You shall call His name

My grandmother told me that since she was widowed mealtime has been difficult for her. It’s not unusual for her to ask for someone to run errands with her at a time that happens to end close to lunch, which she loves to buy for her driver.

I think I can sympathize a little, since I know I have a hard time fixing meals for just myself. I don’t often plan ahead, and by the time I’m hungry, I want something that I don’t have to wait for, and end up snacking until the hunger is gone. I’m sure cheese plays a disproportionate part in my diet. It just doesn’t seem worth getting a lot of dishes messy to sit at a table alone. When I was younger I avoided eating even in fast food restaurants alone, conscious of being the only person without conversation to salt the fries. I was sure everyone was staring at me, and I was ashamed.

A few months ago I read a play in which one character says to another, “There are a million things in marriage, but companionship is at the bottom of it all. . . Do you know what companionship means?”

The other responds, “How do you mean? Literally?”

“The derivation of it in the dictionary. It means the art of having meals with a person.”

Of course I hadn’t thought of that before, for all my having studied Latin. Cum, with, and panis, bread. A companion, someone you share your bread with, maybe sitting around a fire at the end of a long day’s travel.

Lord, I said. I think I have learned by now that you do not withhold what I need; that I must not complain, because I know that you are good, and you love me, and you do what is best. And yet I can’t help feeling a longing for bread-sharing.

And He responded, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” And, “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

And I knew that was love, that He would not only share bread with me, but become bread for me. Be my bread and true companion. With Christmas fast approaching, that prayer has changed to wonder at the name Emmanuel—God with us.

I went to a Ladies’ Christmas Tea on Saturday. I was exhausted and hungry after being out all morning, and didn’t really feel like going, but I’d already bought the train ticket, so I went. The theme of the tea was “The Names of God,” and each table had a name written on a miniature chalkboard stuck in a poinsettia. I looked at the name on my table. Immanuel. I knew some of the organizers were American, and was amused that while all the other names were in Italian, this one had accidentally been written in English.

My friend Margie brought the main speaker, Sue, over to our table. She didn’t speak any Italian, and I was the only other one who spoke English, so I had to overcome my usual timidity-around-important-people and converse with her. Sue was gracious, kind and beautiful, a woman clearly ready to love others. When she got up to speak, she told us she was nervous, and that her testimony wasn’t a traditional Christmas message, but about God’s message in her life. She went on to relate a story most of us didn’t expect from this elegant woman in her upper 50s—a childhood with parents divorcing, attempted suicide, drugs, a violent boyfriend who got her pregnant, an abortion, a foolish marriage, divorce, and finally finding the love of Christ.

When she sat back down, the women nearby smiled shyly and murmered “Grazie.” One woman said she wished she could speak English to talk to her. So I ended up translating for her, and then another with a story to tell. I found myself speaking about husbands who had been unfaithful, negligent, and abusive, about angry children, about having no parents or family to turn to. Mostly about feeling all alone, as if there was no one who saw, or understood, or loved. In the other direction I was hearing words go through me about persevering in faith and prayer.

God-with-us, be with us.

I’d stayed long enough to miss the train, so Margie let me come home with her, Sue, and her single friend, and loaned me pajamas and slippers. We drank tea and ate chicken salad. “I passed out the mugs randomly,” the other single woman said to me. “That’s why you got the one with ‘Mom’ on it.” “Well, I have a Mom…” I laughed, and thought that I was glad that didn’t hurt like it might have once. More are the children of the desolate, for unto us a child is born.

Born of a virgin. God is with us.

I need to spend more time thinking up creative titles

I went for a walk last week. I was annoyed, and tried praying, but couldn’t quite. My annoyance spiraled itself tighter around me until it grew into a mild anger. It seemed best to get out of the house, so I walked.

Walking past a playground, I heard, “Ciao!” and looked around. It must have been the young girl on the zipline. I returned her greeting. “What’s your name?” she asked, and I told her. “Are you a girl?” “Well…” I said, not sure how to answer that one. Terms are so relative.

I told Greta that I was 26, and she told me she was 9, and this was her little sister Melissa, who was 4. I wished them fun and left, finding a bench to sit on. I looked at a tree. It is hard to look at a tree long and try to tell the God who made green that you have a right to be angry because someone hurt your feelings. I’ve tried; it is much simpler to stop demanding rights.

