Assignment 4 (Jim)
ASSIGNMENT: Write a description, not an analysis, of a character (fictional or real) who remains faithful to God despite questioning him. Two pages minimum.
The mystic ecstacy of living in awe, in worship of God’s benevolent omnipotent mystery, that I stayed in, during my senior year of high school, has grown thin, by late college. Back in my senior year of high school though, I was utterly enveloped by a loving faith community. One night then, in the hospital, when Fr. Miriani may die of jaundice, he says, I’ve been to him the son he could never have (as a priest). I marvel, someone wants me as their son? That year, he and I would stop and pray his breviary together, five or six times a day. I’d spend evenings in prayer groups of 20 are more kids, led by him. We’d celebrate intimate private masses together, work on retreats, eat and hike together, and in awe, I see the ocean, for the first time, with him. That year, I feel God presence in all. I roll in the grass, and taste it, ride the breeze, soar with the clouds. I jump off the big, diesel, farm tractor, and scooping up a fistful of freshly plowed dirt, relish its smell, as I roll it between my fingers. I am one with all. This is why I exist. We are born to worship. But Melinda Timmerman, my girl friend, doesn’t get that, when I say I’m going to seminary to be a priest. She slaps me silly till I fall out of my Dad’s car onto the pavement, and she drives off, in his car.
Niles college seminary is very worldly. Sure we have huge dorm water fights and pranks galore but I feel no presence or purpose here. A formal, cold, daily mass is ignored by most, though I worship intently within. As one of three seminarians from rural southern Illinois, I am so alone in this Chicago suburb seminary, where most go home to eat, or to jobs or to girl friends, especially on weekends. Sure I work retreats during the summers still, but its’ changed for me. With little canvass for expression, God feels marginalized. I feel shame as I begin to doubt the miraculous. Was what was so real before college, a dream? The miracles had ceased!
No! The miraculous is real and I want it back. Desperate my senior year of college I flee Niles for St. Meinrad’s, a seminary and school of theology, within a Benedictine monastery. Wow, the miraculous is in the very air here. The buildings and steeples on a huge hill, tower over flat Indiana, like some medieval castle, and the monks in black robes and hoods are otherworldly, but I am a skeptic now. Once I’d questioned the miraculous’s verity, the experience itself moved outside me, for observation. I feel dirty, unworthy, dejected in worship now - like a spy. How I want to experience unsullied awe, anew; to commune, again.
Night after night I worshiped and prayed fervently, till an answer came. It felt like a revelation, an answer beyond me, yet suddenly so right, so obvious, so clear now. I had prayed, I am not worthy but say the word, just SAY THE WORD, and I will be healed. Lift me up and use me. Take me. What I knew in that moment, was I, the skeptic, was why the miracles ceased. I must extinguish all fears and self-doubt and love others purely. God would provide for me then as he does for the birds of the field. Presence, purpose and the miracles return, as I absolutely followed the revelation, day after day.
But there was something else, too. At first it was a pain or pressure in my chest, or heart. It grew with each, further and further, reach beyond myself. Then nightmares began. It culminated weeks later, on a retreat, where the pressure grows exponentially as I try to meet each participants need in the room. I feel the pressure or pain separating from me. I can no longer contain it, and it is pure malice. I’m so afraid and praying fervently now, ‘What have I done so wrong’. When it splits off, the world disappears and I’m falling into nothingness. My prayers are answered, as another revelation comes to me - I had become God. I repent with all my heart, and reality returns.
The experience rocks me to my core though. For three days I can’t speak or eat. For months I can hold little food down. A priest psychiatrist back at the seminary advises me to not pray. I barely pass my courses and I don’t graduate in May, with my class, because my thesis is incomplete, till I finish it that fall.
What happened? God, you were to provide for me. I don’t understand God nor know his will for me. I am wasted.
The skeptic, now a bitter cynic, is reinstated from retirement, and stands guard, on highest alert within me. I cry over the wall within, ‘God why have you abandoned me?’ I’ve shut God out though. No answer is heard... I cry and cry. I was wrong - the miraculous was unreal. No one will provide for me. I must take up the responsibility for me.
Then, in worldly ways, I took computer classes, to make a living. I dated, had daily sex with, and fell in love with, Pat, a Tom-boyish, freckled cashier girl, from school. And every evening, I struggled to bridge the huge chasm between my Dad and I. I must stop the hate, to make peace with authority figures, else I’ll end up in prison. I needed to fit in to survive.
