Ah, how rubbish can be troubling!

For once, this is not a wry statement or pun. It is genuine rubbish which is troubling me, as I shall related following the customary spiritual reflection.

Thérèse of Lisieux was often remarkably candid - if, in the process, sometimes revealing she'd been a bit spoiled - in her autobiography. I well remember her writing of a particularly disagreeable nun, who found fault with everything and everyone. On one occasion, Thérèse was placing an artificial rose at a shrine. She saw the other nun approaching and, knowing her to be one to complain a good deal about allergies, was momentarily relishing having the whinge bag complain, then informing her the rose was fake. Being one who has lived in a convent, and who can be emotionally edgy, I can fully appreciate just how saintly it was when Thérèse approached the other Sister before she had a chance to speak and, showing her the rose, commented that it was remarkable how art could imitate nature these days.

How is this for a marvellous quotation for Thérèse's feast? "I sense in myself the vocation of Warrior, Priest, Apostle, Doctor, and Martyr. In the heart of the Church,
my Mother, I will be love."

What a woman! Yet she'd admit that something as silly as the rose incident so troubled her - and even speak of her 'conversion,' in quite dramatic terms, as a time when, as a teenager currently storming heaven to enter a highly austere Order, she managed to keep calm when her indulgent Papa commented that she was getting a bit old for Pere Noel.

This might seem a trivial matter, but I'm going to ask Thérèse to intercede for me. I may not be saintly, and hope no martyrdom is on the menu, but at least I am a Doctor - I've had to be a warrior (how else could I have persisted in the Church ministries all of those years?) - I've had my share of being apostolic - and would that I had the health to be a priest (though I've been a useful servant to a few.) But I want to 'be love' - and how hard it is!

My current peeve in the 'gets my back up' category has to do with rubbish. Not just the figurative rubbish which irks me day by day. No, this is genuine garbage.

My flat is in the basement of a Victorian home which was converted into six small apartments, and the building's total occupancy is nine. So far, I'm contented that no one seems to bother anyone else. Yet it so irks me (my grumbling to myself at this point usually includes "are people so stupid...?") that, though each flat has its trash can, and there are bins for the recycling right there, most of the others let their bins grow to a height of ten feet before they drag them to the kerb!

I wish to live in a clean house - think the heaped rubbish makes the building look like a slum (it is not) - and have no desire for the company of uninvited visitors with more than two legs. Fool that I am, I thought that, if I dragged out all of the garbage for a week or two, people would catch on... be grateful all was cleaned up... and be more inclined to just place the bins out for pickup. How wrong I was! (Here you'll see my naive nature.) The result, of course, was that, at this point, if I don't take the bins out they don't get out at all. And I find recyclable materials piled on top of my bin, though the bins for recycling are an arm's length away.

I know this will not change my practise. Some of the others in my building are young, and their bins will contain packaging from such items as 'take away' pizza. You know as well as I what cheese can attract... and what, of a similar species but larger variety, remnants of meat can attract...

Thirty years ago, I thought I was prepared to do anything short of martyrdom for the sake of charity and the kingdom. (Bear with Thérèse. You'll recall she never was much more than thirty years younger than I am am now, so her youthful fervour would endure. It was the much older Teresa who reminded God that, with how he treats his friends, it is no wonder he has so few.) Today, though I'm still a kind sort, I think I'll be canonised if I can hold back the anger that I feel, twice each week, when I see those overflowing bins... or the recycling piled on top... or the wrong type of recycling in a bin...

It can lead to the trashiest thoughts and language...