Love Interlacing: A Novel

By Joshua Elzner

The following narrative, the sequel to "Unspeakable Beauty," traces the stories of persons whose lives are deeply interlaced by love, a love that is born, not merely between human hearts, but from the very Heart of God himself, who desires human intimacy to reflect his own divine intimacy as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Two of these persons, Adam and Natalya, are the central characters of the first novel, "Unspeakable Beauty," and this second novel accompanies them into the full flowering of the home for which their hearts have been longing, unto the mysterious and unexpected gift of total love. And many other persons from the first novel are present as well. But there are also a few new persons, with their own incomparable stories, who find themselves caught up into this tapestry of love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joshua Elzner
• Release date: Feb 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201621148

Book preview

DEDICATION

"I thank you for the beauty of woman,

who manifests in a way deeper and more intimate

than anything else that you have made,

the ravishing mystery of your own primordial Beauty.

And I thank you for creating man

to see and reverence this beauty in the woman,

for creating his heart to be a space

in which such a mystery may be intimately fitted,

clothed and sheltered in reverent love,

and thus may flower freely

under the shelter of your own loving gaze,

incarnate in the interlacing of hearts

between man and woman."

– Father Alojzy Kumiega

CONTENTS

Author’s Introduction:

The following narrative, the second of two parts in the series The Song of the Dove, traces the stories of persons whose lives are deeply interlaced by love, a love that is born, not merely between human hearts, but from the very Heart of God himself, who desires human intimacy to reflect his own divine intimacy as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Two of these persons, Adam and Natalya, you will know as the central characters of the first novel, Unspeakable Beauty, and others you will hopefully soon recognize. But there are also a few new persons, with their own incomparable stories, who find themselves caught up into this tapestry of love.

These characters are not mere allegories or symbols, and are not to be taken as such; but through accompanying them in this way, it is hoped that our contemplating hearts may see and feel the closeness of the great mystery in which they are wrapped, and thus may find light cast upon our own path within this world as well. For this mystery, which touches each of their lives uniquely and powerfully, and which, in the singular story of their life and in the irreplaceable contours of their heart, becomes incarnate, is also the same mystery that enfolds us and seeks to become incarnate in our lives and relationships.

So, in fact, it could be said that this novel is about this mystery—about a God who is Love—just as much as it is about the characters whom you will soon get to know. In fact, it is more about him; for he is the Living One, who speaks in the fabric of every day of our lives, and who can come also through the passionately written (if profoundly inadequate) words of this book. It is my hope that by seeing glimpses of such a God in this story—by hearing the whisper of his tender breath or even his arms outstretched in tender embrace—you will come to understand your own true identity more deeply, and come also to love each of your brothers and sisters more deeply in the same sacred space. For here, before God, we are all simply beloved, uniquely and incomparably desired, chosen, and destined for everlasting intimacy with him, and, in him, with one another.

And this mystery of intimacy for which we have been created is distilled and made incarnate with a particular fullness, according to God’s loving plan, in the mutual self-giving of man and woman. Indeed, this invisible mystery of the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is made visible within the very bodies of man and woman and in the depth and richness of their interrelationship. And by contemplating this living icon of the Trinity’s love in the beauty of man and woman and the love that unites them, our hearts can trace their way back to the Source and Origin of such love in God himself, and can find this same love permeating and transforming our own lives more deeply in its healing and life-giving beauty.

I would like you, the reader, to know ahead of time that this novel does not read like a contemporary fast-paced thriller or even like a psychological drama. There is action, and drama, and questions and events that may draw you to want to continue reading, to not put down this book; but there is also a great deal that is more interior. Much of the story, indeed, is composed of the voice of the heart made present in the dialogue between persons, in their written correspondence, and in personal journals. And yet in all of this, there is a deep interior thread that, I trust, will draw you and carry you throughout the narrative.

In other words, the interior drama of the heart takes priority in this story far beyond the external events that one is accustomed to find in works of fiction, while not excluding these. But is this primacy of the heart not, in fact, more true to the way that we actually experience our lives within this world? Our lives are truly very little, very humble, very ordinary, and yet it is precisely in such that the great mystery of love is made present, and of such that the beautiful tapestry of intimacy is woven through the succeeding experiences of our lives, unfolding in the sight of a loving God and side-by-side with those whom God, in his infinite wisdom, has placed with us on our path.

Before concluding this little preface, I would like to make one more point. I said that this novel will not follow your conventional expectations for a fast-paced, page-turning story; but I do hope that it will be gripping on a much deeper level, gripping and even transforming in the most profound way. For it speaks of the deepest reality, which alone gives meaning to all else. And it does so in a way that, born from the heartbeat of life and reality, is hopefully more real, more viscerally real and transformative, than a simplified narrative would be (that achieves clarity rather by simplification). The simplicity here—and I hope that you will taste the simplicity!—comes from the fact that reality itself is ultimately very, very simple, because God is simple. He is a simple family of love and intimacy, and nothing, absolutely nothing exists or finds its meaning outside of him or outside of its destiny to find eternal consummation in the heart of his all-enfolding embrace.

THE LITTLEST ONE

CHAPTER 1

An End and a Beginning

One generation is passing away and another comes, Amelia says, leaning back against the pillow and looking deeply into Adam’s eyes. I am the last one to say farewell to this world—the ‘littlest daughter.’ And now I prepare to go home into the bosom of my Father—of both of my fathers, human and divine.

