Dear Long Lost.
Early this morning, I began to compose this letter in my head, as I often find myself doing throughout the day. I collect my little thoughts and begin to string them into sentences with context (hopefully) and my emotions at the time. This morning, I thought this letter would be about the imperfections in the world.
But then I went to church. And as you know, my dear Shepherd is leaving us – leaving me. His homily today was fittingly about love, not good-bye. He spoke of Love and how God commands us to love freely; that choice is the ultimate manifestation of divine love. As many a priest has no doubt said many a time, we are as free to say yes to love, to accept the open arms offered to us, as we are to say no and turn away from those same arms. But when he said it this morning, it moved me to tears.
He started by talking about how people, especially children, sometimes ask him why he never got married and had a family of his own. He said that if he had been called to do that, he would have gladly done so, and there were certainly women in his life that he had felt drawn to, even passionately drawn to, one so much so that he would do anything to be near her. Her name was Roxanne, with strawberry blond hair, and he said that she was, by far, the best example of that passion. The only problem is that Roxanne didn’t feel the same way, and he learned, he realized that you can’t force someone to love you. Of course, he added slyly, this was in kindergarten, and we all laughed.
He talked about relationships further. He spoke of our collective relationship with God. He told us, as he often does, to proclaim our Catholicism. I usually let this appeal slide in one ear and slip out the other, but like everything else he said today, I felt compelled to retain it, to keep it and study it in some way. He said at one point that we must know who we are and be true to the self that we know, and his larger point, in emphasizing our shared Catholicism, is that that, too, is what we are. We can’t and shouldn’t hide it any more than we would conceal our faces or our gender or our birthright. While I would never say that I conceal it, indeed, I wear it as much on my sleeve as any such similar thing, I wouldn’t say that I meet his call to “proclaim” it. But that’s something I’ll have to study another day – not today.
He finally came around to our relationship to him, both as a parish and as individuals. He worked his good-bye in there in his own way, entreating us to keep him in our prayers as he will keep all of us close to his heart. I felt in so many ways that he was talking directly to me as he wove in reference to the gospel. He was chastising me a little, but also calling me forward, ever calling me closer to his side, and in that way, toward God. I don’t know that you’ll believe me when I say that, or even how much I can believe it with my rational brain, but with my heart, I believe it, and what my Shepherd told me today is that the knowledge, the faith of my heart is just as legitimate as the learning in my head. It deserves equal recognition and acceptance as true if I feel it strongly enough.
I certainly cried a lot, and I still feel a kind of heart-wrenching sadness at the thought of not seeing him every Sunday, of not having his gentle hand guiding me. And more than that, as so unintentionally highlighted in his homily, that time and circumstance have stolen from me the opportunity to build the kind of relationship with him I would like to have. A relationship built on the kind of love he spoke of, built on trust and faith. I have viewed him so long as a teacher and mentor, but I’ve done so unbeknownst to him, and though I’m sure that it’s never too late to reveal these things to him (that, too, is surely a message from his homily), I nonetheless am paralyzed.
As I shook his hand farewell, the words “good bye” catching in my throat and preventing any of the other ones from coming forward, he smiled kindly, and I have to trust that he knew without being told how much each lamb in his flock will dearly miss him.
For now, I find myself contemplating an old quote I haven’t thought of in a long time:
“What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor anything, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does. Therefore, unless you have those weapons that subdue it, the soul plunges through love into an immense abyss. …Mind you, I do not say these things to you only about evil love, which of course all must shun as a thing of the Devil; I say this also, and with great fear, of the good love between God and man, between man and his neighbor. It often happens that two or three people, men or women, love one another quite cordially and harbor reciprocal, special fondness, and desire to live always close, and what one party wishes, the other desires.
“…Well, that, too, is blameworthy, even though it is spiritual and conceived in God’s name. Because even the love felt by the soul, if it is not forearmed, if it is felt warmly, then falls, or proceeds in disorder. Oh, love has various properties: first the soul grows tender, then it sickens…but then it feels the true warmth of divine love and cries out and moans and becomes as stone flung in the forge to melt into lime, and it crackles, licked by the flame.”
…“And this is good love?”
…“Yes, this, finally, is good love.” He took his hand from my shoulder. “But how difficult it is,” he added, “how difficult it is to distinguish it from the other. And sometimes when devils tempt your soul you feel like the man hanged by the neck who, with his hands tied behind him and his eyes blindfolded, remains hanging on the gallows and yet lives, with no help, no support, no remedy, swinging in the empty air…”
–The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
And so, to good love, Long Lost. Be it whatever and wherever it may, I will trust and take it to heart.
God bless and keep you,
–
