by Anne Drissel
Introduction:
I wrote this in honor of the 20th Anniversary of PAX. I was living in Texas at the time and thus, never shared it with the community. But I think it is important as part of the story of the early history of PAX. The Pilgrimage began in the Siebentritt’s Home and moved to the Community Meeting Room at Tysons Corner (which was a relatively new shopping center at that time). Then we moved to the Westgate Elementary School on Magarity Road where my children went to school. And then moved to the St Luke’s Parish House (which had been converted from the Nun’s House to the Priests’ House/Community House and later to the St Luke’s School/Church Auditorium…..
I might note that reflecting on our many moves in those early years, I suggested we name our community “PAX: Pilgrims After Christ” (reference by the X symbol). It was immediately accepted by everyone as expressive of the meaning and purpose and core spiritual experience (and actual experience!) of the community. (I think it’s foundational importance that the idea for PAX came from the emergent spiritual needs of The People who took action to express these needs in meaning liturgical expressions and were supported by the “Servant Shepherds — our Pastor Fr Pereira and other priests and spiritual educators who helped us find our Way….
Below is the text from 1989 that I found today (August 23, 2021):
Origins of PAX in 1969
My name is Anne Drissel. But I was Anne Duncan in 1969, wife of John Duncan, and mother of Anne, Ellen, Catherine, and John Duncan IV. Below are notes I wrote on Palm Sunday in 1989 – a few weeks before the 20th anniversary celebration for PAX. Regrettably, I never shared them with the community. But they tell of the origin of PAX as I experienced it:
It’s Palm Sunday 1989 and, as I drive to DC on one of my occasional visits, I see many people emerging from Churches carrying palm fronds. My mind goes back 20 years to that Palm Sunday in 1969 when a group of parishioners from St. Luke’s Parish held an unusual Mass celebration in the Town Hall at Tysons Corner Shopping Center. The Epistle that morning was a viewing of a silent film depicting Christ as The Clown journeying into Jerusalem. As the figure in the film was led into the city on a donkey, greeted by cheering crowds carrying palms, our community’s children burst into the meeting room in a joyous procession bearing palms and clapping and laughing. None of us had experienced such a joyous, alive, real celebration of a liturgy. Only weeks earlier, the Catholic liturgy had seemed irretrievably remote, rigid and irrelevant to our lives.
Those were the days of Vatican II. At St. Luke’s, we had begun to hold study groups exploring the Dutch Catechism and discovering for the first time for many of us a benevolent and accessible God, a human Christ and a pilgrim church letting go of its all-knowing, all-controlling hierarchy. An underground group in Washington had begun performing unorthodox Masses at different churches in Washington – changing location every few weeks to avoid clamp-down by the pastors and archbishop. Religious communities in the Washington area began having small home Masses to which friends were invited. And home Masses were beginning to be sanctioned in parishes.
We had experienced the shock a few years earlier of questioning Papal authority for the first time when the National Catholic Reporter published a purloined copy of the long-awaited report of the Papal Birth Control Commission and we discovered that the majority report favored birth control. Our belief in absolute Papal authority was shaken when we realized that the Pope had ignored the Commission’s recommendation and subsequently pronounced reaffirmation of the Church’s traditional position. For many of us (I by then was the 29 year old mother of 4 young children) resolving this dilemma of Papal supremacy over evolving theological interpretation meant facing a choice of leaving the church or continuing to define ourselves as Catholic while “forming our conscience” in the face of differences in interpretation of theology at the highest levels of the Church.
St. Luke’s was going through its own struggles. Different factions sought to assert new values for the community. John and Jackie Kennedy had been communicants at a country chapel where our then-pastor, Fr. Pereira officiated. Bobby and Ethel Kennedy had rolled their red convertible into the parking lot at St. Luke’s and their kids piled out in all directions. Financial studies of the parish books revealed that the parochial school was absorbing most of the parish’s resources, which left little money for social causes or for adequate religious education programs for the adults and the majority of parish children who attended public schools. The prospects of fundraising for a new church loomed on the horizon and many of us were questioning why only five nuns were continuing to live in the three-story convent built to house 15, while the small priests’ house was doubling as a residence, meeting house, seminar room, and parish office.
In the midst of this ferment, Fr. Pereira hired Carole Sheldon, an ex-nun, to establish a religious education program for the parish. She quickly became a close friend and advisor to me and many others. When I struggled with new theological and philosophic challenges like wanting to understand “existentialism” – Carole found a Christian Brother, Kevin McDonnell, to teach the course. The home of Elise and Carl Siebentritt became one of the gathering places for some of the study and discussion classes that Carole organized.
One day over coffee with Carole, I expressed frustration about how difficult it was to get people in the parish to accept change. Carole asked me if it was necessary to change the whole parish in order to get what I needed spiritually. Couldn’t I create what I wanted with a few other like-minded people? “Imagine,” she said, “that you’re in a small town, far from a Catholic Church and you need to select a spiritual community to worship with. What would you look for?” I told her I wanted meaningful liturgy that tied to real life and that had a vitality that was lacking in the Mass. Then I looked at her and said “I get what you’re hinting at! If I could describe that and find others who were looking for similar things, I’d have the worship community I needed!” The next day I drove over to Elise Siebentritt’s house for tea and laid out my idea for a special experimental liturgy “study group” – “It’s just for Lent. We’ll start small and see what happens,” I promised. She agreed to help get others to consider the idea.
We started small – first with a Home Mass at the Siebentritt’s. We invited couples who were actively engaged in Parish activities. I had surmised that, like me, these people were hungry for spiritual engagement but that the primary means available to them were positions on various parish committees. Many of these same people had been showing up in courses taught by Carole and Kevin and others they brought in to teach.
My then-husband, John Duncan, was the drama and film teacher at McLean High School. I was the costume designer for his productions. I had helped design costumes for the St. Luke’s Mardi Gras celebration. Our house was filled with audio and video equipment; our lifestyle was steeped in “theatrics.” Thus, it was inevitable that we brought this orientation to the liturgies we planned at the beginning. The first Sunday I suggested a meditation accompanied by a Charlie Byrd guitar solo. We had never experienced a silent meditation of this duration during the Mass before. We introduced the use of film on Palm Sunday. As the children burst in on the deeply moving silent film mythically depicting Christ’s journey into Jerusalem, many of us wept – a deep, soulful weeping.
On Easter Sunday we held the Mass at the Siebentritt’s. For the first time we directly participated in enactment of the key ceremonies of the Easter week liturgy. We brought water from the nearby streams and sacred oils, wine and home-baked bread for the ritual. My husband had secured a copy of the NASA tape of the Apollo 8 Space Launch in December ’68. At the Epistle, instead of a member reading the words, participants heard the astronauts reading from Genesis “In the Beginning was the Word….” We flashed up an “Earth Rise” simulation on the wall (the now-ubiquitous images of the Earth from outer space had not yet been made available to the public) as one of the children lit a blazing fire to signify the coming of the New Fire of life to Earth. Again we were all deeply struck by a powerful sense of Spiritual Presence as the liturgy closed.
Forty years ago, in the spring of 1969, we heard the words recorded from beyond the earth for the first time — “In the beginning was The Word…” Our Lenten “experiment” had moved many of us to a new spiritual level. Though it had no name yet, PAX had been born and would continue to live and grow. It would take many forms. It’s home base would be moved many times over the next 40 years. Many new members would join; others would move away. Families would form and some would break, babies would be born, beloved members would die. But PAX has continued to serve as a beacon, marking the Pathway towards “Spiritual Home” for those of us touched by its existence, no matter where we are.