She reaches out and takes Adam’s hand in her own, and gestures, with the other hand, for Natalya to step closer. She takes Natalya’s hand too, and for a long time simply holds the hands of these young persons in silence. Then she draws them together and places Natalya’s hand in Adam’s, while enclosing both within the wrinkled warmth of her own enfolding grasp.

Generations come and go, my children, Amelia continues, "but love never ends. Love is what endures unbroken, and what interlaces hearts together even beyond the dissolution of time. So love—love one another and love all of those whom God entrusts to you throughout your life. If you do so, then your life itself will become something more than a single span of seventy, eighty, ninety, or even a hundred years. Rather, your life will abide, because you will abide in Love. And thus, wherever Love is present, there you will be too..."

She falls silent and closes her eyes. Without removing his hand either from Amelia’s or Natalya’s, Adam leans forward and kisses Amelia on the cheek, her old and wrinkled flesh soft under his lips. She smiles a gentle and beautiful smile, but does not open her eyes.

Natalya begins to cry, silently except for her occasional sniffles. They both watch this old woman transform before their eyes.

She loves. She abides in Love. And so she will always abide. This is what they now see in her, even if they could not explain it to themselves. It is as if, looking upon her material body, upon the flesh of her face which has weathered so many years, which has experienced so much suffering and so much joy, they are catching sight of the light of eternity. For now she is pressing against the veil separating this life from the next; indeed, now she is perhaps already stepping beyond to touch and see the face of the One who has loved her from the beginning.

At last Amelia speaks again.

He is calling me to himself, Amelia whispers, a look of peace irradiating her countenance and shining with a mysterious light even through her closed eyelids. Christ, the Love of my heart...the Beloved Lover, in whom I am beloved, and in whom I have learned to love. Jesus... And yet even now, he calls me with the voice of Alojzy... Or rather, their voices intermingle together in a single strain, as Alojzy is held in Christ’s embrace, and in this way he holds me. He will carry me, he will carry me over, to that space where I will enter into the unmediated embrace of Jesus, into the virginal union of his divine Heart and my own.

Yes, Papa, she whispers. Now you can show yourself to be the true friend of the Bridegroom, preparing me to meet the Spouse of my soul. And finally you can at last say: ‘My joy is now complete. He must increase but I must decrease.’ Ah, but you have said this long ago, and from the beginning... And you are there on his lap awaiting me. And I come...I come...raising up my arms with a pleading expression, and yet this time without fear. And you lift me, hold me, and embrace me, as he cradles us both, his heartbeat throbbing within us and enfolding us.

Amelia opens her eyes and looks deeply into Adam’s eyes, and then into the eyes of Natalya.

Shall I call your son? Adam whispers, his voice hoarse.

Yes, the time is coming soon, and I would like to say goodbye.

Adam makes a move to turn away, but Amelia does not let go of his hand. Instead, she clasps it yet more tightly. Glancing back, Adam sees that her eyes are raised upward, and she gazes toward the heavens, beyond what can be seen with the flesh to what can be seen only with the heart.

Adam, beginning to shake, tears himself away from Amelia and leaves the room in order to find Aleksy, so that he may witness the final moments of his mother’s life, of a woman who knows that she is loved, and therefore desires to plunge into the embrace of this Love forever.

+ + +

It is six months later, and Adam finds himself in Dallas again. Natalya has returned for a time to visit her mother in El Campo, and he is alone. Alone to mourn and pray, to rejoice and hope. He goes often, sometimes four or five times a week, to the cemetery where his wife is buried, and he stands before her grave, the tombstone etched with the words:

Lily Zobreska-Kumiega

A Beloved Daughter, Devoted Wife, and Loving Mother

Who Gave Everything that Love May Prove Stronger than Death

February 21, 1994 – January 1, 2022

+

Amelia Virginia Kumiega

God’s Gift Destined To Be Born Into Eternity

January 1, 2022

Often he sits on the grass, his legs crossed, and simply gazes in silence. Or he lays down and rests beside her, imagining that he is again with her in the body, that they are again together in a little apartment, husband, wife, and a little child growing in the womb. The weather turns cold as winter draws near, but Adam still comes. Natalya returns and resumes her work in the hospital, but Adam finds himself unable to return to teaching. The most he is able to do is to work slowly and yet consistently on the biography of his great-uncle, Alojzy Kumiega, and yet he is unsure if he will be able to find a publisher for it. He would like to share it—to share the beautiful life of this man so deeply touched by God, this man who had such an expansive and loving heart throbbing at the center of such a humble and little life. But is the world any longer able to hear such things? Has the world ever been able to hear such things?

Adam aches at this, and yet he also carries it all with a lightness, or more properly a lightheartedness, that carries him from one day to the next, in a spirit of gratitude and wonder for all that he has been given to experience, both in joy and in suffering. For everything, everything has communicated to him a mystery, a touch of the love of God, which he is never able to adequately put into words. But this wonder-filled responsiveness bears within itself something else—and is marked by this something in an ever deeper measure. What is it? Adam feels stretched, if it could be put this way. He feels that, despite his new-found discovery—or rather rediscovery—of the beauty and gift of his existence, his heart lives more in eternity than it does in time. He is suspended. He would like to go, to pass beyond the veil that separates this life from the next, and to see again the face of the woman whose chaste beauty ravished his heart, and to hold the two little children whom, in this life, he was never able to hold. He would like to meet his father—or rather both of his fathers—and to gaze into their eyes, to embrace them. In other words, he has known love, deeply, and yet those to whom his heart is most deeply united have all left this world: Lily, Alojzy, his earthly mother and father, his two children.

