Another adventure in the quickly yellowing popup camper, this time to the wilds north of Sheboygan, on the lake. Wilds near Sheboygan? And on the shores of valued Lake Michigan? Yes, certainly, in the midst of Point Beach State Forest. One can understand why miles of lakefront were given over to forest decades ago, for the land is boggy, with choppy old sand dunes overgrown with hemlock and white cedar and swamp in between. Lousy farm land, but that does not bother people now; people now with extra money and good roads to drive on would eat this territory up, were it not for the state land.
Or not, for Point Beach is known around Wisconsin for another reason: the nuclear power plant. Rising its stolid, smokeless head a few miles from the main road, it sits there as a sentinel and guardian of undeveloped land. People do not want to live next to or even near nuclear power plants. Whether justified or not, people who do blame their cancer, or their dog’s itching or anything else unhealthy on the secret, silent radiation that may or may not emanate from such facilities. Three Mile Island; Chernobyl; Hiroshima and God knows what other monstrosities of modern science and the military - industrial establishment all hide inscrutably in the massive buildings that sprout electrical wires and towers from every concrete pore.
But we can vacation there, as if a brief visit is like an x-ray at the dentist, the magical death rays brief enough that we can handle them.
All very well, but it has rained a lot recently, and those swamps between the old forested dunes are full and humming with ducks, frogs, and, by God, mosquitoes. Lots and lots of mosquitoes, so many that our camper became thick with them inside, so much so that killing them was like melting snow flakes in the palm of one’s hand in a raging blizzard. Nothing would work, and sleep would only fitfully come. An onslaught, a deluge that not even the deadly gamma or whatever rays from the power plant a scant five or so miles away could kill. But of course, nothing kills mosquitoes. Individually, yes, but as a collective, they are immortal. They are the Borg. Resistance is futile.
Not that it was all bad. Well sprayed with Deet, we took long fairly pleasant walks on the miles of paths there, only itching our ankles occasionally at the bites of the sand flies who do not respect Deet. We would soldier through it all, for we had a mission, or really, a quest long denied. Like all quests, it had to do with the spiritual. Like some quests, it was also explicitly religious. That the Fatima children were being canonized that (this) week had nothing to do with it, although it could have. Really, though, we had heard of it, this special place, for years and at last we had the chance, and the thought, to go.
Our Lady of Good Hope, or more commonly, the Marian site at Champion, is a staple that once was taught to school children throughout Wisconsin, although dissertations on neutrally gendered bathrooms seem more the rage now. It has, like most religious sites, a great back story. At the same time as the Chicago Fire in 1872 (or ’71?), north-eastern Wisconsin also caught fire. Known as the Peshtigo Fire, 3,000 people were killed as a record drought charged the slash from heavy logging, causing the blaze to go wild. It was so hot that people trying to escape boiled in rivers, and the coals from Green Bay leapt across miles of Lake Michigan water to ignite the Door Peninsula. It was so hot that people in nearby Champion (the land between Green Bay and Door County) clustered together in and about a small log-cabin Catholic Church to find a miracle to save them from the fires. A miracle did come and save them, and gave them an apparition of the Holy Mother as well. While every inch of ground around the church was scorched, the few acres surrounding it remained unscathed.
It, Our Lady of Champion, is now the only official spot of a Marian miracle in the US (Mexico, of course, has the Virgin of Guadalupe). We drove to it from the Mosquito Coast through miles of low farm land and forested hummocks, and on arrival were surprised by its humble grounds. It is in farm country still, and the church there is of small to average size, erected over the spot of the apparition, which is now preserved in a cave-like chapel underneath. There is a small cafeteria and a gift shop, but it is not too kitschy or overly exploitative, so little so that it occurred to me to tell the resident priest to (maybe) advertise more. People were there, of course, and there were white pavilions set here and there for some future event, but those aside, that was it: a church, a basement chapel, a few small commercial connections, and a walk through the Stations of the Cross in a field in back.
