Preface, continued

 

A year or more passed, and I found myself striving very seriously to learn all the prayers, do all the motions and activities that I thought was going to get me “there”, even tried some of the austerities I'd read the saints had tried. I guess I didn't trust them when they said later in their lives they shouldn't have been so hard on their bodies. 

But I was intense in a serious way, and kind of driving myself to find holiness mostly via external exercises. One night I had a dream. I was sitting at a long table, like the kind found in church parish halls, and I was playing solitaire. I was very intent with the cards, trying my hardest to figure out how to win, to find some kind of system.

   Amid the repetitive, unfolding of three cards at a time, I was shown, sitting across from me, St. Catherine of Siena. How do I know it was her? Well, I just knew. I was told without words. And she was watching me play the cards with a smile on her face, an amused and knowing smile. She explained that it is not a matter of any set pattern. There is not any one set way or formula. That was all, and the dream ended.

I've never forgotten the dream or her message, though I've attempted various ways to seek and find God in set ways--including joining a start-up religious order of hermits and wearing a habit for four months. I nearly did in my disabled body by starting a soup kitchen, and when my youngest left for college I divided up furnishings to each of my offspring and rid out most belongings, at least those not specific to religious intent. I had discarded make-up and jewelry, fiction and social clubs, long before these other efforts. 

I worshiped at daily Mass, went to weekly confession, memorized the traditional Catholic prayers, learned novenas, read about saints and victim souls, tithed, wrote, fasted, decorated my abode with religious art and sacred statues, wore a Crucifix and affixed blessed medals to my rosary (which I prayed).  I did all I could to live omnia pro Deo, all for God, yet still not there, had not the win.

Yes, I was passionate with good motives, but I had not found the will of God fiery flowing Holy Spirit living crucified resurrected Christ loving in the present moment way--as St. Catherine of Siena had some years before tried gently, simply, with few words, intimate.