Despite this, there is one person in this world to whom his heart is deeply bound, one person whom he does not desire to leave—no matter how intense is his desire to leave this life for the next. And they spend a great deal of time together, he and Natalya, simply talking late into the evening, or going for walks in the woods where they first heard the dove sing its song of sweet longing. She, of course, notices that Adam seems to be fading, to be slipping away, and this scares her. Of course, she knows that he is already far beyond the realm of ordinary marriage; that is entirely out of the question. His heart belongs elsewhere—or more accurately, it belongs to Another. And yet, in the same moment, she feels that this One, who has taken Adam for himself, has also spoken into her heart a word of belonging, belonging to Adam. She is his, and she knows it. And so does he.

But they speak little of this. They simply love one another. It is enough to love. Indeed, Adam is capable of nothing else than this love—a love simple and gratuitous—a love which is simply a gaze upon the beauty of the other, which is a simple affirmation of the person, which is an intimacy with no strings attached, a touch and embrace of heart and heart. Yes, this is not a romantic love, a love of dating or courtship; no, the air that they breathe together is of an entirely different sort, even as, in the same moment, its grips their hearts fully as man and woman, and interlaces them ever more deeply together as one.

And so they love. And so they listen. They listen, trusting that this word spoken between them by God will become more clear, will mature, and will come to flower according to his intentions.

But Natalya cannot help grieving a little, not the loss of marriage, but simply the fact that the aspirations of their love will never find consummation until they both pass into the next life. But is this not in fact true of all love? Even in marriage, after all, the love of man and woman, if it is authentic and true, if it is pure, is an innately virginal love, a love that reaches out and touches eternity through the other, and reaches out to touch the other only in the fullness of eternity. And so Natalya does not miss this; she does not even desire it. For she has been granted to understand that what exists between them is even more beautiful than what can be expressed in marriage—even if it super-fulfills the essence of marriage on another level—since it is rooted, not in the natural, temporal love that comes to an end in this life, but in the eternally virginal love of the Trinity, and is an anticipation, already now, of their destiny to share in this love for all eternity.

She asks herself at times how she became such a radically different woman, how her heart, so lonely and love-sick, and yet so afraid of vulnerability, could have been lifted up so deeply as to taste the air of heaven. And yet it has happened. Of course she still struggles at times; and Adam continually invites her anew to draw nearer, both to him and to God. For her faith has been weak for so long, and her heart fearful. And the faith that she encounters in Adam astounds her—both in its purity and in its depth. And before this faith, this ardent faith which is so filled with longing for eternity and yet also with tender presence to her in each moment, Natalya stands in awe and wonder. She contemplates and receives; she listens and allows it to work on her heart; and she trust that this love that she is first receiving will give birth ever more deeply, in her own heart, to a reciprocal love that flows back in response.

But all the while Adam fades, and Natalya feels like she cannot get a grip on him. Time passes, and Adam publishes the book on his great-uncle through a small Christian publishing house. The number of copies sold is low, and he starts teaching part time, just to support his very frugal and simple way of life. He has moved into a very small apartment in a poor sector of the city, and rides a bike as much as possible. He eats little, despite Natalya’s nagging, and spends most of his free time out in the woods, lost in thought and longing and prayer. Sometimes he is away for hours, pacing slowly through the winding paths through the trees, or sitting or kneeling on the bare earth, sometimes reading a little but most of the time not. He is a man deeply unsettled and yet also profoundly at rest. He is waiting for something, restless to move on, and yet he is also lifted up, already, into an embrace that gives a taste of his eternal rest. Natalya feels it, both the longing and the rest. And she waits too. And she tries to rest.

Neither of them know what is coming. Not yet. But it is not something that can be rushed.

+ + +

The three year anniversary of Lily’s death arrives, on January 1, 2025, and Adam returns to the cemetery, even though it is a bitterly cold day. He simply prostrates himself before his wife and child, wrapped tight in a heavy trench-coat, and prays; but no tears come. Just an aching hollowness in his heart, which conceals a mysterious and yet intangible fullness. And as he lays here, exhausted and yet wide awake, the images of his wife pass through his mind’s eye. He sees her radiant and unaffected smile and hears her childlike laugh; he sees her long blonde hair hanging down her back, with a little braid in the middle tied together with colored scrunchies; her studiousness, or perhaps more accurately her rapt amazement, as she works on her sculptures, perspiration heavy on her forehead; her light and bouncing walk, even when she has a baby growing large in her womb (only up to a point, though!).

Yes, Adam feels her head against his chest, remembering the first embrace that they shared under the canopy of trees; and he remembers the first time that they embraced in the most physically intimate way possible in this temporal life, on the night of their wedding. For them one kind of embrace and the other were not radically different. For even in the latter they simply held one another, silent and still, breathing together in tenderness and awe, until the end. And Adam holds Lily in this way now, in the silence of his aching heart, reaching out across the veil of mortality to her once again. He inhales deeply, as if trying to bring her back by drawing in the very air of heaven into this temporal world. But he knows that it is impossible. Or rather, he knows that heaven is present to earth only behind a veil, making itself known only in glimpses, in little flashes of light, in a touch or an intuition, like a mysterious hand reaching out to caress the cheek. It is always there, revealing itself; but it is also always hidden, even in its revealing.

