"Why, God"?

In case you have missed it, here is a very good column by Maureen Dowd, of the New York Times, conveying the message of a friend of hers, a priest.

"Why, God?"

It struck a chord with me, not because of its tone and intelligent compassion, but because of these words (all the highlights are mine, not the author's):

One true thing is this: Faith is lived in family and community, and God is experienced in family and community. We need one another to be God’s presence. When my younger brother, Brian, died suddenly at 44 years old, I was asking “Why?” and I experienced family and friends as unconditional love in the flesh. They couldn’t explain why he died. Even if they could, it wouldn’t have brought him back. Yet the many ways that people reached out to me let me know that I was not alone. They really were the presence of God to me. They held me up to preach at Brian’s funeral. They consoled me as I tried to comfort others. Suffering isolates us. Loving presence brings us back, makes us belong.         

These words, especially those highlighted ones, reflect a truth I've come to know. I know they are true by the very absence of such love in my life at the time when I needed it the most. My family and friends - but mostly my family - on whom I had always relied without questioning our "communion" and their unconditional love, let me down in the most unimaginable way possible.

It was that, and nothing else, that caused me to lose the faith that had been my wings throughout my dazzling, unusual, mostly wonderful life. 
(N. B. Reader, you most likely haven't the slightest idea of what exactly I am talking about here, so refrain from judgement - not for my sake, but for your own.)

But I haven't given up hope of regaining it.
Without it, I am as good as dead.
We all are.


All the best, whoever you are, wherever you are.
May everything you wish for others come true for you. ;)



IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU MAY LIKE:
Greetings to the Unknown Human (and non-human, too)

Farewell, the End of Time

Finally: here it is, people.

I can't believe it, no more than you can believe it. 

After so many years of... not exactly waiting or even paying much attention to it, but wondering (in the sense of thinking full of wonder) about it... it is HERE.

I remember as if it were yesterday the day when i first heard about it; I think it must have been in the mid-1990s.

I remember how almost-proud I felt when I told people it would be a Friday or Sunday (the original date I heard was December 23rd), that fateful day when everything that ever was would change. 

I felt almost-proud of the fact that I had checked my PC calendar so far ahead in time.

Friday, December 21, 2012.

Sunday, December 23, 2012.

said the calendar.

How could such a distant, abstract date even be a day of the week:
a Friday, a Sunday?

How far, far away it seemed! 

It seemed far to the point of being abstract. Not a real-real date. Not a date that we would actually get to live through. Certainly not the "we" that we were then. (You know what I mean.) 

And now, it is here.

It is happening TOMORROW - just a few hours from now.
And I know that in less than an hour's time, in just a few minutes, I will be sitting here, watching, awe-struck and in disbelief, as the clock turns to December 21, 2012, the mythical date of all dates.
And I still won't believe it.

I am only fearing the anticlimax of it, and I am mourning in advance the end of so many hopes and dreams. Not mine - I never paid serious attention to it - but of many other people, whose world is my world. 

Your world is my world, and I want it to be a beautiful, healthy and happy world. I want your wildest dreams to come true, because they are my dreams too.

But, just in case, I'll take heed of Spurinna's mythical reply to Julius Caesar's equally mythical: "Well, here we are, Spurinna: the Ides of March have come."

"Aye, they have come - but they have not yet gone."

And that's why I am writing this now. ;)

Finally, I'll borrow a part of the latest message on our sister blog, which has all to do with Time:

Keep your heart upright and light, like a plant reaching for the Sun. 

See you on the other side of Time.

Don't be too surprised if it looks remarkably similar to this side. ;)