All Is Grace_ A Ragamuffin Memoir - Brennan Manning [26]
We had no desire to compete with the parish church on Sunday, so we decided on Friday night celebrations involving the Eucharist at the house, followed by a wine and cheese party. And all those who worked on the shrimp boats could come if they chose. Our services were rather unorthodox from the beginning. We usually got started with a half hour of music, mostly songs from the monks of Weston Priory. This was followed by a message or homily. Gus Gordon, a truly gifted speaker, shared the preaching responsibilities with me. Brother Luke, filled with the gift of hospitality, made sure all other needs were taken care of throughout the time.
One of the first things we purchased in the renovation stage was a huge butcher-block table; it became our altar, our hearth for Communion. I can still remember standing before that table with wine and bread, thinking, This is right.
We adorned the walls of the house with nautical motifs so the people felt at home there, and in no time at all, we did too. Over the course of two years, we had more than two hundred people coming on Friday nights, people who had not been to church in years. Some called what we were doing “the folk Mass.” Seeing as how we were living with and among beautiful common folk, I had no problem with that. In fact, I liked it a lot.
Then a huge wrench was thrown into our ministry. After two years, the Franciscan community in Pennsylvania deemed our experiment a failure. I never received any deeper explanation. Maybe if we’d had more official converts, but the bottom line is I don’t know the reason. What I do know is that our every move was based on the Little Brothers’ spirit of taking Christ to the people, not the other way around. So we had no regrets. After our community dispersed, Gus said to me, “Brennan, that was the richest experience of my life.” I looked into my friend’s tear-filled eyes and affirmed, “Gus, it was one of my happiest.”
11
My story up to this point has followed a loose chronology—one thing happening after the other. But for the rest of this section, time will loop, even fold over on itself. It’s strange how things can go from happy to sad so quickly. But they can. The paragraphs that follow deal with some very dark days in regard to my alcoholism. I don’t even really know how to talk about it. Some of that is due to the shame I feel and some of that is because of the toll alcohol has taken on my mind.
The medical name for it is Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome; I know it as “wet brain.” It has to do with a thiamine deficiency brought about by poor nutritional habits; in other words, the person replaces food with alcohol. Over time this deficit causes significant brain-cell death. One of the telling signs of this syndrome is mental confusion, sometimes to the point of insisting upon events that did not happen. So you can imagine why I approach telling you about these days with hesitation.
To me, the experiment in Bayou La Batre was like an extended summer vacation. And what do you do when summer’s over? Go back to class, which I did. I became the campus minister at Broward Community College in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. There were days at Broward when I experienced more than I could imagine, and then there were days of more than I could handle. It was a time of intense loneliness. Oh, I enjoyed the college students; in fact, I feel I’ve always been able to connect well with that age group. But I had just come out of this idyllic experience in Bayou La Batre surrounded by a close-knit group of peers and suddenly that all went away.
Thinking about it now, the students of Broward were a decent reflection of my life at the time. Some of the students were passing with flying colors, winning awards, and gathering acclaim. I experienced days like that at Broward, moments of being on top of the world. Some faculty members verbally affirmed my presence on campus, and I enjoyed