2024-06-06 A Meditation on the New Normal

“11 Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. 12 Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. 13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” (1 Cor 10:11-14 ESV)

A very broken normal is the new normal: life, spirit, fate drives us to the very brink that equals and measures out as to what we can tolerate. The former years were perhaps luscious, panoramic, wandering and exploratory; and now, the rather unself-aware hunkered down, panic-action-responsive calm, a situation broken but also calling each of us, to see the man or woman of the precious hour as they wave us onwards, into the breach, onto the playing field, out in the community. If we are poor, maybe that is our new final estate.

For, it was always a furtive life we lived, this life that has come upon such Holy Calling and Instance. We never—though recalling fondly the sacrament and the quiet marriage between two or between two along with friends—were quite “Rich” or “Lazy” or “Calm”. Always, there was some tattoo or facet of our being, that was alienated from the quieter climes. Quieter species of friendship. Quieter plain peace around the environs, and time to Grow, to Learn, to Err and be Forgiven.

The broken new normal therefore, we discover it upon penning a note or recalling a former Time. It is a new normal not hated, not resented, not cause to play a blame-game: “See how my peers lucked out; it just isn’t FAIR!”. No, under no illusions as to being siblings under the same benevolent father or mother, we are going a bit farther than some precisely because we do not plead “fairness”. If we go farther, it is because we long ago learned the futility of complaining, and moreover, learned the responsible one’s Duty simply to rise up, yes, Anointed, but simply Dire and Purposeful, to love and to care for, to provide for and think big on behalf of.

Then, the “me time”: to off-load, to pray and repent, to accept anew a Lord and Savior who is found in the haphazard game as it plays out, no “game” but rather dire life and war. Try as we may to prep and avoid the glare of ease or its recompense, strife and punishment, we have to allow some Loving Spirit to correct us, to keep us humble, to give us always fair-play, gamesmanship, a right and a calling to be outward-facing and dutiful.

Life dishes out equal to what we can tolerate? How is that fair to the one under the burden, burden of civil war, of hunger, of endemic bodily pain? How is that anything, until we learn that Grace ministers to the starving victim. Grace ministers to the thirsting dweller of eviler deserts and poisoned climes. Grace prompts all of us to accept that that pained one is indeed we ourselves, and Today we recall the friend, recall the episcopal-as-in-under-authority, or catholic-as-in-universal spirit so Unique and sourced outside of we ourselves. We think to manage and discern around all matters inwardly, but sometimes something Unique is gifted us from outside of ourselves. That something, that Person, that Reality so oblique and present as to be invisible, is the inspiration for a life Eternal, an After-Life, a post-Dying charism and chrism.

We are called to pity upon seeing we ourselves with much wealth, and someone else crafting their own riches in pauper’s guise. We pity and we extend compassion. We are able thus to love on and pray for and instill peace upon, because of that all-sufficient personal fruit of down-time, personal prayer-time, or rather, an urgent Gift gladly received, of Acceptance and Mercy, of Belonging and All-Sufficiency.

Wake up, we then do, to the New Normal: magically or mysteriously Calm though utterly overwhelmed and with untold weapons pointed right at us. If there is a tomorrow victory, it will be because we made some peace with dying, with futility, with utterly compromised—in ultimate matters—centers of being.

Our fantasies, they die with us. Our insane bouts of broken fasts or errant thoughts, call upon us to accept Now and Urgently, a different Teaching: the Gospel Teaching of “Already saved”; “Already known and forgiven”; “Yes and celebratory”; “Yes and winning”. We win, because true Reform only happens in our lives when we have allowed something illogical or not based in reason, finally to sweep over us: we feel all the better having rightly seen our fallen or sinful nature, for that is the deep suspicion or fright always tempting the mind and the soul. Yes, it is a loved and beloved Man, Woman, whom we rise up to be.

Shades of meaning, evolutions of ministries, revisions of Plan: we pray through a life caged and evasive, until Spirit sweeps over us; until suddenly “Here we are!”: we then fight with untold other “ideas”, but no, it is the back-and-forth that educates us: the fountainhead of Speech meets the hazardous New Day, New Temptations, New Distraction. But having prayed ourselves into a Calm… yes, that bears much fruit.

Only, we were already there. We were Held and Prayed Over and Capable, already. And that is the hope, of the soldiering mindset which mindset knows trials do come, trials do overwhelm, trials finally help us to remove our pride and ego from the equation, and to pray as a dying man or woman—a consecrated man or woman—unto dying friends.