The Care and Keeping of Your Sanity

Several large, glassy moments stolen from the middle of the day hang weightily around my head and shoulders as I take advantage of their fullness to whisper with God over coffee in a windowed corner of the cafe. Daydreams and bright bits of future make their way from the pages of my letters to Him to my head and finally into my heart, where they glow warmly. I dream of white walls and breezes in the curtains and my own slip in the harbor, of my practice and all the unique opportunities for service and for love and for growth, of music and books and photographs, of a bright bundle of family and friends and peace under cherry trees.

When I found myself browsing Northern Michigan waterfront real estate, I realized I may have a problem. I need to come to terms with reality: the fact is that I have three-and-a-half more years of school before I can even think about moving up there.

But the dream is important! (Watch me argue this point with myself …) Oswald Chambers says that daydreaming can be useful, as it helps you formulate a spiritual game plan. And, as I learned and am learning from Wendell Berry, homes are important in that they provide a setting for your life. I’m discovering with greater clarity what shape my life should take, and this inspires in me a combination of peace and anticipation that I’ve never before known. My life is unfolding rapidly and will start coming faster and faster every year. What’s wrong with looking ahead at the spaces I’ll need to frame it?

I also found the firm I want to work at. It’s in Traverse City.   🙂

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Surprise

The iced air shimmers in the dark, heavily laden with a flood of frozen glitter. It powders the stained-glass night with excitement and brilliant ideas, flashing hard in clean flurries under street lamps. The moment feels like the first breath after a happy surprise, when the air that finds your lungs leaves its promises behind to warm your heart. Your eyes were made for sights like these, and you revel in it even though you hear the rustling reminder that it’s only paper. The shining world that unrolls beneath your feet is only a fragile layer of distraction, and your rigid, pointing fingers put holes in it. But – careful! You’ve heard the paper tear before, been the only one for him to clap his eyes on in the single terrified glance left to him before he’s gone and the wind rattles the edges left ragged by his drop out of the wrapping-paper world. You lost him, but gained a precious glimpse of eternity in his passing. So you keep your balance, or are given it, and with two big pieces of spiritual scotch tape make an x-marks-the-spot. The work is hard, because your fingers are nearly frozen, but, finished, satisfied feet carry you safely home.

Things around here are finding their ends, which mostly means that we’re all starting over. It’s a lot of back-tracking to find and conclude the ideas and relationships that were important to us when we got here, in some cases dusting them off or being surprised by what they’ve morphed into. A lot gets dropped during this process, which is okay, too, I guess. That’s how you figure out what’s really important to you – also a surprise, sometimes.

It’s unfamiliar spiritual geography. I’m nostalgic and restless, anxious and unconcerned, frantically busy and utterly unoccupied. The season is changing, and it caught me unprepared – or in denial, during the moments when I’m honest with myself. I had determined at the beginning of all of this to love it and live in it for as long as I could, and ignore the pain of leaving until after I left. But the leaving will be the hardest. I have found that God has left me remarkably well-equipped to make good out of any situation: it’s the space between situations that leaves me scattered and scared.

But tonight I heard the paper rustle, and I remembered. The world is so perfectly wrapped that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt who prepared it so carefully for you, but the gift is that God decides when to rip the paper away and expose you to your eternity. If I give in to fear at any point, and in so doing deny the promise of God’s protection, where then may I finally draw the line? Our choice on this paper planet is, finally, between fear and faith.

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Soy Yo

There’s a place in a house near some trees way Up North that makes a good starting point. It’s a good place to start when you come looking for me, I mean. It’s  like your best adventure – no clarity, only clues that draw you on and on. A shiny, gorgeous treasure map glued down under our feet, spread quite thin in a layer of durable linoleum. Plain, serviceable, mysterious. Memorable. Layers of love have settled into it, compacted tight by a dozen dozen holidays’ downward pressure. It’s where we keep our habits. We set them down and walk on them, forcing them down level where they support us all the day long. Old prayers and whisps of past head-butting gather lightly in corners until the day they’re lighted up, searched out and swept away. Days when this happens are good days. They tend to be the days that come just before really good days. There’s a long crack near the fridge that flows like the continuity of culture and memory – a steady stream of awesome flowing down from generations spent in one space. A few tiny dents mark the first steps of my first high heels. A whole story spreads literally at your feet. Look up, around, and in my eyes – then look down.

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Idea, Revisited

My place sees me wondering about it, preparing to paper it over with an essay and a thesis centered on aspects of its character. It returns the attention aggressively, assaulting me with bright and hard-edged situations and fresh ideas about old locations. New books and new people and new songs leave traces of friendship everywhere and give me reasons to stay up late at night and wake up ready, in anticipation of dawn.

I love it when, in describing your ideas to other people, you discover new things about them that you weren’t actively aware of before. I clarified a few things to myself by talking about them to other people over the past few days, which is immensely satisfying. Discussions about art and architecture and how spiritual geography ties into that – more on that later.

