By the time Brother Joseph’s sports car had entered his long gravel driveway in the country outside Greer, South Carolina, Shawn’s tears had flowed as much as they would under the circumstances, and he had dried his face with a cloth.
As soon as they pulled up to the modest house, at least six hound dogs surrounded the car and began baying loudly. Shawn was soon laughing for the first time in days as he attempted, with little success, to get out of the car.
Brother Joseph shooed them all away in a deep, booming voice, and Shawn was finally able to get his duffel bag and walk to the house.
Brother Joseph and his wife and three children made Shawn welcome and comfortable with munchies, a hot shower, and a cozy bed made up on the couch. Sensing the volatility of the situation, they didn’t press Shawn for details about his plight. Shawn talked to Brother Jacob again on the telephone, and when he was asked what he wanted to do next, he answered with confidence that he wanted to come to Lyceum, if for no other reason, just to put as much distance as possible between himself and Greenville, South Carolina.
The following day, after an early but filling breakfast, Brother Joseph’s wife kissed her husband as he headed off to work in the sports car. Shawn and the three children were loaded into the family’s station wagon, and she drove them first through the green hills and forests to Asheville, North
Carolina, then over the Appalachian Mountains to Knoxville, Tennessee.
Shawn insisted on buying lunch for the family, before they continued toward Nashville. He thoroughly enjoyed the trip — he had never had brothers or sisters to play with on a car trip, and was making up for lost time with every imaginable game, riddle, and joke, and at the same time giving Brother Joseph’s wife a break from parenting responsibilities.
As evening descended, Shawn was delivered to a tiny house on the outskirts of Nashville, where a slender black lady named Sister Mary Jane and her daughter lived. After many hugs and farewells, Brother Joseph’s family left to visit relatives.
Shawn was at first uncomfortable in the little house. He had assumed that all Lyceum members were at least middle class. But after he became aware of the beauty and comfort that Sister Mary Jane had created with simple and inexpensive materials, including altars and shrines, study nooks and play lofts, he began to relax. And after he had experienced the tasty southern feast that she prepared in her tiny kitchen, which centered around the best fried chicken he had ever had, he began to realize that his assumption was quite out of line.
The next morning, the little girl roused him at the crack of dawn. Sister Mary Jane was already throwing supplies in the back of her old pickup. They ate hominy grits with honey and cream, and then piled into the truck.
She bumped along narrow back roads that crossed rivers on old wooden bridges, and told Shawn all about the many delights of western Tennessee.
They crossed a wide finger of Kentucky Lake, and ate lunch in the little town of Wickliffe, from which they could see the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Twice that day they passed over or under Interstate highways, but never did Sister Mary Jane seek an on-ramp.
As the sun set beyond the great river, they rattled into a suburb just short of St. Louis.
Shawn could only laugh at himself silently when Sister Mary Jane pulled up in front of a split-level suburban mansion and shared a hearty embrace with the clean cut white gentleman who met her in the driveway. All the boxes and bags in the back of the truck came inside, and a tow truck soon
appeared to haul the little pickup away for a complete tune-up and whatever else it might need.
Brother Bob drove them by some of the night time sights of St. Louis, and then took them to a dark and plush dining room for steak and lobster. For the first time since leaving Greenville, Shawn began to talk about some of his experiences after leaving home. He hoped they wouldn’t ask him his father’s name. They didn’t.
The next morning Shawn awoke to the aromas of Sister Mary Jane cooking breakfast. By eight o’clock he and Brother Bob were climbing into a small twin engine private plane at a nearby airport. It had already been flight-checked, fueled, and loaded with an ice chest full of snacks. They headed across the Great Plains at two hundred and fifty miles per hour.
It turned out that Brother Bob liked low level flying, so as they crossed the farmlands of Missouri, Kansas, and eastern Colorado, Shawn had a close up look at the bread basket of America, sometimes so close he thought he could reach out of the plane’s window and grab a few wheat stalks. The pilot talked about all his favorite events at Lyceum, and Shawn soon realized that he did not yet fully understand all of Lyceum’s many projects and missions.
