Words Without Songs

Words Without Songs Part III

I went to the early Mass because it is awkward to go with the others, and as I am not going to community prayers, I went up to my room at a time when I’m not usually there.  Spring is coming, of course, and the sun is at a different angle now.  I have a round glass prism on my window, and when I opened the door, I found my room filled with the rainbow beams which were also reflecting back from the mirror.  In just a moment, the sun had moved across the sky and the show was over.  I was left feeling as though I had witnessed a theophany.

 ~~~

 Since I am so willing to see messages from God in ordinary events, like a little light shining through a prism, what am I to make of the fact that the elastic came off the top of my underwear when I was getting dressed this morning?

~~~

One of my friends, who is herself a former religious, has been e-mailing me with much advise.  Call me when you are ready to talk, she e-mailed.  This is why I am limiting my communications to e-mail right now.  You are all Very Good to give me so much advice, but I am So Tired.

~~~

            

When I first thought of a vocation, what consternation!  Interrupt my nice life!  And what was I going to do, who could hardly say a coherent sentence to a stranger?  Wasn’t I better off with what I knew?

 And now, look at me, ready to go back to that lifestyle.  But I have become such a different person through the life I have lived - learned to reach out to others, to live with others, to hardly be able to live without reaching out.  Whom will I have to love?  Oh, I’ll always fall in love with my clients.  And I’ll continue to love both my families of religious.  But that’s a hard sort of life,

being disconnected, an unrequited daydream of a thing.  Still, I promise not to give up.  I can’t go back to being that self-absorbed, contented girl, even if I wanted to.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.  Don’t start praying if you’re not open to surprises.  Don’t get on that train if you don’t want to ride it to the last stop. And no one can tell you where you will be when you get there.

~~~

It occurs to me that I will not have to fast, this Lent. I have my penance ready made.

~~~

I find that I am being sustained by grace, by my own dogged persistence born of having so little success throughout my life, and by never losing my sense of the ridiculous.  My appetite has faded, my amazing ability to sleep was for a time impaired, but the day I lose my sense of humor is when I go on medication.

~~~

I have started to be called for interviews.  It is very gratifying to know that my experience looks valuable to someone.  And of course, a comfort to both myself and the community to see that I will likely not be living in a cardboard box any time soon.  I am hoping this will convince them that it is a worthwhile risk to co-sign on a car lease for me.  I, quite naturally, have insufficient credit, since I’ve never had a credit card, bought anything of value, or had a bank account in the last fifteen years.  However, if it doesn’t work out, I won’t take it too hard, since the idea of making a long-term financial commitment at this point, is a trifle nerve-wracking.  I am looking in the papers.  The cars I can get with the loan my sister is sending me tend to be more than eight years old.  This, too, is nerve-wracking.  I know how to check the fluids in a car (a sister in my former community once commented, on hearing that I had refilled the wiper fluid.  “Don’t you have to take it in to a station to have that done?”) and how to maintain a car, but not much else.  The combustion engine (if there still is an engine in there, among the computer chips) remains a mystery to me.