Random thoughts that obtain at the spur of the moment: -conveying recall of time gone, projecting aspirations and preferences for the future, revealing present choices and dispositions, ushering one's heart to aspects unreal.....these make up reconstructed time.
That evening, many years ago, I was alone in my room, but I was cross, very cross, indeed, and at the verge of tears when I was supposed to have joined the merry-making, the laughter and the songs of Christmas - on that particular evening, most specially, because it was the first of the nine days before Christmas... when we celebrated the first Misa de Gallo for the year. The day had started so beautifully at dawn but towards the end of the day, I didn't like the way things turned out. And then I simply ignored everything.
I had cast my eyes into the frightening darkness of the night trying to create images in that black space but could not. All I could sense was emptiness...the same emptiness that I felt inside my heart as one by one, my disappointments came floating to my mind...-my school, my home and family, my special one... all just seemed to gang up on me as if to let me know that I didn't deserve life!
As those thoughts then hurt, cutting me like till I bled, I turned my eyes up to the heavens, wondering if from there I could seek some source of refuge... and a little star seemed to glimmer. Then one more appeared... and then another, and another and another - and all of them gaily shined harmoniously, as if in mockery of the darkness that was in my heart. At about the same time, one song kind of slowly and majestically surfaced above the competing sounds and music that dinned the air - the one beautiful, Ave Maria song. And then that one line from it simply arrested my entire being - Ave, Dominus tecum... the angel telling Mary ' Hail, the Lord is with you'.
An inexplicable force seemed to redirect my thoughts to this one line and and impressed on me the fact that to this announcement of the angel, Mary had obediently consented to the Lord's designs for her. So why couldn't I, a simple wretched creation of God be less proud, less vain, less disobedient, ... when all that was around me was actually love in different appearances no matter how negative my interpretations.
The healing strains of the song continued to search its place in my heart as I finally broke into tears but tears these were no longer of bitter grief, but of a most blessed change into joyful peace.
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ReplyDeleteThat evening, many years ago, I was alone in my room, but I was cross, very cross, indeed, and at the verge of tears when I was supposed to have joined the merry-making, the laughter and the songs of Christmas - on that particular evening, most specially, because it was the first of the nine days before Christmas... when we celebrated the first Misa de Gallo for the year. The day had started so beautifully at dawn but towards the end of the day, I didn't like the way things turned out. And then I simply ignored everything.
ReplyDeleteI had cast my eyes into the frightening darkness of the night trying to create images in that black space but could not. All I could sense was emptiness...the same emptiness that I felt inside my heart as one by one, my disappointments came floating to my mind...-my school, my home and family, my special one... all just seemed to gang up on me as if to let me know that I didn't deserve life!
As those thoughts then hurt, cutting me like till I bled, I turned my eyes up to the heavens, wondering if from there I could seek some source of refuge... and a little star seemed to glimmer. Then one more appeared... and then another, and another and another - and all of them gaily shined harmoniously, as if in mockery of the darkness that was in my heart. At about the same time, one song kind of slowly and majestically surfaced above the competing sounds and music that dinned the air - the one beautiful, Ave Maria song. And then that one line from it simply arrested my entire being - Ave, Dominus tecum... the angel telling Mary ' Hail, the Lord is with you'.
An inexplicable force seemed to redirect my thoughts to this one line and and impressed on me the fact that to this announcement of the angel, Mary had obediently consented to the Lord's designs for her. So why couldn't I, a simple wretched creation of God be less proud, less vain, less disobedient, ... when all that was around me was actually love in different appearances no matter how negative my interpretations.
The healing strains of the song continued to search its place in my heart as I finally broke into tears but tears these were no longer of bitter grief, but of a most blessed change into joyful peace.