Sunday it was easy to be joyful. The world was new and beautiful. After church, one of the elders asked me if I would consider marrying an Italian man. It’s always a bit awkward answering that question when the person asking it is an Italian man. “Remember, I married an Englishwoman,” he said. “She said she wouldn’t have married the ‘classic Italian,’ but I’m not a ‘classic Italian.’” “Good,” I said. “I mean…” “No, no,” he said. “That type, with the Mamma…” he shook his head.

I bought a hand-held fan on the way back from church. After serious deliberation, I went with a red one, with flowers painted on it (then on my way home, saw white, green, pink and blue that I liked). Only later did I notice that it says, “Espana” –it was probably made in China, too.

I had my first chance to use it while standing in line at the grocery store, then again when I wandered through the side door into the Catholic church on the corner and found myself at a concert of baroque chamber music. Others peeked in the door, including one with an OU shirt. Unfortunately I didn’t think it would be polite to whistle Boomer Sooner in the middle of a concert.

On Monday I went with Brea to get her ID card. “Keep this envelope,” the lady said. “It has pin numbers which will be able to be used in the future to activate different uses.” “What different uses?” I asked. She almost chuckled guiltily. “No one knows.”

On Tuesday I went with Troy and Penny to sign the contract with the owner of their apartment. While there, the real estate agent discovered that the man didn’t have the right to sign it—it needed to be signed by his daughter, since the property was in her name (there are laws giving tax breaks to women who own property to encourage women in business). So he was going to sign her name until I protested. Her name is on the document now, but we didn’t see who put it there. Then we needed a signature from the old woman who used to live there to be able to switch the utilities to their name, who is now 91 and in a nursing home. The woman at the water board suggested that I sign her name. The woman at the agency signed it, after asking me if I was any good at forgery. But they also require a copy of her ID card, and the only one the agency had was expired, because—the old woman is unable to sign for a new one. When Troy went to find the water reading before going to the agency, he realized that the number didn’t match any of the meters. So we told the agency lady (she told me, “By now you’re at home here”), who called the son, who called back the next day to say he’d gone to the water agency to close the water. So now we just needed to open it. When we went to do that, I asked if they would shut off the water in between, and they said, “Oh, you need to do a sub-entry” (what we’d tried to do before when they said we needed the old lady’s signature) and typed some things in the computer and said it was done. No forgeries involved.

the grace of no a/c

“I think air conditioning is a little like…” I said to someone the other day. “You know how they say when someone takes drugs at first it gives them a high, then they have to take it to feel normal? I think we’ve gotten so accustomed to air conditioning that we have to have it to feel normal…” Not that I would compare air conditioning with drugs. Except that I just did. (And yes, I know that in some places, it is much more “necessary” than here.)

I do have an air conditioning unit in my apartment, and it is nice to know it is there in case the heat becomes unbearable. It’s just that I’ve found I can bear so much more than I think I can. I haven’t turned the A/C on, because now I forget that it’s there, and I’m afraid that if I remember it will be hard to turn it off again.

Brea and I went out for a pizza the other night, and asked if there was air conditioning in the indoor part of the restaurant. “Sure,” the waiter said. “It’s ‘conditioned’ by the oven.” We sat outside.

I went for a walk a couple of evenings ago, and watched the reflections of the lights shimmer in the river, then the shadow of a person moving between the lamp and the dark water. I smelled the moisture of the grass under a sprinkler. A cool breath of breeze lifted off the water; a merciful respite. No—the breeze hadn’t stopped the heat—it was still there—so it couldn’t be mercy. It was a thing-in-itself; a grace.

There are other graces that I wouldn’t be aware of without the pressure of the heat: coldicygelato sliding down my throat, water, ice cubes, electric fans, the movement of air when I ride my bike, thrilling cold showers (how spoiled must I be to want them warm in the summer?). Life isn’t air-conditioning, and summer isn’t punishment. Life isn’t the pain in my leg, it is the grace of having one, two of them—what superfluity!

I was reading two books where the characters were overwhelmed with awareness, and hence gratitude; but in one, “god” was everything, and so nothing, in the other the man was grateful because he realized that life came from outside of himself.

Today, after a month of holding its breath the sky let it out with a cool breezy laugh, and walking was almost floating, or dancing. I can see the stars from my balcony; they are an unexpected boon. I remember to water my basil, and the night smells green with grace.

