Saint Joe, Ohio

Saint Joe, Ohio

fiction
edward w pritchard

Saint Joe, Ohio is too small to be a town or even a village and the land area isn't large enough to be a township. There are no restaurants or gas stations and very few businesses out there; it's just is a small farm community with a few horse barns and a lot of nice country folks. The only thing extraordinary in Saint Joe is the Catholic Church which is exquisite, not ostentatious but holy and inviting and it serves as a small private school taught by a few nuns who live there; and there is a dignified pastoral cemetery behind that looks like it should be in Boston. Several of the graves have people who were born in the eighteenth century. Below the hill leading to the cemetery there is a small grotto, a man made cave, with an altar, candles burning year round even in rain and snow, and twenty or more chairs for outside worship or private prayer.

I use to drive home past that church often, going the back way, and although I was then an atheist I would stop at the grotto when trouble struck, but actually just a few times. I always left a few coins in the box at the cave and if I ever went into the Church, such as when I went to the annual fair; I left money in the poor box. I was doing quite well financially but I was very poor spiritually in those days for I had a stressful life and some serious problems.

Although I wasn't a Catholic I found solace there and once when some one close to me was in turmoil, I prayed at the cave for the first and only time in my life, and made a deal of sorts with God that he later held me to after his side of the bargain miraculously came to pass. I still do not believe in God all that much and I am often skeptical and obstreperous but its comforting to me to see the continuity and order represented by the Catholic church and I always defend the church from its critics and skeptics. There are many remarkable people associated with that small church and the church is a beacon to the surrounding community and its reassuring to me to know that the Church reaches out throughout the world.