More simplicity!
O Christ, hear us.
O Christ, hear us.
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ, have mercy upon us.
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Or:
Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.
So, what are the origins of the Kyrie?
The Kyrie is incredibly ancient, being used (minus the Christe part) in pre-Christian times to invoke the presence of God. The Christe part has been around since the 2nd century. St. Gregory was one of its more famous shameless promoters.
But in active Greek, although it translates as “Lord have mercy” and “Christ have mercy”, the active voice is more like “The Lord is being merciful,” and “Christ is being merciful.”
It is one of the simplest prayers, mostly used during Advent but also used during Lent, in many liturgical denominations. The various eastern orthodox churches make frequent use of it, often responding three times, and in some settings, doing the Kyrie forty times.
Sometimes in my life, when things are the hardest, simplest is best. I find that when I am truly distressed, the Kyrie, the eastern orthodox Jesus prayer (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”), and other single line, easily repeated prayers can take me where my heart needs to go and my brain can’t take me. It is probably my OCD-ish tendencies at work in a good way.
A friend and I were chatting one evening and we got to talking about how, although everyone makes a big deal at how a lot of hard times seem to come in people’s lives in the Advent/Christmas season, it also seems that Lent has its own share of dark spiritual mazes. Maybe it is just the natural cycle of the hard winters in our lives coming to an end and spring not seeming to come fast enough. Lent, a lot of times to me, seems to be a time of “letting the hard parts go.” The things I stew about and let fester in the dark of winter, at the beginnings of spring, the itch to be renewed hits, and I have to open the windows and let in the air, even if the air is cold and biting, with only a hint and a promise of warmth.
I have had to let a lot of illusions in my life go this winter. I have had to realize that there are some parts of what I envisioned for myself nine years ago when I first returned home, are not to be. But the tradeoff is to become more grounded, more centered in what is here for me. Some of it has been surprises I could not imagine. Some of it is “not the way I ordered it” but has proven to be rewarding in ways I could not fathom. Some of it is painful and stabbing. But it is all so very real.
The real of the Resurrection is coming. But we have to live through the deep gloom of the tomb to get there.
...was the last Facebook status update my blog and Facebook Friend Lee McKinley Davenport left. Unfortunately, as it turned out, Lee turned to the prospect of premature eternal rest. Lee left this world, by his own hand, sometime Sunday.
I found out this morning as I was getting ready for work. Stunned was an understatement. What? Lee? He seemed to be doing ok, despite fighting a metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumor, finding life after divorce as well as coming to grips with his sexuality in the face of family members who found this hard to handle, being a good father to his two children, and fighting to get on disabillity. I knew Lee had previous problems with depression, but he had a ribald wit that was in full view, and it seemed the the return of his daschund Willie had brought some stability to him. His new blog was even entitled "Lee's Fresh Start." In fact, Lee's last comments on this blog were his showing concern when I told the story of my head injury and his admonishment to me that I was NOT foolish for seeking medical attention, that it was the proper thing to do, and he gave me the ultimate ribbing--"Physician heal thyself".
I only knew Lee from my blog and Facebook; I had never met him in person. He was one of a kind on Facebook. I think he sets the record for "most virtual gifts given to me." I'd seriously get annoyed with him. I would come home, get on Facebook and see he had left me six virtual gifts at a pop, and think, "Jesus, Lee! I can NEVER have the time to reciprocate all these!" He also had a real habit of referring to Willie as "his weiner" and would go on for HOURS with one string of double-entendres after another along that line. I would think, "Oh, God, Lee, I can only take so much 17-year old humor." But just when you wanted to be mad at him, one of his ribald quips would show up on status comments or on your wall that actually made me double over in laughter, and you knew there was no way I could stay irked.
I have to confess that the main emotion I have to go through, every time someone commits suicide, is anger. Anger at the person who killed him/herself for leaving loved ones in the lurch, especially children left to fend for themselves in this mess. Anger at leaving ME in the lurch. Anger at those who hurt him/her so much that they would choose this way out.