Here and Now

I had to go to Carpi the other day to run an errand, and couldn’t catch the morning train because of an appointment here, but I would still make it in time if I got the afternoon one. So I got to the train station 15 minutes early, because I still needed to buy my ticket and I like having lots of time. I would have, too, if the self-service machines had been working, but they weren’t, so the line for the real-people ticket counter was long when I joined it. Everyone was a little tense, since we’d all had the same plan. A large group of soldiers (out of uniform; they looked so young I thought they were a soccer team until I read the duffel bags) were all trying to figure out how to get their tickets, yelling at their buddies farther up in the line to get them one too. A man cut in front of me where the line turned the corner (corners are hard to protect) and I glared at his back. The dark foreign girl in front of me glanced sideways as he cut her off too, and she and I smiled at each other, listening to all the tension around us. It wasn’t going to make things go any faster. Finally it was my turn and I quickly said what I wanted, paid, grabbed the ticket and started to run without grabbing the return ticket. “Signora,” he started calling me back, and the soldier next in line brought it to me. “Signora, your ticket.” I thanked him and ran, realizing that I must be getting older, since everyone used to call me “Signorina.” I made the train.

Walking through the piazza a veritable Signora stopped me. “Signorina.” (Not Signora, notice.) I paused, my mind running through the possibilities as I looked at her. She probably wasn’t begging, since she was an older Italian lady. Maybe a Jehovah’s Witness—they like to stop me on the street to proselytize (but so do the evangelicals—I once had a very difficult time trying to convince one that I did in fact know Jesus until his friend recognized me). So I stopped and smiled. “Signorina, you’re very pretty.” I laughed, ruefully thinking of how un-pretty I’d been feeling earlier in the day, and realizing how foolish that was to fret over; realizing that sometimes it takes eyes looking for beauty to see it, and wanting to tell her that; wanting to tell her that it is God who creates beauty and who is the beautiful. Some mixed-up version came out of my mouth.

“Don’t you have anyone?” she asked, and I started to shake my head, accustomed to old ladies asking about a boyfriend, but she went on, “A mother or anyone?” “No…” I smiled, “My mother isn’t here…” “Come with me,” she responded. “Oh—I’m sorry—I can’t…” “Why not?” she asked. “Well, I don’t go with strangers…” I said. “I’m not a stranger. I would be like a mother to you,” she urged. I shook my head and smiled a little, wondering how lonely she must be, and what I ought to do if she continued to insist. But she just smiled and started walking away. Ciao, bella.

I rode the train back, in the late evening light which is so helpful for seeing things the way they are, with Aldous Huxley’s Island beside me for company.

‘Here and now, boys,’ shouted a talking bird.

‘Shut up! Will shouted back.

‘Here and now, boys,’ the mynah repeated. ‘Here and now, boys. Here and…’

‘Shut up!’

There was silence.

‘I had to shut him up, Will explained, ‘because of course he’s absolutely right. Here, boys; now, boys. Then and there are absolutely irrelevant. Or aren’t they? What about your husband’s death, for example? Is that irrelevant?’

Susila looked at him for a moment in silence, then slowly nodded her head. ‘In the context of what I have to do now—yes, completely irrelevant! That’s something I had to learn.’

‘Does one learn how to forget?’

‘It isn’t a matter of forgetting. What one has to learn is how to remember and yet be free of the past. How to be there with the dead and yet still be here, on the spot, with the living.’ She gave him a sad little smile and added, ‘It isn’t easy.’

I stood at the open window, and looked, at the sun on the leaves, at the hares darting through the deep furrows in the fields, at the rainbows made by the sprinklers irrigating the corn, at the people sitting on bikes, waiting for the train to pass. I listened to the crickets and the squeal of the brakes and the greetings of friends, and smelled, yes even the manure. They weren’t just blurs outside the window of my life; they were there, and would be even when I wasn’t present to see them. Even when I wasn’t paying attention.

New Look

I climbed up toward my “favorite” spot the other evening. (At Trevor and Rhonda’s the other evening she had crackers and cheese out, and I said that was just about one of my favorite things. “Let’s see,” said Rhonda. “I know biscuits and gravy is too…” “I would have thought Nutella was your favorite,” said Penny. I decided I have lots of favorite things.) Pretty much anywhere I can see large amounts of sky and not a lot blocking it is a favorite spot, and this was on the hill overlooking the Roman Theater, so I could see the roofs of the city center across the noise of the river in the fading light.

The theater is having a Shakespeare festival going on, like every summer, and people were starting to arrive. I found a seat on a wall with some other people who had the same idea, where we could look down into the theater from behind. I watched the people hurrying in, some pulling off motorcycle helmets as walked to the entrance. There were bikes chained up to the railing along the river.

