After Easter, the apostles sat around in the upper room knowing they ought to be about doing something, but unsure as to what.
The same holds true for me as I recover from what has been a two week long bout of Covid, complete with hospitalization and trying to get to three thousand steps on my fitbit. I have not made it yet. There is so much to life, to being, to doing and yet, the accomplishment of the day is, I napped, went to the grocery store and am still breathing. Bonus, the still breathing is no longer laborious, but is still something that sometimes requires thought. Autonomic functions should not require thinking.
I tried playing with the dog, binge watching Big Bang Show and found myself growing emotionally and intellectually staler by the minute. There are beautiful flowers outside, an eclipse on Monday, my children are home and well, and I am blessed beyond measure –and somehow, there is this empty that comes from not knowing what to do or how to go about doing it. Being in the room waiting to know not just what to do but when and where seems passive, and yet we know, all cooperation with grace is a response to God’s gift, not an impulse by us –so I must wonder, why am I not responding?
Why am I cloistered in my bed, from the world, alive but not living, waiting for some inspiration or push to go out.
Moving less than three thousand steps in a day feels like being too still when it’s mostly passive.
Pulling out my computer, I recognized I used to first thing, turn to writing rather than watching and wondered if that would help. Writing often makes me wander through all of my thoughts until I find what I needed to think. It’s a form of contemplative prayer for me, because it prevents my mind from staying in one solitary space. Saint Teresa of Avila had her enterior castle, mine is an interior world, usually near the ocean, where I walk like I used to walk as a child until the back of my legs bake, and turn around. The wandering led me beyond my own mind until I would stop thinking and just feel everything, from the wind to the sand to the spray. My gulf coast beach is my prayer place even now.
When I’ve prayed there, the prayers have been answered. I’ve had visions of the house, that foretold of tragedy and of hope. I’ve known this place outside of memory and time, as a place God speaks to me. Somehow, even conjuring up in my imagination the shore allowed me to get out of bed, to do some menial tasks and to complete my rosary and chaplet for the day. Persist –especially when you feel like you have nothing to offer, and nothing to add.
That spiritual poverty is an offering of the will, cooperating with the Divine will, without emotional inspiration or consolation.
Mary Magdeline did this when she walked to the tomb, to do what was needed in spite of grief, in spite of feeling like there wouldn’t be a way even to do what she wanted, to annoint the body of the Lord. “Who will roll away the stone?” She didn’t even ask, she just went about the business and discovered what was needed had been done, and what she expected, was not what she encountered. God is like that –giving us what we need and bigger than we expected or imagined, all God asks for, is that we follow, that we come, that we do not let ourselves stay shut inside and immovable. We must respond to the Spirit’s push.
So again, the Easter theme for these days, is to respond to God’s push, and go about doing God’s will always, most especially when we don’t feel up to it, and don’t feel the reward of it in the doing. Autonomic functions should not require thinking, but prayer always requires willing –and we should will it to the point of it becoming our automatic response, so that our wills which are sometimes sluggish or tired or still, can catch up to our bodily cooperation, and our bodies to our wills –when the spirit is stronger than the body.
Happy Easter.
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