While sorting through piles of this and that, having moved in here not that long ago but then faced with increasing back troubles, I came across the last-ever note card I received from me dearest Spiritual Father.
He had such difficulty writing, yet he made the incredible effort. I will always appreciate that effort! I re-read what he wrote. Part of it was letting me know that he spent the days in bed other than being taken to Mass in a wheelchair. How painful it was even at the time to realize the Spiritual Da was truly in decline. (I recall today that I still thought he could rally, get back to sitting in his chair. Not to be.)
He wrote that he was too tired--having a hard time even praying. He read a little of the newspaper but could not read books. Too worn out, he was.
Then he turned to asking me--saying he was wondering about my future. (I should have, when I read that, realized he was trying to point me forward, knowing himself he was slowly dying, that he'd not be up in his recliner again, not going to talk with me again or see me in person again in this life.) Then he told me he hoped I'd still read the good books, and that he wanted me never to lose touch with the supernatural.
There is more--more of his thoughts of me, of what he felt of me and for my life and future--and far too good of thoughts and estimation, by far.
When I read his last statement of which I will not share, I closed the card and addressed him here in this room where I sleep on the floor and suffer on the floor. I said, "Well, Fr. 'X', you know the truth of me now! You see how I'm not at all as good as you thought, as good as you probably hoped! But I'll keep trying, and I pray for deeper conversions and yet you see me here, that I lack discipline, and that I'm far from what you thought, what you wrote!"
Today I read the Divine Office again--the Office of Readings. I located a lamp that was packed, unwrapped it, found a lightbulb, and have it here by my floor bed. I placed the Breviary (Divine Office) and the first of my two-volume set of the Life of St. Philip Neri by my floor bed. I have no excuse for not reading in the evening when my body is worn with pain and needs to be down.
I pushed myself a bit today, though, and got things unpacked and mostly put away in the bathroom, and I vacuumed and wiped out with Pine-Sol water, the large dresser that my great-great-grandfather built sometime in the 1860's-1870's when he'd been a cabinet maker's apprentice and before becoming part-owner of a lumber mill. He developed his artistry as well as his ability to manage a company, rise in stature in the community, and have a lovely home built in which five children would be born, one of them being my great-grandmother.
I thought about how his hands worked the wood--walnut--and designed each detail. All this was done without power tools, all by hand--his hands. In the move before this current move, one of the finials he had glued and brad-nailed as an artistic feature of each of the slanted corners, top and bottom of the front, had broken and torn off. I had saved the two pieces. Yesterday when well enough, I had purchased some wood glue.
So I did my own part in repairing--gluing, clamping by using a rubber band about the intricate piece. Tomorrow I hope to glue and brad nail (saved two of the tiny brads still in the finial) the piece back where it belongs, where it was placed by his hands over 150 years ago. I found this to be an immensely powerful action with deep reverberations of spiritual momentum.
Here I was, all these years later, his great-great-grandchild now in my later years, in essence helping with what God gave him the talent and deliberation to construct from raw lumber, hewn from trees in the area in which he lived. He was a young man then, learning a trade that would lead to a position of ownership and leadership.
I thought of how especially as a consecrated hermit, Catholic I be--a convert--as he was a Protestant--attachments to objects seem out of line with the spiritual life. However, this moment was intensely spiritual, filled with love and joy, and a type of mystical kinship across the mistiness or veil that divides us mortals from those on the other side. So near they are with us; but it is us who usually cannot see them, hear them, touch them.
In one of the drawers remained a typed copy (my mother tended to such good details) of his history, and of which other items he had constructed. My dad had written that a chair he'd built had been sold. He also noted that I had the "chest" [of drawers] and another item of which has been passed on already. I found myself hoping that one of my children would some day want and appreciate this dresser. It is the only one here in my hermitage, so I will be putting it to good use for now.
There are some rub-spots to the wood on the finish from the move, but I have some walnut finishing supplies and will refurbish the areas of need. To think--all these years--and the finish that my great-great-grandfather applied with satisfaction, and I'm sure love in what he was constructing and completing, has remained for all this time; and it endured criss-crossing the country twice now and yet again in another state, far from where built and used for 13 decades of 15.
I wondered what type of clothing was placed in those drawers and where the keys had been lost, as he made key holes and locks for each drawer, including two small drawers on the top of the dresser. These two set back from the front edge with a lovely top, beveled edges, and a simple line design routed (by hand tools) on each of four major drawers none of which are the same height.
I wondered if my great-grandmother had used this chest of drawers, or if she had given it to her daughter to use, and then when my grandmother passed, if my grandfather had then given it to my dad, or if my grandmother gave it to my dad before she died but before I was born, for it to be used by my mom and dad when they got married or when their first two children were born.
I recall my next elder sister using the dresser at least from junior high school on through college. My parents then had it in their guest room. And when they were ready to downsize from their retirement home, having taken the dresser with them across country in that phase of their lives, it came back across country to me.
I had use of it and whatever else of family items they were willing to spare after my spouse left shortly following the car accident. Our marriage furnishings were split, and then following my back surgeries and loss of career and being on disability, at times I'd have to sell some possessions to provide for more necessary items to better provide for the three children I was blessed to rear.
Regardless, I know it is just an item. If it were to burn to the ground with this hermitage I'm in, that would be that. I could put my clothing in boxes or in a plastic container as I did for nearly six years in my previous farmhouse hermitage--quite an episode of life.
I'd driven the dresser and other possessions yet then across country. There was no point, in the farmhouse, to put clothing or anything in the dresser; too many rats and mice! Most all remained boxed and bagged for six years. But here, in Solus Deus Hermitage, now, there is a good use for it. And I am grateful to God for the touches of familial love, of DNA, if you will, and the loving thoughts for my great-great-grandfather and all others who had use of this dresser over the past century and a half.
So if this is part of "keeping in touch with the supernatural" that my Spiritual Father hoped I'd do, when he wrote his last note card to me in January of this year, I figure he is aware as are all those I was thinking of today. Today, while I was cleaning it, doing my own bit of handiwork in repairing. And surely God and any soul I've been in touch with--know the gratitude I have for the lives and the souls of family and others who have given me life and blessed my life so selflessly and lovingly.
God bless His Real Presence in us! Let us love one another as God loves!
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