I have to get used to a new kind of activity. Father Charlie describes Our Lady as being in a state of active waiting – she was busy being obedient and faithful and expectant of huge and wonderful and mind-blowing things from God. (I love to imagine how brilliant she must have been at Cana … “Um, Son? Do something.”) So I can be doing things even while I’m not really doing anything … I think. I’m still trying to parce this one out, because I am all about getting stuff done, but my understanding of “busy” has been informed to a large extent by the rest of the world.  Same word for a different concept. I need to be relentless in prayer, and active in my response to God’s call, “Come Unto Me.” This task is much greater and much more difficult than the glamorous projects I envision for myself, and how much more beautiful. This is the “spiritual” in spiritual geography. This is the kind of thing for which we need a place.

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Is this real life?

I took the LSAT this morning. Then, I got home and crashed into bed like I’d been hit by a tractor trailer, determined to sleep as though I’d just been through some terrible and trying ordeal. And then I couldn’t sleep. I hurt. I felt sad. I’m attributing it to my dad leaving (who’d come down to take me to the test and back and whom I hadn’t seen in far too long and lost far to soon), and perhaps also to the temporary loss of my cell phone, which he accidentally took with him. Four hours away. On a Saturday night. No good.

But that didn’t even really matter after about 6:30pm because – and here’s where I get back to the point – I miss the LSAT. Okay, you’re right … that’s ridiculous. But I miss the way I felt before I took this monumental and unnecessarily traumatizing exam. Because before I took it, it hadn’t happened yet. Circular, I know. Point being, now I seriously am on my way to the next and yet-to-be determined chapter of my life. I’ve taken this exam and the score will be my ticket into law school.

So (follow my twisted logic if you can) I’ve taken the exam and I’m now eligible to apply. And because I can means I really should, in order to better my odds of acceptance. And why would I want to better my odds? Because I want to go to law school, of course. Because I want to graduate, leave my darling, gorgeous friends with their great, big hearts and hearty, humble souls and  their kind, thoughtful minds, strike out by myself, far from home and this place which has built me, on a three-year course of arduous intellectual labor surrounded by raving liberals. Yes.

Lord in Heaven, I’m simply grateful that, today, You’re not issuing a dramatic call to action, or presenting me with to an immense glamorous task. Today, You just need me to follow You. During these strange little hours, You just want me to sit and wait on You.  Help me remember that.

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Be Not Afraid

This is what grief looks like. It’s in the curve of his back as he folds in on himself, a mug of forgotten coffee growing cold and dry between his still hands. It lines her eyes with absent, clicks under her nervous fingernails and sucks the empty breath from her laugh. It quivers just beneath her mother’s paper flesh, making her heavy, making her fragile. It runs its hands through his hair and colors his jawline until he looks like he’s grown up too soon. He has. It’s there when someone sobs in the kitchen and no one turns to look. His sister’s mother tries to sweep it away, mop it up, stack it somewhere and make it manageable. No one else tries. It tumbles out with the funeral food, left out too long. It colors like panic when the passwords can’t be found, the rosary lies broken, the insurance company calls, the family begins to leave. It crackles with misunderstanding and dead cell phone batteries. This is what grief looks like.

A sudden brush and the hand of God remind me again that the motions of my hands across a physical world aren’t final. An eternity spent with beautiful souls in the presence of God awaits me, made possible by the sacrifice of a man and a Savior that my selfish heart barely knows. I pray today for the grace of conversion and again a new conversion, to be called over and over to the Father of Lights, the Alpha and Omega, my Creator God.

Who can say how many lives have been changed by this death? I can begin to count them, along with the dozens of tiny miracles that link one to another and evidence a plan, until I quickly lose track. I’m exhausted by what I’ve seen. My mother was called to the hospital along with the priest. She brought only a rosary. I go over every day and stay late or through the night, passing hours in prayer and sleepless conversation. Still, we’re finding pale wisps of optimism. A gap has been wrenched into what was once stable, and yet grace flows and hearts hang in prayer. Peace is a possibility.

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From Home, To Home

I’m gonna pick fruit.

I’m gonna floor it

… drive that green pick-up truck ninety miles an hour through a peach orchard.

I’m gonna drive it right up a ladder

into space.

(Ben Shelton)

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Rhythms

No thoughts on my place today – my heart turns during these last hours of the Passiontide to the places of my God.

Tonight I’ll hurry home in order to be on time for the evening liturgy, the end of Lent and the beginning of the Easter Triduum. These three most holy days of the year commence, as did the Passover and Last Supper, at sundown. The Mass will commemorate the Eucharist, which has been celebrated faithfully since Christ’s command that we should do this in memory of Him. Some parishioners may have their feet washed by the priest, who will also strip and wash the altar as we remember the worth God ascribes to the humility of service and our need for the cleansing waters of baptism. The church bells will ring for the last time before Vigil.

