Wafting as a Wafter

This morning after Mass my confessor was available.

Besides my impatience, I commented that I am not pleasing to Jesus, that I seem to be wafting, that I am a wafter. There seems no real purpose for my existence, that I remain on the periphery of this existence. I added that I hate these clothes, but I am trying to "play the part" (ie. to conform and blend).

He wanted to know where this is coming from, why I think these things. I could not say. I'm not sure why except from viewing my life. It is hard to fathom that God would allow me to have several degrees, much experience and skills, and then to not utilize them. But later, driving back to Agnus Dei, I thought of Fr. Thomas, a newly ordained priest in India who just a couple of weeks after ordination was in a car accident, returning from yet another ordination of yet more priests (India is burning with the Faith, at least in Kerala). He is paralyzed from the chest down and has been in a rehabilatation facility in Spain. I don't know how he is doing now, but the goal was to teach him to do as much as he could for his personal needs, and to return to ministry in his priestly vocation.

My confessor then spoke of a couple of hermits he knew. When he said "hermits", once again I was stunned, for I still do not think or picture myself as a hermit. He said the hermits he knew were rarely seen. They lived out and away from an Archabbey, and they came in to concelebrate Mass every week or couple of weeks. He said just seeing the hermits, and knowing that otherwise they were praying for him, really impressed him. He said they were doing something that he could not do.

Well, I wanted to interrupt and say that it seems I cannot do it, either! It seems like that, some days. And it is also a point to consider my reaction when he said "hermits". I do not go softly into this dark night, as a supurb writer once wrote.

He was trying to encourage me, and he reminded me of the good of prayer and of what is going on that may never be known. I told him of the thoughts of being a seed, and of wondering if the Holy Father was ever given the time to be a seed, to die in the ground, to remain in the ground and never know what the plant would bear, or even know there was a plant above ground. I mentioned that my confessor himself is on-call day and night, and is not allowed such time. He responded that it is in his prayer that he goes deeply into the quiet and still, and it is there that he is like a seed buried. These times come and go from being a seed to having more of life be the plant.

I said that I must be a seed that stays in the ground a long time, disintegrates, and maybe without much of a plant if any. Some seeds are like that.

But again he reminded me of the interactions with people, here and there, and of coming to daily Mass and simply being seen at daily Mass. Yes, this is so. I do have some interactions, and I thought of the strangers I meet at TJMaxx, although I've ceased that wafting except for a trip to return items!

Today the hermit wafts to her hometown, nearby, to get a haircut, teeth cleaned, and then to pick up a long-time, very elderly friend and have lunch at yet another woman's house, in the country. Yes, the younger woman often takes jabs at Catholicism, or asks pointed questions such as how do I think about the priest scandal; but this is all part of the Order of the Present Moment, and I must meet these friends and the Present Moment as if approaching God in prayer--balanced prayer with much praise and thanksgiving, some contrition, and some supplication.