The Narrative Form

I am immersed in the book Practicing Catholic by James Carroll.   And in a process of deep inner reflection questioning if I really "know" what it is I have believed for so long now.   I mean this in its largest sense, not only in a religious sense.   Can I, at this late date in my life, engage a certain freedom to make my life new?   To leave behind some central experiences that have framed and limited my life to move into the life I have been generously given by grace.

When I started this blog after Christmas mass at Fr. Jim's house, I wasn't sure what it is, what it means, what it will "become" -- I only knew that I felt called to write again and this seems a good way to do it.

This morning, in the last chapter of this book that I will now buy for my library (I'm reading a Missoula Library copy right now), he opens the chapter by saying "I left the priesthood to be a writer.   This is the very definition of my life."   In order to really write, he needed intellectual and moral freedom to go where the writing would and could take him.

And following very quickly he writes something that rings true for me about why, now, I choose to write again -- and maybe even why I choose to write in a way that is shared for the first time in my life . . .

"The redemptive shape of narrative form, the unquenchable thirst for meaning, THE IMPLICATION-LADEN TENSION BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND WHAT REMAINS FOREVER UNSPOKEN, the contemplative habit of absorbedness, the dark night of the soul as a source of illumination, God as the author of creation, why we call Jesus "Word," the final inadequacy of all expression, which is the first value of it . . . "

The emphasis above is mine -- all of this spoke to me and the highlighted section above spoke to me at the level of an almost deafening roar.

I have learned so much about the need to speak and to share from my dearest friend Cathie.   She and her Campus Ministry group at the College of New Rochelle were central to moving me from a soul crushing silence that kept me unspeakably lonely to a way of sharing myself in meaningful ways with others.

It was the beginning of a life long journey to create some balance between the deep introspection that comes so naturally to me and the call to be part of the community that the Gospel demands of me.

And now, in this blog, I am a bit stymied or maybe challenged is a better word, by what to put into language and what is rightly left forever unspoken . . .

Donna