Oh but I love them so! I can think of great titles for books and stories. I can write amazing introductions and conclusions, but that middle part is always a challenge.
How do I tell a story so that it makes sense to someone besides me? I can you know the details? How much of my history do you have to know so that my ideas make sense? Where is there too much disclosure and where is there too little?
When I read Teresa of Avila, out loud, by the lake at Montserrat, it all makes perfect sense to me. This woman knew that the price for her union with God was, while she was on this earth, to know that she would never be a priest. In the last parts of her writings, she tells the nuns in her care something like, "do not aspire to do more than you are allowed to do. Make peace with what you have, what you can do." And oh, how I wept when I read those words.
Almost as much has those words from Jesus, "in a little while, I will be with you no longer, but I will send and Advocate, and He will remind you of all the things I told you."
I don't want Jesus to leave me. Ever. I want to hold him so close and rock him like a little baby in my arms. I want to make His pain go away. I want Him to not feel lonely. But when I am in the woods, reading the Scripture, or on the dock, reading Teresa, I know I don't get to hold on to anything...ever. The Holy Spirit is like the wind, it blows where it wills and if we are lucky, we catch the scent of Him in our nose, breathe Him into our lungs and then He flows into our blood and feeds our bodies. But I don't get to rock Him in my arms...and how I long to do that.
Even in the Pieta, when Mother Mary holds her sweet boy's lifeless body...move my child, do not be dead yet, we have so much more to say, to do, I'm just not ready to let you go. My life, my body, my blood is in you...oh that we could trade places...I don't want to let you go
I've seen it over and over again. Only in personal experience, I think if I stare hard enough, if my will was only strong enough, he would sit up again and smile at me one last time. Maybe they made a mistake, maybe he was just resting...
Death does things to us. Changes us forever. Every single one of them we encounter. They change who we are.
And often it is not until a death that we fully appreciate life. Until then, we live in a whole lot of selfishness, I think. Our desires are so different before we know death. And they are so much richer and relevant once we understand that we are mortal.
So His death, my Boy's death, changed the whole world. Sometimes when I pray, I call Him my Boy. I'm not sure why. I'll leave that to the psychologists in the group. Just sometimes, it feels right to hold Him as my child. Seems for me to just be part of the vastness in which I experience God. If you cannot deal with the contradictions, I can only offer that you pray harder and God will explain it to you as He chooses. Or not.
When I read this bit in John, I am lost in my love for Him as mother. I am never ready to let Him go. As Magdalene, it is easier. Magdalene is more practiced in letting go, but then her lessons are more about surrender, her lessons are about holding on. Mary surrendered to God the moment she said Yes. But the letting go is hard. I don't know about John. Peter, ah well, Peter's heart was broken whether its written down or not...I think Peter might have missed Jesus most of all.
But I digress. Teresa wrote that to love God as we do, and as a woman, there is a great risk and a great price. Since we are still in the world, we are bound by the world and its constructs. The world says I am a woman and I must live by the rules put in place because I am a woman. I can also say I am a white woman, not born in poverty, in south Texas in the 1950s. I am limited by time and by creation.
Play the cards you are dealt.
Don't try to swallow the whole thing at one. Take little bites.
Work with the ones God puts in front of you. Look at what you have. Don't look at what you lost. Don't think about acquiring more.
And that really is the key to earthly bliss: Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive: that means the past is the past. Let it go. Save us from trial: Don't worry about tomorrow. Live today. That is all we have.
Damn.
A consolation is only as perfect as you allow it to be...the very second you think beyond right now...it leaves. Happens every single time.
It is like Chicken Joe in "Surf's Up." (No, I am not completely insane) He's out there on his board and suddenly the wave catches him...he's not trying to catch the wave...and he is so simple-minded that he just rides it until he can't ride it anymore. Later someone says "You've won first prize." and He responds, "I did?!"
Consolation is a lot like that. You can't bring it on, you can only wait for it...and you really ought to be doing something good for God while you wait. Never let your work come before God. That way, when the wave comes, you can turn into it and ride every drop of it.
I like the wave image (there is so much energy in a wave) because it is hard to get distracted when you are in the midst of a really good thing. But you can distracted.
I know that on several times, my consolations were thwarted by a thought so simple as "oh this is wonderful!"
As soon as you add a thought to what's happening to you, the dynamics change and the mind wants control again...but the Holy Spirit doesn't want to be controlled or harnessed.
So Teresa urges her sisters to celebrate what you get and do not grieve when the world tries to take it away.
I'm still working on this. Figured I need to be writing it down.
Love, Cindy
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