a vow is a nail

THOU: Hail holy light! Starlings in the trees fly westward. The churning sweep of low clouds and fog head west in a hurry. Wet streets. Blue morning. Street lights. Last night's storm woke everyone with thunder. We set our clocks forward and lean towards spring. The fire and the rose converge in my heart. Thank you, my Lord and my God.

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THOU: Went to the Brothers today for Mass for the first time since January 10th. It was time to return, though I might not have gone (given the drive in the hard rain and my own trepidation) had a student not requested to go with me, so I held on to my composure, drove us both into the fields where the monastery lies, introduced my student around, and tried to find a new way of seeing myself there. I discovered I had been missed, though I didn't think I would be, and though it was difficult being there, I fell in love with the place all over again. --Though, this time with a new awareness of having had you all to myself this last week. It is too easy to mistake the things we love for love of you, Lord, even when we know we are doing it. And I have all along dreaded the day I would be weaned from this community and left alone with you, for I felt sure I couldn't face you without the Brothers' company. I felt sure I wouldn't find you without the assurance of Fr's guidance in the background.

Right as rain, suddenly, just as Maribel's death put me into a bad spin, Fr wasn't available. Two months. I sent a series of haphazard emails, one requesting a meeting, one angry and doubting, one plaintive, pleading for some kind of sense, one--at last--letting him know I should let go of spiritual direction with him while he was (genuinely) too busy to get back to me and while I was (too) busy working out my anger and grief. The last gesture seemed like a bad solution all around, but I was feeling abandoned, I didn't want to hurt him somehow, and that anxiety began to displace my sense of what was truly at stake: my relationship with you. My childhood father, Fr, and you (a poor sort of paternal trinity) too often bleed together in my head. As H said, "what would sever you from your dependency on Fr besides an assassin? --Maybe God knew it required an assassin."

I am so sad to know the wound runs that deep.

And the question: will you do this for me then, after all? Will you take up Maribel's suffering, mingle her blood with your own, apply (like a surgeon) the knife that made her wounds to the joints I have forged between my father and all the world, and claim your sole and rightful patriarchy? This, again, is the supplicant's prayer. I am looking for you within it so as to hope it is not entirely ordered towards my own very finite dreams.

Oh Lord. I was about to make this vow for my sake, for the sake of my own healing and my own needs. An espousal to myself! What a mess that would have been. Of course it must be made for you, alone.

Thy will be done.

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.

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"Because it is a clear participation in the sacrifice of the cross, virginity represents better the agape which animated it. It not only reflects that love, it embodies it. Virginity is not a sacrament. It does not set the screen of any sign between Christ and man. In it, the divine love is not refracted through the mediation of any worldly feeling. There is nobody who stands for Christ, to represent him: the contact between Christ and the bride is direct. Matrimony turned towards the agape of the sacrificed Christ as towards its fulfillment; virginity shares directly in that agape. The agape lived in matrimony is mediated charity; virginity is love reaching its object directly." (107)

--Lucien Legrand, The Biblical Doctrine of Virginity

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