Because I’m always thinking about what it means to be in love, today I thought a little about what it means to be in love. It snowed last night, so I didn’t make it to Sunday Mass, but if I’d planned my life out just a little bit better and done a few crucial things differently, I could have, so I considered it a big enough lapse in judgment and foresight on my part that I woke up early this morning and resolved to confess it at the National Shrine, where they hear confessions every morning and every afternoon. The only problem is that the National Shrine is really big, and I had no idea how to find where I was supposed to go.
So I did the feminine thing and asked for directions at the front desk. The lady working there was chatting with a compact little nun, who departed when I approached. I asked where I could find Confession, and the lady said, “They’re being held in the crypt. Follow the nun who just left here. That’s probably where she’s headed.” But by the time I had thanked the woman, the nun was out of sight, and I was too self-conscious to turn around and ask for more help.
I followed signs for the crypt as best as I could, but as I’ve alluded to previously in this publication, I’m completely stupid, so I couldn’t quite make sense of my surroundings.
“Hey,” I heard someone say behind me. I turned, and lo, there was one of the handsomest men I have ever had the privilege of laying my eyes upon. I don’t even want to describe him because I want the memory all to myself. “I overheard you say you were looking for Confession. Let me show you the way.” No sooner had the words left his mouth than I had envisioned our engagement, our wedding, our children, our children’s weddings, and finally, myself, clad in black, glamorously mourning him at his graveside.
“Sure,” I said. “Thank you so much.” But what I meant was, “Honey, things are going to be tight this month. Do you think we should consider refinancing the house?”
Anyway, it doesn’t even matter, because we didn’t really talk much more, and while I consider myself to have decent game, I don’t, really, when I’m caught off guard and already in the vulnerable and sort of embarrassing position of being lost in a massive labyrinth of a building, and besides, what was there to say? I wanted to crack, “So, what’re you in for?” But that seemed like sort of a vulgar thing to do, so I just stayed quiet.
He led me to the crypt church, which was very dim, and stretched back a long ways, such that it seemed that if you got to the edge of it another chamber would unfold, and that would continue to happen for all eternity. People knelt in the pews, praying quietly and urgently, their shoulders hunched and their heads bowed.
The man who helped me find my way led me to a room to the side of the sanctuary where there were a few confessionals open for Confession. I confessed missing Sunday Mass and a few other things that are tied to my fairly regular feelings of loneliness.
“Do you pray?” the priest asked me when I finished.
“When I’m not being a degenerate loser, I pray a lot,” I said.
“Well, this is something you need to keep in mind: that it is in prayer that you will find the company you are looking for, in the presence of Christ Jesus.”
I made my Act of Contrition. He gave me my penance. He absolved me of my sins.
I had been so taken by the scenery of the crypt when I had first walked in that it was only upon reentering the sanctuary after Confession that I noticed that on the altar was a monstrance, and that the Blessed Sacrament was exposed for adoration.
This was a happy surprise, albeit one I sort of beat myself up for (how could I not notice that?). I was able to pray my assigned penance in the true presence of the Lord, and sit with Him while I gathered my strength to go and face the world outside again.
This is not the only time recently that this has happened. Each time, I’ve been wrestling with the same gnawing doubts and vices, usually trying to get to Confession after screwing up morally out of loneliness and fear, and unexpectedly, there He’ll be.
A couple years ago, at the recommendation of a friend, I read a novel called House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski. It tells the story of a photographer, Will Navidson, who moves with his wife and two children into a house in Virginia, where they discover a terrible incoherence in reality: somehow, the house is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. Soon, there appears a new doorway in the house that was not there before. Sometimes behind the door will be something no larger than a utility closet; others, it will be a vast network of pitch-dark passages that open into massive atriums and staircases and halls. Navidson becomes obsessed with exploring what lies behind this portal, but the portal—well, the entire house—seems to have a consciousness of its own: it swallows people alive, or it presents those who try to enter it with such a confusing series of shifting rooms that it drives them mad, or it somehow tricks explorers of its depths into wanting to stay there forever.
The book frustrated me on a number of levels, even as it gripped me and wouldn’t let me go. One of the narrators is this beat-generation-type guy named Johnny Truant, who is editing scholarship done on this house and this incident with the Navidson family. Frankly, he sounds like a total babe, except that he’s also a burnout loser. Truant also becomes obsessed with the house in his way as he compiles the records of this anomaly. It’s not surprising: he’s an addict who drinks himself half to death all the time, and the women in his acquaintance seem to suffer largely from an inability to find garments that fit them properly; in fact, they seem to fall off with nothing more than a glance from Mr. Truant. His constant bimbo-screwing made me frankly want to off myself; it got to be so tiring to read. But what’s interesting is that the addictive sexual exploits represent a similar psychological dilemma to Truant as the house does to Navidson: in them he encounters facet after facet of himself and all of his insatiable appetites; the encounters lack meaning in and of themselves but cohere around an ethic of being famished for some impossible spiritual food.
I have that hunger. I think we all do. In House of Leaves, Navidson pursues his lust at the cost of what imbues his life with meaning: his wife, who loves him in a way that some might find pitiful, because she is so emotionally dependent on him, but is no different from the way Navidson depends on that horrible chamber of his house; his two children, who idolize him; and his brother, who in his way pities him and wants to protect him. (Truant doesn’t truly have a life to lose, except in the philosophically essential sense, having been hell-bent on pursuing his passions until he hurdles himself from some figurative brink.)
When I was younger, I used to really mourn how growing up seemed to entail letting go of everything that follows in the tow of such massive passions. In my weaker moments I still have sometimes felt this way about the faith and a life with Christ. How many things does one person have to give up? It all really depressed me. Now, at least cognitively, I know that releasing the accidents of these passions (habits, substances, relationships, pursuits, entire worlds of language) is what allows us to finally encounter and meet the passion in its right sense. I get lonely and fantasize about random men with whom I exchange fewer than twenty words at church because I want to pour myself into something outside of myself, not something that drags me deep into the treacherous caverns of my own narcissism (drugs, alcohol, casual sex). The “letting go” and the “restraint” required of us by faith grants our passion the core of what it wants.
I do all of this mental work to consider ardor and asceticism, but the reality is that I don’t really have to. Here is the reality: whenever I have accidentally enslaved myself to myself again, Christ finds me without a single ounce of effort from me. I go to Confession and for some reason there’s Adoration. I was in a bad way a few nights ago and called someone to talk, and the next day he called just for a second to check to see if I was doing ok. I tunnel so deeply back into my own brain toiling away at all my mental and spiritual projects that I forget that I exist in any meaningful way to anyone else. And this is how it is with Christ: you can be so lost in yourself, and from nowhere, he’ll call you, and offer you His hand to pull you from the dark.
so beautiful and genuine, thank you Joan, i really enjoyed this. :)