Lost Booklet

Tuesday, March 15, 2014

So I cannot find the reflection booklet today.  I would have liked to have finished it off, but ah well.

I have written many defenses of St. Martha, my confirmation saint.  Not quite defenses but alternative explanations for her actions and disputes with the way she is portrayed.  The one I wrote two years ago on Tuesday of Holy Week is here.

I read through it hoping to spark something to talk about today.  It's one of my less obvious defenses of Martha -- her discussing how being a down-to-earth realist helps her experience even more of a sense of wonder and awe at a true miracle like Lazarus.  It's from Martha's point of view, discussing how she sees the extreme of mundane Earth and glorious Heaven and how the two perspectives complement each other and enhance the wonder.

It's a good thought I'd forgotten.  But it made me think of the past two days, which have been very starkly set apart emotionally.  A flurry of pleasant hours anchored in a surprising calm and a tempest of personalities to negotiate in decreasing patience.  And it's a fairly stark difference between the days in how much I called on God to share it.

I was going to beat myself up a bit about only coming to God when I need Him, but I think that's not quite it.  Oh, don't get me wrong.  I call to God in grief more often than in non-Eucharistic joy, and I am not above begging Him for help with a struggling lesson plan.  But I think part of it lies in the moment I had in Mass today, sitting there trying to let my frustration go to pray properly.  I had the thought that I needed to keep that anger in order to put up a convincing scare of the students who had misbehaved with the substitute yesterday.

I very quickly realized the folly of my ways, there in that makeshift holy place (Parish Hall is serving as the sanctuary until the AC is fixed at St. Anne's), and realized that that was precisely what I needed to do.  Let go of my frustration and disappointment so that I could correct out of a sense of love rather than punish out of wounded pride and anger.

I'm not sure how different my lectures ended up being -- more sad disappointment, perhaps, than angry fire in my voice, but I was just as grave both ways, and I am glad I had the moment to be rebuked by God for my attitude.

Yes, I reach out to God when I feel that I need Him, but I also reach out to God in negative emotions because I have learned the hard way to listen for His warning.  His is the quiet voice that implores me to stop and think, that reminds me to calm down, that keeps me from doing greater harm than good.

I haven't felt the same compulsion to check my celebration in moments of joy lest I trample on others in my enthusiasm, but it would be a good habit that I hope to develop.

And both are a more active way of engaging with God in good times and in bad -- asking for His help bearing those times well, rather than just inviting Him to share them.