Zk | 07-seeds-of-doubt--3-choose-fear

It would be incorrect to say that the hike I took yesterday in some way “solved” the anxiety that I felt after the concert. There were, as I constantly tell myself, explain and explain and explain, no words from God. There were no intercessions. How would there be? How would it be the case that He would step in and say, “No, Dee, don’t worry”?

I am trying not to get down on myself enough to lose all hope. I want to say, “This is so unimportant that I really need to just give up on the prospect.” I want to recognize the futility in striving for a relationship. I want to buy into the egodystonia. I want to find some way to turn off that part of my mind that craves Kay, that dreams about the feeling of her cheek against mine and perseverates about holding her hand. How childish! How immature! How utterly beneath me that I struggle so hard with this!

But whatever.

I can’t just turn all of those things off, but I can go ahead and admit that this isn’t going anywhere. I can recognize that she wouldn’t be a good romantic partner for me and I wouldn’t be for her, and, even if the feelings don’t go away, drop any hope of pursuing them. We Catholics are so good at repression, are we not?

There’s nothing to be had but friendship, and I can aim for that, at least. Today, Kay took me to a used bookstore near campus, and we spent a good hour and a half there, digging through the shelves. She sold me almost instantly on the place with the explanation that this was the type of place that would eagerly buy up all of the weird and obscure books that students pick up in their studies. Not just textbooks, though they certain took some of those when the university bookstore would not buy them back, but supplementary materials and personal hyperfixation-induced deep-dive book purchases.

Kay spent most of that time prowling through the music section, and me digging among shelves of exegeses and commentaries. Occasionally, we would head back to the other to show them something of particular interest that we had found. At one point, she brought me a book on harmony written by some composer and laughingly read aloud a short section from the beginning, a scathing indictment of music critics, and we agreed that he must have, at some point, had a concert ripped to shreds in the newspapers. I brought her a whole stack of apologetics by C. S. Lewis and we reminisced over reading The Chronicles of Narnia as children.

I do not think I could come up with a more ideal bookstore, I have to say. Friends always talk about the scent of books being intoxicating, and while I’ve always been somewhat mixed on it¹, the scent of bookstores themselves are something that I am immensely fond of. It’s not just the smell of the books that does it for me, but the shelves, the people, the lingering scent of those who might have handled the books before me. This book makes my whiskers bristle at the lingering scent of anxiety, that one was clearly loved and brought comfort. Whiskers bristle and I lose myself in the past of the place. There is something meta bout the whole experience: books and also readers of those books.

I left after spending a surprisingly small amount of money on a surprisingly large number of books. The problem of fitting them all into my luggage for the trip home is a problem for future Dee.

Following the bookstore, we walked a block to an Ethiopian restaurant. I had never tried such cuisine before and while it was not unpleasant, I am still trying to puzzle out the tastes.

The rest of the day was spent lounging at Kay’s place, reading. She parked herself in her computer chair and insisted that I just use her bed — those being the sole pieces of furniture within her apartment — so I propped myself up against the wall with her pillows and poked through my haul.² It wasn’t the most comfortable of seats, and I had to dedicate a small portion of my mind at all times to ignoring the scent of Kay clinging to the sheets and pillowcases, but it was enjoyable arranging and rearranging the stack in what order might be best to read them in.

Kay, for her part was doing much the same, and whenever I would look over, she would be chewing on her cheek or a claw. She kept tapping out rhythms on the page of whatever page of a score she was looking at, humming arpeggios, and at least once I caught her nodding and tapping her tail about behind her, and when she looked up and saw me, she smiled bashfully and mumbled an apology.

It was a pleasant afternoon, all told, and we followed it up with a simple dinner of chicken that she cooked on her ancient stove and more shared videos, as has long been our habit.

Now I am back in the room that I’m staying in, surrounded by the non-scent of scent-block hiding whoever had stayed there before me, layered over with a thin darkness of my own scent.

I am embarrassed to admit that the change of scentscape has left me a little jarred today, in particular due to the fact that it had clearly been a few weeks since she had washed her sheets, and there was an unmistakable undertone of what I take to be sexuality clinging to those sheets. I do not doubt that she gets as aroused as any other healthy coyote of her age might, and now I imagine that she is no stranger to masturbation. This is in no way surprising and yet I was in a continual state of tense wariness and low-level arousal of my own that I desperately hoped she could not smell on me.

That, above all things is what I found myself needing to tune out. I buried my nose in book after book, and while that meant more than a mere whiff of mildew, it was less distracting by far.

I am trying to square my feelings about this. I am not immune to attraction, but the levels to which this complicates my feelings is uncomfortable. Here I am trying to convince myself to drop my attraction to her and my limbic system works against me!

I am not ashamed to admit that physiological response, but I am ashamed that I was unable to keep myself from acting on it — it seemed necessary if I was to sleep in any level of comfort. I shall have a confession in my future, but then, I knew that already.

