Dark Days and the Blues

Today's not been a very good day. Yesterday wasn't too thrilling either. The weather is sympathizing with my general sense of ill-being - it's dark, rainy, and cold. I've got some kind of nascent flu that's not bad enough to keep me bedridden but not "good" enough for me to go out, plus it's that time of the month and I'm crankier and b*tchier than usual (to myself, since I'm riding this out in isolation). I didn't feel well enough to attend the council meeting yesterday or go to class today, which was probably just as well - I talked to Juwip on the phone earlier this afternoon, and apparently I'm not the only one suffering from a dark, dank, cranky mood. I guess everyone is a little tired lately, and I suddenly realized that this may be a general spiritual attack on all of us - this kind of dreary "desolation" last reared its ugly head prior to the Foundation's anniversary a couple of months ago.

But anyway. If it indeed is an attack, I'm trying to put up the best resistance that I can. I needed to talk to someone today and just vent, but my e-mail is on the fritz and I therefore cannot unload - to my satisfaction - on my prayer partner (to whom I owe a long overdue e-mail anyway!). And someone I was supposed to talk with online isn't around (you know who you are...yes I mean YOU, boohoo), right when I needed a long philosophical/intellectual yet alcohol-free objective discussion on the doldrums. Although it's probably my fault because I fell asleep early last night and slept through most of the morning, but still, grrr...

So I just made do and fell back into reading Bishop Sheen's Lift Up Your Heart, which helped somewhat. Listening to Stephen Curtis Chapman's Sometimes He Comes In the Clouds (considering that it's been a very cloudy day with the sun nowhere in sight) made me feel considerably better (I think I'll use this as a take-off point for tomorrow's Montalban talk), and reading some spiritual reflections is making me feel less sorry for myself (I HATE this feeling)...how's this, from Frederick Buechner:

"Listen to your life; pay attention to what happens to you." Because it seems to me that if indeed there is a God, which most of the time I believe there is, and if indeed He is concerned with the world, which is what the Christian faith is saying -- concerned enough to enter it, to live in it and to work in it and to fail and succeed in it and finally die in it and rise again in it -- if he is really involved with the world, then one of the most powerful ways He speaks to us is through what happens to us, which means keep your ears open, keep your eyes open for the often hidden, illusive word of God.

People often ask, "How do you listen to your life? How do you get into the habit of doing it? How do you keep ears cocked and your eye peeled for the presence of God or the presence of anything else?" One thing I have said, which I think is true, is to pay attention to any of those moments in your life when unexpected tears come in your eyes. You never know when that may happen, what may trigger them. Very often I think if you pay attention to those moments, you realize that something deep beneath the surface of who you are, something deep beneath the surface of the world, is trying to speak to you about who you are.

Interesting, huh? I think I'm going to listen a little bit more. And keep the tissues ready at hand. But the one sure fix from the down-and-outs that I need to get down to right now is to go back to the mission tonight, nascent flu or not. I'm sure God has something to tell me once I "show up" for work...He always does (even from behind the clouds!). Gotta go.