2002 CONFESSIONS
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Contents © 2002
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

FEBRUARY 2002 CONFESSIONS

THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS

I've been praying more lately, but I don't feel it's much cause for pride. Good thing, that: what a "Christian sin," being proud of one's advances in holiness. "I've risen from the muck!" as opposed to "I've been raised up!" -- as if rising were not, like everything else, the fruit of grace). I don't even feel particularly good about it, though I know one may rejoice in and even merit a crown upon which one has no outright claim. I haven't been praying because I love God more than I did (though one may hope for this as a fruit of any prayer). I haven't been praying out of a sharpened sense of duty, though the conclusion of prayer does leave me with the feeling of duty discharged. I suppose I've been praying more because I've been suffering more, but it's a sort of self-imposed suffering, a suffering born of a lack that I have created. Still, it is possible that such an increase in prayer might help improve my comprehension of my total dependence on the Lord, and perhaps strengthen my belief in His supremely attentive love -- if He bothers with such a request as this...

I've been praying because I want something, want it badly enough to spend time asking God and St. Therese of Lisieux for it every morning. It's a small thing -- I feel silly when my wife asks, in all sincerity, why it matters so much to me -- but there it is. It's not material; it's an affirmation of my abilities from a particular worldly source. I have been waiting for it a little over six weeks now, trying not to let it color each day with its failure to arrive.

Though I like having started my day with prayer -- putting first things first -- I have not derived much consolation from my activities. The prayers are taken from the devotional magazine Magnificat: an opening, a Hymn, a Psalm, a Scripture passage, the Canticle of Zechariah, Intercessions, the Our Father, a conclusion, the Mass readings, and a meditation. I follow this with some devotional prayers to St. Therese. But throughout, though the form of the prayers are manifold, I cannot shake the feeling that it is all one grand request, that I am not really praising, not really seeking holiness, not really repenting -- just always petitioning. I sometimes feel I am bargaining with God -- "I'll offer you these prayers if you do for me." But as Claudius notes in Hamlet: "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go." I begin to hear gongs clanging.

Last week, I received a letter from my brother, who may have guessed at my anxiety through his own -- we share some common hopes. He made a fine point, an exposition of what my mother gets at when she reminds me, "Whatever God wants." He wrote, "The more I pray about this, the more I get the sense that it is absolute folly to measure ourselves as artists by what somebody else knows or doesn't know, thinks or doesn't think, about us. The ONLY THING that matters is: are we inspired? And if we are, what we do is from God, Who is the very source of all Beauty, and what more does the artist need to know than that? What 'critic' is more important to please than Him? We could write a book or a poem or a song, or even make a film, that almost no one knows about, either before or after we're dead, but if God sees and declares what we have made to be beautiful, Who knows better than He whether we have been 'successful'?"

My interior cynic is tempted to label this the self-soothing of the unappreciated Christian artist, but that begs the question of who is failing to do the appreciating. I got another reminder of this when I chanced to re-read Robert Bolt's play A Man For All Seasons. Early on, Sir Thomas More addresses the ambitious Richard Rich: "Why not be a teacher? You'd be a fine teacher. Perhaps even a great one."* Rich responds, "And if I was, who would know it?"

"You, your pupils, your friends, God. Not a bad public, that..." And today, as I go over all this, I recall a line from the movie Babette's Feast. One of the central characters is a woman who was once discovered by an opera star. The star trained her voice and dreamed of bringing her gift to the world's attention. Her father, a minister, would not hear of it, and though the star was heartbroken, he eventually saw that the world's loss was insignificant. In his final letter to his pupil, he took comfort from a lovely expectation: "How your singing will delight the angels!"

Endnote: This morning, my wife suggested we begin a novena to Therese for my intention. The opening prayer for each day is the saint's prayer of abandonment, which includes the lines, "I fear only one thing, my God, to keep my own will...it is confidence and nothing else that leads one to Love."

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