Where We Wait

I stepped out to walk while everyone was asleep.  My feet led me to the adoration chapel wherein I had stayed overnight one time when I was younger and had no place to go. 6 hours I sat then, until it was light outside. I think I may have cried a bit then, come to think of it. Some people drown it with alcohol and some people take to drugs when things get bad.  Others seek friends to share with, while others run away to make new ones to leave the hurt behind.

I've always wondered why for me it has been otherwise, why at the brink, I end up sitting in quiet and watching my breath rise and fall.  More so, I tend to end up in churches, when truth be told, I'm the last person to attend mass. I miss going to mass, for the simple reason of knowing that every Sunday it will be there to go to.

Adoration chapels have been a refuge for me, a place to retreat and reflect.  For a person who is already mostly internal, these places serve to magnify the feelings and the hurt until they ring in my ears. Until the silence and the quiet of the chapel becomes all that is left.

I think I end up in quiet and in prayer mostly because I have too much hope in me. That's probably why I don't turn to drink or to drugs or something equally stupid when I am depressed. Not that I haven't in the past, mind you.  Mostly, maybe, it's just that I am too stupid not to do anything but hope for the best. Then again, I think I've learned a few things along the way and I know better now--or at least, a little more.  I think what it is, is that I still have the same quality of hope I've had when I was a child.  The quality that allowed me to sit for hours in the parking lot after dismissal waiting for someone to fetch me while everyone else had gone home. I remember how I would sit and sit and believe that the next car to come through the Salamanca gate would be one of ours. Failing that, I would hope that the next unknown car coming in was borrowed and had come to fetch me because no one else would be able to. Many an afternoon I sat waiting: while everyone else had gone home, after the guards had taken down the flag of the pole in front of the theater. I spent many childhood afternoons honing that talent--hoping against time.

Do we actively wait or do we fool ourselves, time and time again, into hoping for the best when in fact we can choose how to feel and how to react?

Next time I end up at that adoration chapel, I will focus on the great white wafer.  Sometimes we forget that adoration should be profound.