The Kansas Camino and conversion, part two: A journey along Kansas country roads mysteriously influences a skeptic’s own inner journey

Editor’s Note: This is the conclusion of a two-part series. Part one appeared in the March 7 edition of “The Catholic Advance.”

With some Fr. Kapaun Pilgrimages already under his belt, Paul Wilhelm knew what was in store for him. But when Fr. Curtis Hecker issued the instruction on the journey’s second day, Wilhelm couldn’t help dreading it.

“Fr. Curtis said, ‘Walk and talk with somebody you have not met before,’” Wilhelm said. “As a huge introvert, it’s pretty much the opposite of my whole point for going on the pilgrimage, which is to walk, think, pray, and be quiet. On past pilgrimages, Fr. Eric Weldon always chose a time for us to do that, and I hated having to do it – but it always turned out to be phenomenal.”

In one instance, he met Danny Addison from Maryland, with whom Wilhelm and his family formed a lasting friendship. Ultimately, Wilhelm said about being instructed to journey with a stranger, “Internally, I push against it, but I always know that the Lord is there.”

This time, he met fellow pilgrim Mary Hufnagel Stearns of Oregon and found her so disarming they immediately bypassed the initial awkwardness.

“All of those other times, I felt like I was stretching myself or really reaching, but the encounter with Mary was not like that,” he said. “It started as a chat, but before we were done, it got surprisingly deep into each other’s lives. We discussed things we weren’t planning on talking about, but that’s what spirituality often is, right? You’re led somewhere you’re not expecting to go.”

Wilhelm learned Mary was offering her pilgrimage with the intention that her husband, Flint, would start seeking God. When Mary mentioned to Wilhelm that Flint regularly accompanied her to Mass each Sunday despite strong doubts that God existed, Wilhelm was almost as impressed as Mary was embarrassed. So Flint was a man, Wilhelm surmised, who had made the sacrifice of time and effort to attend Mass every week, even though he believed the congregation’s prayer and worship were ultimately directed toward no one?

“I was struck by Paul’s genuine love and respect for Flint regarding his going to Mass with me for years despite not receiving any of the consolations that I get out of it,” Mary said. “I replied, ‘Well, he does it for me.’ Paul’s response made it clear he agreed – and that’s what made him respect Flint so much.”

Wilhelm’s mind hearkened back to remarks from one of the Benedictine brothers at Subiaco Academy in Subiaco, Arkansas, where he attended high school. “He told us knucklehead high school boys, ‘Sometimes you have to fake it until you make it. Just get through it. Let God come to you. Even if you don’t feel it, don’t quit,’” Wilhelm said.

Later in life, he had clung to that advice during a bout with spiritual desolation and emerged with faith that was stronger than ever. He contrasted that with the experience of close family members who had stopped practicing their faith and soon appeared to lose it altogether.

And here was the example of Mary’s husband, who – whether Flint knew it or not – appeared to be repeatedly placing himself in proximity to God’s grace.

“I was captivated by her emotion and the intimacy of her story in a way that I can’t adequately describe,” Wilhelm said. “It felt like there was nobody else on the walk but the two of us. That’s the literal truth. I was drawn in to what Mary said in a way that I have not been before or since. I wasn’t really thinking about it, but it kind of seemed to happen outside of normal time and space. Some of what I said felt like it came from me, but some was just this spiritual moment we were having.”

For her part, Mary came away with a deeper appreciation of her already-beloved husband.
“After that conversation, I looked at Flint through new eyes,” she said.

Another thing Wilhelm said made a deep impression: he told Mary he kept a weekly holy hour, spending time alone with the Eucharistic Lord in prayer and adoration, and that he would bring her intention about Flint to that holy hour.

Nothing but Molecules

Mary was spot-on about his motives, Flint said. Early in their marriage he had resumed regular Mass attendance to please Mary. As time went on, love of their children, Josie and Lucas, also loomed large. “I was even more committed to going to church with our kids,” Flint said. “I felt that if they grew up to be believing Catholics, they would be happy, and if I went along, they were more likely to keep attending later in life.”

Although he had come to equate “nonmaterial” with “nonexistent,” his disbelief in all things spiritual was a far cry from bitter contempt. Although his unspoken thoughts during Mass occasionally veered into cynicism such as This is all a show to get money, at other times he found himself marveling: It’s really neat that I get to do this, or This has been a cultural phenomenon for 2,000 years.

And sometimes he even noticed in himself tinges of wistfully poignant jealousy: Look how happy these people are, even though they are being duped. What’s wrong with me? I wish I believed like they did.

