Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

My posts have been a little sparse around here for a while. Since last December Tricia and I have been looking for new digs as the place we were renting was being sold. Winter time is not an easy time to find a place in Champaign and so it became something of a full time job.  We did eventually find a place and spent the second half of January packing and, last weekend, moving. I will say that I found this experience to be something of a pre-Lenten preparation.

Besides having the house in boxes for such an extended period, we also experienced the movers’ joy of trying to track down everyone we do business with to give them our change of address. Then came the weekend for the move. The previous weekend it had been sunny and in the 50s. The day we picked up the UHaul it was in the 20s and what ended up being a winter storm with 8-10″ of snow was coming upon us. In a rush to get home and start loading the truck before the snow began to fall, I deftly maneuvered the 26′ diesel under… err… into a 10′ railroad bridge. Unfortunately, in my rush I forgot to check to see that the truck’s clearance was 12′. Not an experience I would recommend.

Any way, the damage was not as bad as it could have been (I didn’t peal the top completely off) and didn’t keep us from using the truck. We got home before the snow started to find the dolly had a flat tire. Tricia pulled the pump out from the trunk of her car and as we were filling the tires the snow began to fall. Snow on the deck of the truck works something like a coating of grease on a dance floor but fortunately this did not lead to any serious injuries. Alternating between shoveling the snow out of the way and loading boxes into the truck we actually made decent headway.

We eventually had to quit for the night. The next morning was a slow start as we first had to dig out of the near foot of snow before we could resume loading. Usually after such exercise I am ready for a nap. As further indication that this would be a special move, we heard the loud bang of a transformer blowing and lost power. The power eventually came back and the rest of the day/night of loading the truck and cleaning the old house was not too eventful but it was quite tiring. Unloading the truck went much more quickly. In fact, we had time to do some laundry that evening. Bad idea. The drain for the water exhaust from the washer was clogged and so we ended up with a basement full of water. Oh well, it was our first opportunity to try out the wet function in our wet/dry vac. A couple of days later, we had several inches of rain that melted the almost foot of snow.  Apparently this was too much for the four sets of sump pumps and water came seeping up through cracks in the basement floor…and it was back to the wetvac.

In between wetvac experiences, we had our RCIA retreat.  That was fun, except for falling on the ice on the way to the building and spraining my wrist.  This pain added to the already exquisite pain I already had in my shoulders and back from the moving, except that being my right hand it also slowed down much of my ability to unpack, reassemble furniture, etc.  Needless to say with both of us working, the injuries, and the continually appearing side escapades, the unpacking adventure is going pretty slowly.

So how has this been a pre-Lenten preparation?  Well Lent is ultimately about getting back to the basics in order to learn how to love more fully.  In other words, we were created in the image of Love.  We understand that this means that love is total self donation to God and to others.  However, as JPTG reminds us, we cannot give that which we do not first possess.  In order to love more fully we have to be fully self-possessed.  We have to be masters over ourselves.  This, in large part, is the purpose of Lenten penance, sacrifice, fasting, prayer, and almsgiving.  It is a time to refocus on these essentials of the Christian life.

Believe me; this move has provided ample opportunity to practice self mastery.  It has also given me the opportunity to find God’s blessings in what initially seem to be traumas.  It has allowed me the chance to set aside frustrations, to accept and offer them up along with a plethora of pain, and I think that it has helped me to better prepare to understand what I am supposed to be doing this Lent.  I can’t say that I have achieved the self-mastery and certainly not the depth of love for which I strive; however, I do think that I am a bit better prepared to work on it then I was before our odyssey began.