The effort for this blog has been absent to a certain degree. The hours at work have sufficiently increased due to the loss of my tool partner. He is a gentleman in his mid-seventies dealing with a type of cancer in his heel, soft tissue sarcoma is the diagnosis. He is the only one in the maintenance department with any longevity, thus establishing his knowledge as extremely useful. With chaos and continual fires being the normal mode of operandi, his presence was appreciated. On the human level, he is a good man and friend, sharing an intense devotion to the Cleveland Indians. With the MLB playoffs starting this week, he will be missed. There is some anger in the fact we knew for five weeks or so he would be going on medical leave for six to eight weeks and nothing was done. The futile effort to hire another maintenance worker provided nobody. We have just added another line with five hydraulic presses, fed by a coil embossing system and the load of work for two men could be quite extensive. Now by myself, I am covering two buildings for a company that operates singularly through incompetence. That will amount to 63 hours of work for the week, amassing a total of 78.5 paid hours. The money will be astounding, yet the level of discouragement is substantial. Providence provided a late-night conversation with a priest from the seminary, a vocational guide who in person is a younger athletic inspiring, intelligent, and fully alive man. A Sunday morning breakfast was scheduled, with plans for further engagement. I vocalized my weariness with work and he did not finish his thoughts quoting words from St Ignatius due to his own weariness from an overloaded schedule. His advice centered upon the idea of not making life changing decisions while feeling discouraged. In times of discouragement, it is difficult to decipher the calling of the Holy Spirit. I added the need for immediate comfort and solace being the natural reaction, while the greater strengthening may lie in acceptance, perseverance, and fortitude within an overwhelming trust in God. Daily Mass and my Adoration/prayer time has become the grounding and absolute high point of my day. Though my reading and spiritual intellectual activity has diminished, my prayer time remains comforting and profound, the Jesus prayer a constant companion I always return to no matter how many moments I drift away in thought and responsibility. Foreign classic films absorb the little idle time I have while lounging in bed. The early films of Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Robert Bresson providing a steady diet of images and reflections upon life.
French master Robert Bresson
