The Road To Kingdom Come

I am not a big fan of Halloween. Not that I have a problem with it’s celebration at all. Lord knows I have scarfed down my share of treats as I Tricked and Treated through the years. I just don’t like what Halloween has become. Another crassly commercialized minor holiday that has been turned into a carnival rather than a simple cause for youngsters to have some sugary, chocolatey, dressed-in-costume fun.

I enjoy Halloween night when the little and not so little kids come to the door. But now the beer and liquor companies take it over and it is but one more reason to get drunk. Like people need another reason. I understand that Halloween is now the biggest party season of the year. And I detest the slasher movies and gore fest cinema that has also come to be associated with this night. What’s wrong with a good old ghost story? Why all the blood and guts and sex?

Boy have I gotten old ad cranky!

I have come to appreciate this time of year from a religious and spiritual perspective. Halloween, All Saint’s Day and All Souls Day do more to remind me of my own mortality than any Ash Wednesday. A number of birthdays of living and dead family and friends occur in October and November and Halloween stands right in the center of the grey mist that separates us living from the dead.

Prayer still comes hard to me and I have missed Mass a couple weeks in a row due to physical and emotional setbacks. But I still hold onto my faith and will be attending Mass tomorrow (since, for some strange reason I feel better today) and offering prayers to the holy saints and the holy souls. I envy them, respectively, their presence in and nearness to the bliss of Heaven. And I hope the Lord hears and appreciates the little prayer snippets and prayer ejaculations (as the nuns taught us) that make up most of my prayer life these days. They are pitiful yet heartfelt.

I pray for all of the members of my family and my friends that have gone before me, that they may rest in eternal peace in the arms of God the Father.

This is just going to be one of those rants. I have been suffering from chronic insomnia which has become rather acute lately. Zero hours of sleep last night and maybe a couple the night before. Surprised I can even type this. I have tried everything and nothing works except heavy duty meds that leave me in a stupor for hours the next day. Not being able to sleep really, really stinks!

I have also had a relapse on the stomach issues and all of this has triggered a spin back into the nasty anxiety and depression. But I truly am grateful that I had such a long roll of good stomach and mood weather and I need to write that so I can appreciate it even a little more. That period also gives me hope that there may be a longer reprieve down the road.

I was in a mood as grey as the sky overhead today so around lunchtime I headed out to a local Catholic church that has Perpetual Adoration. It was a much longer walk than I anticipated but I was glad when I arrived. I prayed the rosary while I journeyed over and finished in front of the Blessed Sacrament. I simply prayed for sleep, healing and for the grace to be the person that the Lord calls me to be. I also found myself praying very specifically for the grace of final perseverance. I’m not planning on going anywhere but something tells me that when it is your time, Satan comes at you with everything he has. Praying for this singular grace today was as good as any other day. And I have been reading excerpts from St. Faustina’s Diary so Divine Mercy has been top of mind.

It was also a long walk back. Maybe I’ll be a bit more tired when I lay down tonight.

P.S. – I watched Monday Night Football last night (Detroit vs. Chicago)and the producers made it a point to show an aerial shot of Windsor, Ontario across from Detroit. Couldn’t help but think that Owen was down there someplace.

I am writing this post as a method of metaphorically splashing cold water on my face. I have been dragging physically, mentally and spiritually. I keep telling myself (and others) that I want to get back into praying the rosary on a regular basis…but I don’t. I keep telling people how much better I feel after some many years of feeling just plain awful physically. And frankly, I have been feeling in much better spirits mentally/emotionally. But I’m not doing near as much with these reprieves as I should. I think that I keep waiting for something else to happen. Some sort of catalyst that kick starts these formerly infected factors back into some form of activity and usefulness. But I think that the ball is in my court.

I don’t have as much physical, mental and spiritual energy as before but that is no excuse for not utilizing the energy that I do have. If I can’t say the rosary, I can say a Hail Mary. If I can landscape the lawn, I can pull some weeds. And if I can’t read “War and Peace” then shoot for a book more digestible. As a priest friend of mine says, “Fake it ’til you make it.” Those are simple words of wisdom.

