i've had a lot

. . . on my mind lately.

Work has been busy.  Assignments are piling up.  Cool things are happening as well; I made a group of seniors happy yesterday by helping with a presentation and positioning a projector correctly (it's all about the little things).  They were adorable.  And I got to interview a Knight today who happens to work across the street from me in a tall building full of cold caldrons where they bounce around space flight hardware before they send it into the icy environs of the black void.  How's that for romance.

But aside from work, there are just . . . thoughts.  Curse this melancholic nature I was born with.

There was a certain all-consuming thought that I chewed on, vigorously but usually slowly, for the majority of my last year in Rome.  I worked on it, pondered it out, let the emotions take me up and down, and resolved to stick around for the ride to see where the thought would lead me on the other end.  I did not self-censor.  When I was mad, I let myself be mad.  When I was heartbroken, I let myself cry.  When I felt like I was letting go, I released and when I felt the grip all the tighter, I took another deep breath and stepped out onto the ride again.  Even with everything going on, there was a certain simplicity of life in Rome that let the emotions be emotions as raw and deep as they needed to be, and the thoughts as profound and revealing as they could muster.  And I let them be and I looked at them well.  I had not heard the song, but I knew the meaning of "well I'd rather hurt / than feel nothing at all."

Throughout it all, there was Assisi.  Assisi is a marker place for most of the meaningful things in my life. It is holy and peaceful and it shakes me down to my deepest level of understanding the world and my place in it.  Two Octobers ago, I went there and wrote the sincerest letter I had ever penned in every one of the hallowed spots.  Writing it was a prayer, because even though it was written to a person, it had every hope and aspiration for good possible intertwined in every line.  I had other thoughts on my mind then; thoughts of security, hope and promise, because that is what I thought was laid before my life for the taking.

Two months and two days after that, I was back in the same spot begging for answers and peace.  As I leaned against the cold brown stone of the Portiuncula, I looked up and saw a scene that I then put down on paper.

"There's a blind woman here, down on her knees with arms outstretched up; grasping the rail of the altar grate, head lifted up to a crucifix that she cannot see.  She is praying to her Lord.  Her awkward physical position contrasts against the rest of the pilgrims, lined sitting and kneeling in the wooden benches lining the chapel, or those gathered to stand in the back.  Here in this sacred place, gazing at the beauty of the wooden mural, one enters into a peace triggered by the sights and senses.  But this woman, removed from most's experience of this world, offers up her prayer, reaches up and gropes in the air to find the knees of her Lord, caresses the wood again and again, finds his feet, and falls down to pray again.  A sign of our brokenness and our capacity to present ourselves and heal in front of the broken Lord."

I went to Assisi that day to ask why and please and how now?, and I did not come away with answers.  Only more to chew on.  I've been chewing on it since, especially now that enough distractions have been swept away to somehow, somewhy, bring so much of that year back to mind once more.  I still don't have answers.  Maybe I never will.  But I haven't been able to turn off the switch quite yet.

While I was at the Shrine last Sunday, I inadvertently landed at a memorial Mass for the Armed Forces as part of the Military Archdiocese's annual pilgrimage.  It was so, so beautiful.  And on the way up the stairs, I picked up a a book of St. Francis's life.  It read:

"He came to a place called the Portiuncula where there stood a church of the most Blessed Virgin Mother of God, built in ancient times but now deserted and no one was taking care of it.  When the man of God saw it so abandoned, he began to stay there regularly in order to repair it moved by the warm devotion he had toward the Lady of the world. . . .


Before his conversion, a certain brother, dedicated to God, had a vision about this church which is worth telling.  He saw countless people who had been stricken with blindness, on their knees in a circle around this church, with their faces raised to heaven.  All of them, with tearful voices and uplifted hands, were crying out to God begging for mercy and light.  Then a great light came down from heaven and, diffusing itself through them, have each the sight and health they desired."


I like having things fall into place.  I like it when you can connect one thing with the other and have it create a warm comforting aura all around you that feels good to dwell in for awhile.  I know now that perceptions can be clouded and that perfection lies more in the battle than in the fleeting possession.  I know now that things don't always make sense, that they don't always fall mystically into place, that what you believe in more than anything else can be stabbed to the core and reshaped by the razor of truth.

But I still do believe that meaning exists, that "the process" has its value, that

"For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."


I'm holding onto that thought.  I'm ok with not knowing.  I'm ok with having the old thoughts recarved into something quite different.  I'm ok with having both hands outstretched upwards.