Following up on Things Previously Said

Clearly I don't blog much anymore, so when I do write something, it helps me keep track of my interior landscape all the better. On April 14 I wrote about my Lenten gleanings and noticed a grace that seemed like God was "reaching in to heal a blockage." And then last week I wrote out of a place of mounting burn-out and frustration. 

And then it happened.

I had a panic attack.

I rarely have anything remotely like a panic attack, although I have had low grade consistent anxiety for a lot longer than I've actually been aware of. And I haven't experienced an actual panic attack for roughly ten years. So this was WEIRD and I firmly noted it as such as it began happening...

But I realize I got into this place with this interior forewarning, and it makes me really happy to say I emerged from that place having avoided certain knee-jerk go-tos. The first thing I did was I let it happen. I didn't go to the "this isn't happening" place. I accepted that I was losing it and I let it be lost. Then I went to my prayer spot and I just "was." I didn't try to form words or thoughts, but I just shared my "letting it happen" with Jesus. No trying to manage or understand. If there is something to "Jesus take the wheel" I suppose it is that surrender of things sometimes looks more about acceptance than it does like trying to dig a deeper ditch. When I hear people talk about "a deeper place of surrender" it often sounds to me like I need to put more work into it. But I do think it is more about acceptance: here's the reality. My eyes are wide open, and I'm seeing it. And I'm seeing it with Jesus. He's seeing it with me. That's where I was.

Then I refrained from making it a spectacle. Sometimes in the past I have shared things with people as a replacement for accepting these things. Maybe that sounds strange, but I think that's the truth. If I tell someone else, it sure SOUNDS like I'm embracing this enough, owning it enough to share. But I think somewhere in there sharing has been a step in self-rejection. Like telling on myself. Gossiping about myself. "You wouldn't believe what I just did...." There's a judgment, a lack of mercy in that. I held myself back from it in several directions, several times. It feels good to have chosen differently.

And then, because thanks be to God I had a previously scheduled spiritual direction appointment, in the right time and in the right setting and in the right way, I unpacked the whole thing, from the interior forewarning, through the event, and down to the terrifying question lurking underneath. And into that place of acceptance that turns a threat into an opportunity for compassion. 

I know that this spot will get poked at and tested in the days to come. It doesn't take any interior knowing to realize that; I can look at my calendar. But this was a concrete event of life, healing other concrete events in life. This is why life in God is not boring. This is a testimony to God's faithfulness and the reality that GRACE HEALS.

St. Joseph and the Desperation for Consolation

I was chatting with a priest friend recently about praying the Liturgy of the Hours, and I found that something poked at me like when a metal bra underwire cuts through the fabric and jabs you in the tender underside. So let's draw that out a bit and see what that was all about.

We were discussing the obligatory nature of praying the hours (for priests, same as for Secular Carmelites such as myself), and how he rarely or never finds priests remotely interested in or planning for praying the Office in common. Apparently he finds the norm to be priests always pray this privately, individually. He also mentioned how it takes time to pray this everyday, especially if one is to do so prayerfully, reflectively, with the freedom to pause and ponder, to take it in contemplatively, etc. I know he had mentioned in another conversation having been given the advice to prayerfully pray at least one section of the hours daily, and to be content with recitation of the other hours. The thought of praying all seven hours, for someone who is busy with apostolic life, is just nuts, basically.

Granted. Obviously the Church changed the structure of the Hours at the Council precisely because of the onerosity of an obligation to "make it through" huge chunks of Scripture daily, and how it became a burden to crank it out and plow through it all. Prayer, clearly, it not to be about merely cranking through.

What I found myself taking umbrage with, as one who daily drags myself out of bed to lead public chanting of Morning Prayer, at a consistent hour that I KNOW I would never keep up with, were I not committed to this small group who meets, is the notion that prayerful is consonant with comfortable. Something occurs to my mind, and I want to stop and nest on it, sucking the sweetness out, delighting in my mind, allowing it to speak to me. Vibe: suck it up, buttercup. Sometimes I am delighting in my rest, my thoughts, my privacy, and I don't want to discomfort myself by driving in the morning to meet people at church. Sometimes I'm physically not ready. Sometimes I don't want to sing. I switch it on so that other people can enter into prayer, and to help others with the discipline.

Sometimes a beautiful contemplative thought has struck me during the day, and then a child yells for homework help. Or the doorbell rings. Or there is no lovely thought, but there are whiny children who have required me to step out of the worship space during Mass and I have to set my will like a diamond stylus to engage in what is happening in the consecration -- and this happens more often than not for months or years. I learn prayer ain't all about me and my thoughts and feelings. Sometimes I can't access either of them. It is an act of my will, and it is joining to something larger than myself. Sometimes every step forward for years feels like a sheer act of will against tremendous pressure pushing me the other way.

The Liturgy of the Hours definitely is not mere private prayer. It is the public prayer of the Church. Yes, it can validly be prayed privately, but ultimately participating in it is giving voice to Christ present in His Church, for His Church, as a vehicle of salvation for the world. Ok, objective subject covered.

Ok, then screaming interior stuff. I'm tired. I'm tired of chronic responsibility, and I'm tired of feeling alone in it. I'm tired from a sense of trauma as a child, sensing the adults were falling apart, and I should step up to put them back together. I'm tired from having such a keen eye for every problem in the room and working out how I could solve it before other people are aware of it. I'm tired from being good at things and jumping into serving, and thereby training others to expect me to do things. I'm tired from taking a break and then finding the problems growing weightier and weightier when I step away from them. I'm tired from feeling like it is impossible for me to stop being responsible.

As a Carmelite, I'm called to pray for priests. I've got some anger stuck in there somewhere. I don't feel sorry for someone looking for a few seconds of mental or spiritual consolation. Maybe that's because I am desperate for a few seconds of mental or spiritual consolation. Maybe it is because I would really appreciate someone seeing my need, anticipating my need, and taking up my need as his own. 

I had this meditation the other day about St. Joseph, at the Presentation. The rite of purification was for the mother of the child. But the NAB mentions "when the days were completed for their purification," "they took him to Jerusalem." The law required it of Mary, but Joseph made it his. And it wasn't only because he was a wonderful husband and cared about Mary; he did, but more than that, he understood that this was God's will. It was an act of worship, an act of consecration to God. How he treated Mary was about how he obeyed God. Everything about St. Joseph is not just gratuitous fru-fru care, a nice but technically unnecesary extra, even though it strikes me like that. St. Joseph is absolutely necessary for Jesus' humanity, and for Mary's life, even though she is the sinless Virgin and the Queen of Heaven. God provided Mary and Jesus with Joseph. But Joseph had a human will of his own; he obeyed. He gave his own fiat. 

St. Teresa was of course an ardent devotee of St. Joseph, and taught her nuns to be rooted in, focused on, the humanity of Jesus. I'm seeing those two as inseparable. I don't think you can separate the humanity of Jesus from the person of St. Joseph. All I know right now is that is the antidote to the anger I've felt poking me. 

And maybe I want priests especially to see themselves like St. Joseph.