Let me tell you what happened today, and we'll get back to the saints.
First of all, I got several pieces of bad news about financial things, then after a frustrating day, at about 6 in the evening, just about sunset, I went out to pull my car into my garage. Every day is a dance of pulling my 30 year-old car out of the garage so I can bring out my mobility scooter and use it when I "walk" the dog, and then put the car back IN at night so that it won't be broken into. (This neighborhood is RIFE with thieves who will break your windows just to steal some coins they think they MIGHT find on the floor boards. My car has been broken into many times since I moved in here, and the last time was a riot. They stole EVERYTHING, even a bag of trash. Poor Mr. Charlemagne lost his little doggie booster seat and seat belt.)
I was unhappy to find a car parked next to mine, blocking me from moving mine into my garage. I stood out there, honking the horn, on and off, for about ten minutes. I have no idea whose car it is. They have ignored TWO signs on the building that say "NO PARKING" AND the cross-hatching across which she parked AND the painted sign on the ground that said "NO PARKING" and "RESERVED" for my apartment number. She also, apparently, did not see the garage. I call this CONVENIENCE BLINDNESS. Self-centered people just do what suits them, even though they know they are co-opting someone else's space. They take what they want, without a thought to others.
To THEM, it is no big deal. How could it POSSIBLY be a big deal when I have something they want and it is convenient for them?
In my case, for instance, all of the bones in my hips, knees and feet were killing me. It certainly isn't convenient for me when I have to stand around in the freezing weather, with my bones screaming at me. I needed to put the car to bed so I could walk the dog and put myself to bed. I have yet to meet an interloper that would care about any of that. The neighbors know I am disabled. They see me on my disability scooter all the time, but they don't have sympathy. They let their visitors block my garage and don't tell them where to park. They apparently don't ASK their visitors where they did end up parking or, if they did ask them, they do not make them move. Nor did they bother to leave a note or send someone downstairs to knock on my door and tell me what was going on. For them it is no big deal because for them it is no big deal.
I had no way of knowing which of the 75 apartments was responsible for blocking my garage and, even if I did, I could not climb the stairs to the second or third floor to chase up the interloper.
This apartment complex has very little visitor parking and, in the past, I have made arrangements with another neighbor for her regular visitor to park next to me during times when I don't have to move my car. We worked it out together. But mostly, people just squeeze in and I have to get them to move so I can function.
The woman who finally came out of my neighbor's apartment was polite at first, but she gave the same excuse that others have done, i.e., "I was only going to be a couple minutes," which was not true. My body was hurting more and more. All daylight had disappeared, and it was getting harder to see with my one good eye.
At this point, I can feel myself getting irritated and anxious. I never want to lose my temper. It isn't what one does when one is determined to be a good Christian and a kind person. But my body and the weather are acting against me - so there begins an inner tension. I have to hold myself back. I was able to remain low-key, but I'm sure my tension was obvious.
Finally, when she came to move the car and I went inside the garage to get the mobility scooter moved into the right spot, I heard this woman yelling at me in an indignant tone, saying, "do you even need to get out of the garage?" She wanted to know if I was making her move "for nothing," you see. This always happens, if I don't move fast enough for the interloper and they haven't figured out what I am DOING, for Heaven's sake! I have also heard some version of "do you NEED to use the garage?" They want me to justify my request that they remove their vehicle from my premises. They demand I answer to them about my schedule, which is not something I would ever be comfortable having to do because these people are strangers to me and they are already invading my space with an air of entitlement. What next?
I did not answer her, but said instead, "what are you asking me?" and she huffed off, got into her car, and left. Fighting off frustration and sadness, I finished what I had to do, then moved my car into the garage. If she had not moved, I could not have done it.
Of course, I have friends and well-wishers who live here, but there are some very aggressive and demanding people here. Every day when I get in and out of my car, I have to see the car of the woman upstairs. Across the window, it says in HUGE letters, "F - - K THE POPULATION." (spelled out completely.)
Some of these people on the low-income program see a disabled senior, and, instead of being helpful and sympathetic, they seem to begin calculating how they might take something from me or torment me somehow. There are even a couple of ex-residents who no longer live here but who follow this blog so they can report to others who still live here if they think I am writing about a known person. (I know who you are, by the way.) This is detrimental to my psychological disposition. It is hard to believe that people like this exist outside some film noir drama, and I had no experience with this sort of thing until I became disabled and my income dropped down to poverty level.
I can't commune with my cousin, Saint Wilfretrudis about how SHE would handle this because the monastic institution and circumstances protect those nuns. Most nuns do not have to own a car individually. The convent will usually have one or two, and none of the nuns have to think about how to pay the car insurance bill or the repair bills. It is an organizational thing, and it is someone's JOB to do that. lt is easier to live with poverty when it is lived together. Their entire life is engineered to support the spiritual aspect. They are not faced with hostile neighbors who disrupt the peace and quiet. Not typically, anyway.
