Fantasy

I tried to corner three priests this morning, hoping to offer a good confession. the first one said he didn't have time, but that if I was truly sorry for my sins, he would offer me absolution without hearing them.  He asked, "Are you sorry for your sins?" and I looked him in the eye and said, "No!" and turned around and walked out. The other priest sitting on the chair watched me leave with disbelief in his eyes.
I figure, if I want a drive-thru confession, I can do it on my own, without the assistance or counsel of a priest. (I don't spend a lot of time being nice to other people these past couple of weeks. It's not my job to make them feel wanted or better right now. I just don't have enough energy to be pleasant.)

The second priest, in his homily, tried to soft-pedal today's gospel reading.  You know that story about Lazarus and the rich man.  Lazarus goes to heaven, after suffering poverty on earth and the rich man goes to hell and begs for mercy, and he is given none. "You had your chance" the gospel of Luke tells him.  The first priest said this gospel is a case for the Protestant church to support why we should not pray for the dead.  I can't remember his Catholic solution.  The second priest said it was okay to be rich, but that we needed to care for the poor, too.  Something like that. Thought I could go to confession with him, but my conversation with a friend caused him to disappear before I could even ask.  The third, I actually called, but he was busy all day today. 

So perhaps God wants me to sit with my thoughts a bit longer. And they are unpleasant thoughts. I am filled with different angers, reasonable and unreasonable.  The circus this weekend will be hard on my kids, but I have learned from last weekend that we are not capable of blessing each other right now. The best gift I can offer is my disappearance. My own personal mourning is much too deep for me to be of any use to anyone. Last weekend, the party was for his wife: her interpretation of my ex-husband's life. And then, more useful to me, was learning how my children saw their father...and more frightening, how they saw me in the context of that past. 

What I learned by Monday, is that very little of what we do or do not do is ever understood with any kind of truth.  No one really understands our private thoughts and motivations. It is a cruel world who will judge us, and it will judge us according to its own standards.  It matters little whether we offer good or bad, what will be left behind is other people's opinions of our actions. This was a cruel and harsh reality for me and for those of us who might hope for atonement and reconciliation. 

But then, that's really what funerals and memorials are for...kind of reworking the past to make it palatable. The ideas of Lazarus and the Rich Man are just that, ideas. For each of us, a different image and interpretation.  God chooses, God decides...and we really have no clue about what God think about our antics here on earth.  Even a child molester will offer what he thinks are perfectly justifiable reasons for his horrid behavior. And who knows, perhaps his reasons make sense to God.  See how frightening it is? 

I know that I don't want to go to hell, because that's what last weekend felt like. Surrounded by people who don't know anything about you, but hold opinions about you...and when the suffering comes...it's like you didn't exist at all, that there was proof you were here on this earth, but no one could see it or wanted to see it. What a true horror it is to be breathing and to not exist.

I suspect that is how the tragically poor feel on some level. How Lazarus may have felt in the presence of the Rich Man.  But then, I ask myself, does a poor person truly know what he does not have, if he never had it to begin with?  And can a rich man, never knowing deep suffering, know what it is like to be truly poor? 

There are greater things at work here. 

But I have been imagining things, hence the need for confession.  I have been playing the role of Walter Mitty, for the older generation, and perhaps Ralphie, for the younger one. Imagining the suffering of those who torment me. Wishing less than good things for my enemies. Wanting justice and justification.  Wanting desperately to tell "my side of the story."  Yet, before long, as the party plays out in my head, I am ashamed of my own thoughts. 

Should it matter that I go unloved, ignored, misjudged, humiliated....calumniated?  

Isn't that the prayer of humility?  To learn to not care what the world...or even my children...think of me?  To endure the pain and allow it to make me even stronger?  To be silent and let this situation come down on me, without defending myself?

It seems that is the proper course of action. Yet, I am told I must embrace my own anger.  Express it. Let it heal me as well. There is a difference, which I have yet to sort out. 

I wrote a bunch of ideas on a napkin as I was praying my way through this pain and confusion. 

Writing some short stories where I can play out my fantasies of how I want to deal with these people, and these "unjustices" while still on an errand of mercy. 
I watch a llama roll around in the dirt.  I thought, that's how I feel...I'm rolling around in the dirt...and I realized that sometimes rolling around in the dirt has its purpose: it is a kind of cleaning and scrubbing...and it just feels good when you are all tight and stressed.

A sign proclaiming: Vote for Me!  Yes, we all want to be popular...and right.

Then after the second Mass, I watched a young Hispanic mother and her daughter...thinking in my head: Madonna, mother...and the child was crying...a certain kind of cry...a deep sadness...in her little stripped knit hat and gloves...her mother held her but she would not be consoled...I felt better, listening to her cry, comforted by her tears. After a while, I asked, "Is she okay?" Her mother replied, "She wants her daddy."

I smiled and nodded.  "I do, too."

Love,
Cindy