You Called my Youth

 

“You called my youth, sidestepping me away to exile of the heart…” - words I wrote to You my Lord more than thirty years ago when I felt my separation so keenly. 

A deep and all-pervading ache.

Not remembering that I was actually born with that ache, an emptiness deep inside that would never let me go no matter how much I tried. 

And I have been trying hard to give solace to that ache, to fill the emptiness with what is not You.

Rain mesmerises. 

Rain on a dark November evening pecking at my face, battering my hood. 

Rain on the seafront. 

Deserted seafront, releasing what is deserted in me. 

Thoughts and feelings that are comfortably restrained, kept in check – now, almost unbeknownst to me, begin to stir like skittish horses, taking on a pace of their own. 

I had thought never to revisit this again.

The thought of loss. 

My failure that somehow led to that loss. 

The feeling that goes with it. 

And the shock of how it happened still startles.  

The shame. 

And even though a sense of normality has returned, every encounter leaves me feeling that I have lost.

And You were warning me of what was coming – the uncharacteristic silence.

The realization in the midst of a dance that I was already losing them without knowing why. 

And even then accepting the loss as long as they were happy.

Dear God, You know how much I love them, how much they were first in my life, how utterly attached I was to them, wanting to be in the centre of their circle. 

And perhaps that was my problem, is my problem. 

Attachment! 

Wanting what I cannot have, what doesn’t belong to me. 

Being somehow defined by my relationship to them, being enfolded in them, by them all these years. 

And it was such a joy, an incredible sense of fulfilment not always given to one who is celibate. 

Maybe I smothered it all, smothered them. Maybe they needed space.

I gave the whole heart of me and realize that it wasn’t enough, gave to them the heart that has always belonged to You my God. 

Why is it that I refuse to give my all to You? Why do I hold back and distract myself from You?

For years, perhaps for all my life Lord, I have sensed - I have known - that you were calling me to Yourself, calling me away. 

This is how I stand before You, waiting once more, standing at the door of my soul to give access to You before all others.

You ask me in the Gospel, “what do you want me to do for you?” 

I tell you that I want you to make me a good priest, to make me truly pure in my entire being with a love that knows no fall and takes no offence. 

And then I said, “I want You to take me Home!” 

Home to where I was before I was conceived. 

As soon as that prayer was spoken in my heart I knew it to be true, my whole being was at one, at peace in that prayer. 

That’s what I want. 

This world is not my home.

I am a pilgrim in it passing through. 

And, though I sense that You have heard the prayer - you heard it because Your Holy spirit made it in me - and though I sense that even now it is being answered, I also know that to You a single day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a single day. 

I exist in that expanse of Your timelessness and the journey Home may not be complete as quickly as I would want.

I wait. 

Come Lord Jesus take complete possession of this life that You have created; come bless all those I love so joyfully and so painfully. 

Come! Take my age as you have taken my youth.

Amen!