I always worried about the overload of virtual gifts. What was it he wanted to accomplish from this over-display? I knew something lay under all the "flip and ribald." I knew, because I hide my own darkest demons with the same veneer. Comedy is tragedy plus time. I know for myself, I get told that I am "incredibly funny and witty." I know that some of my wit comes from deep pain. I always suspected Lee had deep pain under there.
But most of us in that situation learn to draw on that wit to heal our tragedy. We use it in gratitude to God for being alive. There was a place, I believe, where Lee could not make that jump. The psychological demons between his ears sang too many siren songs. Perhaps he even, in a sense, became addicted to the dance between his pure heart and the toxins that the pain of his life secreted.
The full picture of this dance came out today. His last virtual gift to several in his internet community was a series of posts on his private blog, his semi-public suicide note for the chosen few to see, timed so they appear after his death. He was so consumed by this pain, he could not fathom the pain he left behind in an internet community stunned by his loss by this "gift". I think the Lee I chatted with, the Lee I laughed with, would not have intended this pain. But if we take the story of the suffering of the demoniac to heart, we know the things that made the demoniac suffer were legion, and silent to the rest of us.
I'm going to be up front. I have cried tears today for the loss of a good internet friend but mostly for the potential that was within him, and the torment he must have felt within himself, and the mess it left behind. I always grieve in a hard stony way about suicide; in the back of my mind I wonder if in that last split second that realization of "this is a bad idea" falls in and oops, it's too late. I remember a story of a friend of mine who once pondered jumping off a bridge to his death. What held him back was a single thought: "What if I get halfway down and change my mind? I'm screwed."
I would like all of us to make one promise to each other in the blogosphere. Please promise to reach out, even if it is to your internet community, should you realize you have this much despair. What I have learned from my own life in the internet community is there is the capability for much love, a pure and holy love, even for those of us who find the face to face world a harder place to show our true and pure souls.
Rest in peace, Lee. I pray to God you have finally found the grace and peace you deserved. I pray for your children, your family, and your friends. I only wish you could have seen the love that was out there for you in what seemed like a rocky and barren land.
Well, at this point we finish with all the “beseeching,” and we’ve moved on to the Agnus Dei:
Son of God, we beseech thee to hear us.
Son of God, we beseech thee to hear us.
O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world,
Have mercy upon us.
O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world,
Have mercy upon us.
O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world,
Grant us thy peace.
I’m so familiar with the Agnus Dei, have always loved the Agnus Dei for its simplicity, but I really don’t know much about its origins. So...I Googled a while.
The Agnus Dei was introduced in the Roman Mass by Pope Sergius (687-701). It may have been added as a defiant act against the Byzantine empire. The Byzantine church had ruled that Christ shall not be depicted as an animal. It was one of the last things to be added to what we now recognize as the modern Eucharistic liturgy, as was the Nicene Creed.
By guidelines of ecclesiastical art, at the bare minimum, the iconic figure of the Agnus Dei should include a lamb crooking a cross aloft with its foreleg. Later, the Anglican tradition was to add the Cross of St. George flag, the original flag of England, but other countries in Europe use other colors for the flag. Some renditions show the lamb atop a book with seven seals as in the book of Revelation. Some versions show the lamb with a halo and others show a gash in its chest with its blood flowing into a chalice, as in the cup of communion.
I learned something new and kind of cool, too. From the ninth century, onward, “Agnus Dei” can also mean a disk of wax made from last year’s Paschal candle stamped with the familiar “Lamb of God” icon. Historically, the archdeacon manufactured the Agnus Deis on Holy Saturday from wax taken from last year’s Paschal candle, mixed with chrism, and blessed. Then they were distributed by him to the people on the Saturday following Easter. In ancient days, these wax Agnus Dei medallions were thought to protect the owner from perils from storm and pestilence, from fire and flood, and also of the dangers to which women are exposed in childbirth.