All these little memories, all of them are coming back to me, and I’m not sure why. Nothing about this visit in particular ought to dredge them up, right? I mean, Kay and I have only talked passingly about faith, and sure, I attended mass this weekend, but there is little to suggest that this have anything to do with the flood of the small things from the past.

Or perhaps it’s talking with God. Perhaps it’s less Kay than it is the way in which I’m approaching this whole situation. She herself is not bringing these out in me, but I am recapitulating so many of the same patterns I went through during my discernment.

Today, it is the memory of that first night that I knew I needed to leave that hit me. And yes, the small things hit first.

I wrote before about certain embarrassing things sticking in the mind of the one embarrassed. We Catholics, we are so good at that. We’re so good at picking the embarrassing things and hanging them up on the wall, admiring them, and then inviting others to share in the embarrassment with us. Our confessors are the witnesses to our shame. All we can hope is that they provide relief, and yet perhaps that is why so many confessions stick within the mind.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last confession, and I accuse myself…I accuse…”

Other than the soft sounds of breathing and the barest hint of vulpine beneath the scent-block, nothing made its way from the other side of the screen, familiar even so many years after the fact, even long after I left St John’s

“I accuse myself of the sin of doubt.”

“You know that doubt is not a sin, my child.”

“I guess, but my doubt is in my vocation.”

“I see. Do you doubt in God?”

“No, no. Just…I find myself doubting, uh…I find myself doubting my upcoming role in the Church.”

“What about the Church do you doubt, if your faith is solid?”

“I can’t put my finger on it.”

There was a quiet sigh from the other side of the screen.

“I guess my sin is that I am doubting my ability to actually serve God like I’m supposed to.”

“I see.”

It was my turn to wait in silence. Eventually, I bowed my head and said, “That is all, Father. For these and all of my sins, I ask forgiveness from God, and penance and absolution from you.”

There was a pause, and then, “Alright, I will ask you to say three Our Fathers for doubting the path that God has laid out for you. It could be that you are still discovering this path, but doubt will only hinder you from carrying out His works. However, my son–” The priest rushed to forestall any response, and I remember hearing a smile creeping into his voice. “Outside of your penance, I would also like you to talk to your advisor. As your confessor, I can only offer you spiritual guidance.”

I splayed my ears, chagrined, and bowed my head. “Thank you, Father.”

With the final go in peace still ringing in my ears, with the tips of my fingers still humming from crossing myself, with the hot flush of embarrassment still pulling at my cheeks, I stepped from the confessional and blinked in the sudden light and space. I took two quick, grounding breaths, and then walked from the chapel.

I do not want to be here. The thought had become a mantra.

Outside, I walked slowly to one of the concrete blocks that served as benches and sat, resting my face in my paws. If I could not see the stars, if I had only concrete and paving stones before me, then if I wanted to pray, I had to block out my sight. It was all too much. I would find myself tracing the paving stones or the catenary arc of the contemporary entrance to St. Francis Abbey if I left them open.

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Let yours ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications…

I was not ready yet. Not ready for my penitential pater noster. Not ready to go see my advisor. I didn’t feel ready for anything.

Most of all, I realized I was not ready to admit to myself that not wanting to be here implied the possible solution of leaving, of not being here. I wasn’t ready.

…If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you so that you may be revered…

I didn’t even feel ready for this prayer, for this call out to God. What iniquities faced me? I was privileged to be able to attend such a school as this. I was loved by God and the church and loved them in turn. I was lucky to have been born with a mind so expansive, a body so healthy.

Perhaps the iniquities were within. Perhaps it was something about myself, within myself, a core aspect of myself. Perhaps the privilege was undeserved. Just a coyote, right? Just a farmer, right? And yet here I was, languishing at a renowned seminary.

…I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch the morning, more than those who watch the morning.

And so I waited.

I wished it were night. I wished I could sit in the quad and look up at the stars, or down at the grass and try to differentiate the shades of green, there in the dark where color eluded me, to find in that liminal state some sensation of the Lord.

At least I could get up from where I was and away from this edifice of concrete and glass. It was, I had been promised, beautiful in its own way. But behind the Abbey, toward the lake, a small path wound through the woods, and there, between the trees and beside the water, stood the statue of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the only other canonized coyote I’d ever come across, and the saint most venerated by my father back home.

…O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem…

I was not the farmer my family was, had few enough ties to her patronage of ecology and environmentalism, but in her I saw at least a face like my own. In her, I saw something of a people I could belong to, though she was from far to the east of my home in Idaho.

Home.

Home was back in Sawtooth, for Saint John’s would never truly be my home, and that in itself was telling.

…It is He who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.

Redeem Israel.

Israel, who struggled with God.

I envy, as I always have, the Jewish tradition, that eternal argument about who God was, what He meant, in which God was an active participant. Perhaps here, I could wrestle with Him. Tumble with my faith. Get all scuffed up.

But Catholicism only offered him so much leeway, and this school even less.

“I don’t want to be here,” I confessed to the statue. I remember that. I remember the kindness in the stone, in her smile. I confessed, then sighed, knelt, and began my penance.