Whether I believe all this or not in years to come, I can’t know. I at least know that when I found Her, I was taken by an aesthetic world of wholeness. She gave me the personifications of feminine love at its fullest. I found Eve, my once lost love, once again. I could finally believe in everything. It will always be the fondest memory of mine when looking back at those first moments of trying to talk to my mother and queen, in my room when the lights were finally turned off. My soul needed quietude. I needed silence as I listened for God in the dark, after my day of endless shouting was over.
I was terribly confused that night. I didn’t know what I was praying, because I had not the slightest clue who I was praying to any more. I cried, and I also kind of shivered. It was because I knew my life would not be the same after this night. And it wasn’t. I shook, because my body couldn’t handle the uncomfortable feelings my mind entertained those past weeks. Finally I shattered, and I told Him I was ready to drown. I didn’t really want to live at that moment, because I knew that the landscape for my life was about to be crushed and replaced by a much hated world.
The abstractions were killing me in the weeks before, by confusing questions with answers and answers with distractions. Everyday before this was an abstract trick. Day after day consisted of me telling myself that I was spiritually apart of her, even though I was in protest. It was a terrible delusion.
But everyday after this, I wanted to find the center of Existence. I knew there was a deep well somewhere facing the East, and standing at it was a Divine King; placed next to Him was his Mother and Queen, the Acceptance in Pure Fidelity. Solomon, that first son of David, made his mother the queen of God’s people in the East, and now the new Son of David made his Mother the Queen of the East and the West. The Jewish woman at the first well did not give her will up to God. This one did. And I was soon to find her hiding from having her Child aborted.
I found her in a few muttered words, only half articulate but honest – a half confession really. Then I found her in a string of beads which gave me her whole story and how I was born. She was Eve. She was the Ark. She was the Jewish Queen. She was every word of wisdom spoken of that bore God Himself. She brought me to my King’s birth. I was finally there at a pool of water. It was my birthplace.
Everyday of my life up to this was spent with a friend and a relative. They were brought along in every new thing I discovered and believed. Some things were false, and some were true. But this moment was different, because no one had the same eyes to see it. No one could see it, because their unaesthetic world was so far from any true sense of grandiose beauty in our universe. We all lost the bearing of a Family over our minds. No more incense or paintings or portraits. We lost fidelity, commitment, sanctity, images of femininity, of sacred pictures. The world we had was always reducing itself to something less, in hope of aimlessly finding a fundamental particle we could all eventually call reality or church or community or whatever we needed as home. It couldn’t find it but kept digging further and further and further until it forgot everything that a martyr was, what necessity a Mother’s love had, what aesthetic need a sacred image filled. It was true idolatry. It was the worst of idolatry, because it worshipped itself and its digging, its own exhaustive but endless work. All to tear down… and for what?
And that was where I was no longer, but a world around me was still there, or so it seemed. My new landscape wasn’t because of any specialty I had, no scholarly eye or hand, but because a humble Jewish woman once gave birth to Grace. I was mystically brought into the grandest of plans. It was a family plan, and now it’s called something like a “Natural Family Plan”- always open to new life. It does not prevent birth. It always welcomes it. I used to like writing about myself and my beliefs and theories, but now that choice was surrendered to a plan that would choose to write me into it instead. Goodbye to the land of “Sola this and that!” – a land of shouting, protesting, and chatter where everyone stood alone. I was now to be quiet. I had only to cry and to confess if I was ever going to put my head down on Christ’s breast and rest. For now, I had to rest on Jacob’s rock and spit out the gunk stuck in my rambling mouth.
I did a lot of musing, really. My ears were full of hymns, because I didn’t have the strength to see who was watching me in the most pitiful state I had ever been in. That old world was rotting and loving to rot, and it couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to rot with it. Of course I “lost it”, because I lost what anything ever meant to that old world. And what “lost” meant to that old world did not mean much of anything anymore. There was always a new definition with a form of stapled “unity” around it.
I sat in my room with stacks of explanations of why this new Magisterial Home was going to be my new dwelling, of all the different rooms, especially of the dining table, where we digested our Lamb and our Lord. Our Queen was there of course, because the meals of the Royal Court were not eaten without our Queen. I was in a land of prose now; the rigidity of “just this” and “just that” was the pride of that old world. That was the world of Shakespeare’s old forests, where all who were lost thought they were found. The rebel was the king in those woods, who prided himself in his own starvation and dehydration. He was going to leave the Majestic Home, because the King’s provisions were not his own provisions. He would not stoop so low as to let the Royal Court provide. That was “idolatry”. He would let his God provide for him and for himself alone, and soon all his followers would come together in “standing alone” to form their own kingdoms under that God.
I left and they all watched in bewildered silence as I approached the gate of that Royal City. When I kneeled, they prayed for me. When the gates opened, they turned around. After they gave up their calls, they gave themselves their own explanations and rumored of how I was lured there.
My first meal was not much, because the guards had to strip me of my clothes full of stench and rebellion. They brought me through rooms. The Book of the Feast was placed at the center of the courtyard. It was propped on a gold stand. Parts of the stand were ravaged from the old riot, and there was another copy with pages torn out; the old world took the torn pages with them as they left. Many older citizens had scars in Rome. I found some cleaning the walls of blood stains and pieces of shattered portraits, and they are still being restored today by those faithful enough to keep up the Court.
I still looked out of windows, and my friends saw me with tears in their eyes, out of sincere concern for me. And that’s what hurt me most, because I was hurting for them as they were hurting for me. Our eyes drew in pain when they met. And that’s because there was so much concealed. They could only see the outside: the terrifying walls, arches, and towers. And that was enough to make them hurt for fear of my life. I can only explain so much through dispatched letters, especially when those letters are delivered with a stamp of the Royal guard on the envelope. Too many of my friends won’t open those letters, because of these idolatrous marks; at least, that’s what they still call them.
I lost my old self along time ago, and somehow I lost it quickly. There aren’t many things you can say about such a transition of living conditions. Too much of it gets lost in those trying to translate without any criteria of translation. I just learn to keep quiet and tell them of what plans I have in this new life, but that hurts still. I know this, because this is all I can say without putting up the draw-bridge. There aren’t many sturdy bridges, and if you send a message over, it’s bound to meet with shouts in defense.
Yet at the end of the day, I can only take on the words of one Pope and sing:
“Wherever the Catholic sun does shine
There’s music, laughter, and good red wine
At least I’ve always found it so
Benedicamus Domino!”
That’s the best I can send to those outside, and I only hope they come back Home once again.
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