One morning, when I used to go to Ephphatha House, a small Catholic community of prayer, and a place of apparent "uselessness," a young girl who lived there told me about her cat:
She was sitting on a large stone on the path to the chapel, the cat lounging listlessly on her lap, and our conversation started on its own. I asked about her cat and she said, "Oh this is not my cat…and he hates kids. It took me a year to get his love and so now I just want to stay with him."
Besides the sweetness of a kid loving a cat that much, I just love the fact that at the end of her longsuffering experience, her patient experiment of opening herself up countless times with a kind of holy greed, that she found herself in love’s leisure, simply and naturally wanting the company of this cat.
I’m reminded of some lines from George MacDonald’s Diary of an Old Soul.
Those who would be born again indeed,
Must wake our souls unnumbered times a day,
And urge ourselves to life with holy greed,;
Now open our bosoms to the wind’s free play;
And now, with patience forceful, hard, lie still,
Submit and ready to the making will,
Athirst and empty, for God’s breath to fill.
