2nd Writing Assignment

Writing Exercises
§ Finish this sentence: “The last time I felt a truly intense emotion was [blank], and this is what I felt . . ."

Prayer

Jesus, you lived a human life and felt every emotion there is to feel. Help me receive my emotions as what they are—indicators of what’s happening inside me and keys to important memories and truths. When I try to escape my feelings, remind me that they are gifts, and help me stay in the moment.  AMEN

The last time I felt a truly intense emotion was standing outside of my church after having driven a group back  from a diocesan Chrism Mass and the feeling I had was of intense surrender to the fact that our pastoral administrator , a friend for over 14 years was leaving.  I was the driver of the church van and as we usually do we were singing on the way back from Raleigh to our home parish in Williamston.  We had been facing our pastoral administrator’s pending departure for over four years and it finally hit home.  This was the last time I would sing with her.  Now before you laugh, you need to know I have been told I cannot sing and have even been asked to move to the other side of the church by a person in our church that had a beautiful soprano voice.  She told me I made her sing off key and needed to move away from where she sat.  I moved and no longer sang. 

In the years of driving back and forth to meetings and the fact that our pastoral administrator loved to sing; as she use to say she who sings prays twice, I started to sing softly when she lead us during these trips.  It didn’t seem to matter if I sang off key.  I had regained enough confidence that I would sing the echo parts to some of our favorite songs, Our Father and the Gentle Women.  In the van we sang a cappella so I was getting pretty brave and was even heard to raise my voice to answer back her echoes in the songs when we sang them in church. 

This day, however, we had spent the day together and it had been a long day.  We were almost back to the church and we were singing Gentle Woman when tears welled up and my voice cracked.  When we arrived at the church, I hurried about getting everything unpacked from the van, put away what needed to be put up inside, and then said good bye to those I had spent the day with.  It was just my pastoral administrator (Sister Kieran) and I standing there as the others drove away.  The feeling that welled up and overflowed was of such loss.  I knew I would never sing with her again like we had on the way home that day.  I gave her a hug and said it has just hit me; you really are leaving this time.   

Two years ago, she had talked about leaving but for whatever reason God saw fit to rearrange those plans.  When she talked to us about staying for two more years, I had shrugged and said okay.  She asked me later about my reaction to the news of her staying.  I had just felt she wasn’t going anywhere then; there was nothing to think about her going or staying as she wasn’t going.  I never felt as much as she talked about it, planned it, and tried to prepare us for it, that it was going to happen.  Was I not allowing myself to think about it or was God telling me not to stress over it because it wasn't the right time yet, I don’t know.  The talk of it just never affected me one way or another; however that day, on the way home, in the middle of the song Gentle Women, I knew she was going.  

There was still time before she left, it was a few months away but there would never be another Chrism Mass together.  That part of our journey was over.