The Cure

Sunday morning.  Slept in and woke up amazed that it was so late (8:30am….).  But like a spin of the kaleidoscope, my thoughts quickly turned from snuggling in a warm bed to wondering what is the measure of my faith?  Yeah, I know, that’s a leap, isn’t it…… It’s the Sunday-morning-thing, where I’m now like a fish out of water, feeling I should be in one place, but finding myself in another, afraid of judgements (from others) and loathing (from myself).    This brave, new territory is unfamiliar, I’m unsure of how to express my spirituality anymore.  I’ve reached that crossroads that so many face, and yet I always felt it would never be my own experience.  I always thought I’d travel the safe road of organized religion til the day I died.   Despite having been preyed upon (as opposed to prayed upon, ha!) as a kid, and despite being officially excluded from certain rituals and sacraments because of my remarried state (thankfully no one human person has ever made me feel excluded from the Church, except the Church itself), I found lots of comfort and healing, doing all the things I did to express myself spiritually, Catholically (that’s my new word).

And then I didn’t.  No comfort, no healing.   Only sorrow and sadness and bewilderment. 

And it’s the sorrow and sadness, and especially the bewilderment, that trickle and flow inside me, like a thawing creek bed with melting snow and ice, revealing the cold, hard rocks underneath.   These cold rocks and pebbles that are smoothed by the passage of time and water.  Maybe the sorrow/sadness/bewilderment works the same way on my soul, smoothing, shaping, pushing along.  

(Spring Creekbed by Jake Wells, 2006)

The questions bubble to the surface and break:   Where do I go from here?  How do I find me a new set of spiritual chops?  Better ones than I had?  I have this craving inside to be close to Him again, and yet I don’t know how.   This makes me cry.  I question all of my attempts at prayer, I start off with gratitude and praise for His gifts and then quietly mumble my apologies for my smallness, my doubts and my unwillingness to reconcile what I know of Him with what I’ve come to despise about the Church.   In my heart, I know He’s bigger than the Church.  In my heart, I know that He knows that I try to let His love shine through my actions, even if I’m not an “active participant”.  And I know that He knows I fail at this, and sometimes I fail miserably. 

I can separate church and state, I can separate church and God.  It’s finding Him after I’ve separated Him from church that seems elusive.   I lack understanding of His word, and I wish for more discipline and desire to read and meditate what He tells me in those pages.   I take Him for granted, because I know He’s there in all the kindnesses and love that I give and receive, but I’m so slow to realize it.   

But He is patient.  And for that, I sob in my bed on a Sunday morning, certain that a rekindling in my soul is imminent, but not knowing how to build an S.O.S. that is worthy, that my journey into this darkness is unknowable to myself, having now lost a compass.   The crying doesn’t last long, just long enough for me to sense that it’s more than just a boo-hoo-hoo kind of thing.  Maybe it’s an expression of my faith, of my soul.  Maybe my tears are a balm.   Maybe they’re a cure.

” Do you know a cure for me?  Why yes, he said. I know a cure for everything:  salt water.  Salt water?, I asked him.  Yes, he said, in one way or another:  sweat, tears or the salt sea. “                                                                                                       (Isak Dinesen, “The Deluge at Norderney”, from Seven Gothic Tales, 1934)

Love,

Chantal xoxoxo