Lily... Adam thinks, speaking with her in the silence of his heart. I miss you so much. God gave you to me, and for this I will never cease to marvel. My heart throbs with gratitude for this gift to this day, with thanksgiving undimmed. But I miss you. I feel like, when you died, I died with you. But how, then, am I to continue living? My heart belongs with you, and with our little ones. Why then am I still here?

He pauses, listening. The air around him is quiet and still—with the stillness that is only possible on very cold days. But he hears, to his surprise, the gentle song of a dove in a nearby tree. She coos, one long note, down and up, and then a short one. Three times, followed by silence. Then, a moment later, she sings again, the same notes, though a different melody: one long, down and up, and then three short. That is the only song she knows, but it is never old, since it is her unique note within the symphony of heaven made present on earth.

At this moment, some of Lily’s earlier words come to Adam again: You will be a father of many...

Of many? For the first time, his heart pulls away from this. It is not the words themselves from which his heart recoils, but from a particular conception of them, from a particular way of understanding them. No, he cannot be a father of many. Not in that way. He is too little...far too little. His heart is so consumed, so lost in this mystery of eternity, that he knows that he cannot love but a few, if he is to love them as they deserve. His heart loves so deeply, gives itself so totally, that he can only give it to a few. And yet in these few persons, in the humble and ordinary love of his little, childlike heart, he knows that an expansive love will reach out to embrace many, a multitude, and to draw them, in this way, deeper into the all-encompassing embrace of God.

Immediately on having this thought, Adam realizes how much his heart has matured, how much it has sunk its roots into the mystery of God and his intentions, in the years since his wife died and his great-uncle came to him in his place of deepest need. He is not being asked to do anything great or exalted. He is not being asked to be a father who expends himself in external service, who is busy about many things. He is too little for this. No, he is being asked simply to pray, to long, to reach out to eternity, and in this very reaching out, to rest in the impalpable embrace of God that holds him already now. And in this place, in this place he can offer his heart and his life as a home for those whom God entrusts to him, for those whom God grants him, in this life, to love.

And Natalya is the first, and she will always be the first. Yet others, too, will come; not many, but a few. A little family, a very little family, born not from the bond of earthly marriage, but from a marriage of souls in the sight of God. For God chose this from all eternity, in his great love for this man and woman, his two precious children. Adam had sensed this long ago, even when he was still in high school, and he and Natalya sat together in the cave on the beach. But he feels and knows it now, with radiant and indubitable clarity.

They will be a very unconventional family, and he wonders if there will be a place for them. Certainly there must be. Certainly there must be a place within the world, or at least within the womb of the Church, for a virginal family such as this. But Adam feels deeply vulnerable and exposed as he thinks of this, as if all the intimate truth of his own deeply loved and deeply loving heart is being laid open to the gaze of others. Perhaps he could choose no more vulnerable, more powerless, more defenseless life than this. But is that not precisely the point? To stake his life entirely on love, on the love of heaven, on the love of the Trinity made present within this world in the most pure and transparent way possible?

Yes. And he finds himself spontaneously, with hardly a thought, repeating again and again in his heart: Let it be, Father, let it be...

+ + +

Give me a call, Adam, says Sarah’s voice over the answering machine. I’d love to catch up with you.

Adam has only spoken with Sarah three times since Lily died, though he suspects that they both regret that their relationship is not deeper. One of the reasons is that she now lives on the outskirts of the city, and it takes almost an hour for her to get back to the area where Adam lives, or for him to get where she lives, or thirty minutes for both of them if they meet in the middle. This is what they do now, meeting in the small suburb of Arlington at a coffee shop. It is Saturday afternoon at one o’clock, in early March, when Adam pulls into the parking lot. When he steps out of the car and looks around, he immediately sees Sarah, looking at him and waving broadly from the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop.

A broad smile immediately spreads across his face, and he cannot help laughing softly to himself. It is so good to see her again. He thinks back on their many conversations in his office at the university, or sitting on a bench or pacing side by side on the grounds. She has matured beautifully since he knew her then, both in personal integrity and in faith, while also retaining her beautiful simplicity and unaffected spontaneity, which makes being in her presence so attractive and enjoyable.

Adam Kumiega! she says, her face radiant, and her arms open for a hug.

He embraces her, and reciprocating the gesture of formal-informality, he whispers, My dear Sarah Anderson. It is good to see you again.

They make their order at the counter, a café au lait for Sarah and water for Adam (another result of his poverty, since he can only afford one coffee, though he doesn’t tell Sarah this). They are seated, and are immediately lost in conversation, such that they hardly notice when their drinks arrive. Sarah tells Adam about her work.

She has been working, for the last two years, as an assistant teacher at a preschool—a hectic job for sure, but a beautiful and rewarding one as well. This kind of work, helping to teach the littlest ones about the littlest things, and caring for them in their littlest needs, fits her humble and yet exuberant personality quite well. She definitely has the energy for it, as well as the tenderness of heart, and Adam cannot help smiling as he listens to a number of touching stories about the daily joys and small crises faced in a preschool.

But after a while, Sarah pauses and looks at him with a sparkle in her eyes.

So tell me, she says, I heard that you and Natalya are growing closer and closer, right?

We have always been close, Adam replies, except for a terrible period of estrangement, which was entirely my fault.

"Yes, you told me that, but I could already tell last time we talked that it is going deeper."

Are you implying something?

Well, Sarah says, delicately, I know it has been hardly more than three years since your wife, Lily, has passed. But I was wondering if you were considering remarriage. After all, you are still very young. Then she adds, How old are you now, anyway?

