Scathing Honesty

 Patricia Masters

Then occurred the only thing in my life thus far that I would call a true miracle. After a month of barely holding it together I was awakened at 4:00 AM one morning by a phone call telling me that I had to come in to work unexpectedly that day. It felt like the ‘last straw.’ I couldn’t take it. I was totally overwhelmed. I couldn’t even cry. I paced back and forth for a while, literally groaning. Then I sat down and grasped my hands into a posture of prayer, something I almost never did. I prayed, not to Kuan Yin as Jack (Kornfield) had suggested I do, but to Mary the mother of Christ Jesus whom Catholics say can  intercede for us. I prayed with all my heart, “Mary, I don’t believe in you. I don’t even know what or where you could possibly be. But if you are anything, please, please help me, because I cannot keep going like this!” 

In the blink of an eye the whole tortured state of being began to drain out of me, like water going out of a bathtub. I felt it go, out of my head, down and out of my body. For the next hour I sat there in a state of calmness and peaceful joy, completely restored. I felt God’s presence strongly and also a loving presence that I now know was Mary. I was given to know that my present period of difficulty was God’s purifying work, that periods of pain and emptiness are part of the path and no matter how dark things are, God is ever present. I remembered the commitment I had made to trust all to God and felt gratitude in seeing that my offer had been accepted. After an hour of this rest I was able to acknowledge that, with God’s help, I could take it and if it was part of God’s plan for me, I wanted it.

Buddhist to Catholic