mass

Matt has a lot of friends who are priests, and ex-priests. It came in extremely handy to have a catholic priest as a close friend, one who could speak intimately about my love, and his life, as all those people crowded into church four days after. Matt's uncle felt matt would want some priest he knew in childhood, but I knew. Jim was perfect. Today, I emailed Jim to ask if he would say a Mass for Matt this month, this month between 23 and 24. I always hesitate. I figure if his friends wanted to have any contact with me, they would. Anyway. Jim said yes. Said he has been thinking of Matt a lot. And that he wonders, too, who these Mass intentions are for - the gone or the still here. Who needs them more?

I think my love is fine, where he is, wherever he is, if he knows he is still him. If he does not know, then for sure, he is fine.

I saw a house last week. An indulgence on my part, possibly not wise, as I don't know how I'd buy anything. But I got there, to a very old house, very empty, except for the old man's old books on his old bed. I picked up one, some book about faith, an old christian something, and opened it. Inside, what fell out into my hand - a single blister pack of homeopathic earache medicine. Precise and random. I think it means - just Hi. Hello. Something is by your side.

I have been reading this morning about the needs of others, how it makes them tell us what things mean for us, when really, what they say is what they need for them. It has nothing much to do with our life, our own meaning, or our own needs. I have given up on thinking I know what things mean, or that they mean anything beyond the Hello, and, I am here. What says hello, my hopes tell me it is matt, my heart says it is love, my mind sometimes looks to science - some kind of loving science.

I need to say it's him. I miss that man so much.

So Jim is saying Mass. I think that is enough. A friend of mine I don't talk to near enough told me yesterday how she has been feeling, hearing, knowing she wants her life rooted in god, but she does not know how. She says, "I don't even know what that means, let alone what I am supposed to do about it." I resist (though not very well) the urge to say - just knowing that you want it, sometimes that is enough. But I know that isn't true. Just wanting it leaves you just wanting it, shouting at the sky or your own heart that you need more direction than that. Something to DO with that wanting for rootedness in god. God is bloody amorphic in the times I need her most, and the thought that all we need to do is turn our hearts that way makes me angry, which I'm pretty sure is the opposite way from where I want to be.

Anyway. Jim is saying Mass on June 28th, his next opening. I am wishing I could be catholic. Wishing I could be anything that would hold me up, or take me in, or let me farm on their land and chant out of their books. But I know none of those places are true for me, or true to me. I've descended into rambling again. For what started as a hello, a notice that tomorrow, the 12th, is the 100th sunday, the 12th before the 12th, the 23rd month.

I will say Mass in my own way. I think my love is quite used to that.

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