You never see it coming: the day that is different.
Summer days unspool with a predictable laze and haze and all the familiar markers of the season. Worshippers are fewer but filled with good humor and summer’s ease. We had corn on the cob for dinner last night, the first time this year. Cherry pies were two weeks ago; apricot galette two weeks before that. The sweet cherries in the grocery stores are good and their prices, are too. There are rumors of peaches, but I don’t believe them. And I don’t even consider tomatoes for another few weeks.
It is not only food, of course. After the morning’s exertions through midday, Sunday afternoons and evenings about the parish are peaceful all year, but a lovely languor settles in with summer that reinforces my routine. I suppose it might be a good night to meet a friend for dinner, but I usually don’t. I would rather be here. The stern glare of the afternoon suddenly is spent and the lush green hush of the summer evening settles softly. The boys almost always are elsewhere and only the cicadas make their clamor.
The church is so quiet and cool when I lock up, it is perfect for prayer. It must be honest prayer, because it made me laugh at my self-indulgence and the assumptions that lead me through an evening expecting Sunday to be like Sunday always is.
Every day, every season has its samenesses that mark our times and guide our dispositions. The long evenings of July, the sudden darkfall of a February afternoon. Even the madcap activity of a month like May is expected and reassuringly familiar, perhaps somewhat or even mostly because we know it must yield to the vacation exhaustion demands, and then right on schedule, everybody vacates.
But this familiar backdrop can highlight the unique event. Driving the customary route home this afternoon from my customary walk, a turn and a merge reminded me of the time I encountered a friend there, and he introduced me to somebody for the first time – somebody who is still around now, six years later.
How normal was the morning there was that text message conveying news of something that would change everything; it would be months before anyone knew what the new normal would be. Then there was the afternoon when the pot on the stove, the text on the screen were as predictable as humidity in summer, but returning that phone call and agreeing yes, something just was not right, led to another call, led to the car, led to discovery. Sweet Jesus help us.
We hear stories of normal lives expecting another normal day who receive disaster instead – a flood, a tornado, fire coming up the hill. Everything lost, precious ones lost, sameness never to be recovered.
Sometimes the change comes first as a whisper. Only later, wondering how we got here, we look back and recall the first clue, that simple call, that small sound that made us look into what might be different. Sometimes the new thing seems insignificant, but then it ripens into eventual delight. Sometimes the change comes as an eruption, a disruption, an unavoidable inescapable event. Sometimes, not often one hopes, it comes as a cataclysm, a life-changing force that changes something for everyone and everything for some.
The rhythm and order of our days, the samenesses that we cherish and nurture, the predictabilities we welcome when they come and we relinquish sadly when they pass, all of these serve not only as background or context to provide the scene to some opening or initiation, some rupture or rending, but the recurring regularities reassure us of the remaining reality on which we stand, we have stood, and we will stand, even when change come as it must, and so often rudely does. The One who never changes, in whom all being has its being, is present and attentive in the cool and quiet of His dwelling place, and always perfect for prayer.
You never see it coming: every day is different. The gift is to see what remains the same.
Monsignor Smith
