Holiness

Elizabeth knew better. Kneeling on the stone floor in that cathedral she knew. The flickering lights of the prayers of saints illuminated the shadows in the smoky darkness. Her eyes wandered to the rose window, dulled with the smoke of the ages, and she wondered. Steps shifted towards her, scuffing along the sheets of granite that had been so faithful through the ages. Now what, o pilgrim, will you stand on?

The priest, old bones groaning in unison with the time worn wooden pew, slid beside her, wrinkles a testament of many nights spend alongside his burdened saints. 'Child'- he spoke, voice gentle in the heavy presence of the silent blanket of prayers offered up for centuries. She turned her face towards him, blank. If there was some sort of emotion to play....but she'd be there for hours, sitting in silence, waiting, crying, angered, confused, with blips of peace rising every so often when she'd work herself out so much that there was no energy to fight against...what?....any longer.

When she'd came in just before sunset she was convinced that the problem was her own; to sit in front of the rose window and confess, surely that would be enough to untangle the controversies in her spirit- surely, if she could but just expel out all of her confusion and materialize it, bringing it out of the realm of speculation and into reality through prayer, words, confession- surely, through the incarnation of articulation these things would be resolved and she would see patterns, results, reasons, solutions- but here she was long past the time the bells had chimed for nocturne prayers, long past the time when the last widow made confessions for her beloved, long past the times when those who had nothing left to offer acknowledged that, had their peace, and went about their night.

And she had been faithful- she had sought the answers; after all, diligence was hers to a fault, and she had answered her restlessness with days and nights of solitude, sometimes praying, sometimes writing, many times confessing over and over again her doubts and uncertanties.

And still no answer. Still no peace....still no assurance within her spirit that YES child, there is an answer and a hope and a peace for such as these who sit night after night in my cathedral, tears dry, spirit dulled with the effort of going around and around in circles and answering yourself only....to find that the answer you found wasn't good enough to get her through the day. Not even that- it was easy- too easy- to live without the answers, and for a long time she forced herself to forget, to accept reality as the situation as she'd want it to be- but that irreconciliation between her spirit and the life that she was leading in denial wore on her. It preyed on her in the night, feasted on her unconscious mind throughout the day, clung to her back in the late afternoon such that she walked with a hunch and a mind clouded with the knowledge that there was something acting against her all the time, cheating her of her peace of mind and freedom of spirit, and it drover her to the cathedral in the mornings at dawn and the evenings at sunset.

At least when she was here the fog was gone; at least that spirit of denial which weighed on her throughout the day was left at the great wooden doors and let her sit on the still pews or stony floor in...blankness. It did not follow her inside, and the best answer she could give was that at least in sitting inside her cathedral, she was acknowledging that there was something- whatever it was- and that in recognizing such, denial could no longer breathe down her neck and seep into her lungs, because it could not coencide with acknowledgment. So she fled here, to the cathedral- before, to find answers, and now, simply to let her spirit breathe, because she had given up trying to find the answers in the frustration of always feeling like she was thinking/writing/confessing in circles.

She'd long since stopped talking to other pilgrims about her questions....when she'd bring them up it'd be with the unbelieving ones, because even they seemed to acknowledge the questions and not write them off. But even them- she had found that it was not enough for her questions to be acknowledged. There were some things that she knew to be true, that did settle in her heart- and these things calmed her, quieted her in this great stone hall, with the prayers of the saints and beloveds thick in the air. Here came the corrupt ones, the pure, the broken, the greedy, the needy, the hostile, the saints.

And so she felt at home with the ghosts who had gone before her, who had already moved on to the ethereal world where all these things had been answered and judgment had been served. Time was outside of her, here; here she knew that she was not the first to wrestle with these things, to sit in blankness at the foot of the cross and to feel...nothing. And that was a comfort.

So when He told her 'Child'- she looked back in blankness, not because she did not recognize the name or his words, but because she had nothing left to offer with denial left on the cold stone steps, and the recognition was such that she knew that she'd turned all these things over in her mind so many times with a lack of conviction that she realized anew that she had nothing to give and here she was, still believing, still knowing in her heart of hearts those things she knew to be true, but having nothing to say or believe about them and the questions that she was asking.
He did not rebuke her; He did not give her the answers, He said nothing, except put his hand on her shoulder and stroked her hair out of her face, looking into her face with a voice that had spoken to many more faces than she with less words. There were none to be said; she came for the reconciliation of the things that she knew to be true and the things she hoped an answer for, and he did not speak these to her. She doubted the promises made to her, she doubted the hopes that she had, she doubted the certainty of herself, of her beloved- and here denial gave way to doubt. He saw this- and spoke.