The Promises We Make
August 2024
Sitting across from me is my great aunt Mary, slowly digging into a plate of pasta with bright red sauce and one of those salads from your childhood made of coarsely chopped vegetables and tangy dressing. She takes her time, yet you can tell she still has an appetite, especially when she reaches for a second heaping.
My family and I have traveled all the way to Combermere in Canada to join her as she is celebrated for 60 years in her service at the Apostolate, the catholic community where she lives. The laypeople who made their home here make Promises- to live “bearing witness to the merciful love of God revealed in Christ Jesus”. They “follow the path of Mary, the perfect disciple, under the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience” vows that in my aunt’s time were taken one a year for 6 years, and upon the 7th year are asked to make the Final Promise, to fully surrender her life to this mission.
Auntie came to live here in her early 20s, moved by the testament of a member who she met while she was in catholic high school. When I look at her now I see a woman who is full of spark and knowing, a quiet rambunctiousness that animates her. Though she is 87 now she still traverses the grounds, showing us around the farm, through the woods, and weaves us through the history of this place. It is one she knows with an intimacy like that of a lover and beloved, hallowed grounds for her heart. This luster makes me wonder if she has really chosen to give up the world, so much as she has bared herself nakedly to the one she desires most, and discovered the fullness of life embedded within her own heart.
I want to ask her, “were you scared to make your Final Promise?” but I know that is just my own fear, my own disbelief at how rich poverty can be. So I’ve been thinking alot about promises these days, what we gain from making one and the fire required to uphold it. I consider the promises of my own life, and masked within the allure of a secret mantra, is really the alchemy of the promise made. Surely, I do not doubt the potency of the prayers I utter, but the promise and the labor to bear it day in and day out strikes me as a medicine for our time.
Sunday night we gather in the dining hall, all the members of the House gathered around flower dressed tables, and we hold up a glass to toast Auntie. In return she speaks in to the microphone, “I have prayed for perseverance, and I pray you find it too.”
Though I’m slightly embarrassed to admit it, I’ve paid for more than one class and workshop telling me how to be confident, with a 5 step plan to discover authenticity. I’ve written down instructions and done all the journal prompts and still been at a loss for the ground I long for beneath my feet. But perhaps confidence is not something we convince ourselves of, but rather a promise made manifest. Returning to this altar again and again, I have discovered a deep trust in myself to show up, to patiently bear, and to allow the “slow work of God” to find me. It is an internal churning where I have found my commitment to myself, which has born the fruit of trust, confidence, and clarity. It is not a matter of baseless affirmations barked into a mirror, for I am unfortunately too wise to believe bearing witness to half truths will transform me into what I hope to be.
Just as powerful as a promise though, is the devastation of a broken one. Like plans broken week after week, our own hearts can become jaded by our lack of conviction. What good is my word if I cannot keep it with myself? Though- I would not doubt that I am alone here in that I have found it easier to uphold the vows I make to another person than the ones I make for myself. And what I really mean by easier, is that I am quick to lay down my own cross, quick to give up, quick to tell myself that it doesn’t really matter when it comes to myself.
So many of us hide from vows in the name of freedom, like a garden drowned by the insatiable force of weeds. It is hard work to return day after day to any agreement, be it sadhana, marriage, an academic pursuit, writing a book, eating regular meals. I give the word hard with purpose- for it is not easy to be relentless in a commitment. Within the relentlessness is also the flow of grace, the ecstasy of surrender, and the bliss of dissolving ones own perceived limitations. In my life, will I be willing to do what is hard, for the sake of receiving what is precious?
Will I be willing to risk the vulnerability of a challenge, to render myself capable of the mountains ahead of me in an affirmation of my enoughness? For a promise of this kind is a vow of ones own sacredness, ones own openness to receiving life’s treasures.
When I looked upon my auntie, 60 years into her promise, I bore witness to what is possible within us when we turn ourselves, without reservation, to love. I have seen the gifts of this hard work in not only Auntie’s face, but in the knowing nods of her spiritual family, the people carrying their own crosses beside her.