over to Canned Meats, as Ivan rolled his cart over to the Fish Department. What Glinda didn’t know was that Ivan had just prayed that morning that God would show him his will for that day, and while he was praying he somehow got the idea that Jesus actually meant what He said. The problem was that He said so much, so it was just all too overwhelming for Ivan, and tended to make his head swim. He eventually solved the confusion by settling on the idea to make a two-year commitment to just obey two commandments, those being to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. The reason he picked these was that he had just read that they were the most important and given his myriad of weaknesses and poor habits he figured that if he was going to obey commandments it might as well be the major ones, and that somehow the remainder of his sins would take care of themselves and fall away of their own volition. Kind of like the saying that if you take care of the pennies the millions will take care of themselves. I digress. He decided to start small, and not love everyone, or even most people, but would just start with one person, the aforementioned Glinda. After a few weeks of service he found that not only did he like cooking, but he went to bed on those service nights with a feeling of bliss in his heart, which helped his previous fitful slumbers which still persisted on the non-service nights. He never did gain a fondness for lawn care. After a month or so he enjoyed his nascent life of service so much that he added one more individual, an intersex person in the same neighborhood named Almira to his weekly service routine. This went on for months, and not many in the church noticed, but the neighborhood did. They all knew that Ivan was a Christian but couldn’t understand why was he serving THESE people for no reason, with no pay, and for so long, especially since Ivan’s world view was the polar opposite of theirs. On occasion people would approach him and ask him about this directly, to which he replied, “God wants me to.” Nothing more. Over time more and more people would ask him (as well as Glinda and Almira) as to the reason for Ivan’s perplexing behavior, and the reason was always the same as indicated. In any case Ivan was having such a good time with this that he started asking others at Christian Church to try the same thing, not so much to help the community but to help those in his fellowship, knowing that they might experience the same bliss at least two nights a week and possibly improve their sleep if it needed improvement. Most of the congregants rejected his “offer”, but there were a few where he could see a small spark in their eyes, and as small as it was, it was not imperceptible. At first it was just one or two others, also marginal Christians, but again, over the period of three or four months, the multiplier effect was fascinating, as it created a type of buzz in the neighborhood surrounding these new zealots who had seemingly lost their minds, serving neighbors who had previously looked askance at them and them they. Here they were cutting grass, making meals, raking leaves, writing letters, babysitting children, on and on with abandon, serving friends and enemies alike. It was as if they were translated into another world, no longer adhering to the norms of the current one. I guess you could say they were living in the Kingdom of Heaven which had been overlayed as an additional dimension on top of the village of Springfield. The children of those recipients also noticed, asking their parents why these people were showing repeated kindness to them for no apparent reason and without compensation, and the answer always came back, “God wants them to,” since it was the only answer that was ever given. This became the de facto answer in the village, almost kind of a joke but not a joke due to its reality. Pretty soon, partly through Ivan’s petitioning, but mostly through the Holy Spirit, the number of servants from Christian Church increased to about 30 individuals, making two year commitments, an aggregate of 60 years of commitment compressed into two years of elapsed time, serving approximately 60 families of four with a multiplier effect of 240, but with neighborhood cross talk you could put that number at about 2000 or so, which is more than significant in a village of 9,000. Then when the 2000 started talking, the whole village was curious and abuzz, and the love of Christ was now becoming palpable. Still the church remained at the same size it had always been UNTIL, one day, Ivan called the 30 fellow servants together and asked them to invite the recipients of their service to Christian Church, just to see what God would do. Almost everyone agreed except for one particularly shy servant, and then they prayed that God would do what God does, proceeded with their invitations, and that my dear sister is when things got weird. Of the 60 individuals who were invited, 32 actually attended, some with families in tow, and while some only attended once, many went faithfully every week, even though they were not even Christian. They just liked it there for reasons they could not explain. Soon, they were inviting their own friends there, and over just a period of a few months the sanctuary was stuffed to the gills, and fire codes were beginning to feel violated, which made the local news, which only aggravated the problem. You see the more the codes were violated the more the people came. And even though they were not yet Christian you would see supposedly non-believers of every facet praising God, with hands raised, along with the Christians. People were actually donating to the Fire Code Violation Fine Fund, and it’s a wonder the whole thing wasn’t shut down. To the Fire Department it was a wonder that they even had such a fund, and kind of aggravated them. Now sure there were those who would find reason to criticize the operation for a host of post-modern reasons, but in this case even valid criticisms would just bounce right off since nothing could be spoken against the thrust of the Church which was “Loving your Neighbor.” All criticisms just fell flat off the Iron Shield of Compassion, to the point where the critics themselves felt ashamed. What was worth noting was that there was not really any change in the church service itself, the faithful pastor preached in the same style he had preached for the last 40 years, the worship band kept the same complement of instruments, the