Merry Christmas. Unseasonably warm weather, rainy conditions, life undergoing the passing through of a threshold, settling into new employment, this Christmas has a strange sense of peace, discomfort within the calmness of acceptance. Forefront, a bizarre situation presented itself, Christian fellowship demanding a response. Extending Christmas wishes to a casual acquaintance from the Shrine, she confessed, speaking deeply of the fact she is struggling. She was evicted from her home, left homeless, living out of her smaller SUV with her dog. I was stunned naturally offering resources, the availability of time in order to help her bring order into her life. It is a complex situation. I will assist her in seeking solutions, remaining detached from her, encouraging her to embrace the truth of her life, the reality in all its complexity. It is odd I would just have exposure to the Ignatian Spirituality Project, an active homeless organization. The woman is a highly educated attorney, physically slowed by severe back problems, yet sober in every regard, a likeable and sociable woman of skill and intellect. I feel overwhelmed, extending a couch, while honestly wishing I would have not been burdened. I did not feel appropriate attending Christmas mass with her. She is still married to her husband, yet I saw nothing else I could do. I worried what Ann would think, while understanding the threshold I pass through is the detaching from Ann. That is my true challenge. During mass, I sat behind her and she is so central within my being it hurts tremendously to be aware of her presence and not share Christmas joy with her. I understand everything we have been through. I have much to feel shameful for. There is such intense discomfort. My heart aches immensely. I am done reasoning and reflecting. Sorrow remains. Life changes and God calls. Simplicity, I pray for, yet complexity presents itself. I dismiss everything, focusing upon God, understanding I am a man of prayer, allowing God to bring to surface solutions to my call for simplicity; a refinement interiorly and exteriorly. The Hospice called yesterday, scheduling a four hour bedside vigil for the evening. It becomes anticipated, relished in opportunity, a lengthy time of prayer at the side of an unresponsive dying person a call to personal intimacy and closeness with God, equitable to Eucharistic adoration, the confronting of the image and likeness of God subject to free will enduring time and circumstance—a life coming to an end, myself reposing bedside in prayer. On the day of the birth of our Savior, I find solace within the call.
A repost from just days ago:
The great overturn…occurs midway, at the fourth mansion, the starting point of true conversion.
What appears to be indisputable is that, in every life, thresholds are crossed beyond which things are no longer the same. As we reflect on this, we shall understand.
What Teresa of Avila calls the fourth mansion is this central experience which can be lived in thousands of ways. It often is a difficult ordeal; man gives up his limited human logic, his thoughts as man, as Jesus says to Peter, his self-sufficiency as an adult, to open himself to the radically new experience which comes from God, this childlike trust that the genius of Theresa of the Child Jesus expressed better than anyone else. –Andrew Doze ‘Joseph: Shadow of the Father’