Once the show started I couldn’t really hear, so I decided I’d rather be at home reading, and walked out, down the street, past three Japanese boys singing in acapella harmony while the Japanese girls walked laughing behind, past a pizza delivery boy pushing his pizza delivery motorcycle down the piece of street that had been closed, past a dog that nuzzled me and the motorcycle cop enforcing the street being closed, or at least scolding the man still riding his motorcycle from the other direction and telling him not to next time.

A couple of evenings later I went to a “molologo,” not knowing what it was but knowing that it included someone playing the piano and was free. The entrance was through the “courtyard of Juliet,” closed to the public, which was pressing up against the gates asking the girl standing there when it would open again. She told them tomorrow morning, but opened the gate for me when I told her I wanted to go to the show. We happy few were shown into a building opposite, to a dimly lit area back or offstage—I could barely see into a richly-adorned theater through the screen we were watching. And there was a Steinway grand, on which an excellent pianist played Richard Strauss’s op. 38, interchanging with the long-ponytailed, deep-voiced, double-breasted suit man reading “Alfred Tennison’s” Enoch Arden—in Italian prose, which left not much to know that it was Tennyson. The plot was all that was left, and it was very Romantically tragic, but I was a little disappointed, because I don't think of plots when I think of Tennyson. For once I thought Italian lacking in melody. But I had always wondered a little about that style of musicandstory that pre-dated movies, so it was interesting to get a taste of it, and understand the feeling from the music.

Now Troy and Penny are here, and it’s been fun taking them around town and seeing things from a new perspective—especially the pointing-out of things to children who’ve always lived in Mound City, Kansas. “Look, Noah, it’s a Ferrari,” “Look at the lady giving bread to the pigeon,” “Look at the dog going for a ride on the motorcycle.” They’re noticing things too—Rowen sat in her stroller, struck with the sound of the bells striking nine. “Did you hear that?” she whispered to me.

Noah gave me a Fruit Loop from his plastic cup of bounty, and the colors seemed to shine back in the pattern of houses and flowers and that man’s argyle sweater in the jewel tones one notices on days of partly-cloudy clearness when the light breaking through picks out colors with flashes of reality.

The old people here smile at them wherever they go. One lady laughed aloud watching Noah trying to find a way around a piece of wet sidewalk. The woman at the post office who helped us with their permessi oohed over them. “They’re so blond!” So far, though, no one has succeeded in getting them to say “ciao.”

The lady at the post office started out a little huffy (we’d done some things wrong) but eventually became chatty, wanting to know about where in the U.S. we were from, and why Penny’s last name was the same as Troy’s (“So women just lose their name entirely when they get married?”). We talked about differences (us having middle names on documents, but not using them generally—sometimes they have second names, but never on documents, which means that if our middle names are on our passports we have to sign everything that way here, since that’s our name). Troy thanked her when we finished, and she said, “Welcome,” then asked me if that was right, “because you don’t have ‘prego,’ right?” “Yes, it’s ‘You’re welcome,” I said, but she couldn’t every quite get it.

Troy and Penny wanted to get an estimate on how much it will cost to paint their new apartment, so we went to a store that sells paint, and asked if they could give us a general idea of how much painters charge or paint costs. “How much does it cost to go to the moon?” the old man asked me. “How much does a dress cost? You can’t ask these questions! You must be foreigners! No Italian would ever ask such a thing!” I tried to be polite, and the politer I was the more he kept yelling, so I eventually just left, wondering if all customers get this service or only foreign ones, and if so, how he makes enough to keep going. But I’m not a businessman.

bookstores are nice

I was feeling a little stressed out—like butter scraped over too much bread—and heading home down a street in another part of town. I’d seen the little room fitted with bookshelves, hardly big enough to be called a bookstore, before, and kept walking. In a place that size it’s hard to “curiosare” anonymously. But this time one of the books on the little display table caught my eye—What’s Wrong With the World, by G.K. Chesterton. And next to it—Surprised by Joy, by C.S. Lewis. And there was another Lewis book. I hate to admit it, but I think it was actually seeing the Mark Twain book that toppled me over the edge. I had to go in and have a look.

It was just a tiny room, but with ceiling-high wooden bookshelves out of my reach, classical music playing and a man and woman sitting behind the desk. She hurried forward politely in a navy-and white retro-styled dress, and offered help, but I just wanted to look. There was a shelf full of Chesterton’s works, including ones I’ve never heard of in English, and right under him was the shelf with Tolkien and Lewis. Clearly this was the Right Sort of bookstore—not like the San Paolo one that has chick flicks in the window and glaring yellow light.

