It seems like I've been sitting around here forever, pinging around looking for a way out, and I never seem to get past the doorway. Or I get out and boomerang back.
Last night I finished up a resume and cover letter for a political job. It was about 2am and I was getting punchy... a friend showed me his very sarcastic Gen-X resume (for his jobless periods, he wrote: "Loafed.") and it seemed a fun way to show some personality and explain a gap. So I put this into my resume:
Adventure of a Lifetime, Campo Grande, BrazilIt feels like it was someone in another life who snorkeled in a river with sleeping anacondas. Ever feel that way? "Did I really do that?" (yes - though they didn't tell me till afterward and I was so horrified to be swimming with giant snakes that I almost passed out.) I can take more credit for my humorous attitude and good horsemanship in the tropical hailstorm.
If you were offered four months in Brazil, wouldn’t you drop everything and go?
~Picked up working Portuguese with a sassy Brazilian accent
~ Received personal mentoring by an outstanding community leader
~ Mentored three Brazilian college students
~ Rounded up horses in a tropical hailstorm
~ Went snorkeling with anacondas
In comparison with that, I looked around my new office today and once again felt that terrible feeling, that awful sense of "is this all there is?", that life is so unutterably boring right now, with nothing really demanding something of me. I must have settled for less again, I thought in sinking disappointment. I suddenly felt hungry for something dangerous or at least intense to do. By the time I'd been home for an hour tonight, I was mentally climbing the walls.
On Saturday I was invited to consider co-leading a trip to Rwanda. That was about as lit up inside as I've felt in a while. But the trip is not til next summer.
On Saturday I was invited to consider co-leading a trip to Rwanda. That was about as lit up inside as I've felt in a while. But the trip is not til next summer.
I've been continuing to sort through thoughts about this whole Catholic odyssey and the theological issue of Mary. One of my mentors had recommended that I "make friends with Our Lady" and go and bawl my heart out to her as my mother. I gave it a shot, but it just wasn't takin'. Then another day I was worrying, "there's nobody my age to hang out with, it's all a bunch of old ladies at the Catholic church." Immediately the Lord spoke to my heart and said, "I gave you all these mothers!"
You know, He really did. I have more Catholic mamas than I can count. Two of them have given me rosaries. Catherine and I sat late last night in the church, and she handed me a rosary blessed by the late Pope John Paul II. It has his seal on it and he used to give them out at personal audiences. When she gave it to me, I got a bit choked up, being that close to something that was in contact with him. His personal assistant and friend, Archbishop Stanislaus Dziwisz, gave it to Catherine.
Last night at the church, a lady told me that she often hears a voice say to her heart, "you shouldn't be here. You're not good enough", and other ugly lies against her faith. After telling her how to tell the devil to scram when it happens, I was moved to pray for her then and there. With her permission, I laid hands on her, rebuked the enemy and set her free. She was so completely at peace when I was finished that she immediately got up, went to light a candle in thanksgiving, said goodbye to her friends and was out the door, her head up in suddenly energetic confidence. It was beautiful stuff. Kapow! As my cousin Pete likes to say. Or as the Deacon said on Sunday, it's giving the devil a bloody nose.
So, okay, I'm bored. My career makes no sense. I'm in loads of spiritual and personal transition and trying to understand what the Lord wants to do with me. I'm locked away in a convent of circumstance. But if anything is going well, it's my prayer life. I spend hours every week, most of them spontaneous, at that Catholic church in prayer, often with loving friends, and I know that God is not going to park this Maserati in the garage (convent?) forever.
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1 comment:
I thought about just emailing this to you, but reconsidered. Another comment seems most appropriate. Who knows? You might turn this one into a "real" post complete with a silly picture ;-)
You being a Maserati is a pretty rich metaphor and I think it needs to be plumbed more fully for meaning here. Within that metaphor I hear you talking about being "garaged" and I detect something negative about it. Let's evaluate the garage concept carefully and bring the term "daily driver" into the metaphor.
Nate and I watch "Top Gear" on BBC America. Frequently it's sort of a "meh" show, but often enough these guys are so completely irreverent in that very British sort of way that I've come to really appreciate the show. We watched an episode the other night in which they reviewed the Ferrari 599 and their observations about it were instructive.
They tried to use the 599 like it was a daily driver. I think they really wanted it to be a daily driver. While better than, say, the Testarossa or the Enzo at being a daily driver it was still completely, totally impractical in that role. It's wider than most street cars, its windshield wipers are quirky, there's other aspects of it that (when compared with a typical production car) just don't work right. And it requires higher attention to maintenance than a daily driver - more garage time, essentially.
Does this make it inferior to a daily driver? If you try to treat it like it's a daily driver I'm confident you'll be upset. Drive it like you stole it and watch what happens: all the daily drivers quickly recede in your mirrors. There's no way for them to keep up. That it's not a daily driver ceases to be important because the 599 is now being used in a way that's in keeping with its design. It's a purpose-built device - built for crazy amounts of speed combined with incredible control. It necessarily spends time in the garage - a lot more time than a daily driver - being maintained so that it can be taken out and used at peak performance.
Where am I going with this?
God's got you spending a lot of time in the garage because you're a Maserati. Garage time isn't a weakness or a failing. Maseratis are rare and precious. They require lots of maintenance when compared to daily drivers. "In the garage" is where Maseratis are most of the time.
And this is where the metaphor completely breaks down. Garage time for a "real" Maserati is secluded. It's being out of circulation, taken off the street. That's not how life is lived.
You've got to live, in the fullest sense of the word, in between the times God's got you blasting around the countryside demonstrating your fine-tuned nature. The time between trips will be as mundane as you allow it to be. John Fischer's May 8, 2008 blog entry (http://www.fischtank.com/ft/inthetank.cfm, then scroll down to find it) talks about this very thing: do we muddle through life, just hanging in there? Or do we remember that we've been sent by a loving God, that we're on a mission? You're on that mission even while you're garaged.
Me? I'm a daily driver. Change my oil regularly, give me new sparkplugs every 30K miles, some new tires when I need 'em. I'm pretty low maintenance. I don't spend as much time in the garage as I probably should. And I regularly struggle with my sense of being on a mission. But you? You're a Maserati. You're built for some things I'm never gonna be able to do.
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