My friends and former colleagues know that I am not a morning person. A night person, yes. Even when I was a kid and I was allowed to I could stay up into the wee hours. I always wonder how it was I made it to 8:30 classes in college. Probably only as long as I had to do so.
At work too, I would come in early as long as my role required, but when flex time was available, I was johnny on the spot to use it. Come in later. Leave later. Stay up later, and begin again.
I am guessing that my religious vocation does not reside in a monastery where matins are 4:30 and they are in bed by I forget when, but way before I even think about it.
I have been involved in assisting a couple of charities and the new head of one, Catholic Relief Services, was making the keynote speech at a Prayer Breakfast today. I was invited by someone in the organization. I am the liason between him and my former pastor, who could not attend. Great. Delightful. A worthwhile event. It began with the rosary in the Cathedral of the Lady of Angels at 6:30 a.m. followed by Mass at 7, and breakfast out in the massive patio at 7:45. I am usually just rolling over for another hour, or two at 7:45 on an average day.
I had committed myself to attending. I wanted to attend. And whatever else is true about me, once I make that kind of commitment, I usually follow through (I am having a pang of guilt as there was a recent occasion in which I backed out of a commitment, though it was not an early morning one. But it remains a rarity.) So after a lovely dinner with friends last night, and a lament that it would be dark when my archaic alarm clock blasted me out of bed around 5:30 or a bit earlier, I sucked it up and knew I would carry on as promised.
Oh, and that 5:30 came quickly. My eyes burned. My cats wondered how they could have lucked out for so early a meal. I said to myself, "It's only a few hours and then I can come home and take a nap!"
I was out the door and at the Cathedral at 6:30 for the beginning of the first decade of the Luminous mysteries, each decade led by a different bishop of Los Angeles, presided over by the newest Archbishop, Jose Gomez. That the cavernous church was more than two thirds filled astounded me. I was ashamed (a little) of my early moring resistance. More people came in as the decades passed. I found myself in the meditative rhythm and grateful to be a participant.. Although I tend to prefer saying the rosary by myself, or I think I do because I do, saying it with oh, 500 people somehow was a comfort of community, even more so when Mass began and having recently begun reading about the Fathers of the Church, and some of their writings, realized that the community to which I was connected extended two thousand years backward in time.
By the time Mass was over it was fully light, though neither warm nor sunny, more like San Francisco foggy. Carolyn Woo, the speaker, was raised in Hong Kong, amid the Catholic minority by nuns and she praised her education in particular, and the role of that education in general,more so in these challenging times all over trhe world. There was a table of parochial school kids next to me, in the proverbial uniform. There had been plenty of kids passing me in their plaid skirts and tailored jackets. I remember it well, me the graduate of a Bronx equivalent. It was the best education. And it was in no way narrow. I read all the great books even the ones that might be considered a little racy by those days standards. I learned history not by rote, but by looking at the writings of the American revolutionaries and aware of the nuance and strife that begot a nation of amazing principle. It was all coming back to me in that courtyard listening to the speech. Do you know we even said the Pledge of Allegiance? I haven't said that since I was a kid. It was a revelatory touch of the past, a good part of the past that I realized had formed me. And I missed. I met the impressive Ms. Woo and spent some time listening to her ideas among a small group of lucky participants. And then it was nearly noon. The sun had broken out and the rest of the day was before me. The morning of prayer and meditation and reflections on a Catholic education were over. I was truly glad I had not given into my sloth.
As I write it is after 11 p.m. I have been up nearly 17 hours of a 24 hour day. I never got to take that nap. I started reading about Latria and Sacrifice in a theology book loaned to me (and it was challenging stuff; I only got through 8 pages before I was exhausted).
Still, I don't think even I, late night denizen, has it in me to spend much more time out of my bed. I think I have to acknowledge that I won't be up for prayer at :6:30 tomorrow morning.
Good night my friends. Sleep tight. That's my plan too.
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