The Holy Ghost, Emblazoned in Ice

It won't last. But right now, the house is grey, the kids are all still asleep, there is a fire going in the wood stove, and the big sister, at least, of all ice storms is going on outside in our corner of the California Sierra mountains. It is remarkably cozy here, seeing the elements but protected from them. I have my coffee next to me, and upstairs my husband is getting the day started in his home office.

The calm is nice and I am grateful for it. I did not sleep well last night.

I don't know if anyone else has the kind of nightmare I do. I don't dream about monsters or aliens or murderers like my kids do. I wake up visualizing the future, in the most vivid detail, with the bleakest outcomes imaginable. The air of tragedy seeps backwards so my whole life seems like a futile pageant of errors and failed impulses towards good, like a novel by Thomas Hardy. This time I woke up trembling and chilled and could not sleep again for hours.

I am not sure how it's best to cope with this; presently, I immerse myself in prayer and make mental notes about the things that loom the largest, to consider them in the morning. Usually by morning the significance of them is gone, which is disturbing in itself because it leads me to wonder if those 3 am vigils are the only time I'm seeing clearly. Like the boy in the Sixth Sense, I see ghosts, but only sometimes, at night. Aren't they still there the rest of the time, when I don't see them? Aren't they waiting for my help?

I have a lot to be thankful for, a lot that is going right, but like everyone else I have a lot of things to be deeply worried about as well. Life is not easy nowadays; we all have our issues to deal with, don't we? And my natural sensibility is more Greek than Roman -- if you notice, the Roman sensibilities were informed by confidence in their ability and natural virtue, and then informed by nostalgia for their past glory days. The Greek outlook was more tragic -- when everything seems to be going the best, that's when fate or the gods are most likely to be steering you towards a giant crash where the seeds of destruction are within you and your best intentions and all your human gifts and capacities aren't enough to forestall it.

On top of that basic melancholy, a Christian conversion has been happily imposed (infused?), so I have a Flannery O'Connor type conviction that however bad it may look -- and sometimes it looks pretty bad -- that is not the end of the story. One's own inadequacy is not all one has to rely on. Redemption is wrested from the jaws of futility; the Holy Ghost descends.

The old life in him was exhausted. He awaited the coming of new. It was then that he felt the beginning of a chill, a chill so peculiar, so light, that it was like a warm ripple across the deeper sea of cold. His breath came short. The fierce bird which through the years of his childhood and the days of his illness had been poised over his head, waiting mysteriously, appeared all at once to be in motion. Asbury blanched and the last film of illusion was torn as if by a whirlwind from his eyes. He saw that for the rest of his days, frail, racked, but enduring, he would live in the face of a purifying terror. A feeble cry, a last impossible protest escaped him. But the Holy Ghost, emblazoned in ice instead of fire, continued, implacable, to descend.

Goethe says:

“The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred….unforeseen incidents, meetings, and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.”

This is what I believe with my will, but when the ice storm enters my psyche, it's difficult sometimes to stir myself to move in the first place. Won't it be futile? Will I not do more harm than good?

Pope Benedict responds:

In nihil ab nihilo quam cito recidimus (How quickly we fall back from nothing to nothing): so says an epitaph of that period. In this phrase we see in no uncertain terms the point Paul was making. In the same vein he says to the Thessalonians: you must not “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Th 4:13)

Later in the encyclical:

We can try to limit suffering, to fight against it, but we cannot eliminate it. It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater. It is not by sidestepping or fleeing from suffering that we are healed, but rather by our capacity for accepting it, maturing through it and finding meaning through union with Christ, who suffered with infinite love.

Ah well! I think it is time to hug Aidan, who is now awake and telling me about his toy train "going to college" to pick up Liam. Liam is here from college, and I can go make a hot breakfast so that when the other kids wake up it will be to good food and warmth. Later I will clean the bathroom, and vacuum the rug. That may not be the solution to all the "sorrows of the world" but it does seem to help clear away some of the frozen, "waiting for calamity" feeling. I will try to help those poor ghosts through loving action.