Ash Wednesday did not begin very well. My left arm has been bothering me (yes, I do have an appointment with the doctor!) which I think is about how I roll about at night in bed trying to sleep, and I awoke with it aching, yet again, enough to restrict a little of my motion. At the same time, the cats jumped onto the bed demanding their morning meal, and I uttered the first word of the day, "Sh-t!". This was not the word I had intended, which might better have been "Amen" or some such spiritual fare, but alas, it was the one that popped out.
I have been re-reading a large portion of a journal I have kept for much of my adult life. While I would like that it had been defined as a place of dreamy musings combined with world historical reflection, it has largely been a repository for my whiny complaints about places and people, including myself. Oh, though it has a few thoughtful segments, even well written ones--well so I'd like to think, it really seems that I have rather embarrassingly missed the essence of being a Catholic Christian.
Now, I shall take this paragraph to say, really, it's not all my fault! Although I was raised on the Baltimore Catechism and a healthy dose of "offer it up" when things went awry, I somehow got the idea in the middle of getting old enough for school age, going through school, getting grades, working hard, acquiring degrees, finally finding a good job as a lawyer doing what the only thing I was meant to do AS a lawyer, that I could control some of the obstacles of life. I am not sure how exactly that occurred and in writing about it now, I am not sure I can quite explain it. I indulged in a kind of magical thinking about my life, even though I experienced the trauma of it relatively early, when my mother developed and died of a cancer (I was 18 when she was diagnosed, and 20 when she died). I seemed to have illogically concluded that if I got over A,B, and C hurdles, then it would all be smooth sailing. I suppose every kid thinks that becoming an adult is a solution to being subject to all sorts of indignities, but in truth as we learn, becoming an adult is often just the beginning. And while some may lead a charmed life, most of us don't, and even those who SEEM to lead a charmed life, often don't. Be that as it may, with the Fall of Adam and Eve, came the "troubles" of life. But think about it, don't many of us, nay, most of us, get a little over the top when we hit our finger with a hammer, when the dog gets out, when we can't untangle a chain, mere inconveniences, let alone the more serious things that we see in the news every day and the ones that touch us personally, like a car accident, or a friend dying way too young.
Here's a meditation in The Magnificat (a little booklet with prayers and encouragements for Catholics that is very popular) that seemed particularly on point on the subject of our rebellious way of being:
"This important truth about life is often completely disregarded. As a rule, no sooner do we meet with contradictions and reverses that we utter nothing but complaints and murmurings. We find that this illness has come upon us when there is much to be done; that something indispensable is denied us; that someone is depriving us of the necessary means, or placing insurmountable obstacles in our way as regards the good we must accomplish or the apostolate to which we have devoted ourselves." (Fr. Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange)
Suffice it to say, that the way I have whined over the years, both before my journal and since it, indicates that I just have not gotten the reality of life, in the here and now, and in the eternal wings. When my classmate in the second grade (was it?) got a grade just a few hundreths of a point better than me such that SHE got the model of a Viking ship as a reward, (I did not want the ship of course, it was the validation it represented), the universe had conspired against me. Oh, it was earlier than that! When all the other kids were throwing rocks at the little metal storage building next to the kindergarten schoolhouse, I joined in half heartedly and I was the only one that got caught! I have examples that span the years up to and including the moments up to this very one, the puniest to the biggest (from my perspective) of how I was not adequately valued, appreciated, or how the fates just did not make things easy, and occasionally threw a real monkey wrench into the proceedings.
Even M. Scott Peck, who wrote that great pop psychology book on the "Road Less Travelled" and started the book with the idea that "life is difficult" and once we get that, life actually becomes a little easier--well turns out like so many gurus, he found it hard to accept his own maxims. I guess that's another part of the Fall--we know what is true but we darn well keep resisting it! I mean, can you really keep arguing that things should be easier when you go to Mass and in the middle of the service, you get a cross marked onto your head to the words, "Remember man that you are dust and unto dust you shall return"? Alas, apparently so.
I was just talking to a friend about a mutual sick friend, a priest, as it happens, who was a man of great brilliance and need for control. He has had some strokes that mostly have affected his memory and have left him partially lucid and partially confused. It is likely that he will not be able to go back to his rectory home, at least not right away. His control is being taken from him. The trick is, I think, for good and spiritual reasons, to let go of the control, not only before it is taken from us, but because there is a freedom in knowing it is inevitable. If we do it ourselves and for the reason of, as Father Garrigou-LaGrange goes on to say in his meditation, the acceptance and doing of the Will of God from day to day, then what a blessing it could and would be.
I have also been reading a little book on Benedictine spirituality "Seeking God" by Esther de Waal, and it speaks to this very point of what Lent is about, what this whole journey may be about, "stability"--a spiritual stability to be prayed for and for which we must aim and practice, "persevering with patience. . .in the original sense of a readiness to accept suffering, even to death" (de Waal, page 58).
Why? If we Christians really believe that we die with Christ and rise with Him on the third day of Easter, then we must go through our version (each and all of us) of His suffering. To seek to avoid the suffering would be to seek to avoid Redemption itself. You don't get to Resurrection without the Suffering. That's the deal. It's kind of what Joy Lewis says to C.S. Lewis in the movie "Shadowlands". You cannot escape the pain when you seek the joy.
So as I wrote this segment, how did I do? When that friend called, and I seriously considered not answering, because he simply is not capable of a short conversation, and saying, "I can't talk long" just doesn't provide a sufficient prompt. it drives me crazy. The timing is usually always bad--I am on my way out, or just on my way in, or resting in the restroom, or doing something from which (like this entry) I don't want to be distracted. I started to "complain and murmur" in my head--a lot. I mean, a lot. And then I remembered what I was writing about here.
And thus becomes the practice of Lent.
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