elders remained until they died of natural causes, the only change being that a few individuals decided to actively engage with their neighbor in obedience to the simplicity of the gospel. It should also be noted that this was not without a cost on the part of the servants. They had to give up or interrupt their busy lives for people that they hardly knew, people that held opposing philosophical views, people that they hated, and many that had a disdain for Evangelical Christians in general. Since many of the servants did not really know how to cook, the meals initially took them hours in terms of time at the store, preparing the ingredients, cooking them, packaging, and the subsequent delivery to wherever and whomever. It wasn’t the one time meal that was burdensome, but the persistent every week task, droning on inside a two year commitment. Yet, it really didn’t drone on too badly because these servants looked at it AS IF they was serving Jesus directly, as if Jesus lived in those houses. The scripture about ‘the least of these’ could be quoted, you probably can quote it from memory Florette, or find it on your own, but I’m too lazy (as you know) to look it up. It’s there though, trust me on this one. It needed to be this way, because making one meal or one lawn service might be a nice gesture, the making of 104 meals (or other tasks) over two years becomes monumental to Ivan and the servants, but more so to the recipients and to those who witness it through the multiplier effect already mentioned. And when the children of these non-Christian parents grew up to become young adults, this monument of love stood tall in their memory for decades, and while not all became Christians they could not speak against it. To the contrary, the stories would be told for generations even if they countered their ideological stance against Christianity. Over the next two years there were 30 times 104 meals served, or other such servant tasks performed by the disciples of Christian Church, or 3120 labors of love, making a large dent in the town’s psyche. Christian Church eventually had to expand its building but that really didn’t solve the space problem because unexpectedly, people in the surrounding area saw no reason to attend elsewhere, since, well, they didn’t really know, this just seemed to be the most full of Life. It’s not that the other congregations lost members, or adherents to their brand of teaching, but their pews were largely empty since people of every denomination wanted to be at Christian Church even as they declared allegiance elsewhere and even though they took issue with portions of the doctrine taught by Pastor Chris. Even the people that had left the church due to sundry grievances over doctrine or practice were returning. Some didn’t like the Pastor’s view on cohabitation, or divorce, LGBTQ, whatever, it was worth tolerating his ancient views just to be there. I’m not going to say it didn’t matter, but I will say that it didn’t matter enough for them to stay away. The teachings of Pastor Chris, though excellent and true were not the draw, and had never been the draw, the draw was a holy compulsion of truth and love, intangible yet palpable, no dilution, divine and present, causing liquid tears of “joyful-wonder-awe” that could not be suppressed and as hard as the strong men tried, their cheeks stained as they plowed through their embarrassment. I’m reminded of the time when Jesus said ‘where two or three are gathered in my name there I am in the midst of them,’ and it was that presence of the Holy of Holies, the Alpha and Omega, permeating the midst of that Quonset hut that could not be resisted. So as you can see with the unbelievers now in attendance along with current and past members the architects were in a state of confusion regarding the design of a building whose size could not be predicted. This phenomenon did not go unnoticed throughout the county and even the state, and in the years to come other churches started engaging their respective communities as did Christian Church, and now the spiritual complexion of the entire state took on the complexion of the village where it had started. As of 2033 it was being noticed by the various national outlets, such as Vox, Huffington, and The Atlantic, where an article was entitled, The Mustard Seed of Springfield, and they even likened it to the Jesus People movement of the 1970’s with the key difference being not only the depth but also the width in terms of age demographics. In other words, the Jesus People movement was mostly young, whereas the Mustard Seed was spread evenly across young and old alike. What they did not mention was that Ivan, who had been referred to as the mustard seed itself, was actually a product of the Jesus movement of the 70’s which was a product of Lonnie Frisbee (spelling), which was largely a product of Chuck Smith, who was a product of his parents (spiritually and physically), who were products of Saint Peter, and so on and so forth, until you reach the original seed of The Son of Man himself. In retrospect, I think about the many churches we have today, Saint Ignatius included, which may believe in loving their neighbor, and may act accordingly in limited fashion, but never on the scale or the magnitude outlined here. This was not a token love but a crazy love, which ironically was one of the songs the church sang before it acquired the crazy servants. Nominal love blends in, but Crazy Love shouts from the housetops. The reason I share this with you is that you may choose to employ this at St. Ignatius, if for no other reason than to see what happens. Dear sister, I guarantee you that it won’t be nothing. Again, please pray for me if you remember and I look forward to speaking with you over the phone soon, if not in person. Until then, Your friend and fellow laborer in Christ, Raoul Duarte I was pretty sure that the sister had read the letter, but not absolutely sure since she seemed to be struggling as I had mentioned. Also, I felt a bit guilty for reading her private correspondence, but she DID leave it on the trash can rim so that’s on her. In any case the address on the envelope was only about a quarter mile to the east so I walked it back to 310 East Main, which is the Chiropractic Office of Dr. Bohl. The receptionist greeted me, and I presented the envelope asking if Sister Florette was around, to which she replied, “haven’t seen Florette in years since her funeral was ages ago.” The color left my face.