“Brother Bob, I was wondering... do you know how Lyceum ever came to have both religious and scientific facilities? I’ve never heard of any other place that tried to combine the two.”
“Interesting combination, isn’t it? Science and Religion, most people would agree, are the two major ways we have of looking at our universe. And, of course, universe means that which there is only one of. That means they are both, in essence, trying to do the same job. You with me so far?”
“Um... yes. That all makes sense.”
“Religion came first, because we needed to believe that our existence had meaning. Then we needed a better understanding of God’s physical creation, the stage upon which our mortal drama is enacted, so Science was developed.
There are even newer methodologies that make both Religion and Science look archaic.”
“You mean like Phenomenology?”
“Yes, and others. Each method of seeing the universe seems to go through
a childhood of believing that they are the only valid game in town, and then a slow maturation process that allows each, after hundreds or thousands of years, to begin accepting the commonalities they have with the other methods. Both Science and Religion have come up against some problems in the last century or two, and they have begun, slowly, to accept the fact that they need each other. Facilitating that process is one of Lyceum’s purposes.”
“Gosh, all that sure does makes you look at the Big Picture, doesn’t it?”
Brother Bob chuckled. “Yes, and every time you think you can see the Big Picture, you discover you have to take another step back, and see how that fits into an even Bigger Picture.”
Shawn smiled, and then his eyes became wide as Brother Bob swooped the little plane between two hills.
When they landed at the airport in Denver, the thermometer was trying for a record at one hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit. Brother Bob announced that he would be renting a car to go into town for business, but that Shawn would be heading west with another member. They had hardly entered the pleasantly cool airport lobby when a tall American Indian man with long black hair introduced himself as Brother Dancing Raven. Shawn thanked Brother Bob, who headed for the rent-a-car counter, and then the reverend’s son and the Indian man climbed into a tiny sedan that sped through the city and up into the Rocky Mountains.
The air cooled as they climbed, and when they had reached eight thousand feet, it had actually become pleasant. They stopped at a little restaurant in an old trailer beside the road, and over fry bread and beans, Shawn recounted his adventures leaving home, working at the mission, and being chased all over his home town. With the distance, both spatial and temporal, that Shawn now had from those events, they seemed almost like a funny but slightly sick joke. Brother Dancing Raven took it all very seriously, and empathized completely with the emotions Shawn had felt at the time. They ate ice cream, and then continued across the mountains.
Night and the Utah border were at hand when Shawn’s host finally pulled the little car onto a dirt road that he knew, bumped along to a flat sandy place that could not be seen from the highway, and stopped. They gathered
firewood and soon had a cheery little blaze over which to roast hot dogs and drink a tea that the Indian made from the leaves of a nearby bush.
Shawn unrolled his sleeping bag and Dancing Raven pulled one out of the trunk of the car. They were soon gazing up at a sky full of countless millions of stars. Shawn spoke of the variety of people who had given him rides so far, and Brother Dancing Raven assured him that the variety would be even greater when he reached Lyceum. After several minutes of silence, during which the sky became even blacker and the stars seemed to redouble their numbers, Shawn asked a question that had been worrying him for a long time.
“Has a Lyceum member ever been kicked out for something they believed?”
Brother Dancing Raven rolled the thought around in his head for a moment. “No... and yes.”
Shawn kept silent, hoping an elaboration would be forthcoming.
“No... as long as your beliefs are in your own head, or practiced quietly on your own time, or respectfully shared with other members who want to hear about them.”
Shawn waited to hear the other side of the coin.
“Yes... in a very few cases in which a member’s beliefs have included the imperative that they push them onto other people who haven’t expressed an interest.”
“Thanks,” Shawn said.
