Failure and Adoration

One last look at the view from the dream office.

I took a meandering walk from my office by the lake to our local chapel. Since the injury to my head, those silent minutes before the blessed sacrament are about all I can do to worship Jesus. No more drums and guitars. Amplification has a way of making my brain feel like there is an ax cleaving every synapse.

I’m moving out of that dream office with the lake view and all the room I ever would need to be the writer, creator, youtuber, whatever I wanted to be. I don’t really know how the next year will go other than all our focus has come to caring for our kids. My daughter will need care we can only get by returning to California despite it not being a place we want to take our children. I already wish I never had to return there. But that’s another story.

I feel like a failure were the first word I said after the kneeler came down and I was seated before the Eucharist. I always take a seat in the back. I never want to disturb these people. They are so stoic and still. I grew up with women weeping in the pews. Spanish and Latin would waft as a whispers mixing with the incense.

You are, the voice from the altar came back kindly enough but still a king speaking to one from his military. Finally everything felt lighter though I anticipated Jesus reminding me that the confessional was to my right and I had missed another meeting.

but you have me in my victory… Then my eyes lifted their gaze from the monstrance to the crucifix. Just like the one that hung above my mother, my grandmothers, and all who have passed before me. I’ve already lost it. The dozen or so Frankish and Germanic souls sporadically inhabiting the pews tacitly permit me to weep. Ah yes that young Mexican is here again they must think. With all that… emotion! Yes it’s me.

After a moment I composed myself again, silent and doing my best interpretation of the veiling women. I began my prayers. The ones so old I don’t recall when they were written on my soul.

After this adoration was complete, he added one more thing:

I have already given you all the love you need.

Exhaling, I softly speak a single word: receive. It took me three and a half decades, my mother passing, my daughters life threatening illness, and years of praying the rosary to receive. And it still feels like my reception of these things is like a child sipping.

If you are reading this my guess is you too have some good gift you have yet to receive. Maybe it is that you are loved and being loved and made for these sacred things…

On the walk home I was thinking about how Theodore Roosevelt witnessed the passing of his mother and bride in one single night. Had not that darkness drawn him to the wilderness, would we have no national parks for ourselves and our children?

As I walked between the trees I drew my rosary. While praying I had this feeling of being weak. I am no monk or priest yet here I am walking around praying these beads. Humiliating and receiving.

Until next week,

-Steven.

PS. I plan to resume my series on the Proverbs next week. I just felt so heavy and defeated this past week that this was all I could do. Thank you

Simon Sarris

for your most recent piece. It inspired me to keep going. Shout out to

Walther Cantu

for featuring me in #91 of Smorgasbord.