It’s been one of those “she has a three” weeks, to be honest. 2020 in general and the pandemic in particular has tied together all the salley ropes of my alarm bells, so if you ring one, you ring them all. A church friend died suddenly; another friend has been in hospital; people I know are getting tested, getting exposed; my own health has been iffy in ways that ought to be familiar but with the backlighting of anxiety turns to a landscape of monsters.
So I did some things that Future Me would appreciate. I wrote down contact numbers and an outline of directions if I should be taken suddenly ill — “I, being of as sound mind and body as can reasonably be expected…” I bought a new sauté pan with a glass lid and used it to make Indian butter chickpeas; the kind of gift that keeps giving. Washed some dishes. Shredded some junk mail. Accepted the offer of local publication for a story. Sat on the front lawn of my building with a friend (she, socially distanced in a lawn chair) with a glass of rosé, watching the dusk fall.
A spiritual director I once had used to talk about “practicing the absence” as a photo negative to Brother Lawrence’s “practicing the presence”: strangely, it involves doing many of the same things. It was not a spirituality, nor a practice, that attracted me much. I did not have to practice a presence that was with me whether I wanted it or not, and doing tasks mindfully seemed to me to be extra makework for the ADHD brain. I preferred the kataphatic movement — the affirmation of images, the celebration of festal pleasures, the shame-less pursuit of fruition — to the apophatic. This also is Thou. My soul was not built to have lovers, and John of the Cross’s metaphor of going to one’s lover in the dark of loss was doubly alien to my sensibility.
But I think I’m in a place where I need an apophatic orientation. Neither is this Thou. Let the images crack apart like dropped tiles; let my need to care burn its last slip on a makeshift wilderness altar; let the treadle of sacred time turn on joys I don’t feel as I give it its minimal push; let it go, let it all go, fashion myself no facile hopes and cling to no impoverished pictures.
I once thought this kind of thing was as self-indulgent and over-dramatic as the lovers of the Affirmative Way were accused of being; but it is not. It’s just the offering that presents itself to be made. Best to do it by choice. Ma foi est mort; vive ma foi.
I’m sure there are some fellow pilgrims on the Via Negativa just now. I’m sure I’ll probably find them. That’s usually how these things work. Bless you, and let’s walk on.