It is also interesting that the various Eastern Orthodox churches, although they have no problem with using the phrase “Lamb of God,” in keeping with the original Byzantine belief, do not use the iconography of the Agnus Dei because of their prohibitions on depicting Christ as an animal.
I have, as long as I can remember, been more drawn to the icon of the Agnus Dei as a symbol of Jesus than any painting, icon, or statue depicting Jesus, even as a child. I am sure some of it is that even my childhood brain looked at renditions of “Truck stop Jesus” and “Jesus on the wall of every old lady’s house” and knew somehow these were not “real.” As a child the only rendition of Jesus I was drawn to was the one where Jesus was holding a lamb. But for me, oddly enough, the icon is more “real” to me than human depictions of Jesus. Part of it is the Lamb holds the cross on a staff in victory. There is a part of me that wants to believe that, ultimately, the holy and innocent parts of us will triumph over evil and death. The Lamb of God, I believe, is the only “innocent” thing that resides in me. But for some reason, an iconic representation of Jesus seems more real to me than a human artistic representation of Him. Maybe that is because any human representation, I know that no one really knows what Jesus looks like, therefore human representations of Him seem "not authentic." However, an iconic representation of Him shows what He is really about, and is therefore more "real."
I like to think that all the jading of the world cannot take this holy and innocent spotless white bit of my soul from me. The Lamb is the holy Christ that lives within me. Some days, it is the only spotless pure thing I have. I may be dark with sin on some days, yet, even in my dark days, inside me is still the purity of the snow white Lamb. Frankly, it is hard to imagine the purity within myself; I am not sure I even could if not for the fact the Lamb lives within me. It is the part of me that can accept mercy. It is the part of me that can grant me peace.
It is how I CAN offer myself as a living sacrifice to God; the Lamb has been there before me. Just as it seems that the Holy Spirit can be seen more or less directly by me, and is at least perceived by my five senses through the actions of others, The Agnus Dei is the only direct line I seem to have on Jesus. I can touch the Lamb of God. I can eat and drink the Lamb of God. Jesus, in some ways, seems a dim shadow of history to me...but the Lamb of God is very, very REAL!
That it may please thee to grant that, in the fellowship of
[__________ and] all the saints, we may attain to thy
heavenly kingdom,
We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.
Hmm. "Attain."
I dunno. I don't think there's any attaining. I think it's just there, if you know what I mean.
At the risk of sounding like a universalist, sometimes I wonder if the "evil within us" dies when we die. I mean, first of all, we're all human. We have all done some degree of evil. We all fall short of the glory of God. None of us are going to attain salvation on our own merit.
The other problem, of course, is that matter of corporate guilt. It took me a long time to even acknowledge the possibility of "corporate guilt." But then if I believe in corporate guilt, then the converse would be corporate salvation, now wouldn't it? Maybe I think along the lines of Father Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov, when he says, "Hate not atheists, the teachers of evil, materialists, even the most wicked of them, let alone the good ones among them...Remember them in your prayers, thus: "Save, O Lord, all who have no one to pray for them, and save those, too, who do not want to pray to Thee."
Judgment is kind of a problem for me. There are plenty of things I dislike, people I dislike, people whom I think are "evil." There is much about the world I loathe. I really loathe our culture of conformity, of artificial, of eternal youth, of "appearances." I am bumfuzzled at how the homely, the obese, the dorky, and the nerdy are so easily discounted when it has been my experience that a lot of very sweet souls live within these people.
I have a hard time grading "evil." Sure, we can all point to the Joseph Mengeles and the Saddam Husseins and such, and come to a consensus on some forms of evil. But what about all the silent evils that occur right under our noses? I think about a friend from my past, who years later I discovered that her ex-husband liked for her to go out dressed up in whorish clothing so men would look at her and he could pick fights with them, then go home and get her to agree to sexual acts that she found fairly degrading. Or I think about mothers whose sole subconscious aim for their children is to grow up to feed their narcissistic egos and to raise them in an environment where "nothing is ever good enough", to hell with their children's own personal growth.
