Pause
The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy, with Dinka in training for a new job, Holy Week, etc. There has been no indication that things will slow down in the near future. If anything, it seems like the next couple of months may be even busier than the last. I have been coping by sleeping slightly less than I should every night, not spending enough time with my family, and worrying about my ever-growing laundry list of injuries and ailments (latest additions: neck pain, shin splints).
Then came word that the Pope was near death, news that took me by surprise despite his deteriorating condition of the past few weeks. When they announced that he had died this afternoon, everything kind of slowed to a stop. I will not attempt to elegantly eulogize him--my writing abilities are far too meager--but I do feel like I need to say something about how important he was for me. Bear with me.
I first began considering joining the Catholic Church about four years ago and at the time I was doing a lot of learning about the Church. One of my primary sources of knowledge and first-hand experience was Dinka, and I suppose that it says a lot about the Pope's influence on her life that his name often came up. Whenever there was a difficult moral question or divisive issue, it was always the Pope's insightful words that made the muddled waters clear. He obviously possessed great ability as a thinker and writer but what always impressed me most was the simple way he framed every argument: everything begins and ends with love--first God's love for us and then our command to love each other--and love should be the motivation for every decision we make and every church doctrine. If you start there, you will always end in the right place. I realized that all of the human shortcomings of the Church were only failures to adhere to this idea that the Pope embodied so well. His example continues to give me great confidence in the Church and in humanity. Although I've only officially been a Catholic for a few years, it is still difficult to imagine the Church without his voice.
I was fortunate enough to be at World Youth Day in Toronto in 2002, to hear the Pope speak in person and to celebrate Mass with him. Even in his diminished physical capacity, I was amazed at his ability to energize the youth of the Church by relating to them on such a personal level. I have a whole shelf of his books--some read, some still waiting--that I hope will continue to inspire me as he has so far.
It has been raining hard for two days here. If this was the movie Magnolia, it would rain frogs soon. But that's ok, because it means that soon the weather will break and life will go on, regardless of whether we know how.