We had arrived just in time for a weekday mass, and decided to attend. Two priests were there to do their magic before only about 25 people. One priest, however, spoke in a thick European accent (Portuguese) and we soon learned that he was the, or one of the, priests who presided over the Fatima site. The pavilions were probably there to hold people for a weekend celebration of the 100th anniversary and the beautification (canonization?) of two of the children who first saw Mary. And here we were at another miracle site of Mary, and the Fatima priest was there.
The whole thing came together then, but still, it was a quiet day. After mass and outside again, the rain began to fall. We did our walk around the Stations of the Cross, alone with the statues in the greening fields, but first we knelt in the very small, almost claustrophobic basement chapel. Cast - off crutches of the healed were hung on the walls before a statue of Mary and all about were hundreds of devotional candles. Most people inside were old, and all limped or hung near hand-holds to steady themselves. Were they praying to have their old - age illnesses eased, or for children or grandchildren in trouble? The stories that Lady of Good Help could tell! But of course she never would, not to any soul but that one soul that asked, that prayed, that beseeched for an intercession from Mary, another miracle. There had been other miracles there after all, and there was no reason to believe there would not be more.
All came together; in the Stations of the Cross, we followed Jesus from conviction to death, no one more in need of divine intervention than he, which would not come. Miracles are for belief, not to remedy the inevitable pains of life on this earth. We are all guilty before Pilot, and the end can only be put off, just as it was with the children who first saw the Virgin in Fatima, Portugal in 1917. Two died shortly after from disease, and another was tormented for her vision by sundry and various. In the end, she lived a long life as an austere nun. It is, as the prophets of the Old Testament knew all too well, not good to be singled out by God. One suffers, most often from the hands of one’s own people for upsetting the rotten apple cart. One’s life is forfeit for the long-term and inscrutable plans of God. One is rewarded in eternity, but not here, almost never – unless, of course, that’s part of the inscrutable plan.
The gift shop: some kitsch, of course, but lots of good stuff, or at least good religious stuff, as well. I got a book I am currently reading, No Turning Back by (Father) Donald Calloway. I read on the back that he was a very, very bad boy before the Calling came. Last night, I read just how bad. Really, really messed-up, drugs and sex and rock ‘n roll bad. Worse ever than you or I bad. And that fits, too. He, too, was used although he didn’t know it at the time, used to show that anyone can be blessed, even major league jerks and screw-ups. Cursed, blessed, cursed to be blessed; the only thing we can depend on is change, ironic turns and twists, the undependable, unless one believes.
That is the problem though, that tautology that is called faith. Is one’s suffering really a blessing? Isn’t that believing in pots full of gold at the end of rainbows?
Except that it isn’t. That’s what miracles are for, slaps in the face of the effects of time, of change, of dunes blown and covered by trees that are to be beaten down again, to turn again into swamps and maybe, then again, into lakes. Thousands saw the apparitions at Fatima; hundreds our Lady of Champion. Thousands more have awoken from nightmarish lives into something that made sense, like our Father Calloway. Yes, these are not as certain as seeing apparitions with others; for these others, the certainty of miracles and revival is within. But that’s what miracles are for. Seeing, or experiencing, is believing. Except when it isn’t; except when even that reality is dragged into the rational. A spoiled bit of potato, said Scrooge of the apparition of Marley. Frightened children and ignorant peasants, we say of Fatima. We say lots of things. We see lots of things. We speak, eventually, only of that which we expect to see.
