Trouble the Teacher

From one of those morning walks down by the lake

What will it take for you to ask for help?

When your friends betray you?

When your family is hospitalized?

When your only son ceases to breathe?

What would it take to seek for help without relenting?

Speaking with a friend last week, this confidant remarked to me, “You have had a hell of a year”.

I am often tempted to wonder when it will get easy until, in contemplation, I am reminded to relinquish the judgement of things and their unfolding.

Too many have entertained courtrooms in their hearts. I too would seat defenseless defendants in my heart while playing plaintiff, judge, and jury. I had to evict these rotten civics from my center and instead build a temple for the Advocate.

This beating basilica cannot have questionable hours like small town shops. How annoying it would be to seek one’s deity only to discover he is available exclusively for a short time on Sundays! My poorly kept construction secrets for this interior castle has been a foundation in the wilderness.

The best contemplatives are never alone in the wild. How often bothered was Gregory, and Benedict, and especially Hilarion who continued deeper into solitude only to discover the Lord gifted him miracles to share with others! But of course the greatest example is still Jesus who went to the wilderness and attracted the gamut from Satan’s temptations to the Angels’ attendance. It would seem even He was never alone. The wilderness wasn’t an empty experience but an optic to the soul bringing focus to the whole.

Solitude practiced with the sacred is never lonely. It is the somatic experience of unity.

As you know, I recently retreated from my serene blues and greens. When I arrived in my mother’s hospital room my aunts and uncles were with me. My grandmother and grandfather were seated beside my mother. It was as though every generation that ever came before us was gathered in the air. The Castilians of Iberia, and the Purépecha of Pátzcuaro, even Santiago himself, none wanting to be left out from this gathering of their children. Miraculously as I began writing on the triage board the story of Jairus’ daughter, my aunt had simultaneously begun to speak of the women healed from bleeding. We had not planned to each tell the other half of this gospel story but here we were again evidence to that Latin saying, Deo Volente.

When I returned to my wild and sat for a sermon the teacher spoke on this very passage:

Your daughter is dead, why trouble the teacher any more?

From Mark’s Gospel Account, Chapter 5

I sat after the sermon stretching hours out of minutes in contemplation, considering what it means for you and me to continue troubling the teacher.

Could it be I too quit praying despite God walking along side of me as we saunter on towards every need that could ever be before me?

Perhaps like Jairus, we must trouble the teacher our whole way home.

Until next week,

-Steven

PS. My mother is now home from the hospital and we continue to pray for her miraculous healing. Thank you all for troubling the teacher with me.