Doing the crazy thing

It’s March 17. It’s a day when most of the United States has big parties to celebrate St. Patrick of Ireland. Green clothing, green rivers, shamrocks, beer, soda bread . . . it’s a day to do all the Irish things.

It’s March 17. For much of the Orthodox Christian world, it’s a day to celebrate St. Alexis the Man of God. That’s who we celebrate today in my family. He’s a saint near and dear to us, since before my husband and I were married. He’s the patron saint of our firstborn son. And he’s known for doing the crazy thing.

It’s March 17, 2020. No one in the United States is having big parties for St. Patrick. No one is having parades. People are sheltering in place in their homes. Big parties and parades might well be the death of us all. A virus has brought us to our knees as a society. We wait in semi-solitude and silence.

It’s March 17, 2020. We’ll celebrate St. Alexis at my house. We’ll have yummy food and drink. We’ll sing and pray and laugh. We’ll probably tell a few stories. We’ll rejoice in doing the crazy thing as we always do this day. But this year, everyone is doing the crazy thing with us.

When I say St. Alexis is known for doing the crazy thing, I’m not exaggerating. I’m not speaking in metaphors. I’ll give you the Cliff’s Notes. On the night of his wedding, Alexis left his new wife with wealth to sustain her safely in the home of his parents and fled. He fled to seek out absolute ascetic humility of the Christian life. He fled to embrace a life of extreme poverty, one that eventually led him to live in anonymity as a beggar at the gates of his childhood home. There’s more to the story and who he became, but really, he just became a holy beggar. I’ll leave it at that for now. He did the unfathomable and crazy thing.

I know. I know. It’s sounds bizarre. I’m not going to mince words. It seems like lunacy. It just does. And I know. I know. Why would a saint leave his wife? It’s a confusing tale in some ways. I won’t claim to always understand it. I’m glad my husband didn’t choose this path.

But I love this saint. From the depths of my soul I love him. His humility and continued love for those who seek his help is also unfathomable. There are many reasons we entrusted our firstborn son to his care. I won’t share them all publicly. But since his birth, I’ve always told my son one thing. “St Alexis reminds us continually that sometimes the right thing is the crazy thing. If you have to do the crazy thing, so be it. I will always love you. Sometimes our path to goodness seems crazy to other people.”

My most recent post on this blog was from Thanksgiving. It was about how much I love a home packed with people and food. Gatherings of people are my love language. I’m an extrovert to the core. Give me a group of people to be with, to love, to embrace, to kiss, to share food with, to get dirty with. I’m not worried about cleanliness or neatness or quietude. Just give me a room full of people. And noise. This is how I love.

This week, this month, the world asks us to do the opposite. No gatherings of people. No churches filled with worshipers. No classrooms of eager learners. And no hugs or kisses. No physical touch. Unfathomably hard. Unfathomably.

I had to sit in a room with a few close friends Monday night and not touch a single one. We sat in sadness and fear about what is coming next. It’s a time when we would normally hug, exchange kisses, pat each other on the shoulders, hold hands. And we had to look at each other from six feet away and just talk. That’s it. We had to prepare for the reality that we can’t even gather this way again for quite some time. Phone calls and emails will be our contact. Crazy. Just crazy.

And, yet, today, this crazy is the good thing. This is the way we are called to love this day and this month. This is how we are called to goodness and truth and beauty. We must spare each other with our distance.

It is so painful. But it is also beautiful.

It’s absolutely crazy. And it’s also right and good today.

Thank you, St. Alexis, for preparing us for this. Today, we’ll rejoice that we can to do the crazy thing. We were made to thrive in this day.