I also don’t think I should feel compelled to write 1,000 words on this blog every time I have the urge to write. Maybe 100 will do…maybe 10!

So with that observation I’ll shut up.

I feel as if I should write…something…anything. So I will say this. After moaning and groaning about the chronic digestive problems that have plagued me over the past 4+ years, I must admit that there has been some dramatic improvement over the last few months. The only really obvious source of this improvement is the addition of a couple mineral supplements that the GI physician added a few months ago.

At one of my last appointments, he (almost as an afterthought) sent me down to the lab to have some blood work done. I figured that it was a standard blood panel that I have had done some many times. I waited around for the results and when they came back the doctor told me that there seemed to be a deficiency in a couple of minerals…vanadium and chromium. Apparently, both these trace minerals have something to do with the regulation of blood sugar in the system. A condition that I had heard mentioned with regard to glucose by my nutritionist was reactive hypoglycemia. I won’t try to explain that particular condition but it seemed that both the physician and the nutritionist were focusing on blood sugar.

The nutritionist had placed me on a very strict diet called the Paleo Diet. The ideas is that our bodies evolved originally to digest and metabolize only foods that were readily available in the environment. Meat, fish, fowl, nuts, vegetables and some berries. These foods are naturally high in protein and good fats and low in sugar and carbs. About 4,000 years ago was the dawn of the agricultural era and we started growing and harvesting much of our food. (Grains, cow’s milk, and others.) The theory continues that 4,000 years is not nearly enough time for our bodies to adapt and we are feeding ourselves mostly processed food that we can’t digest and metabolize properly. Thus, I ended up on the “Cave Man Diet.”

On my return visit to the doctor I specifically asked him how deficient I was in the two minerals he identified. He told me that I had “zero” of the minerals available in my system and that would play havoc with by glucose levels leading to all sorts of problems.

The bottom line is this…since I started taking these two minerals and following a very strict diet I have had no episodes of a condition that had regularly plagued me for so very, very long. I prayed and prayed and prayed for relief from this condition that, in no small part, contributed to my breakdown and hospitalization last year. A nun had referred me to this physician and it took me almost a year to contact him. I can only trust that the treatment he prescribed is what is making the difference in my health.

My lesson from this is just to keep hoping and keep praying. I kept going from doctor to doctor and getting test after test and here it looks like these to trace minerals were the culprits by virtue of their absence.

I really needed to write about this because I had just about convinced myself that I was banging my head against the wall and the no one in Heaven above was listening. I still have some serious issues that I am addressing through prayer and I now have renewed hope that with persistence and perseverance I can receive positive results. I continue to struggle with prayer but I am working on it. I sincerely want to bring the rosary back into my life as a daily practice. I did make a full consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Feb. of 2010 and I want to be true and faithful to that. I believe that the devil would like to see otherwise.

So I am truly grateful that my digestive issues are under control as of this writing and I have no reason to believe that they won’t stay that way. And I thank the Blessed Mother through her Immaculate Heart and to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the blessing they have provided.

I have not written much lately for a few reasons. Chief among them is the perpetual brain fog that I find myself in. Don’t know what to attribute this to but for some reason I am having great difficulty with cognitive issues like memory, concentration, etc. Maybe it is meds but whatever it is I find myself with plenty of things that I would like to write about but this mental sluggishness really is an obstacle.

A second deterrent is an issue that has developed with my spine. Chronic upper back, neck and arm pain led me to the doctor, into physical therapy and then to x-ray and MRI. Apparently I have spinal stenosis which is a narrowing of the spinal column putting pressure on the spinal cord. The result, for me, is numbness in the arm and hand which makes it much more difficult to type. Don’t know what next steps are but hope to find some type of relief so I can begin functioning more normally (whatever normal is for me anymore).

As I sat in a kind of mental stupor yesterday afternoon, I experienced a minor phenomenon. There had been a consistent rumble of thunder during the afternoon but, for the most part, it remained sunny with interspersed clouds. Finally, around 5PM, it began to rain. I looked out the window and saw that it was completely sunny around our location yet the sky continued to growl with thunder, rain came down in a gentle yet consistent downpour and a couple of flashes of lightning brightened an already bright afternoon. What caught my attention was the rain. From my angle, as the rain reached a certain point between treetop and street, the sun would reflect on each drop just for an instant. The result were soft flashes of light that highlighted the location of each drop at that moment. The effect was like seeing thousands of sparkling stars in the air in broad daylight. Or like seeing thousands of fireflies that had become confused about the time of day and had risen from their daily rest a couple hours too early. The bottom line…I watched the air sparkle outside my window.

