Jennifer - Part One

When I set up my xanga, I envisioned it as an opportunity to recall the experiences that have defined me and to share the spiritual insights these privileged moments revealed to me. I departed in my last post with a highly academic discourse. With this post I return to the style of writing I prefer - conversation from the heart.

In the summer of 1984, just twenty-one months into my priesthood and less than two weeks following my reassignment as associate pastor of a large lakeside community church, a car accident took the life of Jennifer. Just days before what would have been the start of her senior year at the local Catholic High School, Jennifer had been crowned blossom queen. Acknowledged by her peers as the person most likely to succeed in her class, her life held so much promise. A missed curve and an appointment with a tree altered not only her destiny, but the lives of her classmates, the community and this young, unseasoned priest.

News of the tragedy spread quickly and a stunned senior class began to assemble the following morning in the school cafeteria to cry, to question and to grieve. Long before tragedies like Columbine and 9/11 led to the formation of disaster response counseling teams, I entered the school alone to help them begin to cope with their loss, and I felt so inadequate.

Some just shook their heads in disbelief, some recounted their last moments spent with her, some recalled the lyrics of a song that said what they felt inside but could not put into words and all shed a stream of tears of love and loss. I prayed; we prayed together. Mostly I listened. Anything I gave that day came from the heart, spirit and soul.

As the gathering of students continued to grow, it was increasingly difficult for me to make myself available to the numbers. In what was nothing less than a moment of inspiration, I backed my van up to the cafeteria, unloaded the sound equipment I used to deejay dances and set it up. One at a time Jennifer’s friends and classmates came to the microphone to share with the gathering what she had meant to them and how they felt. They played the songs that spoke for their broken hearts (Chicago’s "Hard Habit To Break" was a favorite). And we prayed - for Jennifer, for her family and for ourselves.

It is popularly held that Church is not the building, but is the people who gather within its walls. We were all Church that day and together we were healed.

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