Today someone's heart reminded me, of Krakow Poland, a church there, painted in gray.
A few years ago I was in Krakow, with a Polish friend, she took me on a weekday, to a church, a cold Morning in May, a gray day. We were going to see her friend, a business man in his thirties who had done well and had been rising in the opportunities provided as Poland became more free.
But then he quit. Said goodbye to his lucrative future. Became a Franciscan monk.
Why?
His church was painted gray. Dreary. Covered in plaster, dirty, years of someone else's lie covering its heart. But the church was not painted gray originally, it was painted in beautiful reds, blues, golds - a bit of Eastern Orthodox mixing with Western Europe, a meld of Faith, a meld of colors, a meld of stamina.
When I met him, he came out of the back of the church, in the Franciscan attire, a brown long robe, with a hood and a white rope belt, to greet me with the energy of a business man, the smile of a great friend and leadership that sets the tone of Hope. He emerged from a place of quiet to show me what had survived years of Communist gray and survived at the great cost of many lives.
He led me to the quiet sanctuary where he pointed high on the gray dirty plaster walls to tiny, very tiny little cracks in the gray, where it looked as though the walls themselves were giving up. But it was the opposite. He was pointing to a victory. They had hired a restoration specialist to carefully peel back the plaster, to reveal the original church's color. The gray paint covered in years of grime was peeled back to reveal the church's real soul deep underneath. He explained: when the communist's came to power, they covered the beautiful architecture, beautiful frescoes, by sloppily slapping on plaster and painting it all a colorless, lifeless gray.
The monk pointed to those tiny glimpses of blue, then across the room to a small bit of red, then down to the side to a gold -- the little pieces almost sounded a crashing melody of victory.
Hope survived years of dreary, gray, evil rule.
There I saw, we can see, a man, a church, a community completely committed to making sure that the lives lost--the many priests brutally and viciously killed to defend Faith itself--would not have been in vain.
They did not forget.
They are proof in the world's attempt to paint itself gray, Poland's Faith was not forgotten.
He showed me many things that day, beautiful pieces of art, music, paintings, gold that had been so carefully stored, hidden, whisked away by daredevil priests and fearful but unrelentingly brave citizens, many of whom died in trying. He told me of their deaths. Each room had a bit of Faith whose survival cost human life.
Yet every room also had a victory of the human spirit, including the gardens outside. And by victory, I mean a very serious, powerful Victory over total Darkness where blood flowed, where hearts pounded in fear, where trust was hard to find, where the gray, bitter, cruelty of the devil's servants had been the rule of the land.
Yet there I was, walking in a garden with my two friends, smiling, taking pictures, sharing stories. For a while they walked ahead of me, chatting as the school friends they are. I walked through the garden that had blood in its soil, whose grounds had felt the butt of a weapon and carried the footsteps of those who carried the precious artifacts far away, whose grounds had heard secrets that could cost a man his life and whose soil grew food for survival for a collection of brave men of faith who shared it all with others.
Today we have men and women doing the same. And they too are restoring the images of Faith, of reconciliation, in this priceless image, wonderful story by Michael Yon.
But yet it all reminds me, it is one heart at a time. One gray heart. Each of us knows someone whose life has slapped it with gray and slopped a bunch of plaster over the color intended. We are meant to be that restoration specialist, the person that lets them peel back the gray and see the colors anew. The person who lets them come home. Lets them be who they are intended to be, even if their heart pounded once with fear and the soil below their feet absorbed the blood of someone they loved.
As it is for that church in Poland, bringing the color back is a fight. It's gradual. It has to be done carefully. And frankly it take guts. It takes sacrifice.
That man, the monk, was a powerfully strong, gutsy, brave man who had a thousand other choices for his life.
Yet he, and others like him, chose to bring red, blue, golds and Faith itself back. To kick the evil off his land. We owe our life to the same, one battle at a time, one friend at time, one bit of gray plaster at time.
