June.
.. ongoing.. updated 4:19p on Mo, 6.5 :)
🔥.. updates along the top..
❤️ .. :)
I’m on my way home.. and I can’t imagine a time to write, so I’d love to let you wassup..
I went to confession Saturday.. attempted Friday during the day, but Austin traffic was hell, so I invited Hugo to go to a.m. Holy Mass with me, followed by Confession.. an old habit we have long-loved but had abandoned.. I can’t tell you when. It must have been years.
Abandoned has been on the tip of my tongue for close to two weeks now. I thought of it in connection to our Carmelite vocation. We have a Community, but since 2020, it has fragmented and diminished 1) because our Carmelite brothers and sisters have grown old and keeping in contact beyond our monthly meeting is difficult, 2) Covid brought drama into our Community.. wretched, wretched drama, and 3) our life is different from everyone else’s because we’ve had young children all this time. They’ve grown, haven’t all left home, & we’re still launching — which demands a very active presence in the lives of young people.. a very active life to compliment the contemplative. I guess you can say since 2020, we’ve sort of fallen out of the Carmelite lifestyle with our Community.
Then Abandon framed itself in my intellect. I asked Hugo, Have we abandoned our Carmelite vocation?
Years ago, answering that question meant bringing home whatever it was we learned at Carmel — teaching the kids about prayer and Carmelite or contemplative devotion to Our Lord and Lady. Now, we have to reconsider sending our home life back to Carmel to reinvigorate the lives of old Carmelites, our dear friends.
It’s a strange relationship and there’s more to the story.. and it’s weird. As a married couple, we’re a treasure and a joy to our Carmelite Community, but we’re also the very youngest, so we’ve been helped aside while the elders take care of business. I know also, in their hearts, we remind many of grown children who have fallen away, so there’s this silent distancing.. every Religious Community goes through their own rhythms and trails marked by the souls there.. very much like a family.
My own personal interior strength has wavered — attested to by the lackadaisical posting here at Mingled Wine. I’d been unhappy, and I didn’t know why. But I went to Confession for x, y, z.. and especially for an old sin when I was 13 (don’t know if I confessed it or not, so just to be sure), and now, I confidently go forward to reclaim the Grace that has been mine.
I put a big, giant hold on Twitter, too. ..gave myself permission to not keep up with anything, not think about any other thought than what it is I have to do, what I want to do, what I should do. That takes a lot of prayerful discernment. The trouble with social media is preoccupation there takes up the mental space needed for focused prayer. For me, anyway, because I’m such a sucker for souls. Presence on the internet has been a part of my existence for decades now. I imagine there are now souls who suffer disordered attachment to the internet & people they find.. I’ve had this for years. I stay at arms-length, but then succumb, then have to disassociate myself like I am now. This time, though, it’s different. There’s either a different Grace or the soul before you is different.. for a different reason than before.
The rhythm of my life has changed.
And I need a wide and clear berth to do what I want to do, not be a slave to my own stupid slavishness. ..I do this to myself. We all do.
What happens now is, I go home, we do dinner & husband & I do hobby. Perhaps I’ll come back and write, likely not. ..likely, I’ll take notes in my Notebook..
.. but, my dear friend, I am clear-minded and the soul has been freshly swept. I aim to keep demons out of it!
The lesson here is to be comfortable stepping away.
The side story to this is I suffered great, great heartbreak this weekend over familial relations.. it’s nothing to worry about, but I do feel the bounceback has been quick because I cling to Christ.
Really, that’s what I’m doing. I want to say I hold Him tightly like a little girl clinging to her Father’s leg.. but that’s not the image I want to give you. I am very weak, still, but I have Belief: I have Faith my healing is Christ — who knows if I am whole or incomplete at this time, that’s up to Him. This is an important distinction because while I feel great and powerful and wonderful, to turn around and note my own progress is a mistake. I am me, letting God take care of me, while I forget ahead and make beautiful and true and good for those I know and love. There’s too much work to be done to love, for Love, than to for me to selfishly monitor my own soul.
See, I never would have been able to say that 2 weeks ago.. my mind was in such a flux.
The skies are clear where I am, my dear friend.. how is it where you are?
❤️
4:19p
Thurs, 6.1.2023
Well, it’s June 1.
I’m sorry, my friend.. but I finished writing my grant..1
I’m thinking gaps tonight.. and how I’d been gathering information for my grant, but wasn’t ready because I didn’t think that there wouldn’t be a way for me to get everything in my brain down on a page.. I wouldn’t have enough words..
There were other gaps since this morning.. not saying I love you when I left, but that meaning held secure with the little kids (all at home) & Daddy.. me and my gapish prayer life.. me and my hesitancy, my waiting for life to overflow..
