I'm booked in for confession next Wednesday.
I was having a hard time pinpointing my latest collection of sins. Mostly laziness, things left undone or not done well, quasi nonexistent evangelising, a good hundred tiny lies and cheating on the train a couple of times.
And then today something cropped up that left me speechless and wanting to give up trying to be a Christian and just plunge head on into endless despair.
The kind of massive sins that makes you cry out "Oh God no! How could I do that? Why am trying so hard to do the right thing all the bloody time and then go on to sin like I'm the devil incarnate? How could I be so self-involved that I did not even notice I was commiting a sin so huge that I would never be able to forget it?"
I'm not very good at socialising after church. Mostly I want to ponder my own thoughts. Chitchat with the card-carrying Tory old ladies used to bore me to death.
I got a bit better and I now make sure I eat something sugary before church so I'm not grumpy as hell when coffee time comes.
I was having a hard time pinpointing my latest collection of sins. Mostly laziness, things left undone or not done well, quasi nonexistent evangelising, a good hundred tiny lies and cheating on the train a couple of times.
And then today something cropped up that left me speechless and wanting to give up trying to be a Christian and just plunge head on into endless despair.
The kind of massive sins that makes you cry out "Oh God no! How could I do that? Why am trying so hard to do the right thing all the bloody time and then go on to sin like I'm the devil incarnate? How could I be so self-involved that I did not even notice I was commiting a sin so huge that I would never be able to forget it?"
I'm not very good at socialising after church. Mostly I want to ponder my own thoughts. Chitchat with the card-carrying Tory old ladies used to bore me to death.
I got a bit better and I now make sure I eat something sugary before church so I'm not grumpy as hell when coffee time comes.
I do engage in chitchat, sometimes inadvertently dropping the f-word, or even launching into a tirade about why Karl Marx was right. The parish tolerates me well enough because they love my fiance.
A few times, a guy that comes fairly unregulalrly asked le if H and I wanted to visit him at home, because he was having trouble coping with his wife's illness. "I'm her only support" he said, "it's really hard".
So after church I would tell H. "Look this guy wants us to go have dinner sometime because his wife is not well at all". H said well, it's not my parish, I can't do visits, that's a job for the priest in charge, we'll have to ask him for permission. So I said yeah but someone's got to go.
Not that I remembered the guy's name, or asked for his phone number or anything.
A few times, a guy that comes fairly unregulalrly asked le if H and I wanted to visit him at home, because he was having trouble coping with his wife's illness. "I'm her only support" he said, "it's really hard".
So after church I would tell H. "Look this guy wants us to go have dinner sometime because his wife is not well at all". H said well, it's not my parish, I can't do visits, that's a job for the priest in charge, we'll have to ask him for permission. So I said yeah but someone's got to go.
Not that I remembered the guy's name, or asked for his phone number or anything.
I guess you can all see where this is going...
The guy asked me and H. over for dinner three times over about six months. Each time I said we'd try to organise something.
H. and I had this somewhere at the back of our mind.
We also had a lot more on, including crazy work deadlines, someone jumping in front of a train right in front of H.'s house, a young cousin of mine getting kicked out of his prestigious university and needing a weekend of TLC, and two separate wedding ceremonies to organise.
All the while, I was battling a serious onslaught of nihilism and completely lost my footing.
This morning the guy came to church and wept the whole way through. His wife had just died.
Which part of "my wife is dying, I am on my own, can H and you come to dinner" did I not understand? Three times in a row? Over several months? We let the guy's wife die without support for him, without support for her, and without extended sacraments.
Damn my overblown sentimental piety!
I think I'm going to give Eucharistic adoration a miss this week. I'm stunned and I can't quite believe the inequities on my own hands. I never thought I'd be someone to neglect her neighbour to such an extend. To let down the Church I love.
And all the way I was trying so hard, I was wanting so much to serve, to be an "Instrument of His grace" and all that jazz. Cheating on the train was pretty harmless, considering...
I'm gonna hang out with my ol' mate Kind David tonight and afterwards live with the shame until the end of my days.
H. and I had this somewhere at the back of our mind.
We also had a lot more on, including crazy work deadlines, someone jumping in front of a train right in front of H.'s house, a young cousin of mine getting kicked out of his prestigious university and needing a weekend of TLC, and two separate wedding ceremonies to organise.
All the while, I was battling a serious onslaught of nihilism and completely lost my footing.
This morning the guy came to church and wept the whole way through. His wife had just died.
Which part of "my wife is dying, I am on my own, can H and you come to dinner" did I not understand? Three times in a row? Over several months? We let the guy's wife die without support for him, without support for her, and without extended sacraments.
Damn my overblown sentimental piety!
I think I'm going to give Eucharistic adoration a miss this week. I'm stunned and I can't quite believe the inequities on my own hands. I never thought I'd be someone to neglect her neighbour to such an extend. To let down the Church I love.
And all the way I was trying so hard, I was wanting so much to serve, to be an "Instrument of His grace" and all that jazz. Cheating on the train was pretty harmless, considering...
I'm gonna hang out with my ol' mate Kind David tonight and afterwards live with the shame until the end of my days.
1 comment:
Often, in my first encounters with the assortment of events that can arise with street-involved folks (man weeping on the street with all his belongings at hand, naked woman on the corner, gang fight breaking out on the sidewalk, etc.), I have been terrible ashamed and guilt-ridden about how I reacted. I later realized what I could or should have done or tried to do, but that realization didn't change the fact that I had fucked things up and let people down when the event first happened.
However, a bit of a sense of redemption has come from the fact that I have chosen to continue to expose myself to the spaces where those events occur and I have been much happier with the way I have responded the second and third times those events took place (maybe this is why I resonate so strongly with the protagonist in "Lord Jim" by Joseph Conrad?).
So, hey, we all tend to fuck things up the first time around. Lord knows, nobody taught us what we were supposed to do when we encounter situations for which we have no frame of reference. The key, I think, is to continue to put yourself in a place where people like the man you mention will still ask you over dinner.
I know that this doesn't do anything for the guy you let down, and I don't mention it to minimize your feelings about that. Just sharing some of my own experiences around this sort of thing.
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