Aches and Pain of Grace

I never seem to learn. No. That’s not fair, not even accurate. I’m learning all the time, so much so that I wear myself (and others) out with all the learning. I dislike learning absence--of intense connection, of clear sense of purpose, of direction. Absence.

This happens to me every time, so much so that I should expect it, anticipate it, wait for it. I hate “the other side” of transcendence or coming down from “the mountain-top” when it’s time to come into the world and face its demands. My body aches after receiving such gifts of grace, anointing, welcome, and new practice…when it realizes that the spaciousness, giftedness, transcendence of that time is in the past. Part of me grasps and grasps and grasps, no matter what I profess about nonattachment. What had been intimately close and overwhelmingly holy feels far away. I feel alone again. Isolated. Away from the Center. Literally, aches and pain.

So I find myself railing at the universe this morning, though with particular questions: Why the hell lead me to a contemplative, paperless-musicked, deeply-steeped liturgical community in which I have no opportunity to be involved in the flesh? Why show me a place painted with every symbolic-spirit image of the last four-five years—bride of Christ, tiger, wolf, Friends, dance, and more—then enforce an emptiness, a quiet, for the unforeseeable future? The awareness of St. Gregory of Nyssa Church that has fed an entire week of awe has now become painful to hold, heavy to bear, a pain in the ass. It’s like the Spirit of God took an emaciated, hungering soul, showed it a banquet of incredible bounty, then led it away again. I’m the proverbial kid outside the window of the candy shop. The bounty is too far away. There’s no other place like it I’ve ever seen or experienced. And I’m being told—or at least it seems I’m hearing—“You can’t have any more.”

I’m more than a bit pissy, I guess, not to mention dramatic. I know my soul's not emaciated, for one, but just not getting what it thought it wanted. I know I'm never led away from the Banquet either. In some odd way, it's always before me, before us. Merton was right. But I'm still a bit pissy, knowing the graciousness that’s possible and feeling so far away from it, both at the same time.  Would I really rather not know about it? Of course not. Is it better to know and feel the unbearable yearning as it drives you batty? Of course it is. Is there no grace right here, right now? Of course there is. So…what?! I find myself asking. “What is being asked of me?!? What was all that for?!? Why show me the French Riviera of liturgy, contemplative practice, communal service and then lead me back here to Ohio where I do belong?”

And why introduce me to Sara Miles for a ten-minute, tearful, embarrassing-overwhelm conversation? Why push her to the sacristy for the oil with which she invited my anointing? Why did I allow her to do so? If not for the sense of hands-in-hands, the scent of the oil, it'd be easier to say it was all in my head. I have been aware of her all week but I neither know her nor have any non-freaky way to get to know her. I suspect I’ll find her irritating to boot—a Greenwich Village New Yorker, journalist, post-secularist Jesus-freak, boomer, friend of God whose path leads her to St. Gregory’s every day? No thanks. [Great. Envy raises its ugly head. I actually envy her proximity to the circle. That’s charming.] So the interconnection of Life means we’re already connected, but what does that mean for now? Even were we to correspond, in our overbusy lives, for what purpose? To what end?

So I find myself wanting to know all the irritating foibles and flaws of St. Gregory’s right now. For all it brings into the world, it has to be a real pain in the ass too. It already is from afar. San Francisco’s artsy crowd, gourmet foodies doing good, Episcopalian with all that brings? It has just as much brokenness as any other place. I just cannot see it, know that in sensate detail. Perhaps knowing such things would make me yearn for its liturgical giftedness less?

Nah. Doesn't work like that, thank heavens. Perhaps prayer for the community and its good will nudge me out of bad-temper. :) Regardless...

What I do know in sensate detail is grace beyond measure. I saw and felt in my bones a future in which all my “places in the round” resonated together—the rotunda of the yurt, the rotunda of St. Gregory’s; a circle of Friends (Quakers), a circle of dancing friends; a circle of dance led by Wisdom, a circle of dancing saints, led by Wisdom. I know confirmation in a bread-centered theological way, and have hope of being companioned by those known and unknown along the way. I received invitation into a new liturgical practice of chanting the Psalms, available to me "alongside" St. Gregory’s faithful each weekday morning at 8 a.m./11 a.m. Here I’m learning a radically new-old way of steeping in Scripture, and I’m aware of new significance in practicing “alone” though with a sense of virtual companionship. As ever, my task seems to be learning to hold the heaviness I feel, the weightiness of grace past-received but always present, nonetheless.

As I wrote in the thank-you letter to Sara, to accompany the gift of books, so I write once again: I have learned to say dayenu—or at least am practicing saying dayenu—as grace beyond measure is given. It is always more than enough, even when it’s achingly heavy to sustain, in awareness, for long. Dayenu.