Adoramus Te, Christe, et benedicimus Tibi, Quia per sanctam crucem Tuam redemisti mundum, Domine, miserere nobis!

From sixth grade until graduation from high school I spent as much time as I could in woods east of town. From the 1920s until the 1960s the ground had been stripped for coal.

This was before land restoration laws had been passed. As a result thousands of acres of flat Illinois farmland had been transformed into rugged hills, deep lakes, islands, and weird rocky outcrops.

Now it was pastured and once had been used to film a cowboy movie. Mostly it was a vast space that grown-ups ignored. Great for teenage boys.

We built cabins in the pine woods. We skinny-dipped in the spillway. We collected iron pyrite as if it was real gold. We built a chapel, carrying bag after bag of quikcrete to fashion a real floor.

The chapel building was part of a two or three year period when a group of nine or ten of us had joined as the Club of Rome. Bruce and I were the co-leaders. Bruce was the plumber's son. His Dad worked alot in tin. Each of us had breastplates of tin, spraypainted in gold, some had well-fashioned Roman-like helmets. Bruce was "First Consul."

I was the Cardinal Bishop of New Wittenberg, reconciling reformation division in the wastepiles of slurry, cinder, and clay. I wore a cardboard miter on which I had reproduced, in magic marker, a gold and blue byzantine image of Christ ascending.

My principal task as spiritual leader was, at the place we had set our boundary separating "Roman" territory from that of our parents, to raise my hands and sing, "Adoramus te, Christe..."

We adore Thee, O Christ, And we bless Thee, Who by the holy cross have redeemed the world, Who have suffered for us! Lord, have mercy upon us!