I’ll be thirty-two in April, Adam says. And as for your question about remarriage, it is a definite no. Natalya and I are not called to marriage, or at least not to an ordinary marriage.

Oh... Sarah says quietly, surprised at such a short and clear response. But her eyes are asking why, and so Adam continues.

You see, Sarah, he says, you of all people well understand that there is a way of loving a woman outside of the realm of sex and marriage.

Yes, but marriage is also more than sex.

"Clearly. And marriage is the ordinary path that the love between man and woman takes. Indeed, it is so much the norm that most people take it to be the only path. But look at you and me, Adam says. Ours is a gratuitous friendship with no other meaning than simply itself. It is just good to be together, to love one another."

That is true, Sarah smiles, I just wish it could be a little closer.

Adam laughs, Right out with it then! So be it! It will be closer from now on.

Good, Sarah says, grinning sheepishly. I was hoping you’d say that.

And I was hoping that you would, says Adam.

But please, continue, she adds, with a gesture of her hand.

Of course. I have become convinced, Sarah, that the way that God is marking out for me is the path of celibacy. He wants me to unite myself to Christ in a particularly total way, and to love the way that Christ loves, as transparently as I can.

So this is why you aren’t going to get married... Sarah says.

Yes. By renouncing the way of marriage and its normal sexual expression, it is possible to insert my life into the virginal life of Christ—and of his Virgin Mother too—and to share in their own way of living and loving. And this way of love is, truly, an anticipation, already in this temporal world, of the way that all persons will love in heaven, whether they were married or not.

I think I understand, Sarah says. All this ‘Catholic stuff’ is really starting to sink in, and I feel like I’m beginning to live and breathe Catholic.

Then I trust that you’re beginning to live and breathe truth, says Adam, even though you were already in a deep contact with it from the moment that I met you.

Sarah cannot help smiling broadly at this.

But tell me, she asks, what about Natalya?

Well, Adam replies, it is in large part because of her, and in relationship with her, that this gift of a wholly chaste love became clear to me. Of course, this gift is from God, but it has crystallized in my relationship with her in particular. There are many reasons for this, but suffice it to say that, after all that I have experienced in my life, and because of the particular depth and purity of my relationship with Natalya, I cannot conceive of any better way of incarnating our love—and the love of God who has given us to one another—than to love one another in complete continence.

You said there are many reasons. I think I can understand your relationship with Natalya—a little. But what exactly in your life has helped you see this? I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.

No, not at all, Adam says. I would say that it is primarily two things. The first was my relationship with Lily—or rather, he pauses, not wishing to say too much about something so sacred and interior, "or rather, it is my relationship with Lily. Our love and our marriage tilled the soil of my soul, and in particular her suffering and death, which taught me what a heavenly love looks like, a love on the model of the love of Christ. Christ in the Eucharist. Christ on the Cross. Christ who is a Spouse and a Father, and yet in an entirely virginal way."

Sarah nods silently. Adam can see that she is deeply moved.

And—and the second? she asks.

The second was my encounter with Alojzy. Adam had spoken in depth with her about Alojzy at their first meeting after he left the hospital following his accident. And she has also read the biography. She and Natalya were, in fact, the two primary proofreaders of the text. You see, Adam continues, after the love that I have encountered in Alojzy, I cannot but give my life entirely to God in this way. The breath of ‘pure and fair love,’ as Scripture says, has been exhaled upon me, and I cannot but breathe it in deeply, for my own sake, as well as with the hope of breathing it forth upon others in turn.

Ah! Sarah exclaims, hiding her face in her hands.

Adam is surprised by the intensity of her response, and asks, What is it?

Ah, Adam! she replies, and removes her hands, revealing that tears are welling up in her eyes. This is exactly what I felt in you back when we first got to know one another. Truly, this gift has been in you before you ever had your encounter with Alojzy, or even were married to Lily.

Yes, you are right. I can see the traces the whole way back in my adolescence, or even earlier.

Well, good, Sarah says, with an air of definiteness.

That is an odd response, Adam says. What do you mean, ‘Well, good’?

I mean, Sarah answers, ‘Well, good, now we’ve come to it.’

To what?

Sarah laughs again. (Adam is again grateful for her lighthearted, childlike spirit.)

We’ve come to the whole reason that I asked you the question about considering remarriage in the first place.

Have we? Adam asks, not understanding the connection.

Yep, Sarah says, and picks up her coffee and takes a long drink from it. It is probably almost cold by now.

Adam waits patiently. He sees her take a deep breath, and an expression crosses her face which Adam understands from experience: she is about to speak about something intimate which embarrasses her.

You see, Adam, she says at last, I don’t think I am intended to get married.

He receives this in silence, gazing upon her tenderly and waiting for her to continue.

Yeah, I mean, it’s like—like all that you said applies in some way to me too. Does that make sense?

A little.

Well, I want to love that way also.

Have you considered the consecrated life? Adam asks. I mean, entering a convent and becoming a sister?

I have thought and prayed about it, but I’m pretty confident that’s not for me.

Well, what about the different modes of consecrated life? I know that there are secular institutes, where a woman remains in the world while consecrating her life to God. Or there is even a simple consecrated virgin, who does not belong to an institute, but professes her virginity before the bishop.

I feel that God is not asking me to be a member of an institute, Sarah replies. I feel like the Church is enough of a home for me, if you know what I mean. Adam nods. And plus, I’ve visited a few communities, and they truly did feel more like ‘institutes’ than like homes; I felt more like a member of a business than a child in a family or a sister among sisters. I felt like a number, not a name, like a role, not a person.

