It’s been a bit of a dark, crazy week at my house. No details forthcoming quite yet, but the catchphrase constantly thrown my way by acquaintances and family has been ‘there’s light at the end of the tunnel.’ I do appreciate it, though I’m not sure I’m really ready to grasp all the implications inherent, but as the other catchphrase goes… ‘Thy Will be Done.’ Oddly, and despite my feelings of helplessness and frustration, sadness and fury, and yes, relief… I find the second much more comforting. As I told a close friend last night, our God is an awesome God indeed. He truly WANTS us to pass Him the buck, and at this point, the ability to forfeit claim on the ‘what ifs’ is PROFOUNDLY relieving.

In the meantime, all I have to do is live my life and pray. And that… That, in the middle of all the dark and crazy… I can do. If I can just manage that, see, I’ll be in no danger of forgetting this.

*
Sometime in the Indefinable Future

“What does it feel like to be the recipient of a miracle, bub?’

‘Well, it beats the heck out of being dead,’ Jed said. “Or of dying, anyway. I’ve never found the latter much of a laugh, and I’m pretty experienced by now.’

‘Yeah, there’s that. You need to cut that out; it gets a little nervewracking. Seriously though. I don’t suppose you’ve had any personal experience with tunnels and lights or whatnot that you can throw at an old skeptic?’

Jed couldn’t help but be amused.

‘Tunnels, no,’ he said, selecting another cashew. ‘Light… that’s a bit more of a complicated a matter. Or maybe, and conversely and confusingly… A simpler one.’

‘Oh?’

‘The analogy you’re thinking on defines light, or the Light, as a focal, and focused, point. In reality, or at least in my experience, it manifests all around and literally everywhere all at once, and not just at the given, deathly moment either. And it’s constant. Immutably and immovably and irrevocably constant.’

‘And have you seen this light? Physically?’ Kenny leaned forward. ‘At the deathly moment, or at any other time, for that matter?’

Jed set the cashews aside.

‘Again, it’s a question of context,’ he said. “The simple answer again is ‘yes, of course.’ The simpler answer lies in the answer to an even simpler question… “What allows you to see?’

‘Mm?’

‘Well, we can’t see in the dark, can we? Not without the aid of devices that allow us light. More essentially, perhaps most essentially… We see by light – the Light. It’s such an absolute, so fundamental and obvious, that we don’t even see the need to ask the question, much less look for the answer. It’s just obvious. Immutable, Immovable… Constant. The rest… The rest is just practical and applied metaphor.’

*

If anyone here cares to send a few prayers up on my family’s behalf in the meantime, I have St. Monica, St. Rita, St. Jude, St. Ann, St. Joseph, and of course, St. Francis and the Blessed Mother, all on call-waiting.

XO,
Dom