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| A gift from a stranger, who had heard about my cancer from my brother-in-law and brought this back from Lourdes for me... For me! |
Let's all be very disciplined and look only to ourselves and our own consciences when testing Giussani's "unreasonable positions." We all know OTHER people who are getting it wrong, but to focus on them would mean a lost opportunity for us.
Theoretical Denial of the Questions:
This is when we treat the great questions ("Why am I here? What is the meaning of my life? Why is there something and not nothing? etc.) as absurd.
I don't do this consciously, but often, without thinking about it, I leave the great questions off the table as "extraneous" to a given problem to solve.
The big "problem" I face now is my recovery from radiation/chemo. The symptoms need to be managed – with medicine, therapies, devices, various practices – it's easy to turn all these problems into complex calculations, endless adjustments, the need for some new product that will solve everything... Each day I put my little wood statue of Our Lady of Lourdes in my front left pocket where I can easily reach for it and hold it in my hand... But even this can become a kind of "practical solution" rather than an opening up of awareness or a reminder of the Big Questions and my need to keep them in play.
What happens, though, when I allow these questions to frame and define my symptoms and the misery I experience? What difference does it make when my little statue of Our Lady becomes a source of ultimate meaning (and not just a comforting gesture, made with less awareness)?
As I placed the small piece of wood in my pocket this morning, a kind of song or prayer rose spontaneously in my heart: O my Jesus, my beloved. I love you. I'm yours. from the bottoms of my feet to the top of my head, I give it all to you because you're my Jesus, my all. How I love you. How I want to be your beloved, forever and always. Only this... The song continued with many repetitions/different words but the same basic meaning. I didn't consciously choose to pray this way; I didn't even say, "Now it's time to pray." Nothing like that. Rather, it was something that welled up from my heart, as a gift to me. I asked myself, "Where could such a gift come from?" and the only reasonable answer is that the gift comes directly from the misery, the pain, and the odious symptoms I work so hard to stamp out. How many times while leaning over a sink or a toilet, or while sitting up in bed when all I wanted to do was to lie down, did I find myself spontaneously begging: O my Jesus, deliver me, take this away, please, Jesus, my Jesus, please...But if you cannot take it away, please be with me, please stay with me. Please... And these occasions laid down a kind of pattern or habit of invocation and of turning my face in the direction of Christ.
"I would create the universe again, just to hear you say again that you love me" [Christ to St. Teresa of Avila].
If I ask, "What is the meaning of this pain I experience? Why does God allow me to suffer with these symptoms?" then the only adequate response is: for my need to expand and for my love for the Mystery to become the habitual attitude of my heart. These experiences are so much more satisfying than all my calculations, adjustments, researching solutions. And yet God also wants me to do this work of calculating, adjusting, and researching! He gave me this desire, too, because to want wholeness and integrity of the body is also an elementary need. In God's economy, nothing is ever wasted or lost.
