Wednesday, 24 June 2009

• Currently The Sparrow and the Crow By William Fitzsimmons see related

  ART BY CLARK GOOLSBY
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Today, the air conditioning is "on the fritz" as my Mom would say, and so I am cuddled into my corner cubicle quite happily - the fritz meaning I can pretend I am near a fireplace on this rainy day instead of in a frigid recycled air environment. Maybe all we need are fireplaces everywhere.
  
  Huddling is good way to describe my week so far, I am in hurricane mode (internally) and so I find myself cocooning a little. (MONDAY) I slip into a room which grows darker with each passing minute and sit on a rolled carpet, a room a few doors down from happy, laughing friends doing baseboards - I am apart but intentionally close so I still can hear them and smile accordingly. I write an inscription to my Mom in the front of Rolheiser's The Holy Longing before I send it off in the mail, a late birthday present, along with the rest of my Dad's Father's Day stuff. I rewrote something from Rolheiser's first chapter - part of a chapter being the only words of his I've read in the front - Spirituality is what you do with the fire inside of you.
  
  The laughter left the room and halls as people went on with their nights - I waved goodbye, my second load of laundry just in - wanting and welcoming the quiet, but a little wary of the combination of 8,000 square feet of it and myself. I came out of the room and settled into the corner of the left behind couch we claimed as our own and spread out my books, journals, pens, etc. Merton, of course, was picked up and as I read and underlined, always underlining with Merton lately, but it came to life so unexpectedly, I was on my haunches whispering the words aloud as I read them before I had time to realize it - a little creeper I know, but it was also kind of totally great. Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose/You should be able to untether yourself from the world and set yourself free, loosing all the fine strings and strands of tension that bind you, by sight, by sound, by thought, to the presence of other men. I keep reading. I turn the page.
  
  But in these quiet churches one remains nameless, undisturbed in the shadows, where there are only a few chance anonymous strangers among the vigil lights/Let there always be quiet dark churches in which men can take refuge. Places where they can kneel in silence. Houses of God, filled with his silent presence. There, even when they do not kno how to pray, at least they can be still and breathe easy. Let there be a place somewhere in which you can breathe naturall, quietly,, and not have to take your breath in continuous short gasps.
   
  
   
  
  
  

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