I understand, Adam says. There is a great sickness in the Church today, and indeed it has been present, to some degree, for a long time. I think you’ve touched on it quite well.

I don’t know much about a sickness, Sarah says, "but I guess you’re right. Something just felt lacking—like in order to draw nearer to God and to give my life entirely to him, I had to leave behind something of my humanity. Indeed, it felt like I had to insert myself into a regimented way of life, into a ‘rule of life’ that complicated the simplicity of the Gospel, and to be watched and analyzed for the rest of my life. I understand accountability and all, but I just wonder if things need to be so complicated. Is it not just possible to have a home, a true home of intimate love, in which we can love one another as Christ asked, and by his gift? This is all I want. Plus I just feel too little for anything else. I’m just his little daughter, after all!"

Now it is Adam’s turn to laugh. And the laughter bursts deep from within him, as he is both surprised and delighted with Sarah’s words. God has certainly been deep at work. Littleness. Has this not been the deep and liberating crystallization that he himself has been experiencing ever more deeply over the last years, and indeed through the course of his entire life?

CHAPTER 2

Miss Anderson

The relationship between Sarah and Adam begins to flower beautifully over the coming months, as they meet up every week—and often more. And they soon begin to wish that the physical distance between them wasn’t so great. But Sarah also begins to notice, as Natalya had done, that Adam is fading. She cannot help feeling that the depth and tenderness of his presence to her, and the simple gratuity of his friendship, is held within a deeper longing, an aching longing, to depart and to be with Christ.

And, of course, Lily is there too, at the heart of this longing. Sarah reverences this place in Adam, knowing that there existed during Lily’s life a great love between them, and that this love still endures, even across the boundary of death. And Natalya is there too, and though at first Sarah does not much know the contours of their relationship, she asks questions, she listens, and she reflects.

Adam is reserved at first, and, of course, he never simply shares everything. But he shares a lot. Sarah cannot express to herself why this touches her so deeply, but her heart begins to ache with a longing too, born from her contact with the purity and beauty of the love that exists between Adam and Natalya. Is she perhaps jealous, longing to be loved in the same way? No, this can’t be it, not in the deepest sense. Of course, a woman’s heart can experience any manner of things in the maturing of relationship, and Adam himself is very sensitive to this, and often asks her questions in this regard, sometimes more explicit and sometimes more implicit. But no, Sarah experiences something different, and only through prayer and reflection and a deep, silent listening of the heart is she able to understand the word that is being spoken in this place.

She is not jealous because she knows—and comes to feel ever more deeply with each passing week—that there is no competition in Adam’s love. If there is a unique beauty to his love for Natalya, and a particular word of God spoken between them, then Sarah is not troubled, because she hears with ever deeper clarity the word spoken also between Adam’s heart and her own. And it is, certainly, the deepest and purest love of her entire life. This comes, she suspects, in large part from Adam’s phenomenal capacity to love; but it also comes from the very soil in which their relationship is planted, and in which it grows. Yes, for it is in Christ that they meet, and within the orbit of his love that they continually discover one another with increasing awe and gratitude and reverence.

In this way Sarah’s own awareness of and desire for the beauty of a life of virginity blossoms.[*] Through the embrace of Adam’s love, through the cherishing tenderness of his gaze, she finds herself welcomed into an atmosphere, and breathing an air, that is far different than the polluted air of the culture in which she has lived until now. Indeed, it is an air indescribably purer and more elevated—but also more simple and humble!—than even the pure air of natural sexuality and marriage, while also casting light back upon it. For in this space, it is as if all the secondary and fading things which so often obscure the person are rendered transparent, and the uniqueness of the person is laid bare in its innate beauty. And here two persons encounter, in their incomparable singularity, in a unique relationship that can compare with no other. And in this relationship they dance and play in a gratuitous wonder that God has created each of them, and has given them to one another simply as they are, with no strings attached. It is enough to be the persons whom they are, and to belong to one another in the God who unites them, even as the beauty of this communion also stretches their hearts in even deeper longing for God, and also in the longing to definitively discover and embrace one another in him at the end of time.

And Sarah, too, begins to fade. No, that is not accurate. Her experience is quite different from Adam’s. He fades because his heart is already living more in eternity than in time. But Sarah is thrilled with the perpetual discovery of eternity living at the heart of time, and her life is filled with a new and tangible radiance. And she wants to live. But in the living she is stretched, and sees more and more the blindness and darkness and confusion of the world in which she lives. And this seeing hurts, even as it is a pain born from a deeper joy.

And so she lets herself be stretched. She lets herself ache with this newfound beauty and this intensified longing. Above all, she plays, like the child that she once was, and yet which she was never able to be enough, and which, until now, she had lost hope of ever rediscovering. But now things change, and the hope is reborn. As her heart grows and expands, she feels more and more both like a little child, and also like a mature woman, and the two inseparably interlaced in a single mystery of love.

+ + +

Sarah Emily Anderson, her mother says.

Uh oh. Mom only uses her full name whenever she is in trouble.

Come here right now.

There it is.

She gets up from the couch and goes into the kitchen, where Mom is standing, with her hands on her hips and her head cocked to one side, glaring at her daughter.

