St. Benedict on Stability

Tonight... was a challenge. Not the "I see you are out of shape, I challenge you to a game of basketball", nor the "I challenge you to keep silence for 40 days"... but more so the, "I can see into your heart and if you don't want to talk to me, than at least sit there and listen to what I have to say" challenge.

Perhaps it was because I was tired after a week in which two massive midterms were written and a term paper submitted, or perhaps it was because the antibiotics for a sinus infection have finally started to kick in, but I cannot help but feel... slightly overwhelmed. There was an additional cleric visiting the WR this evening, one of incredible wisdom and lived experience; the topic was stability and the effect was profound. She spoke about the meaning of spirituality and how Benedict gives one expression of it. She spoke about well-versed authors and finely written pieces of work. And although I dare not comment on the entirety of her message this evening, there is one subsection of that message that I shall continue to ponder into the wee hours of the morning.

"Get in your cell and stay there... stability is to stay put... stability is to prevent self deception. For only when we stay in one place long after our community can see what we choose to ignore about ourselves and confront us, can we truly experience the grace of God."

I understand very little of this and unfortunately, the more I try and think through it as it pertains to my life in the here and now, the more confused I get. I do not understand where I went wrong... was it when I first left the birth church? Was it leaving the seminary community? Leaving one parish to join another for health/personal/job reasons? What is my cell? Do I need to go back to one of these two church communities to work through this desert with God/belief/trust/fear or can I work these out and then seek peace and reconciliation?

My heart longs to be with my cassock sister, laying on the grass in a long, black robe on the lawns of the Diocesan supported seminary as we read and tried to grapple with the depth of such writings as Benedict and his rule and the always lovely Desert Fathers. For everything that we read made life seem simple and genuine while making faith seem personal and constant. I am learning that this is not the case and more often than not, one's heart is conflicted with one's intelligence.

I have a sinking feeling that the work I started this Ash Wednesday will work on preparing me for the following Easter - like Easter of 2011. In the meantime, I shall continue to read "Girl Meets God" as recommended by UC and maybe pull out the books from the Desert Fathers for a read through. And, as hard as it may be, trust that this darkness too, will end and the questions will resolve.

My fingers are numb...

I was always taught when growing up, that if the world ever gave you something that stirred that urge inside of you to punch something/someone else, reach for an ice cube.

Well, my fingers are number than numb, so what I'm trying to say is that any spelling errors I make, are not my fault.

My fingers are numb because I am upset about the human condition and how people have been trained to respond to tragedy by saying, "I'm sorry...." I understand that there is a certain level of empathy at play here, whereby the other person is acknowledging the pain of a situation by potentially apologizing for the fact that life sucks. I get that.

But honestly, it is THEE most unhelpful, pointless, mundane, ambivilent phrase in the English language. Those two cursed words should be reserved for apologies and apologies only, where you are at fault for something and you are remorseful. And, as a huge introvert who likes to ponder the shit out of every little thing, I would rather hear "Wanna talk?" than "I'm sorry". Seriously. Because I would be more open to talking through how much life sucks and hearing their honest, unreserved account of why life either sucks or it doesn't than to hear that they are "sorry" for some random misfortune that they had absolutely no part in.

I don't know... maybe I'm just upset because on a night where I need to talk the days events out, the two people I turn to, immediately drop the "I'm sorry" bomb on the conversation as if it will make everything better. Or, maybe it's true... maybe "I'm sorry" is a phrase that is abused in our lexicon and we need to work on changing this.

Up to you. I'll supply the ice cubes.

Moments that make you think, "ah... schiza!"

Do you ever have those moments in which time seems to freeze, and this horrible feeling comes over you and the voice inside your head says, "wow... this is clearly something we need to work on!" ? Like when you slave over a wonderful supper and the family sits at the table, scrunch their noses, and ask if there are hot dogs they can microwave instead? Or when you are walking down a busy street/sidewalk and you play "dodge the same way as other person" for awhile, where you are both trying to move out of the other persons way, but both dodging the same direction? They are moments that can never be predicted and often leave you reflecting for some time afterwards.

I had one of those moments today.

I was having iced coffee with a friend and catching up on what we had missed in each others lives over the last two months when she got up to use the washroom. Checking my phone for the time, there was a notification saying that I had received a text message. Opening the phone, I discovered it was from a fellow hockey player and support/pillar friend from the seminary town I had left earlier this year checking to see how I was treating life and how it was treating me.

And then... time froze.

Except the voice inside my head was telling me that I really need to work on saying good-bye.

I hate it. I know that Oma always used to say that "hate" is a word I should never use because "hate" was something that the Nazi's did and it was wrong, but I think I have proper justification for putting "saying goodbye" and the Nazi's on the same vocabulary page. Honestly, realistically, what are the odds of ever seeing these people again?

Maybe I just need to spend some more time in thanksgiving for the place of this text-message-sender in my life and the critical timeline in which they entered and maybe I'll discover that I'm just being selfish for wanting them to stay here longer rather than moving half way across the world in the name of vocation and ministry. Perhaps I find out that her place in my life was to pull a lost soul out of a pile of rubble, dust it off, and take it one step closer to the mighty altar of life and that her job is done now.

But realistically, instead, I sit struggling with trying to understand how someone who truly had no reason to care, did; how someone who could have been doing a million other things, paused and checked in. I stare blankly at a card I picked up months ago, struggling to understand how our language can fill an entire dictionary and yet, not be able to adequately capture the impact of the one sentence, shared in a single moment in the Dean's office, brought me here... now.

Ugh. Clearly, as the pattern is quickly showing me, this is a lesson that I need to learn immediately: how to say 'God-speed' to someone I care about deeply. At the rate that these pillars of solid foundation are leaving in various directions, I very well may not acquire this skill in time to say 'safe journey, much love, write often' to any of them.

Stupid moments of, "you really ought to practice doing......"; these moments are really crampin' my style, not to mention my spirit.