If you start from the Atlantic Ocean and go west, through the Chesapeake Bay, up the mighty James River, you’ll find the Jackson River in the Allegheny Highlands of Virginia. If you continue up the Jackson, you’ll run into Dunlap Creek, and if you travel far enough, you’ll come to a sharp bend in that creek on the property of Boys Home. Set against the bank, on the far side of the creek, is a bulging cliff, a hundred feet high, punctuated by scraggly pines on its ridge, looking over a deep pool just past the bend. The James, the Bay, and the Atlantic carry the stories of those living upstream in their watershed. This summer I have learned and lived some of those stories at Boys Home, and seen them rush downstream, past the sharp turn in the creek. The water picks up speed and gurgles and churns around that bend, as all lives do when they make a turn.
This morning before breakfast I took three boys out fishing in the deep pool just last the bend under the shade of the giant cliff face. I met them on the road to the creek--they were excited to fish, and had gotten themselves up extra early and were waiting for me, poles and tackle boxes and sleepy smiles. We turned onto the farm road down a slight hill. Fog tucked in between the ragged mountains like gauze. Gravel crunched under eager feet. We spread out and began to fish. Lures plopping into water. Comforting soft cluck of a bail clicking shut. Soft whir of the reel spinning. Rocks chunking underfoot as we fished and walked down the bank looking for luck.
We caught two fish, lost one lure, had two line tangles, and caught no crawdads. The boys were real talkative so eventually I made them just listen to the river and hear what the cliff had to say, partly for them, partly for me. We stopped on the way back home to pick morning glories. “I want to bring these back for Mrs. Angle.” Each of these boys has been in trouble recently, and one couldn’t come to the movies later in the day because he misbehaved. The water rushes and gurgles when it makes a sharp turn. The soul is not quiet and peaceful in the midst of change.
“The peace of Christ, it is no peace,” says the hymn written by William Alexander Percy, who raised his nephews, author Walker Percy and his brother Phin, when their mother died. Houseparents at Boys Home know this well--they are raising boys for parents who can’t or won’t. The boys know it too. After compline, the Episcopal nighttime service we pray together each night, many stay and pray in the candlelight. Last night one boy stayed longer than the rest, head in hands, shoulders shaking. “I keep praying to do better, but every day I keep making mistakes,” he sobbed.
It is not easy to be at Boys Home. Changing direction is rough on the boys, and it is the challenge of a lifetime for the houseparents. As Percy intimates, the peace of Christ--the cost of discipleship--will demand more than we know we have. It will shake shoulders and rumble souls. But that is not where the story ends. The peace of Christ that noisily rushes past the sharp bend in the creek is also the peace that flows into deeper, still waters, passing all understanding. One boy weeps for his life, and another stoops down and picks morning glories.