I am certainly not immune to participation in such forms of evil. My hot temper is a willing participant in such events. I have dressed down trainees till their ass was on fire. I have "cut off my own nose to spite my face" at times not to let someone else that I really disliked have something. There are a few people in this world (mostly people who have not done ME dirty, but did my friends dirty) that I really, probably, lie in wait for the first chance they ever cross me in the sole hope of verbally "letting them have it with both barrels." Well, hell, and then there's that line in the Reconciliation of a Penitent, all those "other sins which I cannot now remember." Hell, the ones I do remember include lust and greed and pride and hoarding (I guess that is either a form of coveting or gluttony, or both).
So, you know, I'm just not the person who can evaluate someone else's salvation. I'm not going to let my personal feelings about some people get in the way. I am saved by grace, not because I wandered down a church aisle and said a magic sentence, not because I was baptized or confirmed, not because I jumped through a bunch of denominational hoops in a certain way. That means people I don't like get the same deal. Some of the things I've done, some other person might not think I'm worthy of grace.
Yet I think it pleases God if we all show up to his party, sins and all. That is really an impossible one for me to figure out, but I think it is the one thing that drives me wanting to not just be a better person, but to continue to let go of some things and "put them under my Christ."
Ok, I'm coming in from the cold to some degree.
Many of you know I was mostly AWOL this week. I did manage to schedule my reflections and have them post automatically.
Well, actually, I was here. I decided to take a personal retreat for four days. I wanted to see what happened in a world where life basically revolved around liturgy and meals and everything else was secondary, in an attempt to identify in my 49th year, the beginnings of my "Jubilee year" what are the debts that need cancelling in my spirit, and the slaves I need to free. I will be blogging a lot more about this experience as my thoughts process and evolve. Today, I am just adjusting to my world again, feeling grounded in a new way.
I had a sense what the big one was already, but this trip affirmed this.
The world of "instant availability" has the potential to blow me to bits. It is the root of 90% of my angry moments.
I thought about how "call" has evolved since when I first started being on call 20 years ago.
Twenty years ago, we all had voice beepers and no cell phones. When you were on call, you could easily miss your page or it was garbled. It was not a big deal if you took 20 or 30 minutes to call back; people knew you might be out looking for a pay phone. People did the best they could until you responded. They would wait 20 minutes before calling you again, if they wondered if the message was garbled. You stayed home more on weekends on call because of this, maybe only ventured out to the grocery store or church, because you knew you needed to be mostly home. People often called your house first BEFORE they paged you. People were more mindful of "bothering you at home" with less important things or would say on the page, "call at your convenience."
Then came digital pagers. The need to repeat pages lessened. But people sort of stopped calling you at home first. You didn't have to scramble to write down a phone number, the pager saved it. But you still might have to scrounge for a pay phone, and people were still fairly ok with time lags. But there was no system, really to distinguish "call me now" vs. "call me at your convenience." Sometimes people might enter "911" after the number, as a code for "call me back right now," but we really did not have a code for "take your time, don't rush." Also, with the voice pagers, you knew WHO it was before you responded, and could take things in consideration like "what that person usually gets worried about." With only a number, you didn't know who it was, just sometimes WHERE it was, so you were less prepared for what this call might bring.
Next came cell phones. The first thing that happened was those of us who were resistive to cell phones kind of got pushed into them. I had resisted because, frankly, coverage still was not all that good. But when word got out that "Dr. So-and-so always answered right away, and YOU drag your feet," it was no longer acceptable that you were trying to find a place to call or a place where the cell phone actually worked, it was that YOU were "irresponsible" and Dr. So-and-So was "more responsible than you." Something was wrong with YOU. Everyone suddenly was expected to answer within 5 minutes, and no one seemed to care if their problem was URGENT or just administrative. People were still using the pagers, b/c incoming calls cost money too, and there weren't package deals yet. So at least they weren't calling the cell phone directly and wasting your money.
