circa 18 May 2013
I feel like I've done so little today. But I've prayed well, and attended Mass at St Mark's...where things seem to affect me differently there. This time, it was the water in the new baptismal font...and as I heard it flowing, I knew I had to figure out a way to get there more often...and just be still with God.
Each time I return there, it is as if it is a surprise. I can't exactly explain it. Something must have happened there, something primal or deep inside me. I look up at the stained glass stations of the cross, the ones placed along the 'wrong' wall (Msgr. Smith intended them to be on the dawn wall, not the dusk wall)...and I look at the 11th Station: Jesus dies on the cross...I am drawn like a fly to that one...because it looks like that night of the full moon, back in 96, during Lent...a retreat down near Possum Kingdom...with the choir from the Methodist Church. Once I knew everyone was asleep, I went out to the fire pit, where the wooden cross stood, pretty much life size...and cried like a little girl about the impending divorce...like a speeding train, I knew I could not stop it...and some part of me was glad it was happening, because I didn't like who I was becoming in my marriage. I found a stone and I seemed to remember offering some kind of prayer to God that said, "I give up. I can't live like I was living, but I don't know how to live now. I don't want to live now, but I have to keep living. So I give my life to you. I don't want it. I don't want anything anymore, but I know I have to live. So it's yours. Do with it what you will." and I placed the rock on the cross. I had to stretch to reach the cross bar. The wind was gently blowing on that spring night...and there off behind the cross, through the trees that did not yet have any leaves...the full moon was rising. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seem...and I just stood there, hugging the cross...wishing that somehow, placing that stone on it, I could just let go of all the mistakes I had made...and I could somehow learn to be happy.
I feel that moment every single time I go to Mass at St Marks. During the Mass, I am mesmerized by that stained glass image of the cross...and I love it as if it was the most important thing in the world. I look at it, and I feel that night, I live that night over and over again. It seemed like the beginning of God courting me...and one always likes to remember that first date. Yet it was so much more than that. I had spent so much time in the woods at night with Bob, when we were dating...God knew that, to seduce me, He had to take me to my favorite place...and provide me with my favorite things: a river, barren trees, a full moon, a gentle breeze. I can fall in love so easily under a full moon. And I guess I did. Why that stained glass seems to be connected, why it is the little drops of blood falling from an empty cross seem so important to me, I cannot explain. It is just who I am...and who God is...to me.
A thousand thoughts go through me. Ah...it becomes clearer now. Grandbury, the tornadoes, traveling there with friends...Glen Rose, that was the retreat center. I remember now. All the little pieces. Returning to the Eucharist at St Marks, how I fell to the ground in happiness...why would such a little thing affect me so? Because, to me, it is no little thing.
I cannot speak too well in a contemplative state and I vaguely feel myself going there right now. It is kind of a seduction, this God relationship, which takes all the parts of me and mixes them in a bowl and I feel myself swimming around, much like the wind of a tornado, strong, but not destructive like a tornado. I should have anticipated this...after one amazing retreat, with so much good birthing and so much death being buried this past weekend...and then retelling the story this afternoon to my spiritual director Liz...I didn't think it was going to happen today, but I write and I am really not here. I hear the birds outside my window, singing their night prayers...saying good bye to the sun and thanking God for the day...and I feel all the memories of the Mass, and the telling of the story...
Do you remember what God said?
And Paul?
Be courageous. Time is getting close. Don't let false spirits confuse you...they are everywhere. They want you to be afraid, discouraged.
The things I did, the way I did them...if it was me, I would be sad or embarrassed or something...but I did what I was told to do.
Not like when I gave up, and tried to kill myself again by sleeping with the wrong man. That was long ago...and I learned from it...how a woman can kill herself and still breathe. It's actually pretty easy. Yes, I tried to stop all this foolishness of God, in the only way I knew how...and even then, God did not let go. I suspect no one would really value anything I might write or say, because of the choices I've made, the mistakes I allowed...trying to die because I was too scared to live.
I get confused about it all, trying to offer some rational explanation for the things that keep happening, how I am allowed to witness so much healing...and even be a part of it. And how I know that, if I hadn't had horrible things happen, I would not be able to be the servant I am allowed to be. It is just all so confusing...and definitely not logical.
Be courageous. Speak from your heart what you have learned. Do not fear the truth. Do not fear death. The Evil One thrives on making us afraid of ourselves. I have seen heaven and hell...and the healing that lives between them.
It all seemed to begin with that cross, that stone...that blood that dripped onto the dirt beneath, mixing with my great tears of grief and loneliness and sorrow...thinking about the ones who cried there before me, and the ones who will cry later...under a full moon.
There are things I want to write, but I am still afraid, not for me...but for my children and grandchildren, who may not ever understand...yet must know, we are so much more than dust and water.
We are more than mud.
I loved
without knowing love
but I loved
waiting
for her to return to me.
I loved
when they hurt me
knowing
they hurt me
because
in their own hearts
they were waiting
for love too.
In prayer
I am overcome
by the emptiness
of this world
and its
great hunger
waiting
to be filled
with love.
I endure
their loneliness
ignoring my own.
No, understanding
my own.
He sees it all.
Use me Lord,
Let my ears
hear their truth
feel their pain
sing their song...
just enough
to make them brave
to sing
all by themselves
a love song
to You.
Empty me
enough
to be space
for them
Fill me
enough
to help
to start their song
Remove me
when they
begin to walk
And let me be happy
to leave
Because when my work is over
And I have no more hands to hold
I know you'll be there
holding my hand
And taking me
home.
Such odd words. I'm not sure why I write them. But I'll know later.
Love, Cindy
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