His initial years of skepticism included concerns about his immortal soul, but that challenge dissipated once he concluded no sort of nonmolecular Flint would endure after death and he made peace with the concept of nothingness.

“Still, as the years went on, I was bothered by the idea of being wrong and the skeptic’s argument,” he said. “So, I consequently bounced between atheism and agnosticism for 30 years.”

Even a brush with death made little impression. While canoing with friends on the Snake River along the Idaho-Oregon border in February 2016, Flint fell into frigid water and could not escape.

“I was in the water for about 30 minutes,” he said. “I pretty much lost consciousness, but two friends carried my body up to some hot springs, where I woke up about two hours later.”

He was grateful to survive but did not know who to thank except those friends. “When I woke up, I cried because I was alive when I thought I was going die,” he said. “I didn’t really come away with any profound insights other than I was glad to be alive. The treatment for hypothermia is warm water, and luckily, we were near some hot springs, so I bounced back pretty well.”

Barn vs. Beirgarten

Mary hardly wavered during the first and second days of the pilgrimage. Her feet were free of blisters. Like her friend and fellow pilgrim, Sarah Evans, she had long considered portable restrooms a last resort, but the pilgrimage found the two of them often picking up the pace whenever those veritable oases in the desert known as Porta-Potties came into view. She took the weather literally in stride, such that – although she would not have chosen the monsoon – she nevertheless prayed, “Lord, this is amazing to be out in your wild, beautiful nature.”

One instance combined a downpour with a pit stop. Since she and Evans had been near the front of the line, they grabbed their soggy backpacks and found shelter with other pilgrims under a nearby canopy, where they listened to a priest recount episodes from the life of Fr. Kapaun. “It was amazing,” she said. “It was a gift.”

But after half an hour, the torrential rain had not relented, so Mary and Evans eventually considered their other options for shelter: a farmhouse porch and a barn.

“It was too early for dinner, but we were soaked and exhausted,” she said. “We thought, ‘Let’s try the barn.’”

The dark and dusty interior into which they wandered was full of pilgrims, but short on places to sit. Having already learned the challenges of rising to one’s feet from the ground while in a state of sore exhaustion, they persuaded a man to give up one of the few available makeshift seats.

“We could barely get our bodies into a sitting position,” Mary said.

Like the other pilgrims, both Mary and Evans had stowed their phones away during most of the pilgrimage, but they were in reliably dry spot and, since Evans had sufficient charge, she put in a Face Time call to her husband, Ray. He was at the Holy Smokes Barbecue Contest put on by their parish, Curé of Ars, in Leawood.

“We’re escaping the rain in this dark and dirty barn, and I see my husband and our friends from the parish sitting outside in beautiful, sunshiny weather,” Evans said. “Everyone was eating pulled pork and raising their cold beers to us.”

The juxtaposition hit Mary and Evans right in the funny bone. “We were giggling because it was such a contrast,” Mary said. “We were so uncomfortable and Ray’s in a biergarten. We had to keep our sense of humor and kept trying to send selfies of ourselves in this dark barn, but it was miserable.”

The sodden conditions would prevent tent camping, Evans and Mary realized, and though they were confident the pilgrimage organizers had a contingency plan, the two friends considered a side quest:

“Mary and I looked at each other and said, ‘We need a hotel room,” Evans said. “If there was any time that we were going to pull the plug, it was that night.”

Moreover, they reasoned, getting a hotel room didn’t necessarily mean they would abandon the trek, but it would allow them to clean up, sleep on beds, and enjoy luxuries such as temperature control and indoor plumbing. The next morning, they would rejoin the pilgrims from the same spot.

Evans suggested they call an Uber. Mary countered that doing so from an isolated spot in rural Kansas would either be impossible or exorbitant. Instead, she approached pilgrimage organizer JP Brunke and proposed that the bus used for transporting injured and otherwise incapable pilgrims could take Mary and Evans to a hotel.

“He looked me in the eye and said, ‘No,’” Mary said. “He was probably thinking ‘You can’t quit only eight miles from completion,’ but we had every intention of returning. I just know nobody can camp in conditions like that.”

As it turned out, within 15 minutes, Brunke announced that interested pilgrims could catch a ride and spend the night sleeping on a gym floor. Evans and Mary leapt at the opportunity – figuratively, that is. After all, leaping seemed like too tall an order at that point.

“We were terribly uncomfortable,” she said. “Recently, I came to the conclusion that maybe this bit of suffering from the pilgrimage – that sacrifice – might have had something to do with Flint’s conversion.”

