Nada te Turbe

Nada te Turbe.

Neither depths nor heights,

Neither length nor breadth,

Neither pleasure nor pain,

Nothing can separate

The ocean from its bed.

Nada

I shall not be perturbed,

I shall not be turbulent,

I shall not be disturbed,

Neither shall my soul be turbid anymore.

Nada te Turbe

Once I looked up to see the point

Of an iron spike in a sinister hand

Stabbing down upon me. I shook with fear

And thrashed and splashed away, but the spike passed

Through my heart and left not a single mark.

Nada.

And now I rest in limpid clarity

For well I know no evil in the world

Can harm me. No knife in the world

Can harm the sea.

Nada te Turbe.

I rest undisturbed, calm, at peace

Salt made sweet and ever filled

By water flowing from the Temple’s side

Opened by a Lance.

Transparent, the all but infinite sea He holds

In the hollow of His hand. And I drip

Through the hole left by the spike,

Mingled,

Lost in His Blood.

Nada te Turbe.

Stillness

I kneel and pray, a worn out listening prayer,

A prayer of silence, of quieting my mind,

Of laying out before Him all my care,

In quiet darkness, in soft close emptiness

Of midnight in this empty, holy place.

Gazing at the crucifix before my face,

And under it the tabernacle veiled

In purple. I kneel before it, resigned

To the ineptitude of language; words fail

Beneath the crushing weights that vaguely press

Upon my soul. I lay it at His feet,

Breathe and release all worry, fear and pain

The leaden weight of grief upon my chest,

The lump of tears unshed, my worst and best:

The love that sorrows, the pride that will not weep.

I have to let it go. I make no excuse,

You know it better than I. You know its worth,

Light of heaven, fumes of hell, dust of the earth

All tumbled in one heap, no earthly use

In my worrying about it all. One great big gnarly dump

Of human folly, sin, potential and Divine grace.

What is there for me to say? But let me hear.

There is a peace of soul in letting go,

In knowing I’m not you.

Peace Be With You

All my sins rise up before my eyes

And choke the light with memories of black.

These acts of mine I never can take back

The lusts, the hates, the snobbery, the lies

And simply you reply “Peace be with you.”

 I stand accused with nothing but the truth.

Thus I thought, desired, spoke and did.

These acts were mine and more, I am sure, lie hid

Buried in the subconscious of my youth.

But your only word to me, “Peace be with you.”

Hidden sins I cannot even bring

Before the accuser, hungry for my faults.

Unknown and festering in dark submental vaults

They lie in wait, and to my soul they cling.

But your command to me, “Peace be with you.”

New life, new love, new hopes send down the blade

Through the water’s shallow clarity

Below the shine of surface charity

Plunging into the murk I’ve left unsaid.

And sharply you remind me, “Peace be with you.”

Who knows what lives down there in all that silt?

The water’s peaceful surface boils in fright,

I blame the dredge for what it brings to light,

And still you plunge the blade in to the hilt

And fiercely promise me, “Peace be with you.”

For this you came, to bring the sword of peace

With wounded healing hands through silent war.

Prying, cutting, searching the very core,

Taking away so that you may increase

My hope. My only hope. “Peace be with you.”

Lesson in the Chinook

"Man's curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint--"

Today was a jump day. I had to jump out of a Chinook. This is one of the occupational hazards of my day job, that periodically they require me to parachute from an aircraft while in flight. It is one of my least favorite parts of the job. I hate heights. I'm also bigger than the average guy so I fall faster and I always hit hard. Jump days also suck up a lot of time.

Today for instance, we started at 0800, with rigging our rucksacks. Then the prejump brief, a quick break to get measured for some new gear, and before you know it, it's eleven and we are rushing to the hangar to hurry up and get our chutes on so we can make our hit time. Hurry up and rig, then, Oh, wait, someone forgot to do some paperwork so everyone sit down for an hour in harness and ruck. Then hurry up again to get out to the bird that's spinning up on the tarmac. We take off and start heading to the drop zone, but wait! The pilot and crew have some trainees on board so they are going to do some certification tasks. So we land and sit for thirty minutes. Then we take off and fly nap of the earth, zooming along a river bed, up over the banks and the treeline, down into the clear, banking, turning, diving and climbing like a rollercoaster. Then finally we level off and begin the pass over the drop zone. Everyone goes into the familiar routine, "Standup, hookup, check static line, check equipment, sound off for equipment check." We got all the way to "Standby!" before they called the winds at 15 knots. So we circled and checked again. Still 15 knots. So we circled again. Still 15 knots! So we all sat down while we circled once more, or maybe twice more. Then "Standup, hookup, etc. Again."

This time we jumped. I came screaming down fast as a load of bricks again, but landed in a nice, soft muddy patch so it didn't hurt too much. The winds were high enough that my chute didn't deflate and actually dragged me for a few inches before I popped both of my releases.

Then we jumped back on the bird, they buttoned up the ramp, and we took the scenic roller coaster route back. I had missed lunch because we were sitting in harness all day, so my stomach was already empty and queasy. With the ramp shut it got hot and stuffy, and the stale air smelled like diesel fumes and hot metal. I could feel my stomach bouncing around and my cheeks going pale. The other guys said I looked "even whiter than usual". The whole flight back I was focusing on not throwing up. It's all about breathing, and trying to relax.

It was on the return flight, I think, that the quote at the top of this post came into my head. It is from T.S.Eliot's "The Four Quartets". (The Dry Salvages, lines 199-203. No, I didn't know that from memory. I looked it up when I got home.)

I admit that I was pretty frustrated today. I couldn't help but think about all the other places I wished I was, the other things I wanted to be doing, the other people I would rather be spending time with. The frustration continued on the way home, with every traffic light, speed limit and even the other drivers adding to that sense of loss. I wanted to get home so I could begin doing other things that I actually care about. But T. S. Eliot's line kept returning to my mind. "The point of intersection of the timeless/ with time, is an occupation for the saint."

