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Where Jesus Lives

Where Jesus Lives

Last updated on: February 4, 2025 at 1:17 am by Mary Pezzulo

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Where Jesus Lives 2025-02-04T01:17:52-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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An oatmeal cookie with a dusting of powdered sugar in the shape of a heart

image via pixabay

It was the most anxious of days.

There is so much to be anxious about.

If you are fortunate enough not to be American right now, I can’t describe the stress. I felt like I was in a dream for days. I’ve had trouble getting to sleep again– and when I wake up, I’m in a panic. It’s exhausting.

In this mental state I kept putting off chores, until the compost bucket in the kitchen was nearly overflowing with coffee grounds and microwaved eggshells. I noticed it and took it outside in the afternoon.

There was the Artful Dodger’s little sister, the one who’s about six, walking by herself in a winter coat bigger than she was. LaBelle is a dirt poor neighborhood with quite a few squalid properties and our share of addicts and guns, and I don’t like that. But if I ever get out of here, I will miss that the parents of LaBelle tend to let their children wander the neighborhood unsupervised, playing with one another and getting into trouble all afternoon. There’s an unspoken understanding that good people will keep an eye on wandering children, in case any troublemakers happen along. That’s as it should be.

In addition to her enormous coat, this little girl was burdened with gigantic toy horse she had to carry with both hands, and she was crying.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I wanted to go to So-and-so’s, but she told me to come back tomorrow. But I can’t tomorrow, because we have to go to CHURCH!” The girl wailed the last word and cried even harder.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” I gave her a hug with my clean hand, the one that hadn’t been holding the compost bucket. “That used to happen to me sometimes when I was your age. I was just on my way to the garden, to turn over the compost heap.”

The girl perked up “Can I help?”

Yes, she could help. The toy horse went onto the porch steps to watch. The shovel was twice as big as she was, and the coat didn’t make matters easier, but she enjoyed picking up a yucky shovel full of straw and kitchen waste, and turning it over, and doing it again and again. As she shoveled, I ripped out what weeds I could from among those strawberry plants. The yard was still frozen over, so that wasn’t much.

As we worked, we chatted like old friends. The young Dodger said that she liked living in the rickety old house across the alley, except for “those darn pigeons” that got into their attic. She said “those darn pigeons” in such a grown up voice that I knew she was quoting her mother. I laughed and showed her the weak spot in the gutter where those darn pigeons had made their nest, causing one tile of the bathroom ceiling to soak and fall in before we realized what happened. Those darn pigeons are the bane of LaBelle. They are more destructive than the rats.

The girl laughed when I accidentally called her by her sister’s name. There are three girls and two boys living in that house, they all look identical except for their height, and they all have regal Italian given names as if they’re a family of opera singers. She was not the youngest female Dodger but the middle one. She complained that her brother never lets her play too, when Jimmy’s boy visits, and I sympathized.

Just at that moment, as if they’d been summoned by speaking their names, Jimmy’s boy and the Artful Dodger came running through the alley from their backyard clubhouse. They were jealous that a younger girl got to use the real shovel, but I insisted she had it first. She kept right on shoveling while they broke up the old spindly sunflower stalks with me. I told them my plans for the garden this year: the herbs, the blackberry bush, the tomato cages. I explained that I was getting motion sensor floodlights to go with the security camera, to scare off any raccoons that might help themselves to a pumpkin, and looked hard at the Artful Dodger while I said it. But I also said that any neighbor who needed some food was welcome to knock at the door and ask.

When we couldn’t stand to garden in the cold anymore, we went in for hot chocolate.

“Do you like Jesus too?” asked the girl, pointing to the Vernicle in my icon corner.

“I love Jesus!”

“We love Jesus too!”

“I HAVE to love Jesus!” said Jimmy’s boy, in such a funny voice that Adrienne looked up from the phone and laughed with us.

“You have corn flakes like us!” said the little girl, inspecting the boxes in the kitchen.

“I think every poor person in town has a stockpile of generic cornflakes from the food pantry. Now, wash ALL the germs off your hands until you’re all clean, and don’t leave any black on your fingernails!” I demanded.

By the time their hands were clean and the water was steaming on the stove, they had found Adrienne’s Legos. It was a minefield walking into the dining room in my bare feet with three mugs. The little girl had set up the Lego Hello Kitty dollhouse, and the boys were making a helicopter; the pieces were scattered to every corner of the room. They played as I measured out the flour and oatmeal, to see if we had enough for baking. They played as I made another batch of my Christmas oatmeal cookies and put them in the freezer to chill. They kept right on playing as I put them in the oven. But they came into the kitchen, suspicious, as I took them out to cool.

“Are those for US?”

“Yes, they’re for you.”

Half a pan disappeared in a moment. The girl showed us all how her horse can pose in different stances, and played with the stuffed animals I’d put away in a closet. The boys finished their helicopter, and put it on display in my living room.

And then it got dark. Time to go home.

Jimmy came looking for his boy.

I packed the Dodgers a bag of leftover cookies, got the horse and the coat, and walked them home across the backyard.

“Look at that conjunction!” I said, pointing up at Venus shining brightly right next to a crescent moon.

“That’s where Jesus lives,” said the girl with reverent confidence.

She is wrong, of course. Jesus lives in LaBelle. You can tell it’s Him because he’s poor, and burdened, and helpless, and if you don’t look out for Him He might fall into the hands of bad people and be crucified again. If you do look out for him, though, He will come to your house and sup with you.

I babbled on about a beautiful planet millions of miles away, so close to the sun that its surface was boiling hot, as I took them back to their yard.

The Dodgers waved goodbye to me and made their way across the messy yard home.

Just then, I wasn’t afraid of anything.

I felt as if I would never fear anything again.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows an d Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, donate to “The Little Portion” on paypal or Mary Pezzulo on venmo

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