Face to Face

The idea of the “Courting Chair” blew me away.  Blew me away: it took me by its power away from where I was, from whatever I was doing.  As I approached retirement, the thought of making something for each of our three adult kids was a recurring fantasy.  And from somewhere in my memory, I thought of the perfect heirloom: a courting chair.   It’s also called a tete-a-tete chair, because it provides seating for two, face to face, and even makes it natural to hold hands.  What a gift, I thought, inviting them to this kind of intimacy.  Even as I gathered photos of examples over the centuries and the construction details began t come together in my head, the practicality of the chair itself seemed to come apart

when I looked around their houses.  Where would they find room for this chair that had no back, that could not be placed against a wall, but needed to sit in the middle of a room?  It began to seem arrogant to inflict on them an imposing piece of furniture.  A sadness cloaked me.  I mourned the idea of a chair that calls us to face-to-face companionship, a decorating idea that just doesn’t fit.

This morning as I lit a fire in the wood stove, my mind was trying to get a grip on the Sunday Gospel coming up.  It’s the second week in a row that we have “heavy” stories.  Last week it was about what happens after death.  This time it’s essentially a warning that all hell’s gonna break loose, but don’t worry.  So I sat there on the still-warm cement floor near the stove and pulled my knees to my chest, and just sat.  Fr. Greg Hyde, a Jesuit who now serves as Director of Manresa Jesuit Retreat House, once spent the better part of a week-long retreat helping me to do just that – nothing.  And he guided me to find God not by work, or by thought, but by just sitting in His company, doing nothing.

The reason for the heavy readings these Sundays is that we are approaching the end of the “Liturgical Year”, the cycle of readings that starts with Advent and the promise of the birth of the Messiah, follows his life and death and resurrection, and finishes with some of his teachings, including those as we approach the end of things. 

And here I was sitting on the floor shaking my head in confusion about the end of things, the ultimate unknown, and finding myself face to face, so to speak, with God.  As happens often, I was struck by the ease of His company, by its ordinariness, its dailyness.  And that made me think of Kathy, and how she is always here, and how I take her for granted too, and how rarely I just sit and do nothing with her. 

I’d like to spend some time this week with intimacy.  I’d like to plop a tete-a –tete chair in the middle of our houses, yours and mine, and deal with it.  Some seeds are scattered here next to my keyboard.

·         I plus Thou equals I and Thou.

·         Being together as we approach the end

·         Considering courting

·         Letting the words come