What We've Lost

It is a season of loss, and I know it.  That's why I make my kids come up with something each night at dinner, because gratitude is easy when there's lots to be thankful for, it's harder when there is less.  I want them to practice while there is still far more.  They grieve even if they don't know it,is waht they are doing, over prom, over graduation, over friends, over trips to the store, music lessons, track meets, birthday parties, and yes, even mass with Mom and Dad.  They will miss all the people who filled their lives on a daily basis until March 13th.  

Reading the news and following what's going on in Italy, I worry about the far less we will face in the coming months.  

I miss work, and I know most of us do, and most of us are applying all our mental muscles to carving out some normal to make this new not normal less strange.  The losses must be acknowledged, it is part of the clearing out process.  So I will also ask them each night, what they miss and try to give everyone a means to remedy some of that via tech, via talking, via alternatives.  Knowing what they're grieving today helps too because the little things are going to matter more.   


All the comforts of ordinariness in our lives, of routine, of value through our own business, of community by mere proximity, and of entertainment substituting for joy, have been revealed as what they aren't by their absence.   This is one hell of a Lent but we have been kicked out of Fake Eden, and are being invited into a better one even in this time of social distancing.   

We must go deeper, and this unknowable desert we're wandering into, has a point.  It is to meet God face to face. Up until now, we could find Him easily, in the Sacraments.  Now, we must all seek.   

God has not been taken away.  We've just discovered all the ways in which we do not see Him. 
The other thing we've lost, is our capacity to use shortcuts both to distract and to see Him.  

We will have to begin responding to all His invitations into friendship through acts of the will.  We can no longer be organic in our responses, we must be deliberate. 

I used to donate to the Soup Kitchen when they held their annual drive, because someone reminded me, "They're doing that."  Now, it must be a willful choice. Everything is now a willful choice.  Writing, prayer, exercise, work, presence, all of it is now something which requires assent.  We cannot trust to the routine to make sure these things happen. We also know, it is hard, because we are still seeking to stay attatched to the way things were but won't be again for some time. 

Perhaps that's the real reality Lent seeks to teach us as a season, we should not be content with being comfortable with our relationship with God. We can rest in Him, but we are nto to rest in our seeking.