The Response

Beginnings are not easy.  For God.  For anyone.  Picasso was quoted to have said something along the lines that with every act of creation is an inherent act of destruction. 

 

Toastmasters in Fargo.  A new member arrived from St. Louis.  He spoke from the heart.  He was about 40.  And I wanted to speak like him.  By the time he arrived, I might have been 24 at the oldest.  I just didn’t have it within me at the time, to speak as he did.    

 

Larry Gillick.  He had been over to dinner a few times.  Okay, twice.  My mother heard him talk for the first time as a retreat master while driving back from a graduation.  He has a website which featured a retreat he gave, perhaps in 2006, in St. Paul a few weeks earlier.  It was about Advent.  And about the sacramentals.  Three years later, my mother still doesn’t get it.  Libraries.  My father’s.   She sold his books about 8 years ago.  Last night she now was discussing giving the ornaments away.  The signs of love.  To a charity.  Giving the ornaments and their meaning away.  To strangers.  The sacramentals.  The signs of love.  The years.  Some of them gifts.  Meaningless to others.  My mother doesn’t get it.  The significance of life.  In the ornaments. 

 

My favorite novel written in the last 30 years is Sophie’s Choice.  It seems a bit autobiographical.  William Styron seems to throw himself in a voice in the 1^st person, living as a southerner in New York after World War II.  The main character was working as an editor, trying to write on his own.  At a very young age.  But he never quite had anything yet to say.  About life.  Yet.  He had the syrup but it wouldn’t pour. 

 

To find something to say.  And then how to say it.  It did not happen just by graduating.  Poet Mary Oliver asks the question in her poem, “A Summer’s Day:” “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”  It takes a while to make the discovery. 

 

I had given a book to a 40-year-old brother-in-law who no longer reads for pleasure, I heard before the gift openings began.  It takes a while to make the discovery, for the news to spread. 

 

On Christmas Eve, my mother got a calendar from 2 of her grandkids last night.  Her youngest grandkids.  The 2009 calendar included photos of a 2 year-old and 4-year-old.  In the calendar, their paternal grandmother is Miss Ocotber in 2009.  And Miss October might not make it.  In the last 30 days she has been diagnosed with breast cancer.  She might have known when she was here last fall.  It takes a while to make the discovery, for the news to spread.  She had driven more than one thousand miles, by herself.  In each direction.

 

It takes a while to make a discovery.  And then know how to respond appropriately.  I thought of that during midnight Mass.  A woman has 8 months to think of her response to a pregnancy.  The first pregnancy must present the most concern.  My sister gave me a gift within the last 2 years of Your Labor of Love, a spiritual companion for expectant mothers written by Agnes Penny.  I have no idea why.  Maybe she thought I was going to become a counselor.  I looked at one chapter.  “Toward the end of a pregnancy, most of the excitement has vanished.”  At some point a sense of panic sweeps in.      

 

To find something to say.  And then how to say it.  Stage fright.  Panic.  A response.  Stage 3 breast cancer.  I asked someone how many stages there were.  The answer was 4. 

 

Looking for a point to view.  The Old Testament.  Ten million years of creation.  Still the sense of being alone.  To have the syrup but it just wouldn’t pour.  The years.  The significance of each year.  The meaning in the stories of the Torah.  The New Testament.  The significance of the insignificant.  People with shared ideas.  People with a common past to begin with.  Family.  The sense of being alone.  One thousand miles, by herself.  In each direction.  Thinking of something to say. 

 

The language in the liturgy.  “Behold!”  Touch this sentiment.  Behold.  Because suddenly God was putting the care of His son to humanity.   He alerted the shepherds that one of their own had come.  What was David?  Behold the sentiment.  But you had to know the family, their story.  The suffering.  The suffering was the mortar. 

 

A question of voice.  In memory.  In memoirs.  That jump up and grabs you. The response.  The fear that the future was left in my hands. 

 

Behold the Lamb of God.  Come and behold Him.  In awe.  Be touched.  In the present.  In search for something to say.  And then how to say it.  To give thanks and praise for everything.  For everyone.  Loved ones.  The reality of it all.  Now.  Christmas.  Of life.  Of death. 

 

Endings are not easy for anyone.  For God.  For his son.  For this family one thousand miles away.  How to respond. 

 

Every act of creation involved an inherent act of destruction.  Unless you believed in the Resurrection.