The day before I had witnessed an eagle land in a massive oak tree outside of a building in which I was attending a meeting. I am fascinated by birds of prey and had never witnessed an eagle in the wild before. I wasn’t sure what I had seen when the large bird first landed but as I watched it move behind the leaves of the tree I realized that it was hardly a hawk or a large crow. Then the bird majestically spread his wings and lifted into the air and I had not a doubt what I was watching.

I immediately thought of the words to “Eagles Wings.” And He will raise you up on eagle’s wings, bear you on the breath of dawn…”

Kind of makes me want to spread my wings and soar through sparkling raindrops to that place of never-ending wonder.

Yesterday when I got home from work, there was a piece of mail that was hand addressed to me. Upon opening it, I was delighted to find that I had been invited to attend the golden jubilee of Sr. Maria Joseph O.P., the Dominican nun who has been such a blessing to me over the last couple of years. Frankly, I was truly honored by this invitation. To have made the acquaintance, and gained the friendship, of such a devoted servant of God, especially a cloistered servant of God, is something I never could have anticipated.

This nun, and thousands like her throughout the world, are true prayer warriors. They have given themselves wholly and completely to God and pray night and day for his glory and our needs. I wonder sometimes, if I am blessed enough to attain heaven, if I will meet some individual who I never even knew, who’s vocation caused them to toss out a prayer garland for whoever needed it most at that moment and, at that moment, that person was me. Oh, that we all should receive such a gift from an unnamed servant of Christ who has gone to battle on our behalf without even knowing us. Knowing Christ was enough for them and for us.

The other day I pulled out a CD that I hadn’t listened to in years. I had put new speakers in my car and wanted to hear how some of my older music fared on the new system. It must be a sight to see this older guy come driving up the street in a Honda Civic Hybrid with the windows up, air-conditioning on and sounds cranked up behind the closed windows and doors. I love it when bass notes make my rear view mirror shake.

The CD I had selected was by an artist named Jim Lauderdale who is better known as a songwriter than as a performer. He is essentially country but he used to get a lot of air-play on WXPN at the University of Pennsylvania. I guess he is considered  alternative country or some such thing. Anyway, I listened to the CD and waxed nostalgic about the first time I heard this music.

I had taken a few days off from work about 17 years ago when we lived in South Carolina. I was painting the upstairs hallway and was listening to a syndicated broadcast of World Cafe from WXPN. The musical guest was Jim Lauderdale and I really enjoyed his stuff so I bought a CD. I was describing this to my wife a few days ago and reminiscing about our time in SC. A couple of days later I was getting into my car with my daughter and when she started the car up, the radio came on and the song playing was from the very CD that I owned of Jim Lauderdale’s. I thought, “What are the odds of that song playing at that moment right after I have rediscovered this artist and his CD so many years later.

When I got home I told my wife about this interesting coincidence and she patiently listened while I went on and on re-hashing what I had already told her, building up to the coincidence of hearing the song in the car. I have a thing about coincidences. I really want to believe that there are no coincidences. But, I guess that sometimes there are and this seemed to be one of them. I want coincidences to mean something. I want them to be gleeful affirmations, uplifting accidents of nature or playful spiritual interventions by the God who loves us yet understands and appreciates how challenging it can be to fully accept and embrace the fact of that love. A coincidence can bring grace to fill a void where doubt would like to reside.

My point to my wife was that I was disappointed that the coincidence of hearing that song at that time didn’t really mean anything. “After all,” I said, “What purpose could there possibly be in hearing a song called ‘Can’t Find Mary…’ ”

I stopped dead in my verbal tracks. The song was titled “Can’t Find Mary.” I sat there for a few seconds as the words that my mouth spoke entered my ears and then were absorbed by the pitiful mental faculties that I am now forced to work with to live and understand life. But the name of the song took my mental breath away and stirred my soul. It expressed the essence of how I have felt since I made the Consecration to Mary in February 2010 and then descended into darkness from which I’m still digging out. I tried to find Mary in a deeper more special way and I felt like life unraveled at the prospect. It has a been a Marian prayer struggle ever since.

