Our designated spot is just off the driveway of the strip mall, across a small parking lot, a hundred feet or so from the clinic. Legally, it’s as close as our “40 Days for Life” parish group can stand. Driving up I noticed I’d be on the sidewalk by myself this cold and windy Thursday evening. I parked, and exchanged my keys for the beads I’d pocketed at home. They gave me something to fidget with as I strolled, nervously, to my post. There, I folded my arms with my back to the street, trying to settle myself for an hour of prayer. Showing up is always the hardest part.
Above, the remnant of the day’s gloomy sky was breaking up in the west. Lit by a hiding sun that had sunk below the horizon, the undersides of the separating clouds went from bright gold on my far left to a sad purple overhead. A hundred reddish shades blended in between, and kept me gazing up.
A familiar voice from my past repeated an old seafarer’s saying just then. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” my father would say whenever we fished under skies like this. I’d rather be fishing with him right now, I admitted to myself.
Looking upward (and remembering back), my eyes avoided the structure before me. Seeing the dark brown building out the bottom of my periphery, I zipped my collar up to my chin. “Women’s Care,” the sign said. The letters were old and fading, just like the deceit it advertised.
Beneath the name and behind the lies of this foreboding place, wonderfully-made unborn children
died here today. That sudden thought (or was it the chilly wind?) sent a shiver of unease down my neck. It’s better to look towards heaven, I decided, than to conjure up a glimpse of the gruesome, frightening things that take place so close to where I was standing.
Call me a coward. Or tell me that I don‘t pray with enough courage. If I did, then maybe I wouldn‘t have to look away when the reality of abortion is directly in front of me. But then, all of us do it. All of us turn our heads. If it wasn‘t for our distractions, the dreadful thing would be too much to bear.
I’d rather not stand here alone , I thought rather loudly, sending the hint skyward, hoping it might pass through the colors and reach the Artist above. Maybe He would somehow come… descend from the darkening clouds… and comfort me in the cold. Then a doubt arose. With what goes on here, does He ever come near this place?
Alone with that question, I hummed a hymn I’d learned long ago. The words seemed like a good way to begin praying.
…Abide with me, fast falls the eventide; the darkness deepens, Lord with me abide….
It didn’t take long for Him to answer my wish. No, nothing miraculous. Just a gift of nature—fifty to sixty Canadian geese on their seasonal migration—heading straight at me from across the eventide sky, making the most of the reflected light to get their day’s journey in.
“Thanks for the company,” I told Him, admiring His handiwork. Soon I could hear them—honking as they cheered each other on, flying like an arrowhead shot from miles away.
I remember as a boy my father explaining the way they traveled. “In the Navy, our ships would travel in a wedge like that,” he’d recount, pointing his long arm upward past my ear while he knelt behind me. He liked to take me back with stories of his youth, especially his service in the North Atlantic where his fleet protected unarmed merchant ships on their way to Europe. I superimposed the approaching formation with the warships I pictured from the memory he once shared. “The lead ship would break the waves so the ones in formation behind, riding along in the wake, didn’t have it as rough.” I could still hear the waves… and still feel his chin on my shoulder. His breath warmed my neck as my now traced over his then .
“How time flies,” I whispered up to him, knowing he’d get the pun. From my teenage years on it was my job, it seemed, to cheer him up. He liked it when I distracted him from his sadness. His last thirty years had been heavy for him—ever since he was told of a grandchild lost in a building like this.
“Seems like only yesterday you were telling me about the evil sea creatures that tried to sink your ship,” I said, keeping the conversation going. The Wolfpack submarines were deadly. Each sailor had to take a turn on deck watching for a periscope or a torpedo’s trail. I imagined him close by, the two of us manning the lookout.
“How cold was it when you were out there standing watch?” I asked. He didn’t talk much after he was told that his daughter‘s child became a casualty of yet another world war. Just then a chilling gust stirred, and a small cyclone spun some leaves and papers along the pavement. His way of answering, no doubt: it was really cold.
His own watch ended last year. I miss him these days. But I never feel him closer than when I come to pray at a clinic. He knows I’m there, but that’s not why he shows up. I’ve figured him out. He knows I can leave. I think he’s there for those who can‘t.
“It seems like only yesterday,” I said again, thinking of my childhood and a time when places like this weren’t allowed. But now they are, and ever since the declaration of war, fifty million grandchildren are gone. It was too much to dwell on, so I returned to the hymn…
…Change and decay in all around I see; oh Thou who changest not, abide with me….
