Cool And Clear

It occurs to me that I write daily temperatures on my calendar and/or in my notebooks. In the interest of avoiding redundancy, I think I’ll start noting temperatures in these blog entries (on the days I actually write blog entries).

This morning it was 46F and very clear when Jinx and I set out on our walk. I took vacation this week, just to relax and enjoy the fall weather and do a few projects around the house (some painting, a final mowing of the lawn, some trash hauling, etc.), so the feeling of bliss and freedom and peace was exquisite when I donned my jacket and cap and took up my stick and stepped outside with the spotted menace. Jinx’s step was high and springy — I’m sure he sensed my mood. And as we strolled beneath the tunnel of tulip poplars along our driveway, I thought to myself that if heaven were to be like this, with the numb cheeks and the russet leaves and the tangy air and the crunch of gravel underfoot and the sound of Black Angus in the next field, but with temporal miseries removed — even if beets and kiwis and pork tenderloin were still part of the deal, I would be transported with joy.

I saw several deer on a ridge about a mile away. They didn’t notice me, and I stood still and watched them as best I could without field glasses. How I would love to move among them, patting their muscular necks, stroking their soft flanks, scratching them under their chins. Perhaps someday, in a place where there are no beets, I will get the chance to do this.

As I walked, I said for the first time in a long time my Latin prayers — the Pater Noster, the Gloria Patri, the Symbolum Apostolorum, the Ave Maria. There was quiet comfort in speaking these ancient phrases in my grating and clumsy Latin, the words ringing in rhythm with the tap of my stick and the scuff of my boots while looking up at the cirrus clouds brushed against the morning’s ceiling.

It’s not that I’ve abandoned prayer; quite the contrary. But recent events and my own disgust with the cowardice and passivity of church leaders have driven a wedge between me and anything churchesque. I do believe, outsider that I am, that I will probably always keep a footlocker of Catholicism under the bed of my heart, filled with the things that give me pleasure and peace. The prayers, the sign of the cross, the lectio divina, the contemplation, the icons and candles,  the appreciation for high and holy mystery. Cradle Catholics and real Catholics probably sneer at my priorities. Let them. If I cannot have my crucifix and my incense and my rosary, then let’s be done with it all and have a Brutalist faith and let’s build concrete churches with Lucite altars and gun port slit windows and kente cloth vestments. As Flannery O’Connor said about the idea of the Real Presence in the Eucharist being merely symbolic, I will also say,”Then to hell with it.” Because beneath my veneer of comfort I draw from the physical trappings there is the real wood and nails of faith that I’ve suffered for all my life. Faith that I’ve tended through long, bleak wilderness years. Faith that has accumulated like drops of mineral-saturated water from tite to mite. I will yet massage the pages of my breviary and thumb my missal and finger my beads. I will yet, and I will wait. I do not trust the men who sit in high places, but I do trust the Holy Spirit who sits in my heart and sometimes whispers to me when I am leaning on a battered old wooden sword and staring up at a fading and faraway Mars.

~ S.K. Orr