"The world does not need supermen, but supernatural men. Men who persistently turn the self out of their lives. The world would be saved tomorrow if people would let Me just use them."
So, there's the goal: to be a supernatural man.
What I'm puzzling over today is turning the self out, even as I turn the self-out.
One of my colleagues has taken it upon herself to convince me of the joys of the holiday season. And I'm not digging it. But then again, every challenge is a lesson. And even if I have to fake getting in to Christmas, just to get her to stop badgering me about enjoying Christmas, then maybe that could be a good thing--Fake it until you make it style.
Back to my last words (fictitious of course) to my mother. . . . She's really going through a tough time now as my Dad deteriorates more and more. She's short of patience with the boys, and ends up in yelling matches with them. She felt totally defeated by Dad's sister's need to talk with him on the phone yesterday, which, after much work and maneuvering, he could do, before reverting to a conversation set some place back in Rumford, where he grew up, away, far away from the little nursing home where he sits every day, his head tilted to the side, his glasses falling off his face, his mouth agape, breathing.
No humor about it for Mom. No deflection. No euphemism. Just misery. And certainly no visible manifestation, for Mom, of the work of God.
If these were my last words, I would tell my mother that I love her.
If these were my last words, I would let her know that I have always thought of her happiness, always tried to be considerate, fought myself with extra lashings of self-loathing whenever I offended her, and always, always, always came back, back to her because I knew that being here was the one way to express what she always felt most tenuously, always felt slipping away even when it was strongest: that love of her family, that love of her self, that love of her son.
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