Several years ago, I went to a magical place in Wisconsin, it was the grotto in Dickeyville. A grotto is a man-made cave, meant to be a picturesque place for reflection. This grotto is located on the grounds of the Holy Ghost parish and was built by Matthias Wernerus, who was a priest at that congregation from 1918-1930. Picturesque reflection isn’t exactly what this particular grotto inspires, but it is definitely picture worthy. It was constructed out of thousands of pieces of glass, shells, rocks, fossils, and countless other bric-a-brac. It is a whole garden, with multiple shrines dedicated to faith. Mosaics of Mary, Jesus and the disciples are scattered around the place. Honestly, it’s a little wild, a little weird and certainly kooky.
Fr. Wernerus is buried in the parish cemetery, which are on the grounds with the grotto. Looking at his headstone, I thought he must have been a man of strong and kooky faith, a man who gave strong and kooky love. Who else would look out their office window, imagine a grotto, and then spend 5 years building it? It really got me thinking about how we would describe admirable or exemplary faith.
We use words like “strong” or “deep” or “incredible” to describe some of our faith heroes. Those are all good adjectives; however, I would also like to add “wild” and “kooky” and “quirky” to the list. Oftentimes we want to trim away the ragged edges or clean up the wild parts of our faith. Things that don’t fit into the box of normal or with our perceived ideas of holiness are dropped out. We sanitize the bits and pieces that may look weird to other people, and in doing so miss some of the best parts of our faith. Some of the most relatable and life changing parts of our faith story are also the parts that are a little wild, a little weird and most certainly kooky. Decades after Fr. Wernerus served his community, people flock to Dickeyville to see what his faith inspired him to do. They aren’t coming to see learn about his rich devotional life, or read his sermons, or even count up how many catechism classes he taught, they are coming to see what was a little kooky. So perhaps, those are the parts of our faith we should cling to tightly. After all, we follow a God who decided to take on human form and come to earth to live with us, if that isn’t a little wild and weird I don’t know what is.
Just one last “heads-up”. In May, we will be starting another combined Parish book study. We will be reading and talking through the novel “The Shack” by Wm. Paul Young. It is readily available at Scott county libraries and major booksellers. This is a great book about how God is present with us in the midst of tragedy, however, it does contain some very tragic scenarios, just be aware.
~Pastor Amy
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