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Though COVID-Time restrictions are easing up in many places and are beginning to here in Ontario, as we went to press, most restrictions were still in place.
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Dear Jesus,
How are you? How’s it going these days? I thought I would let you know how things are going with me. Even though you already know all this, I have a pressing need to tell you all the same.
First, about the last pandemically obsessed few months: Living through one version or other of lockdown these last 15 or 16 months has been something like being inside a pressure cooker.
You keep thinking that now at last I must be cooked enough, but no, it’s not over yet, I’m not quite ready yet.
So, the pressure builds some more, and I think of the people “out there” in their own version of same, and how easy it once was to drop in for a visit, have a drink of something together or eat some lentils, and how hard that is to do now. And the pressure just mounts and mounts to get out of this pot!
But no, it’s not quite safe enough yet; everyone is supposed to stay home. No gatherings of more than x-number of people at a time!
Vaccines are supposed to make a big difference according to some. But does getting the vaccine result in any noticeable changes? Nope! Not at the time of this writing anyhow. You’re still a tough old beet cooking away and…you’re not quite done yet.
Conditions aren’t quite right yet for normal living, and if you are in touch with lots of people from lots of different regions and places, you see the human toll this is all taking. How long will it take to repair the damage? We don’t know, and meantime, the pot keeps boiling and the pressure just builds and builds.
Lord, I’ve been around long enough now that I’m more or less familiar with “pressure-cooker spiritualities.” Up to a point, they’re supposed to be good for you. Community life such as is lived here in Madonna House, Combermere, is one example of this way of spiritual opportunity.
The work is not always strenuous, but it is certainly relentless. And yet it’s a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to the stresses and strains of day-to-day community living.
There are big conflicts to work through and petty ones; there are misunderstandings to be clarified and offenses to be forgiven. There are defenses to be dismantled and aggressiveness to be tamed.
And then there’s all the stuff we have to bear with concerning each other, things that we can’t change and are just part of the “package” of a given person.
Day in and day out, with 75+ people to contend with, this can be complicated. This can be a pressure cooker of the first order.
And yes, if you can take it, it’s good for you! You get stretched, purified, modified, rectified, and hopefully one day, justified and glorified! But there comes a day, Lord, when an apostolate like ours needs to come out of its bubble and be, well, apostolic again.
Not that we haven’t tried to do it other ways: Zoom, Facetime, phone time, Skype, more phone time, some cards, a few letters, and so forth. And we offer our pressure-cooker time together for the sake of all those we have concern for, otherwise known as the immense crowd of friends we love near and far.
So, we are never out of touch, yet in another way, we feel, some of us, out of touch because we can only keep in touch. Everyone else is “out there” and we’re “in here.” “In here” isn’t so bad, but it exists for “out there,” otherwise known as the “marketplace.”
We’re called by the Little Mandate, which you spoke to Catherine Doherty, to “be a light to our neighbor’s feet.” I suppose one can do that virtually, but isn’t a journey together more truly a journey when we share the adventure together, side by side rather than screen by screen? Or am I just out of touch with the future of normal communications?
Lord, what are you saying to us through all of this? No time, no epoch, no country, no person, no situation is beyond your reach or outside your Providence. You are ever turning all things to good for those who love you, who in turn, are called to do what is good and right for their fellow human beings.
But what, if anything, is so good about the recent turn of events? My question is not so much about my own “becoming a better person” as how is this all to be turned for the good for everyone else, or at least, everyone open to your grace at work in its usual mysterious way, so utterly beyond our ken?
[SILENCE]That’s okay, Lord, I’m in no great hurry for instant answers. I’ve learned from hard experience that only by breathing the clear atmosphere of your stillness do I begin to perceive a tiny glimpse of you at work for our good through all circumstances.
Already I have begun to notice something softer in me than before and something hardier. Softer in the sense of a greater appreciation of what friendship and family lived far and wide means in our lives, with all its ramifications of time together, life shared in simple so human ways such as eating and drinking and talking and arguing and praying together.
Hardier in that I now see more clearly that restrictions for physical health are not enough to guarantee a truly human survival.
We need to be able to worship together, stand together in our struggles, be prudent about it but not so prudish and rigid that we end up isolated and desiccated. After all, Lord, what is better: to half-live and be quite dead, or to live fully even if one dies and is placed into your all-tender hands forever?
So, there I go, Lord, rambling on in your presence, and you with a whole universe to run. But it is you who have placed even more than a universe in my heart, and so from this steaming pot I cry out to you for us all: how long, Lord, how long?
Yours sincerely,
Fr. David
