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Some Points of Difficulty
I am a Catholic, an alcoholic, a writer, a married man. I wish to belong wholly to God. Points of difficulty –
| Obedience. |
In general I gladly accept the authority of the Church. In detailed practice obedience means to me – regular reception of the Sacraments; morning and night prayers; the attempt to accommodate myself inwardly and outwardly to measures of family life, especially to get a humble and loving and generous spirit in dealing with my wife and children. Most penance comes haphazardly in this area. When in a job I try to do what I’m told willingly and without fuss; but I’m quite often forgetful or clumsy. The spiritual director. It seems God doesn’t want me to have one, but follow the Alcoholics Anonymous path in this matter – a conscious and personal contact with God as I understand Him – in effect this means I am relying on the Holy Spirit as director. Another problem here. In writing verse etc. I have to make my own moral and intellectual and aesthetic decisions. An unusual degree of liberty. Could be dangerous. Yet in various subtle ways God leads me to this idiosyncratic path. |
| Sin. |
For some time God has given me the grace to be free of mortal sins, apart from occasional relapses into faults of solitary impurity, which might or might not be mortal. My venial sins I seem almost unable to identify. A curious void, perhaps of incorrigible stupidity. A sense of general vague emptiness and constant spiritual discomfort, this time from God – yet the rare moments when He speaks to me, He says, as it were – ‘Be quiet. Don’t worry. You’re doing what I want.’ The discomfort shows me that I’m not pleasing him; I feel a most powerful desire to do something about my distance from Him – as if life in the world were choking me and covering me with dirt – yet my station is always both to immediate tasks and the vocation of marriage. Basically, my peace is in His will, and marriage is His will for me. |
| Fervour. |
I would like to blaze for Him, burn for Him, but cannot. The world is a very quiet desert in which I grow old and will die. The [?] nature of page 569 human attributes is certainly before my eyes. It is as if He has withdrawn me from the country, to the centre of my own soul, and said – ‘Wait. Just wait. What you do doesn’t matter much, as long as it is not evil.’ |
| Will. |
Apparently He wants me to be broad, ecumenical, not formally ‘religious’ – like water, which is common, not like wine, which is special, – rather than moving in a direct manner I would prefer to [?], if I had a choice. |
| Poverty. |
A powerful desire for poverty – to be self-stripped of goods, books, people’s good opinion – those things seem to burn and stifle my soul – chiefly (I believe) in order to give Him greater access to my soul. But He, having initiated this desire (the most powerful I have) forbids me to accomplish it but [?] me with things to use and people to try to look after. This is [?]. Blessed be His name! |
| A.A. |
In serving the alcoholics I have [?] but [?] he puts me in solitude. He wants me to stay quiet, not look for company, only answer definite knocks at the door. |
My religious life is in essence an abandonment to the mercy of Our Lady. This was not it seems an answer of the Cross. But it seems it has to be so simple as to be sub-intellectual, though not [?] feeling.
Do I [?] rightly or wrongly? Yet He has taken me into His keeping and shows me the world as a jewel He offers to man but which man mishandles – but as if after many journeys and adventures, He now leaves me more or less to myself, as a kind of sentry on guard or even a stick of wood. I am a happy man. But at times I fear I am not serving Him in the way He desires. Life without God is of course untenable. Without a sense of His presence it is worthy of a rubbish heap. The difficulty is to have full faith that a life apparently all but wholly natural (and lived very clumsily) has in fact the degrees of love and obedience He desires of me. I think, however, He may be playing with me a little, as if in a [?], – not outwardly disappearing, but offering to disappear. No [?] to keep my attention fixed on the Mass; yet go up to receive Him without fear. [?]. Or am I – as so many before me – utilising a spiritual make-believe?
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