Catholic Hermit: Leaving Everything

In today's Mass Gospel reading, the section concludes with the disciples leaving everything and following Jesus.

My personal battle with managing high levels of physical pain continues.  The weather is shifting, making the pain increase due to pressure system.  It is amazing that something so uncontrollable as weather, can cause so much pain and suffering in a body that has had major injuries in the past.

Yet it is so.  And medications are being denied many with legitimate pain due to the abuse of pain medications by those without physical pain.

My efforts to focus on Jesus Christ and Him crucified have been met with pain's efforts to disrupt my physical functioning and brain chemistry of which dopamine and endorphins are needed to help combat pain.  (Seratonin, as well, is needed, but somehow that is not a problem for me; meds prescribed that are seratonin-based create adverse effects.)

What is alarming to me is the fact that we aren't really in the storm-front season but merely in a time period in which the temperatures are lowering with greater divergence between night and day, and the moisture content is increasing, especially in morning.  I wake up sickened--nauseated, chills, head throbbing at the head injury area, spine from low back through neck in agony and radiating through to intestines and now also the lungs.  Breathing is rather painful, thus.

Yet, if I can battle the dark and despairing thoughts, the pain might lessen in a few hours so that by late morning or early afternoon, the body can get up and out to prune or as I was doing yesterday, remove the cobblestones that line the front, paved pathway to drive, pull out dead grass that somehow was able to live in the sand base, and replace the cobblestones to create a fresh and clean effect.

The results are beautiful, lovely!  And, when I am able to engage in even that simple bit of labor, my mind and heart and spirit tend to soar to some other realm in Christ, where peace and removal from bodily pain exist, and time does not.

It is just getting the body to that point of being able to get up and out, for the nausea and chills and head pain to lower enough to push through the pain.

I suppose, in a way, it is a form of "leaving everything to follow Christ."  Leave the body, in essence, leave the pain, to follow Christ.  One must be brought to that point of strength and determination, to detach and with courage--leave everything.  

Beginning with leaving some things, is a start, once one can bring oneself to the point of action of "leaving."

I have considered jumping ship here--leaving my hermitage and going to another area in which the climate is drier and not the barometric pressure shifts, or hopefully not as many.  Definitely not as many storm fronts that roll through in fall and winter, as here--there are other geographical areas, thus, or seem to be, although I certainly cannot and could not afford the most ideal climates for pain-ridden persons.

And now, there is the matter of property maintenance, but perhaps someone could arrange to have the grass mowed and to check on the cellar to make sure the sump pump is working properly.  Yet, financially I'd need to stay with someone, in a guest room or such.  That can be an inconvenience to those who have offered--of which only one or two are in areas of the country which would at least give a chance for this consecrated Catholic hermit's body to find out if the pain is lessened and thus manageable.

That brings up the issue of the silence of solitude; but of course the offer to me is from those who know I am a hermit, and my vocation is understood along with the vows taken now nearly 18 years ago.  I've also taken vows of suffering, prior to my hermit profession; and while the mind and heart can know well for what and whom my constant suffering is offered, the body and mind stumble and fall with the weight of the pain when it reaches the upper echelons of suffering.

Yes, I can think of Jesus Christ and Him crucified--pray to nothing nothing except Him and His suffering and death--but severe pain has a way of cutting the mind and breaking the heart.  Perhaps that is the point in which Jesus cried out to His Heavenly Father:  Why hast Thou forsaken me?

I've taken what I can of over-the-counter and one of the diminishing and non-refillable pain meds; I've drunk of the cup of day-old coffee, strong and microwave-hot.  I will see about getting up if the radiating pain into stomach simmers down and try a can of Dr. Pepper--of all things!  I've found that the sugar and caffeine do help at least a little.  Have consumed the supplements that are known to help with chronic pain--lots of vitamin D and B-Complex, turmeric, B-6 and 12, glucosamine chondroitin, fish oil, magnesium, calcium, and several others.

Must pray to leave this pain, give it a try, as noon approaches here at Te Deum Hermitage.  I must persevere in suffering, knowing that the Lord is with me and I with the Lord, no matter what.  Leaving the temporal stuff is not a major struggle in this phase of my life; I have gained a spirit of detachment to a point that I can do without yet am not bothered having that which is given for our convenience and ability to exist without becoming a burden or expense to others.  

There is a point in detachment from the temporal in which one does not care, either way, but accepts objects that are part of daily life--shovel, watering hose, sleeping bag, blanket, pillows, vitamins and other supplements in order to cooperate with whatever will help us live our lives.  Food, shelter, some money to pay our own way, a computer, telephone--whatever provides the usual means of getting along in the temporal realm--vehicle, gasoline, and insurance coverage, licensing fees paid.

Yet the ability to leave everything and follow Jesus runs far deeper than the temporal aspects of leaving.  More, we have to accept the burdens of living in society--and I call them burdens for in essence possessions are that, at least at some point in our journeys...seem as such.  Leaving pain is something less literal and not so tangible.  I will pray for that leave-taking, now, and take the step to get up and see how it goes with this body given me and all the suffering God is allowing in this present moment.

As for leaving everything, while the disciples left their families and careers and homes in a more literal sense, they still had relationships, pain, trials, interactions with one another.  Ultimately, though, they did leave absolutely everything--those "things" that are non-tangible and more esoteric.  Eventually, they left their bodies in physical death.  It is a process, and that process like all matters for us followers of Christ, are ordained and meted out in God's will and His form of timing.

God bless His Real Presence in us!