Last night I read the concluding chapters to the Book of Revelation aloud in the sanctuary during a thunderstorm. I love thunderstorms. I love the clash of hot and cold air and all the physics that is associated with them. I gave my ex-husband a large photo of a thunderstorm at night in the Arizona desert. In it you saw the multiple shades of dark blue, lightning and cacti anchored in the desert sand. I thought it would remind him of me...as I was often a person who is very dramatic and when crossed, has the lightning and thorns to rival any summer desert storm.
Good thing I am not like that anymore...
Thomas A Kempis says passion is a handicap. One of my priests tells me that falling 'in love' with God might be a problem, because if you fall in love, you most likely will fall out of love someday.
True...perhaps. Falling in love is a disease. The writer Gabriel Marquez wrote of falling in love in "Love in the Time of Cholera" that one should "enjoy the disease while you have it." It is an irrational thing that brings people together. It makes no sense, it sees only what is wants to see...it is blind...and is happy to suffer.
It gets things started. But after the disease, after the antibodies heal you from that glorious irrational, you get to choose to stay or leave. The ride was a wild one, but as the priest says, real love is more than drama.
(Ah, but I think God loves drama. Part of that free will thing, you know. Yes, the ending is known...but the story...ah the story...is part of the joy at the end.)
But I am inclined, as I always am, to believe that things are never black and white. The storm of events that got me to fall "in love" with God have quieted some, but I would argue that the passion is always there. It is not a handicap, but there is a great price to be with God in this way.
There are deserts, and there are storms. There are mountaintop ecstasies and pits of despair. There is euphoria and there is dryness so dry that it hurts. But I wouldn't trade it for a level-headed choice of loving God because...well...its the right thing to do.
Let me fight with Him, let me argue with Him, let me try to knock Him to the ground...and let me lose to Him. Let me weep in my own willfulness, let me grieve my temper, but let me be who I am with Him! Let me be completely real for Him...and surprisingly enough...He becomes completely real for me.
Some days He is my Father. Some days He is my Son. Some days He is my Brother. Some days He is my Husband. And being who I am, I'll fight and argue with Him in every form...and I will love Him and defend Him with all of my being and with my very last breath.
We are sometimes that old married couple that I often visit in the nursing home. She is still giving her husband hell over every little thing, but watching them, there is no doubt in my mind of the deep love that they share.
Is it right to treat God that way? Should I stay at a distance, thinking that I'll only show Him the nice Cindy? Who am I kidding here? Does God really fall for manipulation? Do we think for a minute that He doesn't know the last thought in our heads? Do we think we can hide our envy or lust or laziness from Him?
Sigh...so I just go there, to Him, just as I am. A prickly cactus, a thunderstorm, a irritated porcupine...and so very often also as a frightened little girl who simply doesn't want to be alone at night. And He is there for the long haul. He never lets go, He never gives up. He hangs on when I am shaking in terror that maybe He is disappointed in what I did that day, or if I tried too hard, or if I thought for a minute that I was in control...
He's just there. Solid. Firm. Steadfast. Sure. Loving me just as I am.
Tell me, now, how can I not stay "in love" with Him?! From the time I was six years old, I knew I was His and He was mine. The child that dragged the ladder into the yard to get closer is the one today who writes Him letters with her tears...and the passion has not stopped for 50 years. I suspect it will continue for another 50, if I should live that long...
For me it was not just a coincidence that the thunder and lightning of last night coincided with my reading of certain passages from Revelation. The movement from light to dark during the 7:30 p.m. Mass on Sunday a week ago was not a coincidence. It was a gift. Realizing today yet another truth about the rings I wear...
or is it a truth? Who knows? I wear one ring on my right hand, rose gold with diamonds and rubies. Little ones. White and red, like the Divine Mercy vision of St Faustina. On my left hand, I wear a dome ring with ten diamonds. A larger diamond in the center with nine little diamonds 'floating' around it. That makes me think of the solar system, or the universe. It is on my wedding finger. On the finger next to it is my silver rosary ring that I had made for me when I entered seminary. Silver is a sign of redemption. It was/is my symbol for the Catholic Church.
So in my left hand, I am holding the cosmos(creation)and the Church. In my right hand is Divine Mercy. Sometimes at Mass, when I bow my head to pray, and my hands are folded, in the facets of the stones, I clearly see the crucifix behind the altar and sometimes I see the altar. And when I do, it shakes me to my bones.
Yeah, I like drama.
Think of it, in our hands, we hold the world...we hold creation. We hold the Church and we hold Mercy. We look into what we hold and there we see the Mass, never ending, unceasing...telling us we have within us the ability to make this world work...if we put Him first, if we put His love first.
That happened this morning in Mass.
Yeah, I like drama.
Love, Cindy
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