Between travel and leading a writing workshop at Kylemore Abbey, the Lord and I spent 11 straight days surrounded by people, talking to people, serving (and being served by) people, listening to people. In many ways I enjoyed the experience. Still, I can’t “think” (by think I kind of mean consciously pray without ceasing) when I’m with people, nor can I express what I’m really feeling and pondering…anyway, consummatum est.
Kylemore above all is beautiful. Very satisfied with the job I did, gave my all, learned much, would add and change a few things re content next time (if for no other reason than not to repeat and thus bore myself). The Holy Trinity accompanied me at all times and I barely had jet lag nor was seriously, dangerously tired, all to be hugely grateful for. The workshop participants were a huge gift.
Now I’m on a five-day silent retreat. The overall effect of the sleeping and bathing quarters is of a ’40s mental institution that was suddenly abandoned, like Pompeii.
No matter, for if my room smells of insecticide, it also overlooks the lower crowns of several splendid trees and the ocean.
Today is the Feast of the Stigmata of St. Francis and morning Mass was lovely. As is my spiritual director. As is my traveling companion. As is our evening Adoration, from 7:30 to 8:30. In other words–The Pilgrimage Continues!
Last night, after my evening walk and before Adoration, I sat on a bench overlooking the ocean for a while, As the midges feasted on my flesh, I realized that in some ways I’m kind of mad at God. He so seldom gives “answers” with the clarity I long for. I assume He’s there. I know He’s there. He sends a thousand tiny and large love letters daily.
Still, sometimes I think, Could you just TELL ME WHAT YOUR WILL IS? I will do it, or I think I would do it, if I knew! Or am I just to muddle along floundering, flailing, bewildered, rejected and scorned, feeling that my gifts, small and such as they are, are so often not wanted, not welcomed, not useful…
This of course, one way or the other, is our universal lot.
Suddenly, gazing out to sea and scratching away at my ankles, I remembered sitting in silence at the bedside of a friend who was dying. I’ve written before of how sitting vigil at such times embodies peace. There is nothing more to be done, nothing more to be said. No illusion of fixing, rescuing, comforting, coming up with a plan. Nothing to do but sit with, to be there, to bring your own body and blood, in silence.
And that is just what the Holy Trinity does with us! To speak would be to patronize in a way, to pretend that answers exist. There are no answers. There is the Cross. There is the Resurrection.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was made flesh, and pitched his tent among us.
He died so I could live.
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