“Tomorrow is Friday,” I told him in my prayers, as if he didn’t know. He knew. He knows what each morning means for this building—especially Fridays when business seems to pick up. Around eight, it will open–and become an evil sea creature rising from the deep with a gaping mouth to devour more children and grandchildren. Suddenly I recalled the rest of the mariner’s saying. “Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.”
“Can you ask for some geese to fly over when the place opens?” I asked him. “Or angels?” Anything to fly the little ones home.
In less than twelve hours, the sky would brighten again. I looked to the east, and said a silly prayer, asking Heaven to stop the sun from rising. The darkness would keep the clinic from opening, I mused. “Can’t we just wish this place into a black, eternal absence?” I tried to reason with the sky. Unreasonable thoughts. They diverted me from the sad visions of the next day’s battle I saw through the water that my bottom eyelids could no longer contain. I had taken my eyes off of the geese.
“Ask Jesus to be here tomorrow,” I prayed, “when the little ones enter those doors I’m trying not look at.” I listened. Is their noise some coded message, I wondered, telling me He’ll be ready and waiting—to hold and heal and mend and kiss the tiny babies whose little frames will be torn from the place where they sleep now in their final night?
I closed my eyes and turned my mind to a dawn further off. It wasn’t darkness that I’d meant to ask of Heaven. Musing again, I squinted my imagination towards that one breaking day when trumpets will sound with the sunrise. A gloriously painted sky will start out purple, tricking us into thinking it’s just another day of dying for innocent, hidden babes. But then! Then it will flash to a fiery orange and a brilliant yellow and—in a startling instant—a blinding white!
“Dad, does He tell you when the war will be over?” I whispered upward. The honking was nearly at its loudest as he answered.
“I know, I know… a silly question,” I laughed back.
Then for a blessed half minute more, I pointed my face in the direction of the living wonders that were sent—no doubt—to aim my thoughts toward Heaven. And I continued to tell Him my mind. I mentioned how so many of us have had enough of standing in front of buildings like this—tired of trying to bring peace to a world that doesn’t even know there’s a war going on inside the wombs and souls of our sisters. I told Him how our morale is being tested. We know there will be victory… that the war will end and peace and justice will triumph—but victory seems a dream. Still, I told Him, we’re longing for the carnage to end, yearning for that unimaginable morning when an explosion of all-exposing light will tell us the battle is won and the innocents are safe forevermore. And with my humming I told Heaven, and the One who made the geese and all living creatures great and small, that I believe—in spite of my thousand impatient doubts—that the day will indeed come…
…Who, like thyself, my guide and stay can be? Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me….
At the end of the verse I stopped and listened closely to the geese—and to our Father—directly above. Then in those moments, as I stood on the sidewalk battling the elements, the hideous building had completely disappeared. Witnessing in prayer for the little ones, I’d been rewarded. My prayers—more powerful than an atomic bomb—had made the place vanish.
Nothing to fear, He was saying, so long as we show reverence to life when it comes along. I stared, frozen but now settled, acknowledging this gift of life—one of the millions that come our way when we look to Heaven. I had turned my Faith against the peace-destroying beast—this Leviathan that is devouring entire generations—and was mesmerized by Life, and its Giver who longs for our company.
My neck was straining and my back was arched. The convoy was mostly behind me now. I dared to be bold—to turn my back on the building—and did a casual about-face, ready to salute them as they headed for the horizon.
Then it happened again. Another surprise—a second sign appearing in the sky. How stupid I was to let the new symbol shock me. Time and distance had flipped it around as it took on its deeper meaning… a trickier code… hidden in what was now a departing “V”.
“That means victory, right?” I asked the last of them—birds, but also shrinking dots at the top of a letter that was scrolling away. “You were sent to tell me there will be victory soon, right!?” The honks were fading—soon a parting whisper. I strained my ear and listened for my answer.
Nothing. Then sensing the dark presence behind me, I unfolded my arms and buried my hands in my pockets. The right one still clutched my rosary. It’s the chain of my anchor, and it keeps me from drifting. Stationed here, while the fleet sailed off, I warmed the beads and felt for the answer.
Ah! There it was. I’d found it.
“The Virgin!” I said to the sky, finally understanding. “The Virgin!” A calm—the deep, warm, motherly kind—settled over me and made my fears seem puny. I turned back around, ready to face Her enemy. Leviathan, I realized, has not yet seen the full power of our Virgin Mother.
“You are waging war against Her children,” I informed it. Then, turning all my impatience over to Her, I started that powerful, powerful prayer. I reminded the monster—repeatedly and slowly, fifty times and more—of how our Mother will crush its head on that day when She comes to rescue Her little ones.
“Those are Her babes that you will harm in the morning,” I said to the clinic again, finishing the rosary—and my watch. “Leviathan, take warning.”