No miracle there for us, though. We drove back to the mosquitoes and packed up, destiny home. It was hot just miles from the lake, 25 degrees cooler by the lake, the change hard to take, hard to dress for. We like things dependable, even if it is too hot or too cold, even if life drags on with predictable corruption and pain. We want miracles, anything to lighten the burden of our choosing, but change our minds if they come. No, it can’t be! No, that’s insane! Or if for others, THEY are insane. Driving back on hard concrete thinking of Our Lady, thinking of miracles, I also had to think: who’s inscrutable now? Who wishes for one thing, but refuses to accept it? Who dreams of paradise but insists on something far, far less? From the parting of the waters, to a glowing vision and a parting of the fires, who is thirsting for water but refuses to drink? FK
Or not, for Point Beach is known around Wisconsin for another reason: the nuclear power plant. Rising its stolid, smokeless head a few miles from the main road, it sits there as a sentinel and guardian of undeveloped land. People do not want to live next to or even near nuclear power plants. Whether justified or not, people who do blame their cancer, or their dog’s itching or anything else unhealthy on the secret, silent radiation that may or may not emanate from such facilities. Three Mile Island; Chernobyl; Hiroshima and God knows what other monstrosities of modern science and the military - industrial establishment all hide inscrutably in the massive buildings that sprout electrical wires and towers from every concrete pore.
But we can vacation there, as if a brief visit is like an x-ray at the dentist, the magical death rays brief enough that we can handle them.
All very well, but it has rained a lot recently, and those swamps between the old forested dunes are full and humming with ducks, frogs, and, by God, mosquitoes. Lots and lots of mosquitoes, so many that our camper became thick with them inside, so much so that killing them was like melting snow flakes in the palm of one’s hand in a raging blizzard. Nothing would work, and sleep would only fitfully come. An onslaught, a deluge that not even the deadly gamma or whatever rays from the power plant a scant five or so miles away could kill. But of course, nothing kills mosquitoes. Individually, yes, but as a collective, they are immortal. They are the Borg. Resistance is futile.
Not that it was all bad. Well sprayed with Deet, we took long fairly pleasant walks on the miles of paths there, only itching our ankles occasionally at the bites of the sand flies who do not respect Deet. We would soldier through it all, for we had a mission, or really, a quest long denied. Like all quests, it had to do with the spiritual. Like some quests, it was also explicitly religious. That the Fatima children were being canonized that (this) week had nothing to do with it, although it could have. Really, though, we had heard of it, this special place, for years and at last we had the chance, and the thought, to go.
Our Lady of Good Hope, or more commonly, the Marian site at Champion, is a staple that once was taught to school children throughout Wisconsin, although dissertations on neutrally gendered bathrooms seem more the rage now. It has, like most religious sites, a great back story. At the same time as the Chicago Fire in 1872 (or ’71?), north-eastern Wisconsin also caught fire. Known as the Peshtigo Fire, 3,000 people were killed as a record drought charged the slash from heavy logging, causing the blaze to go wild. It was so hot that people trying to escape boiled in rivers, and the coals from Green Bay leapt across miles of Lake Michigan water to ignite the Door Peninsula. It was so hot that people in nearby Champion (the land between Green Bay and Door County) clustered together in and about a small log-cabin Catholic Church to find a miracle to save them from the fires. A miracle did come and save them, and gave them an apparition of the Holy Mother as well. While every inch of ground around the church was scorched, the few acres surrounding it remained unscathed.
It, Our Lady of Champion, is now the only official spot of a Marian miracle in the US (Mexico, of course, has the Virgin of Guadalupe). We drove to it from the Mosquito Coast through miles of low farm land and forested hummocks, and on arrival were surprised by its humble grounds. It is in farm country still, and the church there is of small to average size, erected over the spot of the apparition, which is now preserved in a cave-like chapel underneath. There is a small cafeteria and a gift shop, but it is not too kitschy or overly exploitative, so little so that it occurred to me to tell the resident priest to (maybe) advertise more. People were there, of course, and there were white pavilions set here and there for some future event, but those aside, that was it: a church, a basement chapel, a few small commercial connections, and a walk through the Stations of the Cross in a field in back.
We had arrived just in time for a weekday mass, and decided to attend. Two priests were there to do their magic before only about 25 people. One priest, however, spoke in a thick European accent (Portuguese) and we soon learned that he was the, or one of the, priests who presided over the Fatima site. The pavilions were probably there to hold people for a weekend celebration of the 100th anniversary and the beautification (canonization?) of two of the children who first saw Mary. And here we were at another miracle site of Mary, and the Fatima priest was there.
