boating and other stuff, like pregnancy

I've heard this notion that becoming Catholic after being Protestant, you swim the Tiber. I find anyone who thinks it's a rigorous swim to be a dolt. If they say "wade the Tiber", I'm all for it. If you've been a member of the Orthodox church, and decide to be Catholic, you might want to cut the swim and the wade from your hyperbole. Then it's more like floating on an overly prepared and comfortable raft. Let us not look a gift horse in the mouth, or something like that. To be fair, you're also a dolt if you are Orthodox and think your piety is !AWESOME! and are depending on public motions and the right phrases it to get you through.

It's the things in life that you don't know that sting and nag constantly, and drag at your will. You know those anchors. The things you work to know, and work to follow, mostly feel complacent much faster than you're comfortable with. Initial zeal is particularly dangerous, and full of the kind of emotion that sinks ships which otherwise, not burdened with the weight, could have weathered the storm. I've done zeal, too many times, and looked to have it in too many places. I haven't found exhaustion within Orthodoxy. There is a fullness that is emotional, physical, spiritual, and that isn't rigid and inflexible. Though, goodness, there are plenty of cons in Orthodoxy. They're endless and perfection in worship and prayer in any church filled with other people who aren't yourself-exactly cloned and unchanging-is going to be rough and ugly. I'd probably find my cloned and perfect selves annoying after a while, anyway. Pretending the congregation of persons you worship alongside are going to be the kind you really prefer and don't struggle to identify with is a sad joke. I've tried many places and many denominations looking for something unbroken. I won't say that in Orthodoxy I've found some gleaming palace of perfection. That would be a lie and a gross mistake if I thought so, especially after where we've been in the world of religion. I think the church is my mother but I haven't really had good luck in mothers. Good thing Doubting Thomas wasn't voted off. There is hope.      

I do know playing The Angel Cried for my daughters as they fall asleep is good. The one time my littlest daughter will release her favorite thumb from her mouth and passively cross her tiny arms over her chest is to receive the bread of life, and that is good. The way the similarly roving morning sun moves over the halos of the icons and draws your wandering eye is good. The new baby held up in the sign of the cross and marched to the altar is good. Praying ceaselessly for the dead is good. Doing things that make your pathetic soul uncomfortable is good. Whatever is good and profitable for your soul...

I have all these little fragments. A few of them gleam. A few of them are rusted. I'm going to keep trucking along until I don't look for the gleam and I don't notice the rust.

Enough with the boating metaphors, already. However, the best way to boat is in a well tested and worn canoe on a small, placid lake (even better if it has navigable tributaries for when you get bored) that is shallow, well-known, and full of easily caught bluegills. Too bad we all pine for the colossal yacht in the middle of the rolling Pacific with the whale beneath waiting to swallow us.

It's 5:28 am and I have been up for hours trying to sleep. Haven't slept in days. The end of pregnancy is rough.

Then comes the infant stage again. It helps that my babies are the cutest things on the planet, but jeez oh pete at this point I could use about 5 years of make-up rest.