What Grows in Still Air?
In the first week of St. Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises, one is asked to identify a fault on which to focus and to ask for grace in improving. I have chosen the vice of impatience , both because it leads to making poor decisions (leading to other faults) but also because it feels like a sin in and of itself against the beauty of the world that we have been gifted. As the old adage indeed goes, haste makes waste. There is also the impervious imposition of stillness we are all facing at this moment. Few plans to make, places to go, people to see. There is no real future with which to fill our present . Parts of me rage at the sameness of it all, an outdoor plant grown leggy indoors, searching for light that I cannot reach, and in so doing, becoming a cranky Medusa capable only of turning others to stone. Other parts, though, the deeper parts that first sought the Exercises, know better than to caterwaul and cleave to an ether with no sun. The part of me that wants to flex di