The other thing that emerged in the "pager/cell phone" era was those of us on call started venturing out from home more, and doing more things outside of the home...which meant we were interrupted more, and we became ANGRY more that we were being interrupted. Those calling became ANGRY more that we didn't answer fast enough.
We are morphing to a world now where at some point, we will ditch the pagers, but not just yet. People still "in-house" at the hospital still need pagers, because in some patient care areas cell phone use is not permitted. But it has created a paradox for those of us who take call outside of the hospital. Some people page you and some call your cell phone, and sometimes when they call your cell phone, they don't leave a message, and because of HiPPA, the hospital phone numbers come up as "Restricted" so you don't know WHO to call back...lots of weird new quirks set up to make more people angry you didn't respond in the appropriate time frame. Also, the pager systems are starting to be more in disarray as fewer people have pagers, and the coverage isn't as good, and the pages don't go through like they used to. Well...just more reasons for those calling me to be angry, and for me to be angry.
I am starting to see how this potential for anger is encroaching into the rest of our world. This year's 2nd year class is the first one that has been visibly upset that I do not check my school e-mail on weekends. I do not believe it is my duty as their instructor to be "on call" for questions about the exam on Monday at 10 p.m. on Sunday. I had one student in the past vehemently line ME out that he pays x amount of tuition and he EXPECTS me to be available for HIS questions because HE PAID FOR IT. He did not care for my response that I was not a happy meal at McDonalds, cooked to his specifications the same way every time. I said, "I hate to tell you this, but piss-poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." He complained to one of the deanlets. Thanks be to God the deanlet just laughed. But I knew had he complained to the right person, I could just as easily have been lectured on "my duty to be responsive to student needs," and it would have ended the way these conversations usually end between us, with my telling him to go to Hell and to hire someone else if I don't suit the mission of the institution.
I am realizing in this word of text messaging and Facebook and Twitter that these things, which in some ways are a godsend, also have the potential to make me fall prey to everyone's expectations. We have all become less mindful of interrupting other people, trusting others to "just put us on voice mail if they don't have time for us." But we forget maybe THOSE people also might suffer from the pressure of "expectations" and answer instead of putting us on voice mail, and then they are annoyed they are interrupted. I know there are certain people in my life I rarely put on voice mail; some are because it might be work related, but honestly, some are because if I put them on voice mail, they will call me again and chew me out for putting me on voice mail! Others get their feelings hurt b/c they see my putting them on voice mail as "I don't want to deal with them, I am dissing them." So instead of being honest with myself and my needs, I answer them, and then get mad that they called about BS. I also know some of my friends have had their moments with me.
This world of "expectations of instant response" has created a lot of insecurity-based anger. People's neuroses and our own neuroses really come out in spades. I recognize it is 90% of my own angry outbursts.
But the biggest, hugest thing I had affirmed on this retreat is that my insistence of my own "quiet times" is to be guarded and enforced except in case of emergency. I'm going to be frank. My "bullshit tolerance level" is way smaller than most, and what constitutes "bullshit" in my world is much larger than most. Despite my gregarious nature in public, I can only be in that mode for a short time, and when I've hit my limit, I break down very quickly. I have sensed for years that the thing to do is just leave. My friends joke about my party skills. I stay a little, am the life of the party, and the next thing you know, everyone goes, "Where'd Kirk go?" I had left, disappeared, sometimes without so much as a goodbye, and sometimes with just a quick, "gotta go, tnxbye." This really offends some people until they understand. Some never understand.
This is why Facebook, when used properly for my world in the way that is healthy for me, is a godsend. (Now, Facebook chat, I can mostly do without. Too much instant expectation.) But I am grateful to God that Facebook gives me the outlet to be social without the physical and temporal pressures of it. I just have to discipline myself not to use it as a time suck for empty space, but rather a positive means of communicating with old and new friends.
