"It’s going to be a bad week.", was the comment that I inadvertently eavesdropped on as I settled into my chair beside the eight-foot windows…hoping for illumination. Yes, inadvertently, because who wants to hear THAT first thing on a Monday morning. "Things are getting goofier by the day.", came the reply. Now there’s a response I understand.
I listen without wanting to. A couple of cabinet ministers names are dropped, the word "INFRASTRUCTURE" bludgeons the air. (Can’t seem go through a day without hearing that word and recoiling from the sterility it conjures up. Listening to too much Alberta news?)
I finally gather that I’m listening to two provincial government bureaucrats. I wait for a rush of inner sympathy. Nothing comes.
But, funny how things line up sometimes. I am scrolling through Psalm 88. (My morning reading for the 17th day of the month.) Psalm 88 is an overcast Job-like lament that produces a little black blob which hovers over my head. And it comes to me. Black hovering blob plus disgruntled bureaucrats equals an implosion that brings positive energy. Two negatives make a positive. Redemptive math.
Perhaps this is one of the things those sodden-Psalms are for. They’re little cathartic grenades lobbed into all the Monday’s of our lives. Small weapons of mass construction. I know the Benedictines see the Psalms like this. They’ve been reading and living them for centuries; and with the fortification of this strange poetry, they quietly built Europe during the Dark and Middle Ages.
(Personal interlude: A smile for the anachronism of an earlier decision to create a little Monday morning breathing space.)
Now the bureaucrats leave and two women–fortyish–take over the table. "How was your holiday?" asks the first woman. "I hated it!", says the second. …Aaargh. The contagion has spread. Help me Job! I listen only long enough to hear about a bad sunburn on the first day… Sigh…
Technorati Tags: Benedictine, Psalms, Mondays
