I am an anxious person.
And what is worse, For a long time, I had nowhere to retreat to. The bumps and bruises of life were magnified, as though sand were being pelted on my bare skin. We are meant to go through life at some remove from its pains, of course, like wearing a sturdy canvas to shield us.
Once, at work, I was criticized mildly for being late on some project. In my mind, I know that criticism is normal, even healthy. But in my body, this criticism was an imminent deadly threat. My heart raced, my vessels dilated, and I fainted. I think my boss managed to roll an office chair underneath me as I collapsed.
This was an embarrassing event for me. I was a young man, with a bit of talent, but probably more arrogance. As much as I knew in my mind that criticism should not have caused that reaction, my body simply rebelled. I had trouble sleeping for weeks. I couldn’t stop replaying the events, and ruminating over them. Over many years, I slowly accepted that, despite my intellectual accomplishments, I was a constitutionally weak and frail person.
Not long after this happened, my wife and I made a weekend trip to the desert. It was a relief to get away from the city, to escape from the constant reminders of my shame and weakness.
In the desert, we visited a modestly sized but immaculately maintained and very beautiful garden. There was a small, round lawn in the middle. Brown gravel paths wound beneath acacia or palo brea trees. Identical, blooming barrel cactuses were growing in a perfect grid out of a bed of slate colored rocks. A perfectly flat but flowing pool of water reflected light with mirror clarity. A labyrinth with perfectly trimmed knee-high hedges
In the middle of the garden was a small museum with a modest collection of photography. At the rear, there were floor to ceiling plate glass windows, maybe fifteen feet tall, facing the garden. The tall windows framed the green lawn, the trees, and beyond, a massive, jagged mountain crowned with snow. If I was asked to name the most beautiful place I have ever been, I don’t think I could name anywhere better than that place.
That beautiful place punched through my anxiety and grabbed me. I can not remember a more desperate time in my life, yet I shuffled aimlessly in a quiet, sun-drenched gallery, staring slackjawed through two story windows at a pristine desert garden, towered over by a gargantuan snow topped peak. Somehow, it made me feel a little bit better.
It’s not exactly that it comforted me, and it didn’t fix everything: it would be a few months before I was all better. It got me to think about something other than my weakness and shame. Maybe it reminded me of all the other beautiful places I had been, and reassured me that eventually, somehow, the shame would pass, that I would be in a beautiful place again sometime soon, and I would feel better, maybe all better.
I never remember being told this, but somehow I had internalized that work, being useful, what you do to earn money, was the most important thing in life. If work is everything and I’m failing at work, then I’m nothing. Being in such a beautiful place was a ladder out of that dead end of a worldview. The beauty of that place was clearly good, but not clearly useful, and if anything, almost the opposite.
Work can be a good part of life, but for most people, and certainly for me, it’s not the most fulfilling or meaningful part of life. Not long after the fainting incident, I got a new job, and by instinct, I knew I could not invest as much emotionally into it as I did my previous job. This has proven to be a very healthy approach. I kept the job almost seven years, was liked and respected by all, did many very useful and difficult things and was well promoted. When I did good work, I was proud, but when I made mistakes, I retreated into the parts of my life that mattered more: my relationships with my wife and children, hosting big dinners for my extended family, playing my daughter’s favorite song on the piano. But I eventually discovered
A few years after the fainting incident, I had a profound religious conversion. I’ve described more of the details in other writings, and most of them are not relevant here. I wonder, though, if somehow, the experience of transcendent beauty when I was so hopeless cracked open a door in my soul. When my ego was out of the picture, an undeniable objective value made contact. My faith, my relationship with God, has become the most important thing in my life, around which all else is ordered, and it is my surest refuge from anxiety and shame. I call out to him in prayer, and I feel Him heal my wounds and direct me through difficult times.
I am extremely blessed to be near a church with an adoration chapel that is always open. For a couple years now, I’ve had the practice of visiting the chapel regularly. Sometimes I spend thirty minutes of meditation. More often I can only spare five minutes or so, just to say hi to Jesus and go back to my day.
The chapel itself is simple but very well designed, and in its quiet way, beautiful. It is made with glass walls on all four sides. Behind the presentation table there is a wall of stained glass, or perhaps faux stained glass, with an abstract wheat design. The glass walls facing the outside are mostly frosted, for privacy and to limit distractions. Right at the top there is a strip of clear glass. When I am low on a kneeler, I can see the branches of trees which ring the front lawn. Light from the sun and the sight of blue skies kindle an animal joy in my anxious heart.
But for me as a Catholic, those external beauties are only hints of the ultimate beauty, goodness and power enshrined in the gold monstrance. Neither the simple beauties of the chapel nor the sublime beauties of the faraway desert garden compare with the infinity that I believe by faith to be concealed behind the appearances of bread. It is there, in that simple, beautiful adoration chapel, the shadows of swaying branches in my eyes, kneeling before my Lord, that I am in my happy place.