Unlocked

With a nod to Earnest Hemingway, Flint’s conversion – or re-conversion, as he calls it – progressed gradually, then suddenly.

According to Mary, when their son, Lucas, learned as a young adult that Dad didn’t really believe in God, the subject of faith became a prominent conversation topic. “Flint would say he wanted to have faith and belief in God but that he just didn’t,” Mary said.

“Lucas and I had an ongoing dialogue about my faith or lack of faith, and I was able to talk to him about it in ways that I couldn’t talk to Mary,” Flint said. “I didn’t need his approval, nor was I afraid of having his disapproval, like I was with Mary. Our relationship was unique in that I could share with him what I thought of the world without feeling challenged. And yes, he prayed for me. He was always understanding and a good listener, giving me respect and dignity, but he made it clear that he disagreed with me.”

Other notable dialogues arose with Flint’s friend, Jon Schott, who Flint describes as a very intellectual and sincere Christian. As Schott described varying planes of existence, Flint posed the question of how to reach them, and Schott wisecracked that Flint could try banging his head repeatedly against a nearby tree.

“I took that to mean I needed to get there by means of an inward journey, not a concussion,” Flint said. “Jon is a Protestant preacher’s son with a strong faith who thought it was a real paradox that I lived a Christian lifestyle without having any faith in the deity of Jesus Christ, so we would we try to crack that nut together. Those were very deep conversations, but they were also a lot of fun.”

But even if Flint had plenty of food for thought, he didn’t have much time for contemplation until a couple months after Mary returned from the pilgrimage and told him about the intention for which she had offered it. Suddenly empty nesters, the Stearns decided to rent out their home in Baker City, Oregon and temporarily move to Kalispell, Montana.

“We left our hometown of 22 years, our house, stuff, friends, and everything familiar, and suddenly I had a tremendous amount of spare time on my hands,” Flint said. “In Baker City, I filled my days with work and plenty of distractions. I like to run, get out in the woods, fish, visit with friends, and fill every moment.”

While Mary spent her days working as a nurse, Flint performed occupational therapy telework for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in a job that tethered him to his computer, even if it did not demand constant attention. “I was able to complete my job requirements in 10 hours a week or less, and was on call, but the phone almost never rang,” he said. “I was isolated and alone with so much free time but couldn’t leave. Sometimes I felt like I was imprisoned, but it created space for me.”

Meanwhile, Kalispell’s St. Richard Catholic Church was exerting its own pull on Flint. “We both loved St. Richard’s and its pastor, Fr. Sean Raftis,” Mary said. “Fr. Sean is really smart, a great preacher, and exudes his love of Christ so that it overflows to those around him.”

Mary could perceive that her intention – that Flint would seek the Lord – appeared to be playing out before her, but she didn’t realize how significantly until Flint surprised her.

“One day, Flint said, ‘I want to go to confession,’” she recounted.

There had been no miracles, mystical experiences, nor massive epiphanies, but numerous tumblers for the lock of his soul had been quietly clicking into place, and with increasing speed in the preceding two months. He had spent some of those lonely, boring days reading, thinking and even praying.

He alludes to a passage in C.S. Lewis’ Surprised by Joy that reads:

“I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did. Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion. ‘Emotional’ is perhaps the last word we can apply to some of the most important events. It was more like when a man, after a long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake.”

“That’s true with me too,” Flint said. “Like Lewis, I don’t remember a significant eureka moment when it all came crashing down and my world was rocked.”

The decision to return to confession after so long was prompted not only by sorrow for his sins in general, but particularly for the sin against which St. Paul warns in 1 Corinthians 11:29.

“When I was going to church for all those years, I even took the Eucharist,” Flint said.

And although he now discerned the real presence of Christ in that sacrament, he said, he also had come to better appreciate the divine wisdom Christ demonstrated in John 20:23 when he gave the apostles authority to forgive sins.

“I wanted to reject any notion of being a ‘cafeteria Catholic’ that would pick what I wanted but disregard the rest,” Flint said. “That meant I needed to go to confession.”

Having done so maybe a dozen times in his life – and not since childhood – felt like a barrier, but not an insurmountable one. “I was intimidated but also knew it was absolutely the right thing to do.”

Moreover, he not only respected Fr. Raftis, but was confident he would be a good listener. “After we were done, he said ‘Welcome back,’ in a very warm and nonjudgmental way,” Flint said. “The experience was so elevating and redeeming. Confession to a priest as an intercessor who represents Jesus is just so real and beneficial.”