I did love Pat, and myself and my father and mother, and that was the crux of my problem, though. I’d seen the horror in my mother’s face when she seen me in bed with the boy, Mickey. I now had a real bond with my father. And I did love Pat, so. It was time for us to become engaged for real and yet I couldn’t. Even in love I can’t remake myself into what I am not. I am so powerless over my desire. It will waste all I’ve rebuilt.
I'm so torn. How can I be true to me, if it means I mortally hurt all I love, and all that loves me? My sense of self has now moved way beyond shame. I feel destined to be evil. When I tell Pat, that I must break it off between us and leave everyone and why, she stops breathing and turns purple. I slap her hard. I am evil. My love is pure poison. I've banished myself from the tribe again.
Walking out of a bar, it’s night and yet a huge light blinds me. Stunned, I lean against a wall. A huge revelation is upon me - ‘I am trying to kill myself.’ Not by my own hand but just as assuredly by deeply reckless living. I cry deep wrenching sobs, for the loss and waste of it all. I am not wanted in this world. True! But a few that love me would not want this, even if it means knowing the truth of me. I don’t want to die or live like this. Why must this be?
Is this how the Good Shepherd comes looking for his lost lamb in the wilderness, by first driving the innocent there? Giving the cynic within me a voice, he cries out testily to God, ‘If I am destined by creation to be evil, then what does that make you?’ I became visible, real then. Coming out from the wilderness, I unleashed my sexuality on a clueless flock.
Was this God’s will? I think it is. My image of God has changed drastically from the retreat days of Christian love and goodness, though. The will of God can be absolutely terrible. It could have me, his son, put to the knife, like Isaac, or deliver me over to the mob, like Jesus was. God refuses to abide by traditions, no matter how sacred. He lives above the Bible, the church, family and society bounds. Obedience is to a terrible, lonely truth. God’s will is always frightening, unexpected, unfathomable. He won't rescue me from it.
One must be utterly abandoned to God. I feel faithful to myself and God in coming out, but we never know for sure, and worse, what is he asking of me now, I shudder.
The mystic ecstacy of living in awe, in worship of God’s benevolent omnipotent mystery, that I stayed in, during my senior year of high school, has grown thin, by late college. Back in my senior year of high school though, I was utterly enveloped by a loving faith community. One night then, in the hospital, when Fr. Miriani may die of jaundice, he says, I’ve been to him the son he could never have (as a priest). I marvel, someone wants me as their son? That year, he and I would stop and pray his breviary together, five or six times a day. I’d spend evenings in prayer groups of 20 are more kids, led by him. We’d celebrate intimate private masses together, work on retreats, eat and hike together, and in awe, I see the ocean, for the first time, with him. That year, I feel God presence in all. I roll in the grass, and taste it, ride the breeze, soar with the clouds. I jump off the big, diesel, farm tractor, and scooping up a fistful of freshly plowed dirt, relish its smell, as I roll it between my fingers. I am one with all. This is why I exist. We are born to worship. But Melinda Timmerman, my girl friend, doesn’t get that, when I say I’m going to seminary to be a priest. She slaps me silly till I fall out of my Dad’s car onto the pavement, and she drives off, in his car.
Niles college seminary is very worldly. Sure we have huge dorm water fights and pranks galore but I feel no presence or purpose here. A formal, cold, daily mass is ignored by most, though I worship intently within. As one of three seminarians from rural southern Illinois, I am so alone in this Chicago suburb seminary, where most go home to eat, or to jobs or to girl friends, especially on weekends. Sure I work retreats during the summers still, but its’ changed for me. With little canvass for expression, God feels marginalized. I feel shame as I begin to doubt the miraculous. Was what was so real before college, a dream? The miracles had ceased!
No! The miraculous is real and I want it back. Desperate my senior year of college I flee Niles for St. Meinrad’s, a seminary and school of theology, within a Benedictine monastery. Wow, the miraculous is in the very air here. The buildings and steeples on a huge hill, tower over flat Indiana, like some medieval castle, and the monks in black robes and hoods are otherworldly, but I am a skeptic now. Once I’d questioned the miraculous’s verity, the experience itself moved outside me, for observation. I feel dirty, unworthy, dejected in worship now - like a spy. How I want to experience unsullied awe, anew; to commune, again.
