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| In proverbial terms, I'm stepping out of the windowless bedroom with sleep/fire in my eyes - have been with a few friends who have happened to be directly around me, but otherwise dropped off the face of the world, so far as almost everyone has been concerned. Phone calls are unreturned, emails unopened. It's more than just my usual scatter-brained-ness or irresponsibility and, without my initial consent, had in fact lapsed over into a mystical experience. Conversations and noise continued around me, I even talked and became louder, more verbose, but 'silence' had been creeping toward me. 'Silence' is peace. Perhaps more will be written about this at some point in the future.
I'm still here, realising how much noise I've attempted to create in recent months in order to avoid the voice within 'silence'. Such silence is frightening, because it carries with it implications I would rather not face directly. The silence is even-keel and unrelenting; it has good sense and has my best interests in mind. On what trajectory is my life travelling? Where am I seeking to be? How am I seeking to serve Christ in His Church? I've been jumping through hoops and bending reality around me to save one [albeit important] element of joy/service, to the detriment of everything that I am as a creature. The 'silence' eventually swarmed upon me: The illusion is my supposing that I can preserve for myself any one element of joy/service. If I were to silence myself and listen to Whose Vox is the heart of vocation, I would sacrifice the intangible possibility of that one element of joy/service in order to serve God in the very tangible, in-my-face opportunities woven throughout me and right in front of me.
-a | | |
| Ka-ping!
[I fully intend to return to the entry series at hand someday, after I finish more pressing tasks and/or have access to the Internet. I was called into work to-night for an HVAC emergency or two and, having already missed dinner and being generally irritable, I've decided to exploit the Internet here for a few minutes.]
1. '. . . But then life happened.' This is such a fitting way of putting things (particularly in the silly things we talk about), though it's rarely felt for all of its wonderful connotation. Much of what our society is geared toward is in fact a staving off or 'freezing' of life. Life (in all of its soddy sweaty mossy stench) is not good; life means chaos and disorder and (perhaps above all) discomfort. By saying this, we somewhat indirectly imply the reality of our flip-flopped notions of living - that the 'space' of our attention and breathing must be filled with distraction and 'security' in violent opposition to the crazy realities of life that (in fact) might make us better, stronger, more patient, and more charitable persons.
2. In the evenings this past week, I read many hilarious and quotable things, none of which I can recall off the top of my head.
3. A friend related a quote to me from an author who relates a story about a young Catholic boy visiting his friend's protestant church. The Catholic boy entered the narthex (or, 'sanctuary') and, as innocently as the sunlight shines, turned to his friend with grave alarm in his voice, saying, 'Someone robbed your church!' After all, there were no candles left, no altar in place, no tabernacle, no Eucharist, no crucifix, etc. The only elements left, notes the author, were vestiges of the Catholic faith - an empty Cross and a blank front wall. The young Catholic boy asked with a pale face, 'Who would have done this? Who would have robbed your church?'
-r | | |
| . . . Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, "Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good—" At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.
-G.K. Chesterton, from the introduction to Heretics
-r | | |
| I inhale the winter air,
Exhale it in the summer of my life,
The sun runs its circuit
Shorter these days;
What are the works of my hands?
Grey days offer open hands;
Turning the covers of my bed at night,
I find beside my place the empty place
To whom I was designed
To love and pour myself -- an empty space,
All day accruing, struggling, laughing, giving
--Only to return to-night
To unlock the empty door
To feel the darkened house,
To count my freezing bedsheets,
Navigate them knowingly.
Yes, I would be hurt, be broken;
I would be mistreated, maybe taken
For granted; it would be crazy
For any of us in this crazy world, but
I'm crazy as it is; and
There's an empty place beside me
Every morning anyways.
O Domine, Weaver of Creation,
I will be patient for Thy coming.
-r | | |
| Once, 'Michigan State' held the smell of a girl's hair
And a spark of another girl's boredom that night at the bowling alley,
The night when it all came tumbling down;
Then, a wash or two removed, some stains accrued
When at last I ventured it out crumpled from the bottom-drawer unused
Had rendered it how both women would want it:
An indiscriminate choice, an average citizen of the closet.
This, it's a black shirt with pocket,
Otherwise unremarkable, one among other shirts
Full of those stanzas I would like to forget
And several I'd hope to preserve;
This shirt, this one is Aunt Denise's shirt,
The smell of a Baptist church
And my bare-handed suitcase
Reminding me of the recent events
And ancient tide-lines of those secretive lazer-gun gifts
For the ride home forever intact in the memory.
To-night, I notice that growing older makes it easier,
That growing stronger means it's good that it's easier:
To-night, sealing her casually under a coat
With fog and mist in the forecast
And smoke in the winter air, dead flowers on the last bench outside,
I sense the arrival of another final loss, epitomised
In a poem for her not even here free of the usual stanzas with references
To my own concerns and my own tiny triumphs and failures.
But, I do this knowing Aunt Denise;
Knowing Aunt Denise,
I think she'd
Appreciate the gesture and sentiment
But hope we'd all get back to the fun,
To these exact pranks and a world full of lazer-guns.
-r | | |
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