Then, as he lay gazing up at the star-studded sky, he became aware of the mind-boggling complexity of the scene over his head. It was not, as he had always assumed, a collection of randomly spaced pin-points of light. It had depth, and texture, and structure, and every time he tried to look at two adjacent stars, he saw, or sensed, an even fainter star between them.
Then he thought about Brother Dancing Raven’s two answers to his question. All his life he had been taught that the Christian gospel, as understood by his family’s church, was right for everyone... and it should be preached to everyone. If they didn’t listen, or did listen but didn’t accept the message, as presented, something was wrong with them.
As Shawn gazed thoughtfully at the magnificent starry sky above, something didn’t feel right about that concept he had been taught. Some little
voice within seemed to be trying to tell him something. The message of that voice was, for the most part, beyond Shawn’s understanding at that moment, but one key thought came through and lodged itself securely in his memory.
As Shawn drifted off to sleep, he vaguely remembered hearing foreign languages and seeing colorful clothes from other countries during his one brief visit to the place toward which he was now journeying. And he knew, with an understanding that bordered on sublime faith, that the truth would always be more complex... and more beautiful... than any human parent could convey, or any earthly church could teach.
The next morning after corn mush and tea, they resumed their journey across the desert prairies of eastern Utah. By ten o’clock the day had become blistering hot, and it was only worse when they crossed the mountains and dropped down into Salt Lake City. Shawn bought lunch for them at a place that promised air conditioning and stocked plenty of cold drinks and desserts.
After lunch, Brother Dancing Raven delivered Shawn to a Best Western Motel and said good-bye, needing to meet his father in a southern Wyoming town by that evening. As soon as Shawn checked in, he learned that the room was already paid for, and that there was a message for him. It was from Brother Jacob, telling him that his next ride would be there at nine o’clock the following morning.
With only slight reluctance, Shawn decided to explore the city. As he strode down the sidewalk, a chuckle escaped him as he imagined his father’s men still watching the bus and train stations in Greenville, while he wandered freely in about the last place his father would think to look. Yet he could still taste the fear and anger that he had so recently left behind in his home town.
He enjoyed being alone that afternoon and evening, looking at the Mormon Temple and walking through a museum of church history and art, sipping cold drinks at a restaurant near the motel, and swimming in the motel’s pool at three different times. He went to bed with the air conditioner on low and a heavy chest of drawers pushed against the door.
The next morning he had gone for a swim and eaten a hearty breakfast at a local cafe by nine o’clock. A few minutes later the phone in his room buzzed,
and the caller apologized for leaving him alone for a night, but couldn’t get down from Pocatello, Idaho any sooner.
A half hour later he was heading toward the Bonneville Salt Flats of western Utah in the plush luxury car of Sister Linda, who managed several large corporations in Idaho, Utah, and Nevada, but who loved to get away from the board room routine to visit the Lyceum campus or join an international mission.
On that particular day she had no responsibilities, was wearing scant clothing and sandals, and had her hair back in a pony tail. Shawn thought she looked more like a school girl than a corporate executive.
They spent the next few hours crossing northern Nevada and talking about all the churches that either of them knew anything about. Shawn had never before met a person who had no religious loyalties, but could joke about them all. They ate a filling late lunch at a Basque restaurant in Winnemucca, and then headed north toward Oregon.
“I’m pretty sure I want to be in the next Lyceum evaluation week,” Shawn said. “Is there anything you can tell me about the process?”
Sister Linda laughed. “I was on an evaluation team last year. That was a heavier responsibility than I have ever felt in the corporate business world.
It’s an intense week for the prospective members, but it’s more like three weeks of reading, studying, conferring, praying, meditating, scribbling, and sweating for the team.”
“Brother Jacob told me something similar,” Shawn said thoughtfully.
She laughed. “Jacob was on the team that rejected me the first time I applied. Even so, I love him dearly.”
“You... had to do it twice?”
