Fr. Don's Daily Reflection
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
Not praying the Psalms in choir (but in protective quarantine) allows me to use the Psalms in a more personal manner: e.g., to stop and complain, argue with the Psalmist. Ps 141 gives me an opening: “With all my voice I cry to you, Lord. I pour out my trouble . . .; I tell you all my distress.” I change that to “With all our voices we cry to you, Lord. We pour out our trouble before you. We tell you all our distress.” Trouble? Distress? Covid-19 certainly qualifies! Our freedom is restricted; human relations are drastically disrupted. And for months. Take me, for example, poor me! I am away from friends, away from visiting and being visited. Sure, I have comfortable accommodations, meals supplied, physical health cared for, etc. But let’s not leave self-pity too quickly. Here are some examples from, remember, an elderly celibate being protected from Covid-19 by incarceration. There are 17 such interned on one floor of the Abbey. No visitors allowed, no visiting. Someone else decided that we would be protected from the virus at the expense of our freedom.
Unlike many readers who are “captive” with their spouse and/or children or a grandparent, these men are not with their usual associates. In a community of 120 you are not living with 120 close friends. Sure, blame me – let’s get personal – for not having cultivated my peers. My three closest friends in the Abbey all died within the last year, people with whom I could discuss my reading, music, my contacts, alumni and correspondence, chat easily. Fortunately, and uniquely I am blessed with wonderful lay friends, men and women who are great company, who ordinarily would come to visit me. By virtue of FaceTime, Zoom, email, phone calls, US postal correspondence, etc., I can be in virtual touch with friends, with alumni in China, California, New York, Sweden, North Carolina, Kentucky, and other exotic places. – But t h a t ’s n o t t h e s a m e a s b e i n g w i t h t h e m i n p e r s o n !
So, despite what I see as deficiencies, I am very fortunate. When tempted by the old enemy, self-pity, I think of people that I visit in my life in alumni relations: quadriplegics, men with ALS who can only receive nourishment through a tube in the stomach, others variously impaired, etc. They tell me, not in words, but by their existence, “Listen, you jerk, you have it easy”. -- However, don’t think that settles it for me. I’m ready to resume normal human relations with friends – today.
Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”