We can't forget that Saint Wilfretrudis had a very strong family behind her. Her grandfather was Blessed Pepin I (The Elder) of Landen and her grandmother was Saint Itta of Metz. These two were my 39th great grandparents, and I only wish I had them more concretely on hand to help me with some things.
I DO have the constant companionship of the Lord however, and, although He is not in the habit of just stepping in and FIXING everything for Me, He stays with me through all of it and I pray that he gives me the inner urgings to guide me in the way he wants me to go.
Having lived as a nun in the Hindu convent, which was modeled after a Benedictine convent, I know how monastic life is supposed to look, how it is organized, how peaceful it is. This is not it.
Always attracted to contemplative life, I had hoped to be able to create it here, but it is not possible. Too much noise. Too many people. And it takes me f.o.r.e.v.e.r to do just about everything. Between the physical inability and the loss of my depth perception due to the blindness in my left eye, I have to be very careful about how I move, otherwise I am banging around and dropping things right and left.
Not only is this environment hostile to spiritual disciplines and simple prayer life, but since my son died I have no close family. At least Saint Wilfretrudis had her association with a family that was rife with saints. Not mine. I am the only Catholic in my family, that I know of, and I have no one close.
I just want to be clear that I am not weeping about this, mind you. I am not sitting here and typing this through tears or what not. I have never had close family - not really. I was terribly abused as a child and could not WAIT to leave home shortly after I turned 17. I've gotten used to being my own company, and after years of placing my mind at the feet of God, I have come to the point where I always feel his presence. People ARE made for one another, but there are the rare exceptions, and I suppose I am one of those. At least, God is accompanying me on my journey because He sees that my mind is with Him.
There is also a wonderful line from a Psalm that I love, Psalm 27:10..."For my Father and my Mother have left me; but the Lord hath taken me up."
When I was a little girl, one of my relatives gave me a book about the Bible, meant for children. I don't know how they got away with doing that because my parents were anti-religion, as was my grandmother. But I was always keen to find out about God, and so He has been with me since I was a little girl. I am not impervious to the disappointments of life, by any means, but I have faith in God.
For the 20 years since I first retired, I have been battling the worldliness I am forced to accommodate because I have no support for my spiritual life. If I was not physically disabled, it would be a lot easier. I would not have to live so close to non-monastics or, if I did, there would be boundaries established by the institution. In order to get my most basic needs met, I cannot just give my space to others and let them overrun me. It is a fine balance. I have to get my needs met without destroying anyone's peace - including my own.
For some time now, I have been disappointed in how I have managed to create a monastic contemplative space. When I decided, 20 years ago, to return to living as a monastic, I had this vision of how I would transform my living situation into a peaceful, inspiring palace of meditation, but I realized tonight that I have been asking too much of myself. My heart was in the right place, but I am disabled, I live VERY close to other people, and there is only so much I can do.
If it takes more time than I really have to take care of my physical needs, how can I possibly devote myself properly to long schedules of prayers? I just CAN'T. The contemplative model is only possible in a limited way, unless I were to be able to move elsewhere. So far, my efforts to bring in more income and thereby pay for more appropriate living quarters and some paid help have proved to be failures.
My whole life I have had artistic side "gigs." I've sold paintings and sketches, jewelry and pottery, writing of all kinds, and many different creative products, but it is much more difficult at this time. I used to be unique - at least my friends and I believed I was. But since YouTube has so many excellent free videos on how to do just about everything, the market is glutted with ladies who make earrings or fingerless mittens or w.h.a.t.e.v.e.r.
I can't really live as an old-style hermit. Their lives were (and are) much more ascetic than I am able to be. Asceticism was never my strong suit anyway - because I have never been terribly physically fit.
My life DOES revolve around the Lord, but it isn't supported by a monastic institution and it is unreasonable for me to expect my life to look like Saint Gertrude's or Saint Wilfretrudis's would look today. But I sometimes have to remind myself that a lot of these saints led "normal" lives before retiring to the convent. But I don't remember reading of any of them being physically disabled.
The pressures of householder life, especially when lived under the pall of multiple disabilities, in close proximity with hostile, non-religious folk cannot look like my favorites monastic saint's lives. Everything is an "inside job", without any external support.
The only solution, I think, is to rely upon the Practice of the Presence of God. I'll have to speak more about that spiritual discipline later, but I will just say that it is a wonderful practice that helps keep me centered, and I believe I may need to practice it even more in the immediate future.
I think also that it may be more practical to find inspiration with my ancestor saints such as Saint Margaret of Scotland, who was both a queen (a VERY busy life) AND a saint. She found a way to become a saint in the midst of what could have been an extremely worldly life. I will have to meditate on a different vision of how to live this life devoted to God. Contemplative life cannot happen in noise and chaos, I don't think.
Dear Saint Wilfretrudis, my great grandmother Saint Margaret of Scotland, and all my other family of saints in Heaven, please intercede for me at the throne of God and help me find my way in this harsh landscape.
God bless us all.
Silver Rose
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