My wife reminded me today of a time early on in our relationship when we had joined some friends in Rittenhouse Park on a bright and sunny spring day for a picnic. People were lounging, talking, and throwing balls and frisbees and enjoying the nice weather. But I was broody and existential. "What is all this?" I said to her, "all this distraction and leisure?" My wife is one of the most pleasant and good-natured people you will ever meet. She was puzzled by the comment, though my friends knew my struggles with depression a bit more and took it in stride as "Rob being Rob."
When I was in college I lamented to one of my Geography professors I was friends with that I was averse to the ups and downs in life, that Buddhism was such an attraction to me because it sought to 'level out' the highs and lows, the joys and sorrows, in a kind of detached and steady indifference. I was willing to trade the peaks if it meant staying out of the valleys, perhaps because my descents into painful darkness always seemed to out-number those fleeting times of peace, love, and joy. He was of a Emersonian-transcendentalist bent and not a believer, but he had lived thrice as long as I had and knew a thing or two about sorrow and joy. We paused in our walk when he turned and said to me gently, "that's no way to live."
As Christian believers, our theological worldview makes room for sorrow and suffering. We, in some ways, intentionally enter into that liturgically as the ecclesia during the 40 day period of mortification and preparation known as Lent. Days of fasting and penance are prescribed and assigned corporally by the Church for us men and women of age. The spirit of the season is not morose, but somber. It is a kind of template to help us replicate and follow in the footsteps of Christ on his way to Calvary.
Christ embraced suffering not because he was a masochist, but because he saw clearly that it had it's place--not as part of the Father's original plan, but as part of the new economy of the fallen world he had entered into. He prayed for the cup to be taken from him, while simultaneously accepting it as part and parcel of his divine mission of redemption. The community of believers were of 'one mind' and united in heart and way of life.
I have always struggled to feel truly a part of that bloc of corporal faith and instead (for most of my twenties at least) lived my life of faith as an outlier on the fringes of community, belonging but stepping outside in order to look in. For most of my life my moods have been the bridles of eels, dictating the trajectory of my day. It made it difficult to plan anything, because each morning I did not know on what emotional shore I would wake up on. Truthfully, most days I was mentally at odds with the task at hand--a night of celebration was entered into sullenly with an invisible weight on my shoulders; at a day of mourning I would be inappropriately elated if that was the emotional script that was prescribed in my psyche that day. Living with a taciturn mood disorder bleeds out into all aspects of one's life, and the life of faith is not immune from such peculiar volatility.
But I recognized at least that the nature of the Christian religion demanded assent and submission to be authentic. The Church was not to march to my orders, but the other way around. Jesus came for, died for, and loved the masses that I seemed to so easily despise and spurn association with. I was not, could not be, a lone wolf, nor could I be, though maybe that would explain the draw of the eremitic life. I needed to find a way as a freshman believer to fit myself into the suit, or else risk being a perpetual gyrovague, making up my own Rule to please my purposes--a class of believer even I had little respect for--always on the outside looking in.
This particular Lent was fruitful for me. I entered into the penitential season with focus, falling along the way from time to time, but overall feeling a sense of purpose and commitment that I hadn't experienced before. I prayed for people every day, fasted, entered into what I knew. It was not a point of pride, but simply an experience of grace. I knew darkness. I knew my sin. It was a natural fit.
And then it was over.
I don't know what I was expecting. I emerged on Easter morning excitedly to drink my beloved coffee that I hadn't had in a month and a half. It was great, sure. And then, just like that, it became ordinary, sometime moving forward I would have every morning. Of course this was just a symbolic sacrifice. Christ paid the ultimate price for my redemption and his glorious resurrection on the third day was the reason for my hope and belief. It wasn't ultimately about coffee or chocolate or fasting or my own little sacrifices. He paid the price. All I had to do was thank him for it, thank him dearly, and bask in the light that pierce the opening of the tomb.
And now we have entered into a glorious new season of hope and triumph as a Church. And, almost despite myself, I felt once again like an outside looking in, struggling to adjust to a new routine, a new mood, a new prescription for expressing the gratitude that Christ died for me. Everybody had made their way to the mountaintop together--the daily mass goers arm in arm with the Easter-and-Christmas Christians--and I was still rolling up my hair shirt and bread crusts in the valley wondering what to do with them. It wasn't that I wanted Lent to keep going; I was ready for the end. But once that end came, it was as if I hadn't prepared for it. I was all mixed up.
After morning Mass with my family and Easter dinner at my parents house, we drove home. I changed out of my nice clothes, gathered the eggs from the chickens, and sat on the couch with my son. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree with him. He is full of volatile emotions, loves deeply, is thrown off by the unexpected, and prays sincerely. His emotional landscape is like mine--full of peaks and valleys that can be difficult to navigate from time to time. But we find our way, eventually.
We do not fast when the bridegroom is with us, but dance. We have been saved in an instant, and yet spend our lives "working out our salvation" in fear and trembling. It says in the book of Isaiah that "every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill leveled off." But the meaning is deeper, I think, than my sophomoric desire to minimize suffering by trading in the heights of joy in a kind of bland neutralization that guards against hurt and disappointment. To be truly human is to enter in fully to the fray of human existence as Christ did, an existence that is more than emotions, more than plans, more than prescriptions, but the very stuff of life itself. I am learning how to live joy, and each year it becomes more and more natural, lubricated by the oil of gratefulness, though sometimes I falter and stall and get off course. But Christ did not ascend to Heaven right away. He stayed with us for forty days, eating fish with us, walking with us, and getting us acclimated to our new reality. As an Easter people.
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