I’ve been meaning to write a health update since last September.  I sat down then to write that everything was still great (yay!) except that gosh, I was really very tired.  Just a cold, though, no worries.

Seven or so colds later (I lost count at six, but there was at least one more), I started to turn a corner around the new year.   I’m definitely better than I was in the fall, but every time I start to be happy with the new normal, the new normal decides maybe I’m getting a bit uppity about this “having energy” thing.

But things are better.  Late February I was at a parish event, enjoying myself and enjoying seeing all the good things happening at church, and I was thinking to myself, “Why haven’t I gotten more involved with this group sooner?”  And then I remember: Oh yeah, it’s only been a month that I could reliably have a conversation without getting a headache.  I really enjoy that change, by the way.

So I’m writing on a day when I’m flopping around miserably, utterly useless, mostly flat on my back.  But I’m hopeful that’s a one-off, and with a little rest I’ll be back to the new preferred-normal.  But we’ll see.  I really have no idea.

 

My first luminous mystery this week went to Margaret Rose Realy, the Catholic Gardening Lady.  She’s the author of A Garden of Visible Prayer: Creating a Personal Sacred Space One Step at a Time, which is the book that helped me create what you see in this very attractive cell phone photo.  I think of her a lot this time of year, because I pray poorly indoors, so I end up going outside, and sometimes even end up in the official “prayer garden” part of my yard.

What you see:

Plants that aren’t dead.  Took a lot of trial and error, and finally a husband who installed an irrigation system, to discover species that could survive this particular corner.  It faces southeast and is not shaded, and thus in the summer average morning temperatures are in the triple-digits.  Early spring is the only time it looks quite this cheerful — in part because there’s a preponderance of early-spring-blooming plants, since nothing put in the ground after May 15 is likely to survive, and the garden store always sells in March – April that which blooms in March – April.

Seashells. That’s the blurry mass of white stuff in the center.  The first time we went to the beach with the kids, several years ago, I collected a bazillion seashells. I can’t help myself, they’re all so interesting, even the broken the ones.  Especially the broken ones.  So I had all these grocery bags of damp, salty, seaweed-y seashells.  And of course I live in a very small house, if you calculate size by creating a ratio of junk-to-square-feet.  So where to put the seashells? And then I remembered that seashells come from outside, and thus . . . they can stay outside.

This makes me happy, because it means when I go to the beach, I can bring home as many shells as I want.  You can’t say that about many things.

A garden gnome.  Thus far I’ve failed in my efforts at acquiring a suitable piece of sacred art for the prayer garden.  Meanwhile, we had this gutter running right through the view from our screen porch.  I kept trying to hide the gutter, which is not attractive even by people-who-collect-junk standards.  Finally I gave it up, and claimed the spouse’s garden gnome from another corner of the yard.  He (the gnome, not the spouse) was appointed master of the waterworks.  He’s got a large overturned flower pot, broken just right, for a cottage, and a collection of overturned broken tea cups for his various pets.  The place is so much homier now that there’s someone to keep company the toad that lives behind the bush.

Rosary Dog.  I’m a sucker for a good ball dog, always have been.  So now the dog knows that when she hears me grab a plastic rosary off the hook in the kitchen, it’s time to bolt outside and find a toy.  In this photo she’s posing with her chewed-up Frisbee, but FYI it’s actually easier to pray while throwing a tennis ball.

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So that’s my report.  Cheer up Margaret Rose Realy (who could use it) by reporting in with your garden updates.  Thanks!

What is the Christian response to suffering? We can take the question from any number of angles, and in time I’m hoping to hit most of them.  It’s a thorny — meaning, “Ouch!” — topic, and as Joe Paprocki observed, it always comes up. Sooner or later everyone passes by way of the Cross.

Today’s topic: What do you do when it’s your turn to hang?

I’m going with the straight-up What Did Jesus Actually Do? answer on this one:

1. Sweat blood.

Jesus lived a sinless, perfect life.  It turns out the sinless, perfect response to the prospect of unspeakable suffering isn’t some kind of happy-clappy, “It’ll be fine!  I love this!” song and dance. By the grace of God, maybe it will be fine.  Maybe you will love it.  But maybe you won’t.  Maybe you’ll sweat blood.  Par for the course.  Not a sign that you’re lacking in faith.

2. Try to get out of it.

Father, if it be your will, let this cup pass from me.  Complete abandonment to the will of God does not prelude prayer for deliverance.  So long as not my will but yours be done is tacked on the end, we’re good. And see “sweating blood” above: We can give ourselves over to complete trust in God, and still not think of it all as one big party.  If it’s one big party, it’s not suffering.

3. Fall down.  Repeatedly.

Will God give you more than you can handle?  Sure.  He just won’t give you more than He can handle.  Sometimes you’ll be laid out so flat the only way you’ll get up is if some Roman comes along and commandeers helpers for you.

4. Die.

The Author of Life is not stuck in the here-and-now. Life on earth as we know it is not our ultimate end.

Is death good? No.  Does it happen to every one of us? Yes.  Being Christian, having faith, doing everything right . . . none of that is a free pass out of mortality.

God can and does frequently intervene to heal, revive, and restore us in our earthly lives.  The life of our Lord was one long series of deliverances after another . . . until, one day, it wasn’t anymore.  At the end of all things, we pass into eternal life by way of death.

You don’t die because you lack faith.  You rise to eternal life because you’ve got it.