Apprehension

A loving, wise aunt, my aunt who says little but sees much, sent a short email to me today: All she said in her quiet, simple, Danish way was, "Welcome home...see Phil 3:12-14."

So I went and saw it. 

"12 Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.

13 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

That second part of verse 12 is a kicker. I've always just read it like this: "Not as thought I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, blah blah blah rumble huh?"

I think I get the first part...St. Paul meant a following that is more like a chase, which fits with the idea of race (and almost conveniently rhymes). So I got that. And I got that I'm not perfect. And I've often thought of myself as a little kid on the Pinewood all-school race in Greece. I was the fastest in my class and I spent more time running, in those days, than breathing. I ran for the pure joy of it, pre-puberty at least...I'm one of those who hopes I have a child's freedom to run again someday. I loved the wind on my hot cheeks, the joy of following my speeding heart.

On that Pinewood School race day, I was the Fast Girl. Flash. And I remember lining up with the high school students, thinking seriously that I would win this race and bring glory home for the 4th grade. 

And the St. Paul's race also reminds me of the mile and a half race at Oakdale Jr. High, mid-puberty, when we back-o-the-bus rebels walked it, blowing it all off. How I had changed, but this was simply the other side of the see-saw that, if level, would be fortitude. 

True to this form in the spiritual life, I have flung back and forth between rashness, almost a manic love of God and a desire to die a thousand deaths, and fear and sloth disguised as rebellion. Once again, Aristotle is right about that balance stuff. Running a race, a long-term one, is about balance. 

Okay. Got it. But what on earth is " if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus"? 

I'm trying to accomplish, or gain, a purpose, a relationship, a creative act. And it is that thing for which I was made. I am trying to be what the Logos spoke when He translated the thought of the Father, a tiny thought that became, in my mother's womb, me. I am both that thought, but in God's wanting me to be a co-creator, this great sharing of Himself with us, I am also a becoming of that thought. He wants me to co-create it, to race for it, to sweat for it, to die for it, like the seed falling into the ground. And I am not just a thought isolated; no. A thought is communication, by its very nature it is a reaching, a spilling out towards the Other, towards Unity. I am meant to be a flame flaring up that lights other flames: we 'sign' this reality at Easter Vigil Mass.

And it is in the particulars of this life, the messy stuff, the matter, the small actions and hard choices and fails and successes and words and songs, the things we choose to see and not to see--these are where the unity will come, that unity that God wants to recognize as His thought of me, and when He will kiss me, finally, with the kiss of a bridegroom. 

So, even on days when the waves crash in (and I had a dream that the waves, giant ones, were coming horizontal with the beach at Curl Curl or somewhere, and I then did not see them coming), on days of darkness, or days filled with glorious light, the particulars are there to create opportunity for me to become more myself--or less. As CS Lewis said, nothing is static. We are either getting better or getting worse. And I guess I might change that a little and say that we are either becoming more unified, more a cohesive, faithful rendering of God's thought of us, or less of one. 

Violence is a kind of force of disharmony, Thaddeus told me today. Sometimes he teaches me; I am sometimes, in precious moments alone, a class of one, because he is just always and everywhere, a learner-teacher. He is my Socrates. Who could be so blessed to be married to a philosopher--not the academic kind, but a real one? Okay, yeah, sometimes I want to give him hemlock. But most times, I see how marriage is supposed to be, where one grows the other.

So I thought about that as I thought of myself as trying, running to apprehend what God made me to do, to be, in a situation where I feel somewhat more than usual that foreignness I carry with me always. I thought that as we run, we act, we live, if we run so that we become more ourselves, what God saw us to be in His mind and then spoke us, we are a force towards harmony. If rather, we run without that hunting, but just amble along or 'walk it' or rashly think it is possible for us to do it ourselves, we become a force of disharmony. We then become a thought of disharmony, a violence. 

After talking to Socrates, I felt suddenly as if my heart rested when we got off the Bellair shuttle at the Anacortes terminal. Dad and Mom were there, and I smelled again the blue and green, the water and the pines, and it seems to me that the sunlight in the islands even has a certain smell, a smell like bread baking. Oh, right. We're sitting outside the Cheesecake Cafe. Dumbest name ever, but please, don't change it.

And how I love the ferries. I know their names by now, and where things are in them, and I love especially the padded linoleum benches sidled up to rows of rounded-square windows; I love the clear, sparkling water, and each island with its over-dress of dark green and petticoat of white rock (I take this from H. Glidden about Patos); we all know that when the ferry pulls away from Shaw Island, it is time to "return to the cars for de-embarkment" and we take the winding drive through Orcas forest and farmland; we always stop at Curtis Lane, just before the turn onto Nina Lane, to do the ineffable Curtis reverence; then the satisfying centripetal turn onto the gravel Nina which takes you through a canopy of Scotch brush and pine and finally, the sign in the reeds on the right "Wrye 299" that my uncle made, and the turn past the blackberry bushes, the rope swing, and first sight of the beautiful art that is the home my uncle built for my parents. It stands, understated and modest but beautiful, the cedar shingle siding still honey-color, with the wide stairway, and the hint of the ocean behind it. The walk up the stairs, the swoosh of the heavy front door, and the soft pine, high-ceilinged great room with the panorama of old friends waiting outside the large picture windows: the little path we made that is still springy from the wood pulp of the building nearly ten years ago now; the rainbow rocks, the quiet gardener snakes surprised, the rock beach, and Patos, lovely magical Patos and Sucia and Matia Islands sunbathing in the blue water. 

The anxiety sort of put up a white flag and I walked out of the battle inside me, looking forward over the water. 

I don't know what's ahead for us, but we asked God to bless our next chapter so that we can help each other "apprehend that for which also [we are] apprehended of Christ Jesus." Instead of fighting over what Jeeves and Wooster episode to watch.