help many to take in more reality.

"Does God hold on to our first shirts? If he does, he never lets us know. His respect for our boundaries is impeccable. But speaking for myself, I wish he was less discreet (or discrete). I really need his presence sometimes, and to hell with my ego, but I really need him so I don’t fall altogether apart. Like an infant.

A baby is born so naked and so bereft and so abandoned to the vicissitudes of existence – and the ineptitude and egocentricity of those who are to take care of her. I wish God would be more available – to the babies in huge big gobs, to the rest of us in discreet but unmistakable bursts. I don’t see his greater availability as any compromise on boundaries. It could help many to take in more reality. But he hides so damn well, it is almost as if he is playing hide-and-seek – with us and with himself. I used to have a problem with God’s wager with the devil over Job, but now I see the truth of it. I really experience that truth.

I am sad and feeling rebellious. There are some difficulties in my immediate family which I am grieving (not to do with baby). And of course I come back to God each night and ask him for an accounting of the mess he’s made. I know, I know, I’m sure it is a sin for me to say that. I am a little demoralized."

...

"I told Fr A I've been angry with God since my miscarriage. He said, 'why are you angry with God? That's like being mad at the sun.'"

...

THOU: Yesterday I drove to Peoria to have a conversation with Fr K. I made the appointment last week when I thought I should start looking around for another spiritual director and meet with a few priests who have seemed up to the task in the past. I made this appointment when I was angry with the spiritual director I have now (the one you gave me), very angry, for I felt certain he'd left me to sink or swim, had chosen to wash his hands of me. And isn't that familiar?

I dare not call him spiritual father anymore. But perhaps--given that I have so many skewed notions of what a father is--of what paternal authority is, of what fathers ought to do for their children--this is best.

So it is: when I fall apart, bereft, stripped of my swaddling, I clench the fist in my heart and shake it at you: "And you! You're in charge! What are you doing about this?!" I want you to act, to sweep the clouds from the face of the sun and let it light up the planet, for you can do whatever you like. You are God.

But I forget: the axis of the cross is access. It is the axle that weds my body to my spirit, my becoming to my being. It is access to (axis of) the secret life of God. It is the secret of God in action, split wide open for me to see. The fault--the divide that opened up between between meaning and becoming--is one that I introduced, that all of humanity introduced, which you sealed again in the crossbeams as you participated concretely in all that my spirit cries out against. It is my fault, but because you are God, I say: "this is your fault." I say: "Do you see this big fat gobbing mess of things? Do you? Do something!" You say: "But child, I already have. Only trust me."

No, Lord. It's not good enough. I want you to do something else. I want you to stop watching the misery of the world unfold in front of you. I want you to dip your hand into its lake of fire. Just enough so that I can see the ripples on the surface of things move across the face of the deep. Then I will trust you.

I want you to acknowledge that from the beginning this whole thing was a set up. I want the good book to say (somewhere) that you knew this would happen to me, because you made me this way, and that you take full responsibility for it. I want you to tell me that you knew freewill was an ambush. An ambush, Lord! It was your discretion: say it! Then I will trust you.

I want you to tell me, tell me, that the wrath of God is the idol of human pride, is human vengeance--is the whining perception of humanity's childhood tantrums. I want you to tell me you could not possibly punish me, take vengeance on me, annihilate me, leave me to writhe and rot alone in a box. Then I will trust you.

But child, I already have. I laid in wait for you in the secret innermost sanctions of time. I have done everything you have ever asked of me. I have called to you from the apex of your becoming, I have acted, I have lived what you live, suffered within you, made a humiliating spectacle of myself, and died--this too. And when you asked me to be God, I rose up again, and said "Fear not." "I am who AM." I gave you a Mother and a Father, an infant to remind you I am as vulnerable as an infant, a full grown man so that you could touch me with your human touch. I gave you the best of my fold: teacher, physician, benefactor, master. And I sacrificed God to you--to you--the little gods of earth--slaying myself, as you demanded, so that you might see nothing is beneath me. Nothing is beneath me. All of this you hear as a whisper or a silence among the noise of the world, the noise of your hurt, but I am telling you: trust me. I am the hurt. I am the silence. Stand back and look around you: I am the axis between my secret and yours: I am access to all that I am. Take it in, me, reality, as I have taken you in. You will find yourself in my secret: your first shirts and your last.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. To God who is, who was, and who is to come, now and forever.

Amen.

...

"It is through a secret that one enters into interior silence. There is no other doorway. Exterior silence is an act of willpower: we will to be quiet. We can all be quiet for a half-hour. Not for much longer though, for by the end our willpower begins to wane. It becomes agitated, begins to boil, and overflows ... and we begin to chatter. Exterior silence is a matter of ascesis. Interior silence, on the other hand, arises from love and overcomes us. There are silent souls who safeguard love. Silence is the guardian of love. One knows this when one loves. The Fathers of the Church illustrated this with the wonderful metaphor of perfume (an accurate one since perfume is always connected with love in Scriptural symbolism) which, when not carefully stored, evaporates (like champagne, fine wine, and anything good, qualitative, and subtle). One's heart evaporates if not held by a secret. One's true personality comes together in a secret, in true secrets, and one's interior strength consists in bearing a secret." (140)

--Fr Marie-Dominique Philippe, Wherever He Goes: a retreat on the Gospel of John

...

Dear G,

Thanks for the news. I shall pray fervently that the Lord and His Mother will work in and for you this weekend. I, too, hope that more grieving will not be too much but rather an occasion for on-going healing. Let us entrust this weekend to Our Lady knowing that she will draw good from it for you.

Please keep me in your prayers as well.
It has been good to see you the past couple of times at the Priory!

In Mary,

fr JM


G wrote:

Okay, I'm signed up to do it. I'm ambivalent about plunging into more grieving right now, but I trust that God is leading you in leading me. I leave Friday for Romeoville. Pray for me.

In Mary,

G

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