This week, I did manage to get the rosary said a few times. Even said it with my wife last night. Yet there is still a sense that I set off to find Mary in a different  way than I had known her before through just the Rosary and here, nearly a year and a half later, I am reminded, by the grace of coincidence, that I still haven’t found Mary. Of course that doesn’t mean that I should stop looking or that she can’t be found. I know she’s here someplace…perhaps hiding behind the next coincidence.

There is a lot of celebrating during the month of June in my family. My wife’s birthday is the 16th, my Mom’s the 17th, Father’s Day, my wedding anniversary on the 21st, my sister-in-law’s birthday and her and my brother’s wedding anniversary. Tomorrow we will gather and sort of address all of these at the same time.

It is only appropriate to recognize and acknowledge that one year ago at this time I had just completed a 6-day hospital stay and it was on Father’s Day of last year that I checked back into the hospital after just 3-days at home. But here we are, a  year later and I will participate fully in any and all celebrating during this event-filled week. Last year I was “away” for my wife’s birthday and, even worse, was not home for our 30th anniversary.

It has been up-and-down during the last year but at this moment all is well. Right now I feel good physically and mentally and have seen a lot of improvement during the past few months especially. I have had a lot of love, prayer and support from people that know me well and not so well. I can say with sincerity that I have worked hard to get myself back to some degree of normal and to fully participate at work and at home even when things were on the ugly side either in my stomach or in my head.

But the bottom line is that it is impossible to describe how far I have come from the nightmare and hell of June 2010. One year ago I could never have conceived of arising at 8 AM, going out for coffee, working on my website, shopping for a b-day present for my Mom, trimming the from hedges (my least favorite job), writing a blog post and preparing to go out to dinner with my wife and children this evening. I saw only darkness…pitch black darkness. No future, no possibilities, no hope, no happiness, no life. Yet, here I am.

I have had a strained relationship with the Lord and his Mother during this time and I know that he is, was and always will be the same and that am, have been and will likely continue to be all over the place and that all of the strain was on my side of the spiritual fence. But I am so very grateful that my prayers and the prayers of others have been answered and do have the clarity of mind and the humility to be able to say “Thank You” when a day like today plays out so very well and the simple pleasures of daily living seem so special.

Meister Ekhart wrote, “If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is “thank you,” that will suffice.” By the grace and mercy of God I hope that he is right because I am tossing a very big “Thank You” His way today.

First of all, this blog needs a facelift. It is looking worn and dated to me which is likely the result of me seeing it day after day after day. Looking at this blog is like looking in the mirror. “Holy crap! Who is that guy?” I think I need a facelift also. And perhaps some touch up of the grey hairs that continue to slowly and subtly take up residence on my head. Fortunately, I have been blessed with a full head of hair so I have thousands of follicles fighting back against the grey incursion. It is a brave but futile effort. A head of white hair is inevitable…and no hair dye for me. I want to age gracefully, if possible, and I have no intention of painting my head so that my hair looks 20 years younger than my face.

I speak of aging because it has been, for the past few days, a top-of-mind topic. I had the good fortune to be invited to spend last weekend in Sea Isle City, NJ at a condo that was vacant for Memorial Day weekend. The owners are friends of my wife and I and the husband in this couple just had his hip replaced. He is still rehabbing so they couldn’t make it down and offered it to us. And we jumped at the opportunity.

The condo was located near the center of the town which is also the location of all the bars, clubs, shops and restaurants clustered in about a 3 block area. I spent a lot of time here when I was in my early to mid-twenties…over 30 years ago. After a painful breakup, my now-wife and I met at one of these clubs one night after being apart for over 3 years. During the hiatus, each of us, coincidentally, were dabbling in the Charismatic movement. My wife had made a Cursillo retreat the year before and offered to sponsor me for an upcoming Cursillo weekend. I accepted and the retreat changed my life. We were married 8 months later.