After Mass, we will process through the Church with the Blessed Sacrament to the Altar of Repose.  The consecrated Host will remain “entombed” there among the flowers until we keep the Easter Vigil on Saturday night; no Masses will be celebrated in the church before then. Many will stay and keep watch with Jesus in memory of His agony on the Mount of Olives until late into the night.

Tomorrow, Good Friday, everyone will struggle to understand what happened that day at Calvary. We will enter the church to find that even the building mourns: the altar (the symbol of Christ’s sacrifice, kept always covered with a white linen cloth) will be bare, the church stripped of its ornaments, the empty tabernacle left standing open (the sight of which never fails to shock me). The words of the Passion story will echo in the absence of the sound of the organ, which will remain silent through the service from which the consecration prayer will also be omitted, deepening the sense of loss.

Christ’s sacrifice is inseparable from His Cross, and we reverence the Lord’s instrument of our salvation during the Veneration of the Crucifix, during which we adore Christ in a particularly profound way. The priest will chant the Reproaches as the congregation approaches the cross. The remainder of the Three Hours will be kept in silence.

At three o’clock, we will walk with Christ to Calvary during the Stations of the Cross, processing through the Church and pausing to pray at fourteen particularly poignant moments between Jesus’ condemnation and burial.

Holy Saturday, the day of the entombed Christ,  is the quietest day of the year – the world hangs between the darkness to which Christ descended and the promised restoration of the Light of the World with His Resurrection. No services are held; we prepare our hearts for Easter.

Easter arrives Holy Saturday evening with the Vigil, the Great Service of Light. Paschaltide (the Easter season) begins with the most exuberant Lord’s Day celebration of the entire year – the scents of flowers and incense accompany bell-ringing and choirs and (if I’m at Grandma’s church) trumpets! Then we shall know that Christ has risen and our faith has not been in vain.

Christ became, for our sake, obedient unto death,
even the death of the Cross.
Philippians 2:8

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Wine Drugged with Myrrh

We  sat feigning normalcy around a small table at a bright window. We didn’t touch, although we were close. Our thoughts, however, bridged that gap, collided and mingled and shaped one another, coloring the small distances between our serious heads. Smiles flashed like lighting, punctuating the thunder that rolled across the table beneath those critical words. Laughter emphasized the silence that pressed on the bubble our focus had quietly woven around us. Our eyes met and thought that perhaps they truly saw each other.  Our hearts were full. Sometimes, you don’t realize you’re starving until you begin to eat. That’s how this feels.

Lent combines fasting and feasting in the most unexpected ways. The silence inherent in the season allows us to listen to ourselves, to recognize all the ways we hunger. Each meditation on the Passion strips your soul bare, places you in the perfect position to accept corrections and guidance with the full awareness of how much you need them. Each act of physical self-denial leaves you with a space filled so much more beautifully by love. Prayer sears, drives you again and again to the church, to the Sacrament, to your knees.

This turmoil finds us roving, searching each other out for encouragement. Minds open and hearts come clean. Simplicity and honesty begin to replace destructive habits of mind. Relationships become more and more of what they ought to have been all along. These transitions overcome us painfully, by degrees. Grace flows.

I’m embedded in the season of endings. Pain happens in places that I didn’t know could hurt as growth and acceptance unfold from the inside. I am not strong by myself, but God gives me to sing the song of His strength, and it ignites hope.

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Break With Energy

The exhilarated expression of recognition on Tom’s face lit me up like an adrenaline rush. I had kept all of this to myself, determined not to voice it to anybody but this best of mentors, and it had been a good decision. Clouds of words streamed from between my lips, hanging in bright swirls around the folds of my long black skirt and spinning out behind me as I hurried to keep pace with my thoughts. The light dropped slowly  from the air as night began collecting in corners, and still we walked, circling our ideas and the same city block again and again.

Sometimes the best prayer comes when you’re completely exhausted. I stumbled into church that night after speaking my mind to Tom for what felt like days, and collapsed to my knees as all the thoughts I had so carefully ordered scattered to the floor like so many shiny plastic beads. It takes effort to close your mind – effort that I couldn’t muster as I contemplated the altar, aware of the Presence contemplating me. Not having the energy to (attempt to) hide my thoughts left them bare to my own roving eyes, as well, which slid shut as my true needs, my true desires looked back at me. I am a sinner in need of grace, a confused woman aspiring to godliness. I desire to experience truth, want companionship as I wander in its pursuit. The moment told me that there’s not as much to me as I like to think sometimes – I’m really just a child. Sleepy children, however, have the sense to surrender at day’s end. They know enough to risk vulnerability when there are sweet dreams to be had. In the sanctuary that night, I broke from my usual headlong sprint long enough to remember what such vulnerability feels like. Who knew what could happen when you rest long enough for all your sweetest dreams to catch you?

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