Desperado

Item: I got my tragus pierced. Unfortunately, I cannot spell tragus, and have resorted to referring to the locale of my cool new piercing as as that "sticky-out part of my ear" (which really doesn't clear things up all that much for anyone because, sadly, in my case, that's my entire ear)

I just put the boys on the bus, and have the house to myself.

I feel really oddly hollow this morning . . . detached. Something inside me is all spent . . . empty . . . gone. (You're losing all your highs and lows / Ain't it funny how the feeling goes away?)

And there's just this engulfing wave of sadness that I haven't been able to shake for weeks. I know I need to snap out of it, but easier said than done.

It's funny. I was thinking yesterday that thematically, one of my all-time favorite motifs in love songs is that of the persistent guy following a girl all over the country to be with her - Collin Raye's Little Red Rodeo:

Oh, how fast can I go?
Gotta catch that little red Rodeo.
She drove off with my heart
I gotta let her know.
Need the girl in that little red Rodeo.

Or my current favorite, Jack Ingram's Wherever You Are:

Wherever you are
No matter how far
Girl, I'm gonna find my way to you
Through rivers of rain
Over mountains of pain
Do whatever on earth I've gotta do
I'll follow the dream
I'll follow my heart
Girl, I've gotta be
Wherever you are.

Mind you, I've never really had that sort of relationship. (I think Joe might have driven to Pennsylvania once to visit me.) As a rule, guys don't tend to drop everything to come find me and tell me they want to be with me. Which is fine. I don't expect them to. But regardless, I think there's something in my fascination with the image that speaks to the human condition. Everyone wants to be loved - to be wanted with the sort of urgent immediacy that comes from a man in love realizing what it is he wants for the first time - to be desperately, passionately sought after.

The day after commencement, Fr. Heisler gave an amazing homily in which he quoted (of all things) James Blunt's "You're Beautiful". He told us that Christ too, like the guy in the song, looks at us, beholds us, fathoms deep in love -- "sees our face in a crowded place", as it were -- and tells us . . . "you're beautiful." But he said that the tragedy of the song lies in the last line - "It's time to face the truth / I'll never be with you." It indicates how the world, while desiring a love like that: real, abiding, persistent, passionate . . . has despaired of finding it, because they have never experienced an encounter with the Divine Love.

Just the day before, the same priest told me that Christ is deeply in love with me -- that His eyes light up when He thinks of me. And I started crying. Because I understood, for one brief, fleeting moment. I remembered the way Joe's face would break into smiles when he'd been waiting at a crowded dance for a while and I finally walked into the Commons. The way so many boys over the years have looked when they told me I was the most beautiful woman in the world. Most of all, I thought of that look a boy gets in his eyes when he really, really wants to kiss you, when for one blissful moment the whole world stands still and you're the only two people in it. And I realized that all of these things are just a pale reflection of something so much more permanent, so much more substantial, so much more passionate and real. That the greatest love story the world has ever known was already written on Calvary Hill.

And then I get this achy feeling in my stomach that this longing, this damnable craving which I've been experiencing for years, but ever more and more urgently since Joe left - is for something deeper and more inexorable than any human love can ever provide - something which is only going to be fulfilled by one thing. I'm caught in a frenetic whirlwind of seeking after imitation Christs, but it's all leaving me so hurt, so alone, so empty. (These things that are pleasing you / Will hurt you somehow)

I'm still running from Him, but I can't run forever. Maybe guys don't chase me all over the map, but Christ has definitely followed me, calling me, to hell and back again this year. When will I wake up and listen? (You better let somebody love you before it's too late.)

I guess Augustine summed it up best in the Confessions over sixteen hundred years ago: For Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee, O Lord.

Unfortunately, like Augustine, I find myself praying all too often these days, "Make me good . . . but not yet."