Yeah, Mom? Sarah replies, trying to sound nonchalant. She has inherited an attitude from her mother, and yet her mother cannot stand it, so she tries to reign it in whenever in her presence. Otherwise, their relationship would be one long train of conflicts—in large part precisely because their personalities are so alike. Sometimes misery doesn’t love company. Though it’s not misery, but angst. Yes, perhaps angst is the best word. And Sarah has a reason for angst, because she is a teenager. But Mom doesn’t, right, because she is a middle-aged woman?

At this point in her life, however, Sarah is not in the habit of reflecting on such things, and she is not really sure why she feels angst, nor even knows exactly what it is. She only knows that the world seems to her like a very cruel place, and that she can’t really trust anyone, and that she has to fend more or less for herself; and she knows that everything feels particularly dramatic, not because of the intrinsic significance of things in themselves, but because she feels alone in them. Okay, so perhaps Sarah does know what angst is, after all. But she tries not to think about it. She is very lonely, but any time she tries to express it, all that she hears from Mom and Dad is, It sounds like you have an ego that is a couple sizes too big. Does she really? After all, she has been trained thoroughly in the values of individual self-expression and striving to achieve one’s goals, because God made us for the happy life, as Dad says at times. But what she wants is just to be seen, and, in being seen, to be loved.

Dad is a classical, almost stereotypical, Protestant businessman, following the track that the Protestant Reformation had (intentionally or unintentionally) marked out in humanity, and that the American movement allowed to find its highest expression: an expression which went, perhaps fittingly, by the name of the American dream, even as America was now seeking to evangelize the whole world with the same values. What are these values? A high-level technical education. A good and well-paying job. And then, when these are in place, get married. Have a child or two (at most). And then? Well, and then enjoy it all. Prosperity in this life was a sign of being chosen for bliss in the next. It was as simple as that.

How many times do I have to tell you not to watch that TV show? Mom says, cocking her head even further, and Sarah is brought back to the present.

But Mom, there’s nothing wrong with it. Plus, it won’t affect me, cause I know what I’m watching. (Sarah doesn’t realize that this is a contradiction, as if she won’t be affected by what in fact doesn’t exist, as long as she knows that it exists.)

The show is not that bad. Just some off color jokes here and there, and above all just the typical youth sitcom stuff: young adults and teenagers who are presented as geniuses of creativity and irony and self-affirmation, and parents and adults who look like idiots who hardly know their right hand from their left, and who are ceaselessly nagging their more intelligent children (because they simply can’t understand their superiority). And the parents, of course, are a primary target of the irony, though it is not reserved to them alone. Of course, its not all that funny, but funny enough (the canned laughter that is repeated regularly in the background helps, perhaps); and above all, it is distracting. And that is what an angsty teenager wants.

But Sarah doesn’t know that her angst-laden world is about to change forever, and that things will be unsealed within her that will alter the course of her life. It will be a breaking of the little self-made world in which she has been increasingly living—and which, in large part, she was given by the narrowness of her parents, who knew nothing else but to bestow upon their daughter the self-centered and limited vision of the world that they themselves knew. But any breaking of the kind hurts, at least at first, even if afterwards it opens up broad vistas of surprising beauty and freedom.

Turn it off and help me with dinner, Mom commands.

But it’s almost over, complains Sarah.

I said turn it off. Now come, cut some carrots.

Grudgingly, Sarah obeys, but very slowly, trying to catch the end of the show by pretending that she cannot find the remote to the television.

+ + +

Sarah’s attitude comes from more sources than teenage angst and the atmosphere of her home. Of course, the very cultural atmosphere that she breathes in each day at school, and through the technology that threatens to entirely infiltrate her interior conscious space until she becomes a drone of social media and internet jargon, also affects her greatly. But the latter she has in common with almost all of the young people of her generation, and the former, too, is very common. What sets her apart, or what exacerbates the feeling of having no place in this world unless she safeguards it for herself, is the other thing that she experiences. Or rather, the thing that she has, throughout her entire life, failed to experience.

She is, of course, the only child. Dad had his surgery a year or two after she was born, and she learned of this in a matter of fact way in a dinner conversation one evening, long before she was entirely able to understand. But in fact this was one of the only times that anything having to do with human sexuality was mentioned to her by her parents. She was never told how children were conceived and brought into this world, nor educated in what to expect when she herself began to grow into a woman.

She would have been totally at a loss, and quite frightened, in fact, if her friends at school had not spoken about it. She acted like she already knew it all, of course, but could not avoid indirectly making statements that would evoke a response that would help her to learn more. They were subtle jokes or acknowledgments that concealed little questions, to which she did not know the answer, but which she desired to know. Nonetheless, such tactics of learning about puberty were not always successful, and they inevitably did not cover all bases.

The worst case of this failure was when she had her first period. She had heard vague references to this, but had never had the courage to ask explicitly (and thus to admit her ignorance). And so one day at school, after the bell rang to move from one class to the next, she stood up, and felt the fabric of her underwear and pants clinging to her skin. Looking down, she saw that she had bled through her light khaki pants. And, looking up, she saw that a couple of the boys in the class were looking at her, laughing and...pointing. They knew what she was experiencing, probably better than she did herself.

Burying her face in her hands and trying to hold back the tears, she ran to the bathroom and tried to clean herself up as best she could. But to go back to class...that was too much. She sneaked instead to the nurse’s office, her heart racing, and asked them to call her mother. She asked Mom to bring her a change of clothes, or otherwise to come pick her up for the day. Mom said that she was busy and would not be able to come for another couple hours, so Sarah should just go to class and hide the stain as best she could. She would have the school office call for her whenever she arrived.

