Outside The Wall

 "Tribalism, it's always worth remembering, is not one aspect of human experience. It's the default human experience. [And] one of the greatest attractions of tribalism is that you don't actually have to think very much. All you need to know on any given subject is which side you're on."

(Andrew Sullivan, "America Wasn't Built For Humans," New York Magazine)

A month or so ago, I prayed a nine day novena to Mary, Undoer of Knots, for deliverance "from the esteem and adulation of men,"  as well as for the grace to be extricated from social distraction and that which keeps me from being singularly-focused on the Lord. I realize this is kind of vague, and even when I felt compelled to ask for this grace, I didn't exactly know what it meant, only that things like pride and vainglory are a constant threat to my spiritual equilibrium. 

I believe Our Lady has honored that prayer and been gently pruning me limb from limb. The thing is, it is extremely painful. For the very thing I felt I needed, prayed for, and seemingly have received is the thing that puts me outside the wall of the very social comforts that have been making me spiritually uncomfortable. 

Today, for whatever reason, I felt this lack of established belonging so acutely in meditation that I found myself groaning, as it says in Psalm 5:1 "Give ear to my words, O Lord; consider my groaning." The Hebrew term hagah means to muse, growl, moan, utter. It is no surprise we find this term used in Jeremiah (the "weeping prophet") 48:31: "over the people of Kir-heres I moan." It made me realize how much I had been relying on men, on creatures (as Thomas a Kempis often cites), and that in having that being slowly peeled from my fingers produces the pain of detachment--the very thing I prayed for. 

When I go outside the walls of my home without leaving it, it is to enter into the place of prayer. This is literally the case, as my "hidden place"is actually between the inner and outer walls of our bathroom (the pipe closet). To enter into this place of prayer, one must get on one's hands and knees and enter through a small door about two feet wide by three feet high. It is adjacent to the toilet, so there is an extra layer of humiliation that is required to enter. It always reminds me of that Indiana Jones movie when the riddle "the penitent man will pass" requires the pilgrim to drop to his knees (and as a result, being saved from being decapitated by a booby trap). The pipe closet-slash-prayer mausoleum is freezing in the winter; since it a three foot by ten foot space outside the inner, insulated wall, I can often see my breath. So, it is uncomfortable to enter, uncomfortable to be in, and uncomfortable to spend much time in. And there is only room for one.

This is what being without a tribe feels like. There's a feeling of being in an uninsulated space, of being exposed, of not having the comfort or assurance of belonging, and the pain of literally going against what seems evolutionary hardwired in our nature. 

In many ways, this feels like the part 2 post to my post from two months ago, "The Hardest Thing For A Person To Do Is Go Against Their Tribe." On one level, one would think that being Catholic would solve this need for belonging, when in fact, Catholicism is anything but monolithic. It is tribes-within-a-tribe, and so it seems "We are all Catholic!" is a sentiment reserved for the wide-eyed and optimistic neophyte. 

It says in scripture that Jesus HAD to go through Samaria (Jn 4:4). But he didn't. He could have followed the other routes that pious Jews took in going east, crossing the Jordan, enter the region of Perea, heading north, recrossing the Jordan, and arriving in Galilee. But he doesn't do this. He took the direct route to meet the Samaritan woman at the well. These tribal boundaries didn't mean the same thing to him that it did to others. But this also was the same Lord who said, "foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head" (Mt 8:20). In following him, in imitating him, we can sometimes find ourselves outside the walls of our proverbial home and tribes without much company. The patristic eremites sought this out to enter into the solitude of the heart. St. Simeon lived on a pillar for Pete's sake. It wasn't that he hated men. It was that he could not enter into the place he was being called in their company.

My prayer for detachment from men was pure, but I don't think I realized the implications. If one of the strongest psychological tenants to our evolutionary survival is belonging to a tribe, and you find yourself outside whatever that state of belonging is for you, to what degree are we disadvantaging ourselves, especially when SHTF and things get rough and you find yourself without a tribe? I feel unsteady, uncomforted, unsure of myself, following God in the disorienting dark and just trying to focus on holding his right hand (Ps 18:35) to lead me. "I have become an outcast to my kindred, a stranger to my mother's children" (Ps 69:9). But I cannot say, "Zeal for your house has consumed me" (Ps 69:10), because it does not. I am between walls, in an uninsulated space. 

God, my God, lead me and do not let go of my hand. I am lost without you otherwise.