Multiconstruct

Back on Memorial Day weekend I started seeing news stories about an incorruptible Body drawing large crowds in Missouri. It seems an elderly nun had died 4 years ago, not embalmed and buried in a pine box was disinterred and found to be in pretty good shape. I was intrigued enough to find a story of her life and that had pictures and she did look pretty good, all things considering.

As I lay in bed Sunday night I decided to map out how far Gower was and if it was less than an hour I’d road trip over there. How often do you get to see a full on miracle?

I usually get up with the sun and I learned Gower was only 45 minutes from Leavenworth. The convent requested you not arrive before 8:00 am, people live there, for God’s sake, and they were going to inter her in a glass coffin in the afternoon so I really had my last chance to see her aur natural.

It was a pretty drive through the country. The loess hills of Western Missouri and Eastern Kansas aren’t really appreciated for how beautiful they are. My first sign there was spectacle ahead was an LED light sign saying watch for stopped traffic in the middle of nowhere.

There was parking in a field across the street and a long line snaking out of the entrance when I arrived at 8:00. It definitely had a carnival vibe with volunteers pointing where to park and volunteer fire department directing traffic. People were excited to ask where you came from but it was mostly Kansas and Missouri with a smattering of Iowans.

The line started to move a little after 8:00. I listened in on the folks around me. There was a group older Filipino ladies behind me who had been on a lot of pilgrimages and visited other incorruptibles. They were pretty charming as they talked about their adventures on the tour bus to Petra. General impression was “it’s hot there”.

Ahead of me was a Catholic mom and her teen and grown kids. They had a lot of talk about Catholic schools and the brother who didn’t make the trip, apparently because he smokes a lot of weed.

There were a lot of canopies with water and fruit and donation jars for area churches. Mostly staffed by big families of conservative dressed kids. Not a lot of solicitation but some QR codes to support the cause. The newly built chapel which led to all the fuss looked sharp. Before you entered there were teen girls with skirts and scarves for the bare legged and bare shouldered. Yoga pants count as bare legged I learned. It was hot so I had worn shorts but I wasn’t offered a skirt.

Sister Mary Willhemina Lancaster had a compelling story even before she died. She was born in 1924 and grew up in a Black Catholic family and when her Catholic school segregated her dad started their own.

She became a nun in the oblate order and at 76 started the order in Gower. This might be a good time to mention I am going to post a couple of pictures of the body.

After the womenfolk were appropriately clothed we entered the chapel where folks mostly followed the admonishment on the sign to be quiet. There were some super geriatric Knights of Columbus complete with sword and sash as an honor guard and also serving as ushers.

I’d seen pictures in some of the stories so I wasn’t surprised to see a pretty good looking corpse. I don’t know what the typical decomposition is in 4 years but I think you’re mostly bones at that point. I watched season 1 of Dexter and a two year old corpse was bones and stringy meat, assuming the show runners did a little research.

People were coming up in groups and families. It hasn’t struck me that I was the only one who had arrived solo. People were kissing her face and heads and draping her with rosaries and medallions, sometimes a goodly string of them. Everyone would kneel and the usher would take a photo with someone’s camera in a posed kind of way. People stuck to the 45 second rule posted without a lot of promoting. There was a lot of emotion in the room.

At my turn I took some rushed photos and kneeled for a bit. I might have tried to pray, I was more taking it all in then putting it out there. 15 seconds tops, was plenty for me.

After the visit I went to the gravesite and got my teaspoon of grace diet. There was a pretty good sized hole it was hard to reach the bottom. There was another Filipino lady just shoveling it in a bag. She got admonished for breaking the teaspoon rule but she said she was with a group so they let her have a few more solid scoops.

I went over to St Joseph and went for a bike ride and hike on trails, the waterfront and downtown. It was a cool and surreal Memorial Day.

So what does it all mean? Was it a miracle? As I get older I get less and less interested in deciding what I believe about things. Things just are, regardless of what I believe. The folks I was with, without exception treated it as miraculous. Even with the crass and objectified relic hunting it was a sincere expression of belief and kind of beautiful.

There was nothing I saw that was incompatible with a miracle. An admirable life of someone who appeared worthy of esteem and an incorruptible Body. When I talked to my sister who is crazy for the miraculous and my Catholic coworker who is pretty devout it was easy to convey I bore witness to a miracle.

But also I suspect that corpse deteriorate on a bell curve. Probably moisture content and exposure to oxygen, insects and who knows what else are drivers of variability. Some corpses decompose very quickly and some very slowly and most at the typical rate. We note the exceptional and the countless typical examples are not noted. I felt no need to research, hypothesize or explain. Just to bear witness to a phenomenon I had proximity too that interested me

When I told my brother about it he suggested vampirism. I didn’t argue against that either. There was a Christian rock song in the 80’s called Renaissance Man that had these lines: ” How does it help you feed the poor? How does it help you love your wife? Tell me Renaissance Man…” Those questions have stuck with me and what I believe or don’t believe about the apparently miraculous don’t really mean that much.