The whole thing came together then, but still, it was a quiet day. After mass and outside again, the rain began to fall. We did our walk around the Stations of the Cross, alone with the statues in the greening fields, but first we knelt in the very small, almost claustrophobic basement chapel. Cast - off crutches of the healed were hung on the walls before a statue of Mary and all about were hundreds of devotional candles. Most people inside were old, and all limped or hung near hand-holds to steady themselves. Were they praying to have their old - age illnesses eased, or for children or grandchildren in trouble? The stories that Lady of Good Help could tell! But of course she never would, not to any soul but that one soul that asked, that prayed, that beseeched for an intercession from Mary, another miracle. There had been other miracles there after all, and there was no reason to believe there would not be more.
All came together; in the Stations of the Cross, we followed Jesus from conviction to death, no one more in need of divine intervention than he, which would not come. Miracles are for belief, not to remedy the inevitable pains of life on this earth. We are all guilty before Pilot, and the end can only be put off, just as it was with the children who first saw the Virgin in Fatima, Portugal in 1917. Two died shortly after from disease, and another was tormented for her vision by sundry and various. In the end, she lived a long life as an austere nun. It is, as the prophets of the Old Testament knew all too well, not good to be singled out by God. One suffers, most often from the hands of one’s own people for upsetting the rotten apple cart. One’s life is forfeit for the long-term and inscrutable plans of God. One is rewarded in eternity, but not here, almost never – unless, of course, that’s part of the inscrutable plan.
The gift shop: some kitsch, of course, but lots of good stuff, or at least good religious stuff, as well. I got a book I am currently reading, No Turning Back by (Father) Donald Calloway. I read on the back that he was a very, very bad boy before the Calling came. Last night, I read just how bad. Really, really messed-up, drugs and sex and rock ‘n roll bad. Worse ever than you or I bad. And that fits, too. He, too, was used although he didn’t know it at the time, used to show that anyone can be blessed, even major league jerks and screw-ups. Cursed, blessed, cursed to be blessed; the only thing we can depend on is change, ironic turns and twists, the undependable, unless one believes.
That is the problem though, that tautology that is called faith. Is one’s suffering really a blessing? Isn’t that believing in pots full of gold at the end of rainbows?
Except that it isn’t. That’s what miracles are for, slaps in the face of the effects of time, of change, of dunes blown and covered by trees that are to be beaten down again, to turn again into swamps and maybe, then again, into lakes. Thousands saw the apparitions at Fatima; hundreds our Lady of Champion. Thousands more have awoken from nightmarish lives into something that made sense, like our Father Calloway. Yes, these are not as certain as seeing apparitions with others; for these others, the certainty of miracles and revival is within. But that’s what miracles are for. Seeing, or experiencing, is believing. Except when it isn’t; except when even that reality is dragged into the rational. A spoiled bit of potato, said Scrooge of the apparition of Marley. Frightened children and ignorant peasants, we say of Fatima. We say lots of things. We see lots of things. We speak, eventually, only of that which we expect to see.
No miracle there for us, though. We drove back to the mosquitoes and packed up, destiny home. It was hot just miles from the lake, 25 degrees cooler by the lake, the change hard to take, hard to dress for. We like things dependable, even if it is too hot or too cold, even if life drags on with predictable corruption and pain. We want miracles, anything to lighten the burden of our choosing, but change our minds if they come. No, it can’t be! No, that’s insane! Or if for others, THEY are insane. Driving back on hard concrete thinking of Our Lady, thinking of miracles, I also had to think: who’s inscrutable now? Who wishes for one thing, but refuses to accept it? Who dreams of paradise but insists on something far, far less? From the parting of the waters, to a glowing vision and a parting of the fires, who is thirsting for water but refuses to drink? FK
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