He said that he would be arriving around eight a.m., my Home Advisor expert on decks and terraces, to begin work. Now, anyone who knows me knows also that I am not an early morning person. So to be up at 7 thirty, shower, dress, and finish clearing items off the terrace is no small feat for me.
And then there was a message. My terrace repairer will not be here until about ten as certain materials he needs are not yet available.
I have a list of projects on my desk. I could start one of them. But after a cup of coffee and watching the hummingbirds taking nectar breakfast from my feeder--a joy because for several months they seemed to have ceased using it, but have returned with a splendid frequency, I decided not to take on any of the items on my ever expanding "to do" list just now.
I try to do a little morning prayer each day, mostly without success. But I see I am today distracted by making sure things are sorted for the work, like making sure my cats are safely in the back of the apartment and not in danger of being frightened or lost because of the work. And besides since I am never up quite this early, it seems silly to waste some quiet in the morning sun on this occasion that I am.
For a bit I lay on the only piece of furniture still on the terrace, a little cushioned divan, which I will need help to move before work is begun. And I noted how different is my life now from the one I had only five years ago, almost exactly five years ago, when I was a prosecutor at the State Bar of California. I'd be at my desk fielding calls in my supervisory role, from complainants about private attorneys and from the accused attorneys lamenting their ungrateful clients. I'd be worrying about meeting arbitrary ill considered deadlines and the chronic clamor of individuals and entities with their inconsistent demands for the operation of a system they neither understand nor, it would seem, care to understand so long as their particular constituents were placated. I devoted a quarter of a century to legal work that suited me, and at which I was surprisingly (to me) talented, and that did good from time to time, perhaps more than I give credit for having happened.
That extended part of my life's path ended in five minutes or less, as it did for three of my similarly situated colleagues, when the then relatively new CEO of the State Bar advised me that the Bar was going in a "different direction", the disastrous results of which have since become manifest and reported by the legal press. It was a stunning, though not entirely unexpected, blow at the time. Mostly, the hurt has subsided over the years, for I know that I have joined the ranks of many an individual whose excellent careers have been terminated so I have no reason to feel particularly victimized--it is the reality of business life private and public after all-- and I have a relative freedom not vouchsafed to most people. But still, sometimes, having seen the disastrous outcome of the decisions made by that now former CEO, and some dilettante minions, and knowing how that work was my calling as an attorney, I feel a twinge of reverberated hurt and irritation at the reality of ordinary injustice in the business world and the world at large.
And then I realize--I am glad I did not have to endure the misery the long suffering staff had no choice but to do. I had seen my share of dysfunction in the organization, a perpetual state marked only by changes in degree. Given what is happening right now in the United States, I begin to see that this is the inexorable order of man's disposition toward evil in greater or lesser form. What I miss probably, in my pride, is not being in charge of something.
I have to resist, in my voluntary activities, resorting to my executive disposition which some who worked with me considered to be too exacting. I have to learn to embrace the obvious--that the world spins on (until the apocalypse at least, yes I had to mention that) readily with or without me. For a small example: the person who is to work on my terrace is now a half hour later than he promised in his rescheduling. It makes me crazy because it happens almost every time any work has to be done. He arrived. He took a look at the terrace along with his assistants and told me the materials had not in fact arrived. He apologized and is coming back tomorrow. I like him. Don't know why exactly, but I do. I even trust that what he is telling me is true.
In point of fact. my frustrations don't matter, ultimately, except as an occasion of purgation. God has a mission for me, as He does for everyone, and that is to do what is before me in the present moment, whether I apprehend it or not in that moment. My mission was perhaps to develop a patience I do not possess inherently. I did ok.
All in all, I am blessed. Maybe now is a good time to offer a prayer of thanksgiving since I can spend another hour or so on my terrace before I go to Mass. That's something that is wonderful since I lost my job. I can go to daily Mass. I can get the Graces I so sorely need to face the larger world of the Republican (happening as I write) and Democratic National Conventions and the microcosmic realities of my days.
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