But I am realizing that I need regular, stable quiet time like some people need air, and I've been living like someone with emphysema in that regard. I can live more fully and be more forgiving and less angry about the pressures of my job when I have time for just being quiet, praying, and recharging. Facebook allows me to be social in a community in a way that does not pressure my physical need for "alone time." I'm sure there is some expert out there who will say this makes me a reclusive nerd or some psychopathology is at work, but my short answer is, "No, the more quiet time I get, the more I feel alive when I DO interact with others."
There are little glimpses my body has given me (none serious, but some enough to rule out some serious and scary medical issues) that as I age, I can no longer "do everything." I have chosen to listen to my body in this regard. I find I can do what I choose to do more freely and boldly when I have ample recharging time. This is a very liberating thought, and to journey to a place where I feel less shackled by the unhealthy expectations of others is relieving. We will always labor under expectations of others, but I am realizing so many are "unhealthy" and so few are "healthy." Maybe some of this is none of us feel free to admit what it is we really need, me included. I know in my case, I tend to prefer to be silent when what I want to say is "No," and my silence too often is read as tacit approval.
The Catechism in the BCP (p. 848) says one of our duties to others is "to speak the truth, and not to mislead others by our silence." We all have a habit of either silence or the unfeeling "yeah, sure" to some degree when we mean "no." I have definitely been this way about my need for solitude, because I sense my need is off the bell shaped curve compared to most others (it has the potential to appear "weird"), and I don't think people see this need as "authentic" in me because I'm just so damned gregarious and windy and comical when I'm "on." But it is real, and this trip has affirmed my need to understand this need more in myself.
That it may please thee to grant to all the faithful departed
eternal life and peace,
We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.
Well...Even though I'm not yet 50, there are many people who used to be in my life who are gone.
Once upon a time, b/c of all the divorces in my family, I had eight grandparents. I am down to one. I have lost at least four high school classmates to the spectre of Death. I've written many times before about my uncle R., who died in a hunting accident at age 11. Many of the people I grew up with in my home town, people of "the greatest generation", that made up the productive life blood of my home town, are gone. I really miss that bunch. I would love to hear what they would have to say about this present economic crisis. (I have a feeling they would say, "stop whining and do the best you can--that's all you can do.")
I can sit and miss those people at the drop of a hat. But sometimes I can still feel them in my heart.
You know, in some ways I know a TON about death. My job is a constant walk alongside sickness and death, rendering diagnoses that sometimes will almost certainly end someone's life sooner rather than later. In some ways I'm pretty fatalistic and downright cold about it. I know better than most that we all will die, no matter what we eat, how much we exercise, and that our "healthy habits", although laudable, are just prolonging the inevitable.
It's why I don't worry a hoot about trying to look alluring. It's why I chose to go gray. It's why I don't even OWN a bottle of moisturizer. I know full well I will gray, wrinkle, sag, and degenerate. I don't have time to waste on people who want me to be an image, and I don't have time to waste on "artificial". If they don't find my soul attractive, my heart young and loving, well...they can all go to Hell (My grandmother's favorite response to any form of rejection..."If they don't like (fill in the blank), well, they can just all go to Hell.")
Yet, most of Death, I haven't a clue.
I think we all have a disconnect. We cannot get beyond some variant of "imagining ourselves alive" when we imagine ourselves dead. We just sort of imagine us, as we see us, but in another place. It's just "live us" in a different locale.
I can't imagine "light perpetual". I can't see "light" without the counterbalance of "dark", just as I can't know "hot" without knowing "cold" or "room temperature."
Then comes the really really weird part. I think the closest I've ever been to feeling the presence of God, it's in the dark silent places. But God is light. What's up with that? For me, he's a warmth or a wind in the middle of dark and silent.
I have this very Jesuit notion about the moment of death. When we die, the world we know melts all around us and we discover that the Kingdom of Heaven was right here with us all along. It's my version of "All will be revealed." It was all covered with this little Japanese rice paper screen, this flimsy and fragile illusion of "life."
In my 30's, I used to have this recurring dream. I dreamed that my life was, well...a dream...and when I woke up, I found I was not a professional, had never gone to college, and I had remained in my home town, putting together chicken pot pies at the local ConAgra plant. It was a scary and awful dream. I'd wake up sweating, and unsure if I really DIDN'T put chicken pot pies together for a living.
