“She would have to be a saint because that was the occupation that included everything you could know; and yet she knew she would never be a saint…. but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.”

― Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories

I think Flannery would laugh at the Goodread hashtag of sainthood with this quote.

This quote isn’t so much about sainthood as it is about sinning.  It is the story of both our God pre-planned purpose –to become saints, and our fallen nature which leads us to want others to do the work for us.  The quote reveals the  hope we hold that because of our intention, in the moment, we get the moral victory.  We might.  God sees everything and knows the depth of our depravity and sincerity.

Flannery understood that martyrdom looks on its surface, like the last moment save, the easy way to permanent victory. The reality of death however, was and is such that we will likely walk into that reality if it is our reality, with fear and trembling.   Every moment that we are not being physically martyred unto death, we wrestle and work out our salvation via the little deaths, a thousand cuts, and those we take on as we enter deeper into Lent.

I complain more about the papercuts of life than the big stuff. I grouse at the straws as if they were mountains.

My brain started humming the Dead Cat Song.

It is why we long for a swift rather than slow path to sainthood, because our souls are capable of infinite distraction, and yet it somehow fit the theme of what daily dying to self is.

We often can surrender big things easier than the small –because we allow ourselves to stay on the small, to wallow in them.   We can allow the little things to consume us because we tell ourselves, they’re just little things –little sins, so they don’t count.  They all count not because God is an accountant but because we are –we measure out with what we’ve been given, minus some, whereas God measures out overflowing, on the just and unjust.

How is  your Lent going?  Mine is both fruitful and frustrating, it is the both and of knowing I am trying, and that it is trying.  Love, all love, reveals sacrifice, requires sacrifice, and all sacrifice freely given, is love.  Any sacrifice which comes with strings, which even years later, counts the cost, is not a sacrifice, but a loan with interest charged, and not a gift.  It is an exchange, of use for use, that leaves the giver and receiver more empty because both even if one knew from the start, it was hollow, recognize what the sin imitated.  Sin always hints and promises more than it delivers, and it can never deliver joy.

It’s why we don’t tally chores or effort or gestures of love in marriage or parenting or friendship –because it is an act of love.  We may recognize such love is not returned and thus some friendships fade, or that some relationships require a different type of sacrifice, one we will wrestle with –but that still ultimately requires what all love requires, a gift of self.

I write all this because of a casual scroll through Facebook where one person wrote, “After this year, I feel hollow.” and another, how they are deleting all the pictures of a relative who has decided to hate her faith, and a third calling out Christians for not correcting a Christian who said after death, we won’t see Atheists anymore.   Without going into the deeper reasons (which in one case I know, and in the other two, I don’t personally), in each circumstance, I heard the despair of the poster and the anger at the unfulfilled thirst in their hearts.   It fit with the song we’d heard the night before while watching Cyrano –a movie I recommend by the way, where each of the characters in turn took up the chorus, pleading for the joy and fulfilment that came from being really loved.

What all of them think they will find fully in another, is actually a cry to know the deep love of God.  We usually know this easiest through others –and their deep love for us –spouses, parents, friends, and discover it more deeply as we love others –spouses, parents, friends, children, and then discover, it is to be given out, scattered like seed everywhere, hoping that as much as possible, will grow.   It’s the lesson Cyrano doesn’t quite get to, because he first must recognize, his pride has crippled him far more than he knew –and it’s the lesson each soul discovers on its slow walk through this life, where it is engaged in a gradual martyrdom irrespective of when death comes.

“Our hearts are restless, until we rest in thee.”  Until then, know that that restlessness is a sign of the soul thirsting for God, and that is a very good thing, to be thirsty for the source of living water while here in exile in this world that hints of the one to come, but is not it.