During the pandemic, we had no option but the virtual mass and it was a soul saver for my spirit. I’d watch the local one of our parish. Sometimes I logged in to view the one from my brother’s high school in Texas, where I knew people I knew were also watching. It kept us connected on a spiritual if not physical level, better than the phone calls and Zoom meetings we tried to orchestrate.
Since the pandemic lifted, I’ve taken to listening to the daily mass on my phone as I drive to work. It helps set my spirit for whatever challenges high school ninth graders feel like throwing –even if it’s pencils. I’d prefer to attend but the schedule prevents. So I try for a full measure of His word to feed upon, and a spiritual communion. However, it feels lonely because I am listening alone.
As a reader and writer and person of faith, I love podcasts for reflection on spiritual matters. I weave in and out of consuming Catholic radio and online media –as a lot of my favorite writers have jumped from place to place. Some ran blogs, some wrote for the same publications I did, and some I just fangirled wherever they went. I realize, I’m seeking in those experiences something not singular in nature. I want the friendship, the connection as much as I want the spiritual insights they offer.
However, when I want to do a deeper dive, I need the quiet of my own mind, so I need a book. I thought about why this was so, and it follows that when you write, you cannot multitask and when you read, as opposed to listen, you cannot multi-task. So I need the physical, incarnational nature of a book when I need to concentrate. Likewise when I’m listening, if you really want me to hear, put a pen in my hand and a notebook before me. I will take notes, and I will remember. Otherwise, you might want to pray to Saint Anthony, she doesn’t forget.
Part of why as teachers, we struggled with instruction and learning fell off during the 2020 and 2021 school year nation wide is that absence of the physical reality of life in those encounters. Indeed, the virtual nature of most things now, makes going out into the world harder for many. My own students and children sometimes profess to prefer the comfort of a knowable engagement, that doesn’t allow for discomforting interactions with angry, unhappy, unpleasant or nosy people. “Who wants pizza?” will be met with stony refusal if the price of said pizza is making a phone call and talking to someone, as versus ordering online.
The incarnational reality of reality, the importance of presence in relationships is something we need.
Romance, friendships and even bad customer service help us to be more human. Somehow, because of original sin, we refuse, deny, and ignore at our own peril. I know I do this with friends, thinking of two I need to call and set up lunch dates with, and one I need to fly out and visit. We rely on past memories and occasional accidental connections to preserve what should be sought because it holds innate value –knowing others. As we drift, we recognize the gap but it gets harder to move forward –for fear of rejection based on absence, a reality of our own creating, and which may yet continue. It seems easier to start over or never dive deeper –but swimming only in the shallow of relationships, like swimming only where you touch, eventually grows old and stale.
God calls us to go deeper and deeper in, with Him, and with each other.
Going to mass, like reading a book, like writing, like going to lunch with friends, is an experience in and of itself with innate value, even if our conversations and minds wander. However, all of these actions share root intentionality. We may be going for wrong reasons. For example, I may be reading to avoid housework –it works until it doesn’t. Often I discover I’m thinking about dinner or the shopping list or an upcoming trip, or any number of worries while at mass. It’s a source of frustration for me spiritually, that I can both hyperfocus to the point of not hearing people talking to me, and have my brain play hop scotch to a million things without me recognizing the passage of time.
However, the habitual nature of going helps mitigate my Jackson Pollack style thinking –and I’ve taken to bringing a pen and paper with me to take notes. It helps me. It’s a form of not multi-tasking for me because it prevents me from doing anything really other than listening. Writing puts my hyperfocus capacity to good use in the context of a place where the passage of time should fall away –in the mass.
It allows the Holy Spirit to direct my eyes to see the adult son rubbing the shoulder of his elderly mother, or the three year old girl with absolute trust as she throws herself into her mother’s arms and shuts her eyes. There’s the couple who come every week with their seven children, and I feel throwbacks to an earlier time in my own life, as I delight in their presence.
Seeing all of these people, young and old, healthy and infirm, from every state processing up to say, “Yes” to Jesus reinforces my own yes. I know this is participation in Heaven. We come to be healed. All of Heaven is present in every mass, all worshiping the Lord, and we are part of that celebration. We come and are made more like Him by receiving. We come to be made more real, more incarnational, and we are sent to do the same in all the rest of our life with all we encounter.
I need to go make some phone calls, schedule some lunches, and buy a plane ticket.
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