The man finished his phone call and asked if I’d been introduced to the order, and quickly made the proper presentations. I expressed my approbation of the authors on the shelves, and asked if they didn’t possibly have any in English? Alas, no. But he sent me a link to a site with all of Chesterton’s works online.

The store was Catholic, and so were they, and they asked if I was, but were still very nice when it was discovered that I wasn’t, and seemed glad to hear that our group was here to teach Scripture. “If you have any good books on the Scriptures, let me know and maybe we can keep them here,” he offered. “As long as they’re good—we’re very selective.” And just to be sure I knew they weren’t prejudiced, he showed me the Bible story book that they have used to teach their own children, put out by an evangelical publishing house.

Before I left they gave me a book as a gift, on—wouldn’t you know it—suffering. I laughed, and then had to explain why. The wife was also extending a calendar toward me, but her husband said, “You know, I don’t think the evangelicals are very much in agreement with the saints,” and she pulled it back apologetically as if it would bite me, laughing a little embarrassedly.

I left feeling like I had friends.

Happenings and happiness

Yesterday I took three contradictions in energy and questions and sinfulness and made-in-the-image-of-Godness to McDonald’s. One of the cheeseburgers came back with mustard, despite our special instructions for only meat, cheese and ketchup, just to prove that some things are the same worldwide. And we talked about what if Adam and Eve hadn’t sinned and could God make himself a woman and also about how at American McDonald’s you don’t have to buy ketchup for your fries separately, and you can get free refills on drinks (the free refills, along with fried chicken, were the marvels of America that my friend Isobel from Peru mentioned when I sat across from her on the train the other day).

I took them back to the language school where their parents were studying, and waited there until said parents should arrive. “Excuse me, are you American?” one of the teachers asked. I affirmed. “Would you mind looking at this translation, just to see if it makes sense?” Which of course I didn’t. “This sentence…isn’t a whole sentence in English.” He sighed. “Well, the original was kind of strange in Italian too.” I noted that “remind” in English has to be transitive (although I couldn’t remember the term), and suggested “remind one of,” or “call to mind.” He wasn’t pleased. Evoke? “Ah, yes, that’s nice,” he said, and wrote e-v-o-c-e. I objected, so he added an h after the c before just letting me write it.

This morning I had to accompany the mother of the contradictions to the doctor. When we walked in at our turn the doctor said, “But I don’t know you.” Evidently here it is customary to be signed up with a particular doctor before being sick. The doctor gave a prescription, and added that my friend should be careful about air conditioning. “We don’t have it,” she said, and the doctor was satisfied.

The waiting room included a flyer for a medical clinic especially for immigrants, and evidently catering to illegal ones, since the tagline (in all the languages I could read, which were not many) was more or less “Here we heal you, not turn you in.” At least that’s what it was supposed to be—the English version said, “Here we do not denunce.” (Speaking of funny English, the store across the street from me is now selling “LEGGINS” for a mere 3.90.)

I went to the pharmacy to fill the prescription, which included “Brufen” (Ibuprofen), and asked the old deaf pharmacist if it was necessary to have a prescription to buy that drug. “It’s better to,” he said. It turned out to be powdered.

Walking home I glanced at the marble sidewalks (everything seems to be marble here in Verona. Even the pavement of my poor apartment is red and pink marble tile—and yes, there have been times when I was tired enough to sleep on it) when I saw a little flower of the type whose name I can’t remember. Alright, a type whose name I can’t remember. Small and colorful and spread easily, even though they’re usually planted on purpose. So I reached over to pick it and the roots came up too—I put it in with my basil bush (I’m basilsitting too, and it hasn’t died after a whole week with me!) so we’ll see how long it lasts.

Some days it’s so easy to remember grace.

Sunday Sundry

I am thankful for: Oreos! They have lost their exclusive expensive only-at-Blockbuster status and are now available in the snack machine at the train station. Yay! Although I do think it’s funny that they are described on the package as “Cocoa-flavored sandwich biscuits.” Ha!

I am thankful for libraries with air conditioning and free wifi.

I am thankful for a great big cone of gelato with whipped cream and Nutella on top at my favorite gelateria in Italy, la Slurp (“Zlooorp”) and catching-up with old friends.

I am thankful that someone turned in my purse to the front desk at the library when I went off and left it (I don’t have a problem with “Oh God, help!” kinds of prayers. They are some of our most sincere.)

