When necessary, use words...

I have never been in the zone like yesterday night. Everything from the last few months (and some things from way further) just came together at that point in time and made sense. I wasn't preachy, I didn't even say much at all, but by the end of the evening we were giddy with laughter and delight.

I have seen, not so long ago, an elderly priest entrust himself to disease and ultimately also to death. It was the most loving and trusting thing I've ever witnessed. I can't believe I was there. I don't feel worthy to be around so much of the real deal.

Now I don't need to relate that event in order to bring about its trust and delight. Such events become part of me after a while. I just need remember this trust. And bizarrely it enables me to enter doubt, pain and ambiguity without freaking out too much. After a little while you feel that trust too. I caught it from the old priest and you caught it from me.

OMG OMG OMG !!!

I struggled not to fall down on my face right on the road in Durham and utter nothing but "Thank You God, we Love You the best we can!" for the next thousand years (and become a beautiful set of nondescript atoms in the process).

I could not believe the relevance of my months of doubting, until I had a chat someone with (possibly) terminal cancer who shared the very same doubts.

When I'm nothing but a collection of atoms of dust, cremated by fire or just eaten up by worms, I believe that the God who created the whole entire freaking universe will say: "Danielle, my Beloved, Come out"!

I believe that with popes, I believe that with bishops, I believe that with drunk nobodies. I believe that with anybody who would believe (or even attempt to believe) that with me.

God loves sinners.

God wants to spend eternity with sinners like you and like me.

And... Guess what? God will.

Clergy wife 101: learning the (very) hard way

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 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.

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.