Sorrows Of The Day
“Each present joy or sorrow seems the chief.”
William Shakespeare
I hadn’t seen them in months, and today when we met, I was so unsettled at their appearance, I had to force myself to maintain a benign smile.
He is about my age, and his wife just a few years younger. They were once an outgoing and pleasant couple, ready with smiles and laughter and jests. But first he, then she, fell into the maw of modern medicine, and now farther down that road, they have both endured debilitating strokes and other ravages that have left them quiet and staring. They both stared into my face today, watching me with the close examination that awareness of ones own changes inculcates in the spirit.
We talked and it was apparent that they didn’t want to dive too deeply into recent events, so I followed their lead and kept things fairly light. When it was time to part, I asked if I might walk them to their car, and they said they’d like that. It was a long walk, not in terms of distance but rather in terms of difficulty. He uses a walker with the laborious scraping movements of a much older man. She manages as best she can with a quad-cane, but her other arm hangs loose, a twisted and useless pendulum.
We reached their car and I helped them in, pretending not to see the filthy upholstery and carpeting. I could tell from the car’s interior and from their clothing that they still have their houseful of cats. Childless and alone in this world, they have long sought solace in each other’s blue eyes and in the purring companionship of little creatures who do not mock them or look away from them in distaste.
They drove away and I watched them, and I had to turn away and walk across the parking lot, a sob catching in my throat. Just one more “Why, Lord?” that I must raise to the skies. I know there are no easy answers, no quickly forthcoming answers to my questions, the questions I ask when I see the age-old situation of the wicked prospering and the good-hearted and humble apparently forsaken.
Forsake them not, O Christ. Lift them, bless them, help them. And quickly.
The clouds are moving in from the west and the temperature is dropping, and how I wish I were at home, head bent before a lit candle with rosary twined in my fingers, sighing out my hurts and my hopes to the gleaming crucifix. And how I wish my prayers would change things.
~ S.K. Orr
4 Comments
Pierre Lefebvre
A very beautiful piece.
Thank you.
EPL
admin
You’re very kind, EPL…thank you, my friend.
Carol
S.K.,
My heart goes out to this couple, and I too “wish my prayers would change things”.
And I hope you don’t mind if I share something with you here, as the tears drawn forth by this post have opened the flood gate to a spate of weeping on another matter entirely, and I’ve no one to whom I can express such spiritual matters.
(please feel free to ‘not’ publish this comment, as it is not entirely germane to the post and it may be deeply disturbing to read)
Also, I’m writing this thru tears between sobs, so please forgive any spelling errors or incoherence in composition…
I had horrific nightmares last night. And I thought they were ‘only’ nightmares –
– but a bit ago, I was praying intently for protection against further such nighttime ‘incursions’, and (you may not believe this) I had a sudden intuition that the horrors my ‘dream self’ had experienced/witnessed –
– were actually a glimpse of potential future events…
S.K., please, pray and encourage your readers to pray for God’s intervention in this world, because if the “transhumanists” have their way….our children’s children are going to be subjected to physical horrors the like of which I can’t bring myself to express.
…suffice it to say that in order for them to ‘meld’ human & machine – experiments involving…what amounts to human butchery will have to be done.
Please forgive me for bringing such an ugly idea to your blog, but…it’s what I not only ‘saw’ happening in my nightmares – it was happening to me and there were children there…
…and I know there’s something ‘real’ about this, because I can’t stop crying about it.
Keep in mind, I do not ever watch horror movies, or read horiific fiction – so, there is no ‘waking source’ of such imagery for my mind to be creating such scenarios.
Again, I’m so, so sorry to inflict this on you and understand if you just delete the whole thing…I just really needed to try and get it out of my head by expressing it ‘to’ someone…
…it’s so very, very frightening.
Thank you for ‘listening’.
Carol
admin
Carol, I’m glad you commented and am pleased that you feel comfortable expressing yourself with such candor here on my blog.
I am just about the last man on earth who would take lightly what you related. There are countless mysteries in this world, and the supernatural is a large part of daily life, whether or not we acknowledge or believe or perceive it.
There’s nothing disturbing in your comment from my perspective. except in considering that what you saw in your dreams. The people who are running this world, many of whom I believe to be under demonic control, truly hate us. They hate Christ, Whom they see in us, and they hate our devotion to Him, because our very lives are antithetical to their aspirations. I think we’d have to go a far piece to envision something so horrible they haven’t already thought of it.
So I certainly do encourage all of us to pray fervently and often for our Lord’s protection and intervention in the events we see unfolding before us. I think we haven’t even begun to discern what these evil people have in mind for us, and I think it’s going to get much, much worse, and I think it’s going to start accelerating so fast it’s going to catch many of us completely off guard.
But I also think it’s essential to remember Who is in charge here. Christ the Lord is not in some cosmic tug-of-war with the forces of darkness. He created all things, and the “things” include the evil beings we see mocking and defiling His creation every day. He will bide His time and will act at the time when He has decided it is time to act. We must not give in to despair and fear, but rather trust quietly. This does not mean being passive, but it does mean deliberately choosing to place our trust in Him.
We have so many resources available to us. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself intercedes for us, as does His Blessed Mother (who is our Mother), as do the saints who are watching us. We each have a powerful, powerful guardian angel accompanying us every hour of our lives. God’s purpose is being worked out, even in the midst of the pain and trials and burdens that we must endure here.
I would ask my readers to pray along these lines, and also to pray for the souls in Purgatory, some of whom will be released from their current state and ushered into Heaven, at which time they will be praying for us too. Isn’t that an incredible thought?
Thank you again, Carol, sincerely. And please feel welcome to express yourself freely here any time you are moved to do so.