I am glad for my foster cat, Pop, who even though he wakes me up earlier than I would like and has tried chewing or clawing my couch, my good dress, my necklace and earrings, my HAIR, and my teddy bear, is nevertheless a good listener and quite comfortable when he stops his clawing tread and curls up.

I am grateful for cooler weather.

I love standing at the open window of a train while it is moving. It is the best way to be involved in the countryside one is flying through.

I am grateful for the village name “Roverbella,” and the row of rainbow-sherbet-painted houses at Mozzecane (even if I don’t like that name).

Train conductors are so funnily official in their uniforms, with their hats pushed back and glasses pushed down. But they’re lacking suspenders. Maybe I should propose them to Trenitalia.

I saw a camp-out in a backyard we flew past—two tents, and a real table surrounded by children eating pizzas with real plates and silverware. Oh Italians, you are so funny and I love you.

I am thankful for storm clouds even higher than the mountains.

De-stressed

I had cookies for breakfast this morning—not even “good-for-you” cookies, just normal breakfast cookies. This is an Italian’s idea of a proper breakfast—coffee or tea and some cookies or fruit. They just about have a heart attack on my behalf when I tell them I eat eggs for breakfast.

These are some of the few cookies I will deign to dunk, since they have the right consistency for it and actually taste better with some other flavors in the undertone.

I’m not a cookie, but I’ve felt a little lately like I’m soaking in tension from all around me (maybe I need to work on my analogies). Not that I’m under particular stress, mind you, it’s just that I keep seeing stressful relationships: on other teams, in churches, between friends; and I feel like I’m soaking this all in and making it my own, and am ready to crumble. Not to mention the dread I feel when I think of the tension almost guaranteed my team in the future.

The library here has pithy sayings written up on the walls over the door. One of them is, “Vivere e’ combattere,” “To live is to fight.” I don’t know if that’s supposed to instill courage. But I’ve been feeling lately that that’s all life is: fight and fight and fight, and then we die (alone). I said this to a friend yesterday, feeling cynical and grown-up.

I should know to beware whenever I feel grown-up. There’s a reason Jesus said we have to be like little children. All of my cynicism is rooted in thinking that I’m in control; I have to carry the weights of the world alone. In acting like I think I’m God.

Most of my problems with stress, like suffering, happen when it’s not even really mine. God gives grace for the real, but not for the weights created by my imagination. He is still in control. He is enough for other people’s problems, and enough for the problems which will come in the future. He has already overcome the world. Each problem that arises is an opportunity to demonstrate His victory.

Yesterday one of the elders in my old church (yes, the one suffering many tensions) read part of Romans 8: “In all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation [in Italian it says, “any other creature”—all of these things have been created], will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

In all of my worry about fighting, I had forgotten what God told Moses: “The Lord will fight for you; you have only to be still.”

Suffer the Little Children

“Where does the sun set again?”

“Well, it doesn’t actually set…” I tried to explain, and did it poorly. He didn’t answer, but I wondered if the six-year-old brain was cogitating that grandest of all wonders: that the truth is bigger than we understand.

I remember the slow-dawning realization that our world is not the center of the universe, that we are actually spinning around in space. I remember lying in the yard, looking up at the clouds in the deep blue center, dizzy with the thought of hanging in space. I dug my fingers into the grass, in case gravity wasn’t enough to keep me here. Wonder intertwined with fear.

Fear keeps slithering into my heart. I read from so many sources about God’s goodness in suffering, and I wonder what He knows is ahead, why I must be ready to embrace suffering. I brace myself, wondering if I will be strong enough, and wish he would just give it to me and get it over with, because this dread of suffering hurts too much. “Whatever you do, do quickly,” I tell God, with the self-centered inversion of sin.

I lose myself in “what-if,” forgetting what is. Or who is.

I know suffering can be used for God’s glory. I know we must participate in the suffering of Christ if we hope to attain to the resurrection from the dead. But do I really want Him to say, “Well done good and faithful servant?” Or would I settle for a “Well, you’re done; pretty good most of the time.” Getting through life without too much glory, but without too much pain. A tame God.

He’s not tame, though. He’s good.

But Love has pitched her mansion in

The place of excrement;

For nothing can be sole or whole

That has not been rent.

(Yeats)

And here I am grateful for God’s humanity. I am grateful that even Jesus, even knowing, asked for the cup to be removed. I am grateful that he prayed, Nevertheless, in any case, whatever you decide, not my will, but Yours. What shall I pray? Father, glorify your name. And a voice from heaven answered, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it.”

Rend the veil and make me whole.