I had good intentions, at the beginning of this year, to focus more on this blog. To write more. To create pages for poetry, and for the Christmas posts. And here we are, well into August, and not a word have I put to this endeavour. Not a single alteration has occurred. Indeed, I see that I have again left the Christmas playlist up, far after I could reasonably argue for it being there.
What can I say? This year has been something unlike I have ever lived through before. Something my parents, and sundry aunts and uncles aver, is unlike anything they have ever seen, in spite of living through the upheaval of the 60s and 70s. I do not want to write about any of the extraordinary things that have come upon us in this most singular of years. I have nothing to say that has not been said before-- more eloquently by some, and done to death by others. I do not understand the fear that oppresses and drives so many into behaviours that I find unfathomable, nor why we are discounting so many societal red-flags in the interest of a safety, which, in this case, has nothing whatsoever to do with actually being safe, but has everything to do with not getting sick. Nor I do not understand how the reasonable anger at a cruel and needless death, translates into months of rioting, burning and looting, much less into a wholesale iconoclasm, without even a thread of connection to the original grievance. Nor how we-- an ostensibly civilised society-- can look upon this great upheaval and do nothing at all to stop it. I am a creature of habit, a lover of order and the natural rhythms of ordinary life, where one attends Mass on Sundays, visits with one's friends and family in the evenings, or the weekends. Where the holy days and the holidays are marked with the same, tradition-worn pleasure and comfort with which they are always marked. I cannot comprehend a willingness to allow such an upending of these cycles. It seems that we are in the midst of a great unravelling, and I do not know how to make sense of it. I know that it is not right, nor healthy, nor wholesome, and I have on me a great desire to fight for the return and preservation of these ordinary good and human things.
And yet, for all of the grievances this year has given me, and the anger, outrage, anxiety and panic that have accompanied it, I cannot honestly see it as a bad year. The big and incomprehensible things going on about me... I cannot do anything about them, but live as a good Catholic (or as good as I am able), to pray, to fast when I can, to offer up the daily sufferings (which are manifold and idiotic) for this poor, Godless world. And while the Wide World around me falls apart under the weight of its own hubris, my own, small world has enjoyed much blessing. A particularly troublesome quandary that was plaguing me last autumn, was largely assuaged by a Providential (and completely unexpected) educational opportunity, and even the burdensome lockdowns have given me a breathing space in which I do not have to make any great decisions for my future. A two week precautionary isolation period allowed me the luxury of participating, via livestreams, in all the Holy Week and Easter Week services-- a holy and wholesome experience indeed. The good priest was able to keep our local Catholic church open for visits to the Blessed Sacraments during all of this time (even when he could not celebrate the Mass), so I have gotten into the habit of making daily visits. There is much calm and courage to be gained from this, even if I am a dry and brittle creature, often insensible of its grace.
And the world is still a very beautiful place, full of hopeful new mornings, flaming sunsets, the balm of summer rains coming in unexpected and thunderous downpours in the midst of summer heat. A friend and I have made frequent pilgrimages to that little strip of meadowy land between the Marsh and the sandy edge of the Lake, where chickadees, juncos, wrens and sparrows make noisy communion from the willow breaks. We have walked in the twilight, beneath a sky alive with swallows, when the world is darkening, but the lake holds fast to the silver light. We have seen ravenous young coots, calling pitifully from the shelter of the reeds and cattails, while their harried parents hunt in pools for little silver fish. Have stood on the opposite bank of the river, where it widens into the Lake, and seen a mama black bear, swimming lugubriously in midstream, tossing her head and chuffing at her three timorous cubs, who sat on their furry haunches and refused to follow her into deep water. We have watched the terns and osprey, wheeling for fish, their hover-hunting, and subsequent straight-down plunge, a thing of heart-stopping joy and exhilaration. Have seen the great blue heron make its long, slow flight up from the half-hidden marsh water, its elegance marred by a most ridiculous calling-- as though God, in designing so lovely a creature, gave to it harsh and hilarious voice to keep it humble. We were privileged to see unusual things: the uncommon nighthawks, with their raptors' bodies, and sparrows’ flight, the windows on their wings making for easy identification. A river otter... a river otter, here! I never knew we had them in the mountains.... bounding along the far bank of the river, like a sleek, playful dog before slipping back into the current with that liquid grace that all water creatures display when they are in their element, however clumsy they might be upon land. The arching leap of small fishes as they went after the mayflies, swarming just above the evening lake, the curve of their straining bodies describing some perfect joy. The pair of summer-bright tanagers-- normally a canopy bird, seen in quick, yellow glimpses as they streak from tree to tree-- feeding among the bitter brush and meadow grasses. Strangely unafraid they were, concerned only with the hunting of seeds, and patient with us for watching.
