Be My Companion

the invitation and the promise

The drive is short—just five minutes—from my house.

On the way, I look at the Christmas decorations in front of the houses: poinsettias in ivory and crimson, lights in multicolor and white, a manger scene in the middle of a lawn, adult-sized toy soldiers heralding walkers on the sidewalk with stationary trumpets and bright, merry eyes.

I love it. It feels like goodness. Like possibility. Like hope.

It’s been a few months since I’ve seen Father Chi. I’ve missed him. I am eager to see his gentle eyes and hear his kind voice. The Jesuit Retreat Center, where we meet, is a haven of calm. I enter the main double doors, shoving the round brass knobs to get the old wood to give way. The carpeted room is musty and wonderful–smelling like church and grandparents and love. In front of me is an empty desk where the volunteer receptionist sits in the mornings and smiles at you like you are the most wonderful person she’s ever seen. I turn right and knock on the door frame of the first open door on the right.

Exhale.

“Come in!”

I step into the carpeted room, and Father Chi stands half in and half out of a large closet behind his desk, his arms full of rolled-up papers resembling architectural plans and books.

“Jennifer! Come in, come in! It is so good to see you! It has been a long time! Just a minute, let me put these down.”

I stand in the middle of the room. The furniture includes a desk and desk chair, a low bookshelf underneath three large, single-paned windows and two black leather armchairs facing each other where we usually sit. Father Chi rummages around in the closet for another minute, and I look out the windows, beyond the driveway to the lush green of Silicon Valley and the blue of the bay beyond. We are away, up here–on this hill, even though it is just three minutes from town.

This room holds me, a place of rest between the world’s bustle and the promise of peace yet to come.

“Ah, Jennifer! It is so good to see you!” (He repeats this every time we meet, at least three times in a row, which I love.)

“How are you?”

He sits down with a smile, a swirl of warmth, energy and peace all in one. He is here, lap and hands empty, legs crossed, face open and waiting. With no one else but Justin, am I so immediately myself. Here, I do not hide. Here, I do not run away. Here, I do not pretend. Here, I set fire to pretense. Here, I reject complacency.

My girl, to Me, run, run, run.

It has been a while since I’ve been here–six months, which is the longest gap since we started meeting, first, for spiritual direction, then for the Ignatian Exercises, and then again, for spiritual direction, in the last four years. It is up to me to initiate a meeting, and I haven’t since May. I don’t remember deciding not to meet with Father Chi for months–I simply just let the opportunity go. But last week, I felt compelled to reach out to him and sent him an email. He responded to my email within the hour, saying he could meet as early as next week.

I sit across from him in the chair, and he is so kind and open towards me, which makes me entirely unafraid to share:

“I have so many questions, and they are kind of dark. I am frustrated about being human. And I am mad, too. I mean, Jesus was human, but then He only lived until He was in his early thirties. What does He know about being forty or fifty or seventy or eighty? And while I am not feeling as down as I was last year, when I was depressed–and on medication for a few months–and felt like everything was pointless–I am feeling a lot of fear, and I’m not sure what is going on.”

Father Chi listens with a palpable intensity. His left leg is crossed. He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes as he begins to speak–questions that have a weight to them, words that are not just words. His heart is talking to my heart. I can feel it rising.

Come out, come out, come out, my darling girl. I’m right here.

He tells me, “You are embarrassed by your sin–by the same struggles, so familiar and tiring–pride and insecurity–lurking, telling you lies that make you feel crushed and sad. What do the lies tell you?”

“They say, ‘You need to get healed. Why aren’t you yet healed? What is wrong with you that you continue to have the same problems? Figure it out. You need to get better. You need to completely fix those broken places within you.’”

“These are lies,” he says. “These are lies.”

And then Father Chi continues, saying something that makes me cry with a mixture of confusion and relief.

“We are always going to have struggles that return. And insecurity, to some degree, will always be with you—because we, as humans, are sinners, and that’s okay too. You get to turn toward Jesus, then. You need Jesus, then. We always need Him. And when we forget we need Him, that’s okay, because He does not leave us and we turn again. When your mind is not integrated with your heart, your heart feels like it is dried up. You need affected healing. You need your heart, mind, and body to be integrated. And this is possible. You turn and you turn, and you turn.”

You turn, and you turn, and you turn.

On the drive home, the Christmas lights are not on yet, though they will be soon. I want to return to this street later tonight and walk with Justin. How beautiful it will be to walk, just for the sake of walking, just for the sake of feeling–with no answers but with the solace of companionship, looking for beauty, expecting good to come.

Turn, turn, turn.

---

Christmas Tree Lights One Morning

I walked into the room expecting darkness
and here, by the window, the Christmas tree
blinked and twinkled, its lights shining bright.

And what a delight this is, awakening 
to beauty unexpected, for in my tendency 
for complacency—not expecting miracles

but hoping for them all the same,
my heart withers, not allowed to expand 
in its dreaming, for oh, how it could dream

if I let it, with permission to push into time 
and space, existence beyond latitude
and longitude, clocks with second hands 

and measuring sticks of progress: 
a face’s beauty, a curl of a child’s hair. 

To not reach as if reaching were a place
to get to, to set my feet upon but stretch in
-to, my soul expanding upon endless shore,

brilliance rising and falling 
in crashing rhythms until I am
in it, crashing too,

in every moment, with every breath
for there is no stopping shining

shining (will you catch me?)
all hours of night.