Night after night I worshiped and prayed fervently, till an answer came. It felt like a revelation, an answer beyond me, yet suddenly so right, so obvious, so clear now. I had prayed, I am not worthy but say the word, just SAY THE WORD, and I will be healed. Lift me up and use me. Take me. What I knew in that moment, was I, the skeptic, was why the miracles ceased. I must extinguish all fears and self-doubt and love others purely. God would provide for me then as he does for the birds of the field. Presence, purpose and the miracles return, as I absolutely followed the revelation, day after day.
But there was something else, too. At first it was a pain or pressure in my chest, or heart. It grew with each, further and further, reach beyond myself. Then nightmares began. It culminated weeks later, on a retreat, where the pressure grows exponentially as I try to meet each participants need in the room. I feel the pressure or pain separating from me. I can no longer contain it, and it is pure malice. I’m so afraid and praying fervently now, ‘What have I done so wrong’. When it splits off, the world disappears and I’m falling into nothingness. My prayers are answered, as another revelation comes to me - I had become God. I repent with all my heart, and reality returns.
The experience rocks me to my core though. For three days I can’t speak or eat. For months I can hold little food down. A priest psychiatrist back at the seminary advises me to not pray. I barely pass my courses and I don’t graduate in May, with my class, because my thesis is incomplete, till I finish it that fall.
What happened? God, you were to provide for me. I don’t understand God nor know his will for me. I am wasted.
The skeptic, now a bitter cynic, is reinstated from retirement, and stands guard, on highest alert within me. I cry over the wall within, ‘God why have you abandoned me?’ I’ve shut God out though. No answer is heard... I cry and cry. I was wrong - the miraculous was unreal. No one will provide for me. I must take up the responsibility for me.
Then, in worldly ways, I took computer classes, to make a living. I dated, had daily sex with, and fell in love with, Pat, a Tom-boyish, freckled cashier girl, from school. And every evening, I struggled to bridge the huge chasm between my Dad and I. I must stop the hate, to make peace with authority figures, else I’ll end up in prison. I needed to fit in to survive.
I did love Pat, and myself and my father and mother, and that was the crux of my problem, though. I’d seen the horror in my mother’s face when she seen me in bed with the boy, Mickey. I now had a real bond with my father. And I did love Pat, so. It was time for us to become engaged for real and yet I couldn’t. Even in love I can’t remake myself into what I am not. I am so powerless over my desire. It will waste all I’ve rebuilt.
I'm so torn. How can I be true to me, if it means I mortally hurt all I love, and all that loves me? My sense of self has now moved way beyond shame. I feel destined to be evil. When I tell Pat, that I must break it off between us and leave everyone and why, she stops breathing and turns purple. I slap her hard. I am evil. My love is pure poison. I've banished myself from the tribe again.
Walking out of a bar, it’s night and yet a huge light blinds me. Stunned, I lean against a wall. A huge revelation is upon me - ‘I am trying to kill myself.’ Not by my own hand but just as assuredly by deeply reckless living. I cry deep wrenching sobs, for the loss and waste of it all. I am not wanted in this world. True! But a few that love me would not want this, even if it means knowing the truth of me. I don’t want to die or live like this. Why must this be?
Is this how the Good Shepherd comes looking for his lost lamb in the wilderness, by first driving the innocent there? Giving the cynic within me a voice, he cries out testily to God, ‘If I am destined by creation to be evil, then what does that make you?’ I became visible, real then. Coming out from the wilderness, I unleashed my sexuality on a clueless flock.
Was this God’s will? I think it is. My image of God has changed drastically from the retreat days of Christian love and goodness, though. The will of God can be absolutely terrible. It could have me, his son, put to the knife, like Isaac, or deliver me over to the mob, like Jesus was. God refuses to abide by traditions, no matter how sacred. He lives above the Bible, the church, family and society bounds. Obedience is to a terrible, lonely truth. God’s will is always frightening, unexpected, unfathomable. He won't rescue me from it.
One must be utterly abandoned to God. I feel faithful to myself and God in coming out, but we never know for sure, and worse, what is he asking of me now, I shudder.
posted by LifeWriter at 2:09 PM
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