To me, these are the real things, the important things in life-- the glimpses of a greater beauty, those odd moments when the veil between heaven and earth wears thin, and those little creatures of God somehow manifest a faint, and almost incomprehensible aspect of His own great beauty and perfection. Please understand me here. I do not mean to suggest anything pagan in this, no environmental, New Agey nonsense of God being in and composed of the things of this material realm. I mean that God the Artist (as all great artists do) left behind something of Himself in His works. That His distinctive touch, His fingerprints, are pressed all over His creation, and that in studying it, as one studies a masterpiece in a museum, we are startled to see something of the Artist Himself looking back at us in a way we cannot wholly comprehend. And so we-- in these fleeting moments that somehow have the mark of eternity upon them-- are able to glimpse, ever so dimly, something of God's great glory in the indescribable fire of a cloud-streaked sunset. Something of His gentle care, in that single-minded attention the coots and the bear show to their poor, crying, silly offspring. Something of the sheer exhilarating fineness of Him, in that arrow straight stooping of the tern and osprey. Magnificent as these things are, they are poor images of God Himself, and yet, for that bare instant in which we are able to glimpse it, we have the immense privilege of looking through the veil, through the tangle of the temporal, and seeing (imperfectly) the Face of God. And we are better for that barest of glimpses.
And so, I cannot see how any year that is blessed with the mysterious hand of Providence (however it chooses to bless, with comfort, or with a much needed wakeup call), with beautiful holy-tides, magnificently shot through with the most unlooked-for moments of grace and growth, and so filled with the immutable beauty with which God, for sheer joy and goodness, chose to shape His world, could ever be a bad year. Perhaps there is foolishness in this-- I have known years of great sorrow and they have seemed very bad indeed to me. But perhaps this year has taught me to see with a wisdom I was not able to bear during those other years. Perhaps God has used this mad and chaotic time to bring me another step further along that steep, and treacherous path to the Light. I cannot be the judge of it, for I have failed more often than not in holding on to those moments of grace. I have prayed by route, more often than from the heart. Have complained bitterly that I know we are to accept the crosses that He sends us, but crippling panic attacks at work are a stupid cross-- and strained mightily against all of the senseless and unreasonable dictates that have upended so much of my orderly little world...
And yet, all of this madness will pass away, as all things must eventually. And I suspect that the things that will be remembered most, are not the troubles themselves, but the lives lived in spite of them. I suspect that I shall look back on this year, and shall remember Holy Week and Easter Week, and homemade pasta, and sourdough bread. Will remember the otter, and the heron, and hunting terns, and the way my days had shaped themselves around the Blessed Sacrament, even while I was unable to receive the same. Will remember that my sisters and I learned to sing Sicut Cervus in 4 part harmony, and sang it on the last day of Easter Week, at Communion time, during a tiny, private Mass, in an abandoned, decaying old church out in the Nevada desert (the only place that was available to us) when our family friend was received with great joy into the Church. (And remember too, that being us, and incapable of not making things nice, we were able to make that desolate spot a clean and blessed place for our dear Lord to come.) Will remember that there was joy and grace, blessing and courage, freely given, and with them, a great and deep down peace, that remained steady, however tempestuous the surface might be.
And perhaps.... just perhaps... it will not be myself alone, but all of us, who look back in this time, and call it blessed.
