🔥.. how are you?
my dearest, dear friend..
I went through about 3 time-capsules worth of stuff. Most of it was teaching-related — methods of writing to lead children deep into their own thought. Some of it was small papers of childish writing — Paul’s, Beatrice’s, some of Lauren’s stories — and some of my own.
It was a comfort to go back in time & let my mind rest on the little persons nested within these older children I have now.. a great comfort. Palpable. Nothing goes on in my life that causes this deep connection, there is no wanting.. I just experienced a *very* lucid ability to go back with the mind. I was surprised.
This type of thinking, I probably hadn’t exercised in quite a while — to be mentally present in another time, feeling that sense of fun, accomplishment, & wonder while touching my children’s things when they were younger. It’s a new muscle, one I owe to the contemplation & prayer I practiced this week in company with a friend, my husband.1 I sought God beyond my prayer books. Really sought Him. Not in the material or mystical, not in exercising Sight — o, where might He be? — but in being present to God.
I’m here. I know You’re everywhere. I know You look at me, love me, I know You are always there for me. Let me love You, let me know You.. as I would my husband, my children, my father & mother, my dearest friend who listens. Let me feel that pit of familiarity, that knot of intimacy.
..just as though I’m here conversing with you, my dearest friend, that’s the movement of my mind, of my heart.. somewhere. It’s otherworldly. And very normal. Like me loving you through this screen. Do I not love you? if I take the time to write? and tell you the joy of wonder I’ve discovered?
Contemplating God is like that. It’s just love & conversation.
In a way, as I fingered their papers, their ribbons, their things, I must have contemplated the presence of my children in God. Could I have traversed Time & entered into God’s Eternity? Would He have let me? Why not?
Is it possible, in those moments, as I stood there barefoot over my children’s treasure spilt onto my kitchen table, could God have allowed me to enter His Memory — my memory? and could He have healed my guilt of not being a perfect mom when they were young?
..dearest, describing this to you now, I’m seeing this..
possibility.
..the possibility of every flaw & flawed perception being healed..
..the possibility of every mistake & wrong turn taken forgotten, corrected, grace-filled.
..the possibility of every worry & concern balm’d over.
..just by being in His Presence.
This wasn’t what I meant to write tonight.
I was going to go into a the pain of the mind, but I guess I was meant to laud the mercy of God as He worked on mine instead.
Recollected presence is so important to me. I’m defining it as bringing all of the self, gathering all the faculties of the soul, all of our mental acuity & powers of concentration we use to pay close attention to someone we love or to something we’re interested in. If we can be recollected, as the Great Saints say, then we can contemplate. If we think we can’t, then our ability rests on our interest, our desire, our belief, our Faith in God.
But that’s for another time.
Today was just about glorifying God in the observed powers of my soul, to focus, to concentrate, to love from afar. It’s not much different than the conversing I do with you here.
.. my dearest friend, how I love staying beneath these sheter’d vaults..
All my love.
❤️
in Love,
your veronica
—
In Spiritu Tuo, ad gloriam Patris. 11.6.2023.
friend.. because it’s different when you’re not alone, when you don’t want to be alone, when you want company.. why this sense pervades, even when he is never more than 2-5 feet from me (aside from work), I can only guess is to cling more & more to my husband. bring him with me, keep him with me. I’d been away for so long.*
*to be explored later - intimacy in Intimacy, love in Love.