God fills, I know this. He is the balm of or our injury, of the coldness we suffer, of the incompleteness.. of whatever it is we don’t even realize we miss from our lives.. whatever it is we decide to detach ourselves from. I begin here, my friend, already trekking upon the Mountain, with His faults & fissures, never easy climbing, especially as clouds roll in the higher you go in altitude. How carefully we look down.. I want to stop & examine every loose rock, every clod separated from every divot’d hole that birthed it.. can I not wait here and touch flakes of strata? What paradox — life is too much for me, all I want is to know & tell it all.. but I know if I were granted an infinity of time for every second, it would not be enough. God would be my only satisfaction.
See, for all my thought — and it has been non-stop.. this wonder, this bliss.. — contentment for me, the desire for which my mind is built, can only be in Him. For any passersby, the act of contemplation seems nothing.. when He is All. Everything we could possibly want to know. But in the moment, there would be No-thing. All the little detail I want to possess would not be worth this Empty of Everything..
The Great Gap.
I’ve more thinking about it, relative to everyday life & being “stuck” about stuff as an extremely gifted, high-minded creature (eyeroll).. I want to overcome.. Gaps are okay & I have enough..
I’ll try to be up early tomorrow, to wish you that good morning I promised..
With love..
❤️
1:22a
Wed, 5.31.2023
.. my dear friend..2
.. missives, missives..
I’m needing a place to anchor in the earlier part of the day, so this is it for the rest of the week, perhaps for all of June.
About a week or two ago, I was actually amped about pre-Juning.. I absolutely adore June. She holds my birthday, my anniversary, several favorite Feasts.. and other reasons. Every year, I get caught up with the realization of Summer — proof I’m not optimally living life. Yes, it takes time to peel away from work — 2, 3 days to forget about it completely when going on vacation. For a responsive, Thinking Teacher, it could be 2-3 weeks. But, I should be living Summer everyday. Everyday should be a Spring, everyday an incarnation of life, love, being.. oh, dear.. This confession gnaws my bones dreadfully.
I said before I know it’s my interior life — my prayer life.
Enough talk. I’ve published Introibo, a post as empty as my poor little soul right now.
What I understood this morning — what I remembered — was that in this place of this work, I would always Divinum Officium.. my friend, at the cold of my desk, in the black of my screens before I would flick switches, lower white backdrops of whiteboards, turn on glare of dead lights, and do other ritualistic motions for the mechanized public school god, I’d imbibe the language of the Holy Mass. Every morning. ..before I greeted children.
The Holy Liturgy would bend me, this little flower would wake and turn upward, so that when I’d see disheveled little faces, my eyes would be primed to see beyond whatever cold spell had been cast upon them, too: a rush of breakfast amid stressed parents, loud buses bearing down on tight traffic.. funneling bodies down massive concrete conveyor belts, screeching bells competing with yelling teachers..
This year has been different without a classroom full of my own children. I’d broken routine & rhythm & didn’t know it.
So.. I read Holy Liturgy this morning and remembered another part of the ritual I’d missed — greeting my day with you.
In the pull-back away from constant presence, which isn’t healthy for anyone, I’d made the mistake of not keeping my writerly-visiting parts that made me happy. I will start coming here in the morning, having a Night Write greet you first thing when you come here, to me, doesn’t suffice for our friendship. I will do better.
I will do better.
It’s very nice to me, for me to say this — it concretizes me and you, beyond screens. Soul here, soul there, had I not remembered? Have I not wanted to do more for you? Love God, love my neighbor? in the quiet of his soul?
See, that’s the problem with waking up anew everyday. Without the ritual, we seem to forget & have to re-establish.
It’s a bit past noon, but, I got it done, remembering my friend, remembering my glow, my radiance, luminosity, & glory as a Daughter of God, remembering to breathe upon smoldering embers to awaken Divine Fire.. to see how He can help me love, what He can help me create.
❤️
12:35p
.. with, of course, lots of Twitter brain-space in-between. I don’t expect to hear word until sometime late-Summer. What I asked for were tools for writing & making thinking visible, mainly through whiteboards and craft paper. I envision giving kids a glimpse of maybe what a naturally inquisitive home might be like.. what it would be like to think & ponder & talk about thinking & pondering about how nature and the world are & what can be assembled by what fits & makes sense.. sense-making, meaning-making, although I used none of those words. It was very hard to do, and I must be the worst grant-writer in the world. Now that I’ve done a One, it’s time to write another.. so much STEM money out there..
I’m at work.. on pause, waiting for someone else.. and I’ve a grant to write.. but..