Footprints: Assaults and Caresses

It rained a bit last night in Stockbridge, and coming to Eden Hill had that feeling out of a Gothic novel. The air - thick and almost pasty with a leaden, low-lying sky drenched with high humidity - seemed as visceral as water. Was that a wake my car left behind itself as it drove up the water, an expanding "v" the way a motorboat signs off on its cruise of a lake? To the north, the sky was gray-black, looking like a kid's blackboard that had just had the chalk marks erased. What did it say? I could only guess that it said what it always says to me as I make this short drive - "Welcome, Dan."

Gothic weather, un-Gothic words (depending, of course, on how you define "Gothic;" I mean "portentously gloomy," not a style of young people's dress and manner where they think it's good to look like the living dead).

The light rain left puddles around the periphery of the parking lot, nothing large, but one strategically placed in a slight indent in the asphalt that leads into the employee's entrance. If you weren't looking, your normal path would lead you into the puddle. You wouldn't notice, but as you walked onto the cement portion of the walkway entrance, you'd leave your footprints in the slight incline. They would start strong but start to fade as you reached the door.


Clean-up & 'Footprints' - I could see several sets of footprints of those who had made it in before me. Some were fresh, some drying (dying). I thought of last night, when my wife and I finally tackled some inside cleaning. We reorganized drawers and cabinets, throwing out medicines with past-expiration dates, products with nothing left in the bottle, trying to get rid and let go of all but the credibly marginal items and above.

When we got down to the cellar, we dove into one of many stored boxes. Books, mostly. Inside, we found a colored-glass imprint of the famous "Footprints" poem. You know it. Someone's walking on the beach with Jesus. They each leave footprints over the journey across the beach of life. The person notices, though, that at different points, one set of footprints disappears, notably when there's a difficult time. The person asks Jesus why He abandoned him whenever things got tough. Jesus tells him those were the times when "I had to carry you."

So even before I entered the Marian Helpers Center, not knowing what to write, I had a connection. The evaporating footsteps on the cement brought to mind "Footprints." I thought, "Let's walk a little down this conceptual path and see if leads anywhere."


Can't the Guy See It? - The funny thing about that poem, if you think about it, is how the person doesn't realize it's Jesus' steps that continue, not his own. I used to think: "Maybe they had the same foot size," employing the first rule in literary or artistic critique: describe what's happening literally. Then go to the deeper meanings. The next thought would be, "Even if the foot size was the same, wouldn't the guy (in my mind, it's a guy) know that his footprints were gone when tracing the line of prints back, and seeing when his stop, they not only go over the Jesus' side, but the Lord's footprints get deeper in the soft sand from carrying the guy? You'd think this guy would be able to induce that.

In the "Footprints," sentiment overwhelms these pedantic objections. The point is: Jesus is there for us when things get rough. A critic may object to the manipulative pull on the heartstrings, but he couldn't say a word about the power of the idea. We are never alone.


Not Fade Away - What of the fading footprints on the Eden Hill cement? They were made singly, by the people who tracked them to the door. They faded away not because Jesus had to carry them, but because of evaporation, that lick-tongued wicker job the air does to the water, like a cat licking up milk with its pink sandpaper.

There's no resolution to this meditation, except to point out that the footsteps we put down on this earth alone, like the sentiment of "footsteps," are not just the work of solitary feet. They can't be, if the dictum, expressed in so many ways by so many religions, is correct: that the Kingdom of God lies within you. Is that true? If your body is your temple, your footprints are its steppingstones.


Tracks - Come to think of it, maybe that's why footprints have always fascinated me. They're a personal archetype. Each of us has them. Another one of mine is translucence: screwdriver handles, crystals, Jell-o, Jujubes, dashboard lights, stained glass, and the like.

I love it when it snows, so I may see the tracks I put down and pick up. I love it when a baseball player runs across the infield of a freshly manicured baseball infield with spiked shoes leaving cleat marks in the clay, little divots shooting back like shells being ejected from a Winchester rifle. I love running on a sandy beach and running patterns - post patterns, buttonhooks, slants, outs - just to see how precise my cuts were. Wet cement? A kid's dream!

I love footprints because they show I exist, they show I was "there," they show my direction, and they show that I am never alone. I think, therefore I am, and I am because I left a set of footprints. You can see why an old philosophy professor once critiqued a paper because I "put the horse before Descartes."

The times where we do feel alone stem from an interior ache that people have had since the emergence of consciousness and self-awareness. It is the "I/Thou" dilemma, of feeling the utter loneliness that can sometimes afflict us. No matter how close you get to someone, they can never "be" you. They can empathize with your sufferings and share in your joys, but "you" are an island universe, one that has never existed in all of time and space.


Feelings, Nothing More than Feelings - These are feelings; feelings, though powerful, can mask more than they reveal. Sometimes, they are important clues to look for something else.

Win the lottery and you are happy. See a loved one die, you are grieved. These are operative feelings entirely appropriate to a specific circumstance. The "inoperative" feelings have no apparent trigger. They are existential. They arise simply because we exist and we are conscious of our lives in a way, for example, animals apparently are not. The closer you get to God on a mystical level, expect many of these feelings to assault and caress you. The assaults are among the worst you can experience.

Many times the Diary of St. Faustina mentions Helen's interior agonies. These were her inoperative feelings not triggered by an event but by an existential (and inescapable) presence in her life - the interior presence of God.

August 4, 1936. Inner torment for more than two hours ... Agony. Suddenly, God's presence pervades me and I feel as though I am coming under the power of a just God. His justice [notice how she does not, for once, focus on God's mercy here] pervades me to the marrow; outwardly I lose strength and consciousness. With this, I come to know the great holiness of God and my own great misery. A great torment afflicts my soul; the soul perceives its deeds to be not without blemish. Then the strength of trust is awakened in its soul, which longs for God with all its might. Yet it sees how miserable it is and what utter vanity everything that surrounds it. And face to face with such holiness, Oh, poor soul ... (672).



At this point of the entry, the writing stops. Saint Faustina did not make another entry in her Diary for another nine days.

When she did begin writing in her journal again on Aug. 13, she wrote some of the most shocking words in the Diary. Here's how she begins entry 673: "I was tormented by terrible temptations all day; blasphemies thrust themselves upon my lips, and I felt an aversion for everything that is godlike. Yet I struggled throughout the day. In the evening, my mind became depressed."

Not the words you'd expect to read from a great saint who personally knew the comforts of The Divine Mercy Himself.

In the next entry, 674, she becomes that person in "footsteps." Read it and find out what I mean.


Golden Bursts - Other deadlines loom, and so I must stop laying down tracks for now, my dear friends. Next time you leave a set of footprints somewhere, look at them. They tell you where you've been. Think of what they may actually mean, and what may actually being walking that mile with you in your Nikes, Cole-Hahns, or Tom McCann's.

Just so you know, as I write this at 11:34 a.m., the gloom has lifted and the sun dapples through, running its golden bursts across the lawn, woods, and the fens outside the window. It tells me something, though for the life of me, I would not try to put it into words. I don't have to. Adios and much love, my brothers and sisters.

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