"It's all because I read a story about Crazy Horse when I was in eighth grade," she tells people. For a couple of years, she read everything she could get her hands on--about Indians. That's the story she tells.
I've heard it more than once, a showstopper of a line, in part because she's not complaining, not at all. That line of introduction, just like everything else she says, comes out in a smile because she loves to tell people about St. Paul's and the community she serves. She loves the people too. She loves her dog hugely, loves the church grounds. It's very peaceful. Loves a lot of things.
You can't help but smile.
Oh, and she teaches too, in the branch of the Native college that meets on the campus of St. Paul's. She loves that too, she says, and smiles some more.
Sister Pat is 76 years old. She's been at St. Paul's for just about all of her life. She was born in Youngstown, Ohio, and when she came she'd had never been to the Yankton Reservation--or the plains of South Dakota for that matter. She was just 17, she'll tell you, and when she left her folks she cried like a baby but never thought--not for a minute--about not coming. She doesn't say it, doesn't have to; but in an old-fashioned way, you might say she was sure in her calling. And that was just a few years after she read that book about Crazy Horse.
She's small and stocky, and her naturally curly hair is a kind of bush that doesn't require much fuss, but then she's a religious and has never aspired for beauty. What she aspired to is to be here, to serve, ever since eighth grade, since Crazy Horse.
Up front of St. Paul's, the wall behind the altar is full of people, some of whom, Sister Pat says, she doesn't know. Many are distinguishable saints, but some are just people. "See those prairie animals down below," she says, smiling, and pointing at the rabbits and the pheasants.
Way down below on the right is a sister in an old-fashioned regalia. "Did you used to wear a habit?" I asked her.
"I sure did," she said. "That band over your forehead starts to bind after while, and the collar gets dirty really quick because you sweat, you know. . ." She looks down at herself. "I should have dressed up a little," she says. "I knew you were coming." She was wearing jeans and a tent-sized t-shirt from a fun run for cancer victims.
When one of her guests asks about numbers, she says the real problem is priests. There's only two anywhere close, so they can't make it regularly, and then one of them's blind in one eye and doesn't travel well. And that's when she says something I've never heard her say before, something that shocks me. "Things have to change," she says, smiling, "and they will."
There isn't a Jeremiah in that statement, just plain and simple facts, all of delivered in that same smile. "Not in my lifetime anymore," she says, "but the church will change. We'll have women priests."
More smiles.
There used to be many more around St. Paul's, but there's only three left now, and one I've never seen. There's Sister Pat and Sister Miriam--Oblate Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament "who desire to grow daily in our knowledge and love of God."
When you leave St. Paul's you can't miss the old convent right across the road. It's half-gone, burned down about a year ago now. No one has cleaned up the mess. "It's very sad," she tells us--the only time her smile fades. "I used to live there, third floor, east side, really close to where the Native American church used to worship." For a moment, we almost loose her in a memory. "Some nights I'd hear those drums," she says. "They were so beautiful."
More smiles.
When we left, I told the group that I was surprised a woman like Sister Pat would tell us what she did--that the church would soon enough have women priests. I would have thought someone way out there in the middle of nowhere would most certainly be a bare-knuckle conservative.
One of the bunch I was with, an 80 year-old woman, a world traveler who professes no faith but was raised Roman Catholic, demurred. "I'm not surprised at all," she said.
All around us was prairie, here and there a mobile home with an open door or window, four or five cars in no particular order. This is the world she chose sixty years ago or more, after reading the story of Crazy Horse. All those smiles make clear that this is the world she loves.
This morning, I'm thankful for what I witnessed just a few days ago in huge church in the middle of nowhere. I'm smiling just to remember.
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