God's Whisper--Maybe

It is very nearly a year since my job was lost to me.


A song occurs to me, "What's it all about Alfie?" with appropriate substitutions of name, c'est moi, the Djinn. "What's it all about, Djin-n?" In these pages and in other fora, I have offered some thoughts along the way, from the early days, in July 2011, right after the fourth of July, through each month.


I almost became a legal denizen of the transit system and its traffic court. I wrote about my first ride on the Los Angeles City trains in preparation for that role. But then I realized that I did not want to step immediately back into the realities of bureaucracy, public, or private. I was grateful to my friend for connecting me to the possibility of that job of reviewing decisions of the new hearing officers, and I felt some remorse at having let her down by deciding not to pursue it after some initial training. She said she understood, that my mind and heart were not in it right then. I hope she did.


Over the year I took three voice over courses and I was considered for one little radio commercial through an on line audition, although I never heard from them so I assume after the consideration I was not chosen. I have an on line profile on Voice123, with a kind of makeshift demo, pending the professional one that I will need to pay some bucks for, which bucks have been diverted to the renovation of my father's condominium into which I shall probably move.

I have written a rambly presently 380 page nearly finished first draft of a memoir about my life before, during and after therapy, (and one individual who I felt graced to know who led me to other individuals I remain graced to know) that probably will never see the light of day but has been on my list of things to do since I can remember. I read for the blind and dyslexic and I enjoy ever single 15 to 20 pages I do of various books each week. I plan on increasing my donation of time to this enterprise.

I almost went inactive, but decided that I had worked so hard for two law licenses, one here, and the other in New York, that I was not quite ready to relinquish the moniker, Attorney at Law.  So I am still active and dues paying. Whether I want them to or not, people I know call me when they have a legal problem. Sometimes I say I can't help. Other times, I'll take a look. And who knows, even now, perhaps something long term in that arena,will turn up that will be as good a fit as the Bar. Maybe this time I won't be in a 25 year rollercoaster ending in a big personal crash by virtue of circumstances outside of my control. I should say that my first contact with a bunch of laweyrs in ten months was at a lovely bit of spiritual direction at a local retreat house led by a professor at St. John's Seminary. It no longer stung to admit that I was one of the "top prosecutors fired by the State Bar". There were four of us. Since that time, two others have retired from the organization after helping the new leaders to take the lay of the land, and another was "let go", leaving an entirely new management team in place. I wish them at least as long as I had as a manager, a not uncommendable ten years. Was it worth it? Yes, it was. I wouldn't change a thing, even the things that made me crazy and hurt like hell.

More and more it has occurred to me that God is telling me something, but I am still not sure what it is. Or I am but I am resisting what I am hearing. Not resisting, exactly, but it is true, really true, that there is a big tug of war between spiritual development and "the world" which, as tragic and often malevolent as it often is, also has delights that I do not seem willing to give up the potentiality of, even if I were never to take advantage of them. You have read, those of you who are reading, surprisingly in places like Russia and France (not many but more than I would expect) of my increased attendance at Mass, my volunteer Eucharistic Ministry. I am trying to pray more than ever I have even the rosary which I always found difficult in its repetitions, because I cannot sit still. I am doing some morning and evening prayer now, with moderate consistency.

Is there a "holy roller" in the offing?  Well, I guess it depends on how you define the term. If it is that I am trying to say "yes" to eternal life by looking to the Trinity, that I believe Christ is the Center, that I am a sinner and that my life is not about me (in Fr. Robert Barron's paraphrased words), then I guess I am. But to be "holy" is to be truly other and allowing God His conversion, His very Divinization of human nature, so that I become transfigured, as all men and women are invited to do, to be truly "other", well, I am a long long way off and may not get there by journey's end.  But even lawyers can become saints, look at Thomas More!

I am often puzzled at the ease of dismissal of the idea of God's expectation of us to let us love Him, even as I know that letting love out or in of me from a human perspective has always been nearly impossible for me. Sometimes it is more than dismissal it is a rebellious willingness to be separated from Him, which is what Hell really is. It is perhaps the most simplistic reason why I believe, that if it IS true, then I have gained enormously, and if it is not, then I won't know about it. But it sure makes more sense to me than telling God He is a fictional putz and taking my chance on having condemned myself in the process. Seems a potentailly costly mistake, if it turns out it is one, as something deep within me tells me it would be. But I digress, as usual.

Will my efforts take? I have no idea. I have lapsed before and I am not going to swear that I won't again. I can only go moment by moment.


On more earthbound subjects, I have renewed my passport and after the condo is renovated and my renewed fear of flying is hypnotized out of me or otherwise goes on hiatus as it sometimes does, I want to see the places that formed my genetic national self, Ireland and Greece (before it goes kaput completely). I have seen Italy but maybe since I loved it so much I might go back. We shall see.

 I have always been a creature of habit. But with my entire prior personal world exploded and being reborn, I am having to consider a different response. All the usual markers are gone.


Here's the thing though. I am a little afraid to say it. With all my anxieties, and they remain legion, I find that I am one thing more often than I have been in the past. I am happier. Maybe that is part of God's Whisper.