DEAR MAKER OF THE STARRY SKIES

First line of another great old-timey hymn…

We sang it here at St. Andrew’s Abbey the other day at Mass…

Blessed Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

I make my final promises as a Benedicine Oblate at today’s Mass. They give you a piece of “parchment” and you hand-write out the pertinent passage of the oblation–“I offer myself to almighty God, through the Blessed Virgin Mary and our Holy Father Benedict…and I do promise before God and all his saints the reformation of my life, and the service of God and humanity…This I do on the 12th day of December, in the year of our Lord, 2024″…

Then apparently you sign it on the altar and then the Abbot signs. Information, instructions, and preparations have been slightly scattershot. The former Oblate Director, the good Fr. Francis, died last summer and I’m sure the transition has been difficult. I prevailed upon the good Br. Sixtus, Oblate Director at Portsmouth Abbey in Rhode Island, and he took time out of his busy schedule for a zoom chat a few weeks ago and that was a great gift and a balm. And one of the dear monks here will hear my Confession later this morning before Mass.

One of my beloved brothers will drive out to the Abbey from his home in the desert about 40 minutes away, and my treasured friends Tensie and Dennis drove down yesterday, 3 1/2 hours, from Santa Maria, where they live, on the Central Coast. Having people take so much trouble makes me feel unworthy and vulnerable. But it’s kind of a big deal, a formal commitment that ups the ante, calls my bluff, invites me to ask how serious I am, really, about this life. “Do you love me?” “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” “Feed my sheep”…

And grow up. Quit frittering away time on activities that don’t matter and morbid self-reflection. Quit obsessing .Quit counting the cost, keeping score, and holding grudges. Get up off your mat and walk.

I have the Surrender Novena Sacred Heart of Jesus prayer card and scoff all you want, the older I get, the more I love and use these again old-timey (seemingly) prayer aids. Basically the text runs: Why do you ask me for this and that and then proceed to fret, angst and obsess over the results? Why leave it all to me and it will all work out! Then you pray ten times, “Jesus, I surrender myself to You: You take care of everything.”

Well, why not? One thing this shows me is how very much I am NOT surrendered. I do live with probably if you could measure these things a fairly high level of base anxiety. Such has it always been and no doubt always will be. I have chosen, for better or worse, not to take medication. Thus, the Great Physician…

And thus as well, the many people I know pray for me. The older I get, the more I also see those people (along with many others) have kept me, and continue to keep me, alive…

Anyway, it is beyond beautiful here in the high (Mojave) desert with the sycamores and maybe cottonwoods all deep golden with leaves, and yuccas, agaves, Joshua trees, and the fragrant California chaparral dear to my heart. It’s pretty darn cold at night and in the morning (colder yesterday by about six degrees in fact than in NYC) and pitch black still when you leave your cozy room at 5 minutes of 6 (or earlier if you want to sit in the darkened chapel for a while before Vigils) and traverse the frosty path down to the church.

So many beautiful touches around the monastery: the spotlight outside the chunky stained-glass windows so that in the darkened sanctuary one shows a pale milky underlain-by-gold green and the other touches of orange and blue. The candle above the icon of the Blesed Virgin to whom we turn and sing the Salve Regina after Compline. The vase of creamy white and blood-red flowers (roses, maybe) beside the tabernacle yesterday at noon Mass. The dispensers with food pellets for the ducks in the duck pond. The space heater in the public women’s bathroom. The light sensor outside my room so I don’t have to fumble around in the dark for my key.

If you walk before 5:30 Vespers, you can hear the owls hooting. And the skies, true to form, are starry, starry, starry.