“Yes, with a year of study and service in between. But I realize that’s not what you wanted to hear about. Let me think. You are about to experience more methods of finding out what a person is made of than you ever knew existed...”
For the next hour, Sister Linda gave Shawn many tips for getting through the evaluation week at Lyceum unscathed. The sun was sinking low as they pulled into the tiny town of Fields, Oregon, in which the temperature was just beginning to come down from its high of one hundred and eighteen degrees.
“But I want to leave you with the knowledge that evaluation weeks are a fun and rewarding experience for everyone, except a very few immature individuals who slip by our pre-screening process. The members of Lyceum all remember their evaluation weeks with fondness.”
Sister Linda parked the car and checked into one of the four motel rooms at the only place in town. They drank milk shakes at the little cafe, which was no more than an add-on to the small grocery store, and then strolled around a group of huge shade trees that had been planted in pioneer days. Sister Linda loved the quiet and slow pace of tiny desert communities. They were her retreats from the corporate world when she didn’t have time to go all the way to Lyceum.
Just as the sun was setting and the heat was starting to taper off, the throb of rotor blades was heard, and the entire population of twelve or thirteen people came out to watch the helicopter land right in front of the little store.
Three passengers got out and headed for the cafe. The pilot, whose T-shirt advertised High Desert Air Service, was obviously old friends with the store owner. The two men began filling gas cans at the town’s lone pump to fuel the bird. Sister Linda told Shawn that a member would meet him at the airport near the city of Bend, and then she wished him farewell.
When the passengers had finished their cold drinks and the pilot had completed the fueling of the helicopter, he stowed Shawn’s duffel bag. The passengers, who now numbered four, took their seats. Shawn soon learned that the other passengers, just a little older than himself, were college students returning from a kayaking trip on the wild Owyhee River in southeastern Oregon. He enjoyed listening to them talk about their adventures and near-catastrophes, their moments of excitement and their hours of solitude so profound it was almost frightening.
The desert below them soon faded to a gray shadow as night set in, and their eyes were drawn to the silhouette of the Cascade Mountains against the orange western sky. By the time the evening sky had darkened, they were almost at the base of those mountains, and preparing to land at the Bend-Redmond Airport.
Shawn thanked the pilot, and asked if his passage had been paid for. As Shawn expected, it had been.
As soon as he entered the small airport building, a very muscular black man, with a tiny Lyceum pin on the pocket of his sports shirt, greeted Shawn and showed him to his vehicle, which turned out to be a small motor home.
Brother Arnold was a resident member of Lyceum, he explained as they drove north and then west, but was just returning from his vacation, which had consisted of a solid month of the most wonderful rock climbing and cave exploring he had ever experienced. They stopped for a late snack in a resort town at the very edge of the mountains, and Shawn became aware that he was rapidly approaching his destination. As they made their way over the Cascades, Brother Arnold told Shawn all about his adventures in the lava tubes of eastern Oregon, and he did so in such an animated fashion, with gestures and sound effects, colorful language and interesting technical explanations, that Shawn was entranced the entire time.
Close to midnight on that warm day in mid-July, a year and a half after Shawn’s first visit to Lyceum, he was riding down the same stretch of forested back road, in the same direction, that he had once traveled with his parents.
Both he and Brother Arnold were talked out and were listening to the radio playing softly. Shawn thought he spotted the pull-off where the Cadillac had gotten stuck in the mud. He was sure he recognized the speed limit sign that had captured their attention so long ago. Then, as they rounded the last curve in the road and he could see the lighted sign at the entrance to Lyceum, tears almost came to his eyes.
Brother Arnold parked the vehicle and guided Shawn in through the Residential Lobby, saying he would unload the motor home in the morning.
They walked together through the enclosed walkway to the Main Office, and there, perched on a counter, talking to the other Sister on duty, was a young girl, almost nine-years-old, with scar tissue on the right side of her face, looking quite a bit more grown up than the last time he had seen her.