And so it became a regular habit that Flint adopted going forward.

The Arrival

Evans and Mary had followed the instruction to pack nice clothes for the Mass at Fr. Kapaun’s home parish of St. John Nepomucene in Pilsen, but Evans had her doubts. “I thought, ‘Oh gosh, we are so gross right now after three days of walking,’ but we put on our skirts and sundresses and looked pretty nice,” she said. “When we walked into the beautiful church in Pilsen, I was blown away.”

After Mass, the pilgrims and many of their families gathered in the church basement for a post-pilgrimage feast, and Evans reflected on what she and Mary had just done. “It was fulfilling in terms of having accomplished something really difficult and doing it with my best friend,” she said.

Wilhelm was reflective. “I keep asking, ‘Why does walking out here have a spiritual component?’ But it absolutely does. There are always the same discomforts and annoyances, but I have never made the same pilgrimage twice.”

As a general practice doctor, Wilhelm noted, the pilgrimage is a sharp contrast from his highly regimented life, which is typified by days with a new appointment every 15 minutes. “A pilgrimage exists somewhere outside all that. I just dedicate the time, effort, discomfort, and vulnerability to just walk,” he added. “If the scripture about the road to Emmaus does not get to you on your pilgrimage, you’re asleep. Mary was this revelation of something I didn’t know until later, and I recognized Jesus in her when she was talking about her husband. Everyday life is boring compared with pilgrimages.”

Tears characterized the completion of Mary’s pilgrimage: the approach, the Mass, the interactions with so many military veterans who welcomed them. “I cry when I am joyful and when I am moved,” she said. “I was very moved.”

She thought back to the morning when she decided to try logging on to Formed.org, despite not having done so in so long she had doubted it would work, and how her love for veterans such as her father and Flint drew her to Fr. Kapaun’s story and videos about the pilgrimage. “I don’t think that was a coincidence,” she said. “I was asking Fr. Kapaun to help Flint get to Jesus, and I know he did.”

I Love You, Flint

An adequate recounting of the Stearns’ days since Flint’s re-conversion might require another article of this length. Suffice to say their lives have been transformed. Even the smallest daily routines have taken on a new sheen. “Every morning, I drink tea, and he drinks coffee,” she said. “We have done that forever, but now we’re talking about our faith and praying together. We just finished a novena to the Holy Spirit.”

Flint has jumped back into the faith of his youth with both feet, reading from the Bible, especially the New Testament, watching The Chosen, listening to talks by Bishop Robert Barron and podcasts hosted by Fr. Mike Schmitz, reading books by and about the saints, as well as other spiritual reading.

“I just finished Searching for and Maintaining Peace by Fr. Jacques Philippe, and I am doing a Tuesday devotional with St. Anthony, who I consider my patron saint,” he said. “I have so enjoyed the richness of the Catholic faith in so many ways.”

That faith sunk in so deeply that he pressed Mary to finish the email she had started composing months ago but set aside. In it, she reached out to the Diocese of Wichita to express thanks and tell an abbreviated version of the Stearns’ story. When Flint learned Mary had not finished it, he urged her on.

“I have come to learn how important prayer is,” he said. “It has real and tangible effects. It has affected me. Reciprocally, a man I have never met named Paul Wilhelm prayed for me, and he ought to know and gain a bit of consolation that his prayers during adoration were received and effective.”

A recent event has further reinforced Flint’s appreciation for Wilhelm’s prayer.

Flint has become something of a regular at Eucharistic adoration and borrows Mary’s books on the subject. A portion of one came to mind one evening as he knelt before the Blessed Sacrament.

“The writer had struggled with how a wafer of unleavened bread in a monstrance is God,” he said. “It doesn’t seem to make sense, but she accepted it. Her solution was to use a visualization technique: Instead of looking at an unleavened piece of round, white bread in a pretty gold frame, she decided to envision Jesus in human form.”

On his knees before the Eucharist, Flint tried it.

“I suddenly saw Jesus Christ in robes, like you might see in The Chosen, with the beard and the beautiful, kind face,” Flint said. “During that – and we’re talking about a millisecond splash of vision – there was Jesus in a relaxed sitting posture on the altar, with his legs dangling over the edge. There wasn’t anything unnatural or weird about it. He looked straight at me and said, “Flint, I love you.” It penetrated and was gone in an instant. I came off my knees and slid backward, bumping my back against the pew and knowing that it was as real as anything I had ever experienced. God gave me a sweet, gentle consolation that was absolutely wonderful.”