I came here under premonition, decision, wincing in preparing for the barrage of fire, but the one thing that helps me even when I'm feeling like the scum of the earth about my decision to live here like I am is to go to this massive cathedral where I am just a peon.
In the whole sense of the word "blessing", it just doesn't matter what the whole world thinks for a moment in your life. For just one hour, you get to be a person who could be worthy of forgiveness, a person full of graces, and part of a family. For one hour, you can focus on something so much sweeter, nicer, more loving, gentle and warm, forgiving than the weight of all the raucous crap people feel entitled to give you just because you made a decision to do something with your life, and every person you ever knew, ever loved was hurt or pissed by it and had something to say on Facebook about it. (True story.)
For just a few moments, you get to shed the unraveling of the prior week (or weeks), the pain them feeling betrayed. In French, "blessure" means "to wound." In my studies of eternal matters, I have found that many of the saints refer to this "wound of love" that pierces them. It is this pain that they rejoice in because it signifies death to self and a welcoming of the eternal love that floods the soul through the light and mercy of our most Eternal Lord. (Can you imagine the light pouring in your eyes? The pressure of joy bursting from withing your gut? The sheer, overcoming relief of total welcome?) Isn't it something that we refer the the word "blessing" without really even realizing its sheer and pure, yet absolute meaning.
Funny thing is, the scenes didn't all unfold caustically until human judgment got in the way; and, like it or not, I'm finally realizing that it isn't their forgiveness I'm seeking. (Although it used to be. Weird, huh?) But I digress. I still felt like this (refer to "peon" paragraph) before I made the decision to move here and eff up everyone's perceptions of me, hurt their feelings, shock them. You know, when I was a Stepford wife.
That doesn't mean that you are reprieved of the things that you do which suck, or that your journey to be a good person and make fully conscious decisions, complete with consequences just stops there. It means that for a concrete, singular moment you get to breathe. Which is a blessing.
Of course, it seems easier when the people in the church don't know your every last sin, but when you're sitting there with the uncle of the man you're with on the other side, and he knows that you are there under some matter of dramatic sequence, you know you are going to be facing the music eventually.
But even then, it's okay. It's peaceful. Because even when they know my story (at least the people closest around me), I know they're not going to be the type of people to judge. Even if they heard all the gory details down to the final indiscretion, these people I already love already love me and this life, here, is already its own proof that I am not the same person who just lays idle about life and allows everyone else to define her boundaries.
Ici est la cathedrale de Chicoutimi:
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