Spring Break: Wisconsin

One does not think of going north for spring break.  Of going to Wisconsin for spring break.  It is not an MTV location, if there is still an MTV. 

But, each year at spring break, generous friends from my church allow my family to use their lake home for a week.  It is really more than a cottage, or a cabin.  It is sprawling and luxurious.  A lavish gift.  Each year we take friends with us, as our family of four would get lost in the expanse.  We bring friends in case we have to form search parties.

Our spring break party destination is Door County, Wisconsin.  The peninsula bridge between Green Bay and Lake Michigan.  Thus, our party beach is covered in eight inches of snow and the lake is frozen over.  Snowmobiles and ice fishing.  We do none of that.

We do nap, however, and read, and watch movies, and hike, and eat. Oh, do we eat.  Even our movies are about eating:  Jaws, the first night.  There are laundry baskets full of popcorn, chocolate chip cookies, Red Vines, crackers.  And, we share meals of wood-oven pizza, grilled salmon, pork chops, pasta.  We all contribute.  Starting Monday we will get back to the gym and our diets.  But, this week, friends crowd around tables and laugh and tease each other, and ask questions like:  What’s the hardest job you’ve ever had?  Who’s the funniest person you know? Can you believe all this food?

Napping and eating.  Eating and napping.  To prevent self-loathing and seam-bursting, one has to go for a walk.  Some justification for the next snack and nap:  Well, I did walk for 15 minutes this morning.  Before I walked to the fridge.

On a morning walk during spring break I have my most satisfying meal.  This year, spring break is framed by Palm Sunday and Easter, and, across from the lake house, back in the woods, I have discovered an Eastern Orthodox prayer chapel.  It is at the end of a path between two small homes, and this week it is deep in snow.  I have to shovel the steps to the stucco structure that rises like a range light in the pines.  The heavy wooden doors are held shut on the outside by a rock.

Shovel the steps, remove the rock, pull back the doors and heavy, sweet incense welcomes me.  I can see my breath in the chapel.  The only furnishings are a lectern, and some wrought-iron patio chairs.  An oriental rug on the concrete floor.  And there is a curtain that hides an altar.  Light comes in from windows high up near the ceiling.

I am not Eastern Orthodox.  My church experience is the furthest thing from it.  But, this quiet, mystery spot is holy ground for me each year.  If I ever saw someone at the prayer chapel, I would confess and apologize for defiling the sanctuary.  I am sure I have.  Compared to my lecture hall church back home, this Eastern Orthodox chapel is a chemistry lab.  I sort through the vials and bottles of incense, the charcoal discs, the elaborate tongs, the beeswax candles.  Again, I am sorry, but I light them all up.  Piles of jasmine incense atop sparking charcoal discs.  A candle.   Maybe two.   I light the thurible, and all the suspended oil lamps.  I want to be clothed in it.  I want to walk out smelling like the experience for the rest of the day.  Like I’d been somewhere.

So, each morning, I tramp back to the chapel, and I fire up the slow pyrotechnics and sit in the cold, on the iron chair.  And I talk to God—more I just sit--under the gaze of mysterious, severe, alien saints, all who have been somewhere.  Like St. John the Well Keeper, and St. Moses the Ethiopian.  And under the flint watch of the Incarnate God Almighty Himself.  All radiating light about their heads, from golden halo discs.  And the white smoke wanders up towards the windows.

A couple mornings, when I return from my chapel walk, my wife asks:  What did you learn?  And, I have to say:  Nothing, really.  I was just there.  Like sitting and being silent with someone who knows you.   Not having to think of the next thing to say, or complete an assignment.  Being versus doing.  Resting under the weight of the mystery, and the welcome.  There is holiness, but…And, there is welcome.

I confess one more defilement:  at the back of the chapel, there is a turned-down, paper grocery bag.  Next to it there is a hand-written index card that says: Blessed Bread.  Help Yourself.  And, in the bag there are crumbs and cubes of dried-out bread.  It’s not defilement, I just don’t know what it is for, and I do help myself, and I labor to crunch it in my back teeth.  It tastes like, well, stale bread, but it makes me feel part of the place.  And, that is the point, I discover.  In the Eastern Orthodox Church, only a portion of the round communion loaf is consecrated by the priest.  This is called the “Lamb”, and it is Eucharistic.  For members.  The rest of the loaf is cut up and blessed by the priest.  It is for any visitor.  It is a sign of welcome.

I finish my time and close the wooden doors, replace the rock, and tramp back through the snow.  The incense follows me on my coat, and in my scarf, and in my gloves.  And, back into our friends’ house.

Back at the house, the MTV Spring Break film crews have still not arrived.  So, we eat and nap.  Nap and eat. Later, outside, my friend and I light the grill for the evening’s meal.  We talk, and laugh, and are quiet.  We take pictures of the sun setting.  We pretend we know what we’re doing when it comes to grilling, as the smoke rises from the coals.  We smell like it.  Inside, we pray thanksgiving for the meal and welcome each other around the table again.