My point is that I do have fond memories about Sea Isle but, now that I am creeping towards crotchety, I have rather conflicted attitude towards the hordes of young adults that patronize the bars and clubs. I did the same thing 30 years ago but not in the afternoon and then into the evening. We (my college friends and I) were at the beach all day, had dinner and then went out. This past weekend the activity in and around the bars was an all day affair. It seemed that all the young guys were really buff and all the girls were babes. This generation of club hoppers and bar flies works very hard at looking good. The all-day partying, public use of crude language and general rudeness did put me off.

My inclination is to say, “Hey, you were their age once. You did the same things albeit in a less conspicuous rowdy manner. Don’t judge!”

But I am judging. I saw a generation that is less inhibited, way more crude, less polite and more economically independent than my friends and I ever were. I went to the beach and saw young girls wearing as little as possible with no self-consciousness whatsoever (I can’t help but notice since I am the father of two daughters). And I shake my head and wonder, “What’s the world coming to? We’re going to hell in a hand basket.” Then again, perhaps my thinking is a sort of revisionist personal history, remembering things in order to make me and my contemporaries look good.

Then I ask the question that is at the core of this type of thinking, “How in the world did I get so old?”

My grandmother asked a similar rhetorical question once while I was with her. To the best of my knowledge she never got an answer and I don’t expect to get one either. That’s because I know the answer. Age happens. I, like everyone else, have been aging since conception, each minute bringing physiological changes that used to enhance but now degrade.

I have no desire whatsoever to be young again. Nor am I terrified of growing older. I just wish that I didn’t have to watch it happen. It ain’t pretty. The skin on my face gets wrinklier and droopier and hairs grow where hairs never grew before! Gross.

I guess that I was very aware of this as I sat at Mass last Sunday. I was pleased to see quite a few families and young people taking the time to attend Mass while away from home. I was grateful that I had weathered the storm of my youth with faith intact so that I may now weather the storm of my painfully progressing adulthood.

Yet even as I move beyond the years of serious productivity I still long for some opportunity to do something meaningful for the Lord. I do try to do that within my chosen vocation as husband and father, but there is a restlessness to do something else. Something that is evangelical in nature. Writing? Witnessing? The Deaconate? Who knows. But hopefully my brain cells don’t deteriorate to the point that I can’t recognize opportunity when it appears. Just like I can barely recognize that guy in the mirror.

I am leaving on retreat for the weekend in a couple of hours. It has been many years since I have been on a formal retreat and I am looking forward to a directed experience.

This past week has not been fun. I went to a wonderful wedding last weekend and the next day was wiped out by whatever it is that wipes me out periodically. It has been a struggle all week but each day seems to be a bit better. It is exhausting and, once again, family and co-workers have very little sympathy or tolerance because of the frequency of these bouts. I know that a lot of it is the fact that I can’t really tell anyone what is wrong with me except “I don’t feel good.” Actually, I feel terrible. Exhausted, weak, shaky, light-headed, slightly nauseous, etc. The frustrations of those around me creates a sense of guilt, isolation, loneliness, worthlessness and hopelessness.

So I am entering this weekend with some extra baggage to place on the spiritual luggage cart.

I am going to be doing some additional thinking, praying, reading and, hopefully, blogging about the Blessed Trinity. The section I posted earlier from the encyclical of JPII has continued to intrigue me. There is an aspect of the infinite, wondrous and ineffability of the Godhead and then there is the intimate, joyous, loving community that, in my mind, results in the whole of creation. The Father eternally begets the Son, together, their mutual love eternally begets the Holy Spirit and this uncontainable love begets, almost inevitably, the whole of creation. I think that there is much to be learned about the nature of God by considering the Trinity’s oneness and separateness … as love and sacrifice … as taking and giving … as loving, creative community.

Do I understand any of this? Not really. But I read a book titled “Called to Intimacy” by George Maloney, SJ some years ago that was instrumental in opening my mind to a clearer, more meaningful perception of God. I want to revisit that. Becoming reacquainted with this concept by the aforemntioned encyclical was not a coincidence. As Richard Dreyfus said in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, “This means something…”