I'm stuck knowing what to write this week. I've found myself totally caught up in the mad rush of getting used to the autumn season and it's a killer on my reading and writing. The more my places to be and things to do list grows, the more my energy for absorbing and writing story diminishes. It kind of makes me feel resentful, and yet my life overflows with good things, children, husband, home, friends, work. Of course, this fall has also been full of soul-sucking mayhem. Probably perfect fuel for the writing fire, but since this is not a place I choose to let all my madness show, most of that is saved for the journals stacked on shelves like a Library of Congress next to my bed. I feel quite jealous, actually, of those who have been able to carve out their life, wearing their suffering on their sleeve. Who have walked so far into it that there's no turning back, but to make their story known. My stories are mostly still stuffed in a closet, or hiding behind trees in the forest I wandered, not wise enough to be scared by what is hidden in the dark places. I've tried, at times, to blow the dust and debris off these stories, to make them part of the visible truth of my life, but inevitably someone - or something- brings opposition and silences me. And it's not that I need always to write about these dark places in my memory, but having to act as if they don't exist, never having a safe place to drag them into the light, feels like a handicap I'm lugging around.
So, in this week of remembering all the saints who've gone before us, I'm here on a Thursday morning contemplating the handicaps left behind by a few of the saints in our family tree. It makes me wonder if one of the reasons God allows the saints to cheer us on is to make up for all the damage they did while they were here on earth? Oddly enough, that's a cheering thought.