My mind was in New York, in South Carolina, In Virginia, in Panera Bread or Pho' Tai in Tacoma. What was on my mind was the past (the fun I had last night) and the future (upcoming weekends, get-togethers, leave, even the fact that I'm getting out of the army in a couple of years.) I was not in the present, which is the only point of intersection of the timeless with time. So I was not living as a saint would live.

Over the course of the day this has been my ongoing battle, to be present in this time, because this time alone is real. God is found only in the present, never in the past or the future. Leave time in September, as much as I look forward to it, is not what I have been given. It does not exist. I have been given this moment, with the smells, the heat, the headache, the noise, the nausea. The thick, numb feeling of my whole body from hours of bombardment with rotor noise is the gift I have been given. This is my calling, this moment, right here and now. The infinite presence of God is an intolerable notion sometimes, because it means there is no mistake. If I have been following Him, then here is where He has put me. And He did it on purpose. Dwelling endlessly on phantasms of where I wish I was is a sheer waste of precious time, time given me to become a saint. That time spent in discontented grumbling is time horribly unredeemed, unredeemed because I refuse to surrender it for redemption. Time is the stuff of which my eternity will be formed. Let me think twice before I spend my time grumbling.

Here and now and nowhere else is sanctity to be found. Here there are rosaries to be said, praises to be offered, petitions to be made, and redemption to be shared in. I have been given these inconveniences as a share (infinitesimal, but all I can handle) in the suffering that Jesus undergoes for the redemption of my family and my friends. As my mother used to say, "Offer it up!" Offering it up is nothing more than allowing Jesus to make you a partner in His redemptive suffering, a little co-redeemer if I may use the phrase. But to do that I must be present.

So while on the outside the story of my day went much like the paragraph above, a series of routine delays and inconveniences, interiorly my day was pretty much a volley of my mind, bouncing back and forth between irritation and resentment, and peace and gratitude. Going all in an instant from impatient muttering to prayers of thanksgiving, maledictions upon my fellow-man grudgingly reforged into prayers for my loved ones. A long, constant effort to drag my mind back from where it drifts to the call of God in this moment.

...An occupation for the saint--
But no occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us there is only the unattended
Moment..."

The Lenten Life

There is a certain comic heroic air
In a sidelong view of my silly petulance.
Clattering down in calamitous dusty thunder
Pasteboard cards demand to be rebuilt
Despite the dismay of the ruins of all that is.
But all that is, is far too big for me
I cannot bear too much of it at a time.
What is, is through nothing else but love
Meted out in generous frugality;
Forth from the Eternal Moment, cut to size
To fit the confines of restrictive time.
What is is greater praise than what is not
Diapers changed than greatness dreamed about;
And what is asked is greater than what is done
The mop demanded than the chosen Mass.
And so what is (this mop bucket) Is Indeed.
And here, and now, and nowhere else, all Grace,
All Strength, All Peace, All Joy, All Love, is found.

Eye of the Storm

A young man, old enough to shave, was walking home from work one evening and took a back street behind the local super market, which he usually didn’t take. He saw that there was a martial arts dojo on that street and as he walked past the door a man came out with a gym bag in one hand and a wooden bokken training sword in the other. He was middle aged, with glasses, of very average build. He looked like he could be a dentist or a barber, except for the wooden sword.


“Practicing some sword fighting?” The young man asked, flippantly. “Pretty sweet. I didn’t know they had sword fighting schools around anymore. Now, if I ever get into a sword fight I’ll know where to come.”

The older man smiled faintly and replied, “if you ever get into a sword fight, it will probably be too late.”

The youth paused, and then, a bit irritated, asked, “Come on, you really believe you’ll ever get in a sword fight? What’s the point of practicing something you’ll never use?”

The older man stopped walking and quietly looked the young man in the eye. Then, without any warning, he dropped the gym bag, both hands seized the hilt of his sword, and before the young man could blink, the sword was poised less than an inch from his temple. The older man had moved like lightening. His face was a mask of rage, and every muscle in his body was taut and straining. He had swung with the speed of a snake and the force of a home run, but had stopped less than an inch short of cracking the young man’s skull

The youth leapt back, spluttering and tripping, and fell over backwards, while the older man relaxed, his face became calm and peaceful once more, and he stood once again with the sword held in his left hand, hanging by his side. He was completely at ease as if nothing ahd ever happened.

The youth scrambled to his feet and ran up in his face. “What the ---- was that? You wanna get your ass kicked, old man? Think you’re really smart and cool? I wasn’t ready that time but if you wanna go I’ll take that stick and shove it up your ass. I ought to ------- stab you…”

“The point is this,” the man said in a low, calm voice, easily cutting through the torrent of expletives. “You experienced fear just then. The only way you know how to respond is with anger and threats. You were afraid, and then ashamed of being afraid, then afraid of being afraid, and then full of hatred towards the one who frightened you. But you do not even know why you were afraid.”

“Of course I ------- know why I was afraid. You swung a ------- stick at my head.”

“It was not the supposed danger to your life that frightened you. If you were working on a construction site and a steel girder slipped and almost struck you, you would not be afraid like that. You would not respond with anger at the piece of metal, even though your life would be just as much in danger. You were afraid because you were created to be loved, and in that instant, you felt hatred. If you trained with the sword you would learn how to stand in the eye of the storm, with hatred swirling around you, and remain at peace. Instead, you can only become what you fear. But the fear does not leave you.

This seems to me something worth learning.”

He carefully tucked the corner of a worn black sash back into his gym bag, before picking it up and continuing to his car.