Seizing the Last Few Hours

The final twenty-four hours of any life is always the most melancholy. This is, apparently, most true when you know you will miss the people and places you are leaving. Every chair in which you sit and window you peer becomes memorized for use much later when you know you will need the courage and comfort of that moment.  I suppose we all do this - I suppose old men do this when they remember that gas, gum and Coca-cola were all once sold for a nickel.  This time around the pieces I am frantically trying to memorize are more abstract than I could ever hope to remember.  So my memories simply become a hope that I will soon be able to return here and experience things the way they are now.  Though, I have been reminded that I am not merely leaving here but driving through.  

The way the light hits the B of A building on the right gets under my skin like a warm chill.

My fondness for the West is always constructed from the idea that good weather makes all life better.  It is only when I visit the East that I rekindle my life long desire to be here if I must be anywhere at all.  Here there is a sense of belonging that is lost on many places in America.  Here the streets have names with meaning.  Like returning home I come to these cities because it is my origin as an American.  Though this is only my first experience in Providence, the expressions of Boston and New York and other Eastern cities flow through the people with only a nuance of pride that they are not like the people from anywhere else. Perhaps I will join them again before rain turns to snow and sun to cloud.

It's time to pack the green duffel again, only this time I am not anxious to do so.  I'd rather leave my few belongings in the places they currently lie.  But this is not entirely true.  I want to stay here because I'm afraid of jumping in the cold water of Massachusetts.  In the end I'll rather have jumped and warmed to my surroundings quickly than hesitate on the poolside here.  Within a few hours my life will be squeezed into a pill only half my size and reality will set in that I am going somewhere very much unfamiliar.  I have been raised as Christian as anybody - probably more so - but I have missed the Catholic youth train by about twenty years.  I find myself reciting prayers in their Latin origins as if it would make a difference in the end.  I am told by my superiors at Agape they will greet me for morning prayer tomorrow due to my late arrival tonight.  In the few short years I have been Catholic I remember praying liturgy of the hours (divine office) only twice. I have a dueling fear that I am spiritually inadequate for the tasks to come and a realization that I am probably more trained in Catholic history and ideology than most laity.  I know I will be helped from the warm voices that already represent this community and I will be jumping in the cool waters with two others.  Despite the words and feelings I am very much driven to live amongst these people because in many ways they are my people and I to them.  My memories of Bethlehem Farm in West Virginia is enough to remind me that I would give up everything to be taught by people who have been doing this for a long time.  For what seems like a lifetime religion has been the thing that needs to be discussed and understood - for once I hope to be in a place that I can be religious for the sake of it's initial cause, to better ourselves and others through peace and love.  What more did Christ need say than to love your neighbor as yourself.  All life seems to spring from this understanding. Five years have passed since I was handed Deus Caritas Est from the pen of Benedict XVI. Starting tomorrow I will start to put those words to action in a way a mouse moves a mountain. But faith, like so many things I lack, can move mountains. There is much to be learned.