Dregs

This week has been a low ebb for me. But I suppose any Lenten pilgrimage--any daily spiritual practice--has its nadir. (Why did I imagine that I'd be any different from St. John of the Cross, Mother Theresa, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Simone Weil--even Augustine--in this respect? Yeah, I'm all too aware of the ways in which I differ--but having a spiritual pilgrimage without a nadir, without a coming to account, without confession?--I don't think so. Maybe one enters these things as in a dream, just as one enters marriage and parenthood through the door of romance, because if we entered them knowing how hard they would be, we would never start at all?) One starts with a resolution not to use take-out cups. And discovers all of the hoarded clutter in one's own life, and a terrible fear of letting go.

"A rabbit paralyzed by headlights," I described to a friend the feeling of facing the millions of tasks in my life all vying for top place. I imagine myself a white bunny in the white snow, arrested in her tracks by a circle of spiritual squad cars, all shining their headlights on me. I can even feel the heat. (The heat might be a bit of hormone drama thrown in for extra effect.)