I began my official morning with an excerpted quote from Jean Pierre de Caussade’s Abandonment to Divine Providence:
“The divine action, although only visible to the eye of faith is everywhere and always present … There is not a moment in which God does not present himself under the cover of some pain to be endured, of some consolation to be enjoyed, or of some duty to be performed. All that takes place within us, around us, or through us, contain and conceal his divine actions.”
It was an excellent kickoff, though I should probably explain the “official” thing. Unofficially, my day had begun hours earlier, at 2:30 am with Pete’s front paws scrabbling desperately at my face. Pete had to pee! Pete had to pee now!
Off we went to pee. At 3:30 Pete was happily asleep, and I was staring at the ceiling. I went downstairs and stared at the ceiling from the couch. Three-thirty became 4:30. I called it a night and got up. I was productive in that jittery “gotta keep moving or I might fall over” manner of insomniacs. I did stretches; I cleaned; I journaled and prayed and read Fr. de Caussade and thought, “Well. OK. Let’s see what the day holds.”
First it held paperwork. Then it held a lunch-hour nap from which I awoke utterly confused, wondering how I’d managed to sleep till after noon on a work day. When I got my bearings, it was time to sit on hold with the Indiana Department of Revenue.
Our accountant, “Chuck,” and I have been intermittently sitting on hold with the DOR for months now. I’ve had time to imagine the place. In my mind’s eye, it’s a giant airport hangar lined with cubicles full of women wearing headsets. In the center is a quartet of lute and recorder players — flowing white dresses for the women, breeches and velvet tunics for the men. Whenever one of the cubicle ladies asks if you can stand a “brief hold,” she rips off her headset and hurls it, javelin style, at the lutenists. And there you are, listening to the same four lines of scratchy, ponderous, renaissance-fair Muzak until headset lady takes pity and reels her equipment back in.
If you’re lucky, as Chuck and I were today, you can get cut off an hour into the process and start all over with someone new.
“Could we just speak to Josephine?” Chuck asked plaintively. “We were making a lot of progress with Josephine.”
But Josephine had been sucked into the void. There was no Josephine. It was Cassandra or nothing.
Cassandra put us on hold.
“I wonder if I can get this music on Spotify,” I shouted to Chuck over the opening chords.
He laughed, a little hysterically, I thought, and shouted back, “I’m pretty sure this is enough for me. Ha ha HA!”
As it turns out, the DOR has not yet reviewed the letter they requested in October. Neither Cassandra nor Josephine has any idea why, but Cassandra has promised to “escalate” things. The review should occur “soon.” How will I know? Why, I call them, of course.
I hung up the phone and drove down to the YMCA in a soup of thick fog. Headlights appeared out of nowhere and disappeared into nothing. I considered my day. I’d spent it exhausted, mired in tasks that were alternately tedious and disagreeable. Yet at the same time, I’d found myself patient, blessed with a sense of humor, and grateful for Chuck’s infinite fortitude in the face of implacable bureaucracy. There had indeed been “duties to be performed” but also “consolations to be enjoyed,” and I could say honestly, that yes, throughout were the fingermarks of the divine.
I could say, honestly, that yes, it had been a good day.
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