But I'll tell you something I miss about not having that dream anymore. When I would finally wake up and realize where I was, I had such joy, such gratitude, such delight for WHO I WAS, warts and all.
I want to believe at the moment of my death, what I see will be so awesome, so powerful, so amazing, it makes the best moments of the time I have been allotted on earth look like making chicken pot pies at the ConAgra plant...because it means the hardest and most painful parts of my life will become nothing. That thought is a delight!
That it may please thee to strengthen such as do stand; to
comfort and help the weak-hearted; to raise up those who
fall; and finally to beat down Satan under our feet,
We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.
Well, as an expatriate Lutheran, the one part of this I already know how to do is "beat down Satan under our feet" with a lot of enthusiasm and vigor. It's been said that I can sing "A Mighty Fortress is our God" in a way that sounds like I'm planning to singlehandedly whoop the Devil's ass.
But here is the paradox with the rest of this stanza. I am pretty ok at comforting the weak-hearted and raising and strengthening OTHERS who fall; but I am very very lousy at doing these things in myself. I am the first one in line to kick my own ass, sometimes shoving the other ass-kickers out of the way to be the head of the line.
I have been mostly AWOL from the internet and the cell phone this week, mostly by design. At some point I will reveal more about that design but right now I just need this to evolve. There have been things evolving in my life over the last year and a half that have taken me by surprise to a fair degree, and one of them has been a marked increase in my desiring "alone time." I have spent decades "not listening to God's still voice" (Hell, not even listening to my own still voice!) and beating down the empty spaces rather than exploring them. What I learned last year working through all the Psalms was that I am curious as to "what's down there in the bottom of the dark craters of my heart."
I have historically had a tendency to overfill every waking moment of my day, to control every detail and dynamic of my world. Now, on the job, many of these things have to be done--I'm the boss, for cryin' out loud. But my return to a life of liturgical worship awakened a sleeping giant. I am still not sure what the name of this giant is. I have been struck by how the three most powerful and noisy things in my spiritual world are found in a realm of silence: The fact that, other than getting the sacraments on Sunday, I prefer the Wed. AM prayer service to Sundays; the fact that God seems to speak loudest to me when I'm working alone on fixit projects at church, and the fact that God seems closer than I've ever experienced when I'm out "fire sitting" or just kicking back in my reclining lawn chair, staring up through the hole of the "sacred space in my yard."
Let's just say, "This is not the church experience I expected."
The historical part of me says this is non-productive; "time-wasting"; "lazy," and weak. What I am learning, though, is it is forcing me to a new challenge. All my life there have always seemed to be "missing parts" in my psyche. I won't go into the details (I'm not even sure at this point I can explain them, because they come up in weird ways) but certain psychological attributes that most people have, I just don't seem to have them. It's almost, in a sense, "localized autism." I think over the years I have conditioned myself to respond at least semi-appropriately in settings where at least the appearance of them is needed, but at the deepest levels, they are not there.
Yet, as human beings bound by our Baptismal Covenant, we are constantly charged to love more fully. I am realizing that I have to figure out how to love more fully, despite seeming to have "missing parts" when it comes to some of this stuff, or at the very least, "have the parts but they do not seem to be hooked together all the time; there's shoddy wiring between one and the other." I have a very strong sense, though, that this is not something to be "fixed" in the sense I will ever acquire these parts. I just have to learn how to love more fully with the parts I have, and this appears, at least at the moment, to include a lot of reflective/contemplative stuff. Yet I am the kid who, in kindergarten, could not lie on the mat and be still. Hmmm.
I am not afraid to go to the dark places. In fact, I kind of want to go there. Now I have to learn how to hear what needs to be told to me there. I am not particularly patient with myself there. I need to learn to give myself the patience to stay there and the fortitude to decide "weak" is okay in this instance. What a paradox!
