Breaking the Ice with Jesus

Jesus and I went for a hike, to see the last of the ice.

This is my prayer life, lately: asking Jesus to come with me on a hike, or a drive, or out to the backyard to turn over the compost heap. Sometimes I talk to him and sometimes he just stands there while I think about something else.

It’s the only prayer I have, besides “Don’t hurt me,” and “I hope you can hear me.”

I don’t know where I heard that God can’t hear the cry of a soul in mortal sin– that God is deaf to you until you repent. I’m sure it isn’t doctrine. It’s one of those folk beliefs, like my Irish great grandmother claiming that a baby who didn’t cry during baptism was still possessed by the devil. I can’t remember which one of us were quiet when baptized, causing Great Grandma to glare at my mother. It was probably me.

I don’t know if I’m in mortal sin or not. I don’t even know if I still believe in mortal sin. I only know that I am too severely traumatized to go to confession, or to be alone with a priest and explain why I can’t go to confession. Believe me, I tried going to the Orthodox church, but after awhile the panic attacks got so bad I couldn’t anymore. The Episcopal priest has been very friendly and welcoming to me, but he doesn’t know I cringe in terror when he leans over to say hello before the service starts, because he’s a priest. And then, after the Episcopal service, I go to the Catholic Mass and stand in the foyer with my eyes closed later that Sunday, in case God and Great Grandmother are angry with me for going to a Protestant church.

Thank you to everyone who’s trying to tell me that God doesn’t require all of this effort and worry. I really do appreciate how much you care about me. This is the place I’m in right now, and I’m going to have to stay here for awhile.

But I don’t panic at all when I go hiking with Jesus, so that is where I pray.

Today we went out to Frankfort Mineral Spring.

I imagined he was in the passenger seat, not minding that I was listening to secular music on the radio, as I drove out to western Pennsylvania and up PA 18. I imagined he got out of the car with me as I parked, and waited while I changed into my hiking shoes.

The snow was inches deep everywhere, clinging to the trees like a lace chapel veil. There was ice on the crick, but I could hear the water still flowing underneath. It’s remarkable how the sound of flowing water under ice makes the world seem even quieter than if there were no sound at all.

Jesus and I walked right past that fork in the trail where we were supposed to hike uphill. It’s easy to miss in deep snow. I realized I’d gone too far, and doubled back. I’d been following the footprints of a hiker who took the shortest trail and not the mineral spring loop, which goes uphill. The uphill trail was barely worn and hard to find. Jesus and I went up, past the place where a great big tree had fallen over and ripped out at the root, so the whole network of mud and worm holes was visible. We passed a place where the dead leaves were quaking on a young beech sapling– noisy, so noisy it sounded like a practical joke.

A blue jay jeered at me from the thicket. I looked up, and he jumped to a branch further up the trail. I followed, and he jumped again. Again and again, he cried out and jumped to the next tree, one bright cobalt-colored dot in all the white and gray.Maybe the Holy Ghost is not a flame that descends and makes your Charismatic community go insane. Maybe the Holy Ghost is a noisy blue jay with black stripes on her tail. I would like that.

Jesus and I crossed the stream at the top of the hill, and found ourselves  under pines that went up and up like cathedral spires. There it was truly quiet: no birds to lead the way, no chorus of beech leaves, no flowing water. Only dusk, and the smell of chrism and incense.

I told Jesus that I was afraid that if I died out here on the trail, he’d send me to hell.

Out of the pines again, and down the steps to the grotto. Now it was noisy again, because the stream of water was still alive below the ice– but oh, what glorious ice! More ice than last year, more ice than I’d ever seen, a palace of ice, a basilica of ice, the Hagia Sophia and the Sagrada Familia, Notre Dame de Paris and Notre Dame de Chartres and the entire Vatican City put to shame. The waterfall was a world of foam and diamonds, with a cataract of liquid water still pouring alive down the middle.

The font where I’d made the Sign of the Cross in absolute despair three years ago was rimmed with white glass, but the water still poured into it, clean and clear and inviting.

The grotto itself was curtained away from the rest of the world by a roodscreen of icicles at least ten feet long.

I found an opening big enough to fit between those icicles and stand on the floor of the cave. The sandstone was varnished from one end to another with a rippling mosaic of perfectly still water.

Of course I got up far too close to the cataract to try to take a photo of the stream behind the waterfall, and of course I fell. It’s not so frightening to fall when you’re used to falling down. When you’re as clumsy as I am, you either learn to fall without minding, or you never get up again. The trick is to resist the instinct to break the fall with your hands or elbow. Let a soft body part hit the ground first.

Jesus and I lay on our backs, slain in the spirit, staring up at the wall of the grotto and the falling snow, unable to approach any closer to that glorious miracle. I was trapped on the ice, several yards from soil or snow that had any traction at all, but I didn’t mind.

Vidi aquam egredientem de templo, a latere dextro, alleluia.

Streams of water, bless the Lord, give Him Glory and praise forever. 

Hágios ho Theós, Hágios iskhūrós, Hágios āthánatos, eléēson hēmâs.

So high, you can’t get over it. So low, you can’t get under it. So wide you can’t get round it, you must go in at the door. 

I’m still not sure how I ever got off the ice, but I did.

Crawling on my hands and knees was involved. Eventually I was back on good soft snow, hiking back towards PA 18 to go home. That part of the trail lay between shale cliffs and over the same stream several times. The last time I crossed the stream, it was impossible to see where Jesus and I were supposed to put our feet. The flat stepping stones were invisible under the even blanket of snow. I gave it my best guess. I walked on water. It went beautifully, for a little while.

And then, of course, the ice made a great noise as it broke, and my hiking shoe went straight through. There was the crick underneath, loud and cold and so terribly alive. There was Jesus, washing my feet. You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.

There was that blue jay again, hopping just ahead of us as we found our way back to the parking space.

There was Jesus, settling into the passenger seat as I turned on the radio. We drove back to Steubenville, where my life was destroyed by a Catholic cult.

I don’t know if I’m in mortal sin, but it doesn’t feel like I am.

It feels like Jesus can hear me.

I feel like I can hear him, and he sounds like Living Water.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.