| Some might call it coincidence. Others would term it fate. But for Fred Childs and Father Carl Faria, they have no doubt that a higher power brought them back together after more than two decades. |
| Their re-established friendship is made visible in a mural at St. Jude Catholic Church in Marina, where Faria is the pastor. Childs, an artist who lives around the corner from the church, completed the 5-by-18-foot canvas late last year, showing Jerusalem as it might have looked 2,000 yeas ago. |
| And Father Carl tells the story in church – about his friend Fred – and the little miracles that once again placed them in each other’s lives. |
| Childs and Faria met in 1974 when both were living in the Santa Cruz Mountains. At the time, Faria wasn’t a priest. He hadn’t even made the decision to enter the seminary. He worked in at a grocery store. They met after Childs rented a room from a friend of Faria’s. |
| "He had a statue and he was trying to find a home for it," recalls Childs. The statue – displaced after a church renovation – wasn’t just a little tabletop item, either. It was a 4-1/2-foot-high, 30-pound statue of Joseph and the baby Jesus, not an easy thing to place. |
| Childs’ mother, Elizabeth, a devout Catholic, said she would take the statue. So Childs and Faria took it to Marina and gave it to her, placing it in a corner of her bedroom. |
| Then Childs moved, and Faria moved. They lost track of each other. Every so often, Elizabeth would ask her son, "Whatever happened to Carl?", and they would wonder where he was. |
| Years went by. Childs moved back to Marina, where he had grown up. His mother had kidney failure, and he helped care for her, as did his sister, Ruth. |
| Ruth said the statue gave her mother great comfort, even before her illness. "She could reach out and it would be right there," she said. "It made her feel safe." |
| Elizabeth even took a picture of the statue, and carried it with her wherever she went. |
| She still asked about Carl from time to time. |
| At the beginning of 1988, Elizabeth was dying at Hospice House. As always, she had the picture of the statue with her. She asked for a priest, Father Kelly of Watsonville, to come to her and administer the last rites. |
| The sad news cam back: Father Kelly had died hours before, after suffering a massive stroke. Ruth and Fred were shocked and uncertain what to do next, since they knew no other priests. |
| They finally called St. Jude’s. |
| Later that day, the looked up, and saw their old friend Carl at the door. |
| Faria recalls being paged and told to go to Hospice, something that he did with reluctance. He’d been moving a refrigerator and had other things to do. "It was not even someone I knew," he said. |
| "But I get there, and Fred’s there. And it all began to flow. I asked him if he had a yellow Cadillac." |
| Fred, indeed, had had such a car back in the 1970s. The had found each other after all those years. |
| Elizabeth Childs dies at age 83 on Jan. 25, 1998, eased on her way by her long-lost friend, Father Carl Faria. |
| "She was sharp to the very end," said Fred Childs, a catch in his voice. Faria agreed, saying it was unusual finding someone that close to death who had such presence of mind. |
| The two men discovered some even more amazing coincidences, such as the fact that both now were living in Marina. In fact, Childs said wonderingly, by looking out the window of this mother’s room, he could see Faria’s second-story apartment. |
| They had lived that close for years and never knew it. |
| But after all, the Marina church is named after St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes and hopeless cases. Maybe St. Jude answered their prayers. |
| Childs said he had always hoped to see Faria again, but didn’t think he would. To find him was a minor miracle in itself. To have him arrive at the moment he did . . . well, it must have taken some divine intervention. |
| "It was meant to be," said Ruth Childs. "It was in God’s control." |
| Last year, Fred Childs began working on the mural as a tribute to their mother, something to reflect the circle of events that has transpired. |
| The mural, done in iridescent acrylic on canvas, covers one back wall of the church sanctuary. A bright star sends beams of light into the Jerusalem night, illuminating the walled city on rugged hills, a scene that Childs said he’s seen in his dreams. |
| The mural will be on display there through Easter Sunday, April 23. |
| Faria said the experience has shown him something important. If he had not made the decision to live," all this would not have come to pass. |
| Said Ruth Childs simply, "She asked for Carl, and God brought her the man." |
| This article appeared
in the Monterey County Herald on April 3, 2000 and has been reprinted with permission.
|