This was dreadful.

Thankfully, the nurse offered her a little hooded sweatshirt of her own, and had her tie it around her waist, to be returned once she got her longed-for change of clothes.

And so she walked, her heart aching, back to class, and waited anxiously for Mom to come.

In the car that day after school, Sarah hoped that Mom would give her the education that she should have received long ago, but never did. She looked at Mom with a pleading, questioning expression, but could not bring herself to ask explicitly.

They were nearing home, and Sarah had given up all hopes of such a conversation, when Mom glanced at her, and said, So you’ve started your first cycle?

Yeah, Sarah said, in as relaxed a tone as she could.

Do you know how to put in a tampon?

Sarah had heard of them, but didn’t really know what they were. She had seen some pads on her bathroom counter a few months back, with a little note, For Sarah, when she needs them. But that was all. Were these tampons?

Actually, Mom said, as if remembering, I think I meant to buy you some, but never got around to it.

I had some pads that you left on my counter, Sarah replied. Were those them?

Mom laughed. No, dear. Those are just pads. Tampons are different. I’ll give you some of mine, I guess. You can look it up online how to put them in. You just push it straight up until its comfortable, and you don’t feel it any more. If it hurts, it’s in crooked, or is not in far enough.

Oh... Push it in where exactly? And how?

She looked it up that evening, but couldn’t bring herself to try it. Instead, she decided to just use the pads, hoping that these would be enough.

+ + +

That was four or five years ago now, and Sarah is fifteen. She still doesn’t use tampons, but she has learned a lot more than she knew then—though only indirectly, through off-color jokes on television or conversations at school. She has still not seen any naked body except her own, and she looks at this as little as she can. And she can’t remember the last time that she was seen in her nakedness, either. Perhaps as a little child, whenever Mom bathed her. She doesn’t, of course, remember this, but she assumes that it must have happened.

She does remember one incident, however, when she was just shy of twelve years old. She was invited to a birthday party of, Jordan, one of her friends. It was a sleepover. She was a year older than Sarah, and a grade before her, but they had known one another throughout elementary school, and had played together even as children. They had grown a little further apart over the last year or so, but Sarah was glad to find that she was invited to the party. But a sleepover? Sarah had only been to a couple sleepovers before, and never for a birthday party. She was anxious for this one, because it would be very different: there were six girls invited, not including herself.

But despite her nervousness, Sarah was also excited, and found herself looking forward to the day—a Friday in the beginning of June, shortly after school let out for the summer. All that day Sarah found herself struggling to focus on anything, and was surprised even to feel the butterflies in her stomach. What was the big deal? After all, nothing was going to happen. And if she found herself uncomfortable, there were enough girls there that she could just sink into the background, unnoticed.

And so the time came, and Mom and Dad dropped her off on their way out for dinner. They were having a Mom and Dad Date with her being out of the house. The girls were all there already, sitting and chatting together in Jordan’s room, when she entered. After an awkward moment of introductions (for those who didn’t know each other), and the sad recognition that Sarah was the youngest girl present, Jordan’s mother told the girls that they would have dinner in an hour or so, then presents and cake, and then would watch a movie afterwards. Simple enough. She could make it through that. The first hour would be the most difficult, but after that she could just ride the wave.

And so it all happened. Until.

Until, half way into the movie, the girls got restless.

After a unanimous vote (excluding Sarah), they turned off the movie. Instead, they sat in a circle and talked, the room almost entirely dark except for the dull light from the blank screen of the television.

Sarah tried to hide away from the light, hoping to be passed over in anything that may follow. She had always had a terror of some of the games often played at sleepovers...truth or dare, or two truths and a lie, or secret-sharing.

But no such games followed. Instead, the conversation took a turn that was even scarier, particularly considering that all of the girls were older than Sarah.

One of the girls said, Have you noticed that Jessica hasn’t started her period yet? And she’s in eighth grade!

Yeah, another girl said, her voice vibrating with excitement, she looks three years younger than she is.

I don’t blame the guys for not really liking her, said the first. She’s just a little girl, not a real woman.

Sarah could not help thinking at this moment, Am I just a little girl? I feel like a girl in comparison with them. She could not help looking at their chests, and she saw that they certainly had bigger breasts than she did, and more developed bodies. She felt like a child in the midst of a group of budding women.

I don’t know a girl, another girl said, who would still be wearing a training bra.

Oh yeah, the first girl said again, my breasts wouldn’t even fit in a training bra any more. They have grown so much in the last year.

What size are you? asked another.

Well, I just moved into a C-cup.

Really, let me check.

She rose to her feet and pulled a bra out of her duffel bag.

Sure enough, you’re not lying! the girls exclaimed.

Then all of them did this, and they compared.

Except Sarah.

She was, after all, wearing a training bra.

The girls kept talking and comparing, and Sarah sat there, wishing she was invisible.

Mine aren’t quite that big yet, but I started my period later, so I’m sure mine will grow to be that big, or bigger, just give me time.

Yeah, me too, for my mom and my big sister have big breasts too.

Sarah gradually began to scoot herself away from the group of girls, trying not to draw attention to herself. But this backfired. For Jordan saw her.

Turning to Sarah, she said, Don’t worry, Sarah, you’re a year younger than the rest of us. You’ll grow up too, and when you get full breasts, then the guys will really be interested in you.

After Jordan said this, all the girls turned to look at her. She felt like an object now, as their eyes passed over her,