"Death Comes for the Archbishop" and How to drive to the Y without a map.

I read Willa Cather’s “Death Comes for the Archbishop” when I was in high school. I heard it was an important book which made me curious (still does), so I borrowed it from the library and read the whole thing.

It was mud. I didn’t care about the characters; two middle-aged priests who go to the American southwest to build and strengthen the Catholic church. Snooze. Nothing cohesive happens. They do a bunch of walking around in the desert followed by episodes of trying to be helpful a few days here, a few years there. Yawn.

Scroll forward 50 years; I just finished rereading it this morning. Holy Cow! It is beautiful, heartbreaking, progressive, regressive, funny, and deeply inspiring.  All I had to do to appreciate this book is – be old. 

The book starts in 1848 in what is now New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico. Two priests, college friends from France, have ended up in this territory which has not had much functional Catholic leadership in a hundred years. The priests arrive when they are in their late 20’s, they will live most of their lives here. 

They are good men; reasonable, diligent, hard-working, intelligent, caring, and responsible. Because they yearn and strive to make their mortal lives matter, they tug at your soul. You know this kind of quiet, care-laden, enjoyable, worrisome life because you have one of your own.

Father Latour is an introvert, Father Vallient is an extrovert. They learn the southwest by nearly being killed by it several times. They encounter and live among wonderful people, crooked priests, true saints, and a few psychopaths.

It is a story of good adults living long good lives as they work to inspire and protect spirituality among tens of thousands of people spread over tens of thousands of square miles of gorgeous, dangerous land.

Cather pulls you into the singular colors and overarching sky of the Southwest. “The plain was there, under one’s feet, but what one saw when one looked about was that brilliant blue world of stinging air and moving cloud. Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. … Traveling with Eusabio (a Navajo companion) was like traveling with the landscape made human. He accepted chance and weather as the country did…”. (Book Seven / The Great Diocese)

There is no obvious plot to this book. It simply relates, tale by tale, things that happen to one or both of them.  It is based on the real lives of two real priests. The novel rings as clear as the bells of old Catholic churches.

If you have ever lived in or traveled through the southwest, Cather will take you back there.  Father Vaillant is priest for a long time at San Xavier del Bac.  I’ve been there and so have many of you.  (The photo that opens this is that cathedral.) You will see again the cacti, the cliffs and mountains, the grey and red dust, the sky that shines and rains and snows all at the same time. The small brown people to whom  this land belongs. the priests notice and comment that they don't bring spirituality to these people, they just bring more language with which to live it. 

My take on what this book is about is lowbrow, but I noticed it yesterday and I am still thinking about the surprise of it. I went to coffee in the morning with a young friend. After our pleasant repast I drove her back to her apartment which is on the west side of Waukesha. Next I wanted to go to the YMCA which is close to downtown on the east side. But Waukesha, like most cities that slowly evolved along a river, is a challenge to negotiate. The actual map of this town is a game of Pick-Up Sticks.  

So I drove up to the first corner, turned right, then right again, then left, then drove around and down a steep hill. There was some veering here and veering there plus one unprotected left-hand turn from Broadway onto Broadway (not kidding). A few moments to wait for a freight train and then … Voilà- the Y!  

It occurred to me that I drive Waukesha not by a map, not by logic, but by yearning.  I hold my destination in my heart and keep going. 

…

When I was young, I thought life was what happened after you planned it. That’s why I couldn’t understand “Death Comes for the Archbishop”.  If you are awake, spiritual, and lucky – you want something. You yearn for it. You might not be able to clearly say what your goal is– but you sail towards it every day.  If you are “a good person; reasonable, diligent, hard-working, intelligent, caring, and responsible…”  then your life WILL take you to dangerous, rewarding, and beautiful, places. 

It isn’t until you are at least a little bit old that you will see that what you yearned for became your story. And by looking at what situations you have accomplished and achieved, you finally see what you were yearning towards all along.