Finished this most interesting chapter but of course I'm not there yet. I am still at the point of doing God's will because it is God's will or at least I think it is. But certainly not to the point of being united to Him, although there are times when I wake up totally full of love for God. But then it dissipates and I am back to the real world. And I was playing at Mass and singing and as soon as I thought how good my singing sounded I messed up the piano playing and had to stop singing to concentrate on the piano part. Just a little reminder from Our Lady that she is the one doing this through me and if I start to take credit she will be gone and I will be left alone to make a mess.
I should perhaps read the commentary here one more time before finally, catching up by taking as long as it takes to find yet more illumination in fixing a light bulb.
Meanwhile, one of five comments of mine on c10, "replying, we sing" has been replied to.
(Not to rush anyone, a few of my reflections were offed with some cost in pride-broken-into-humility, if not outright humiliation. A "vulnerable" reply might involve a cost in return, which I would rather wait for, when attention is not obliged to attend to greater duties, instead of already having a distracted reply. (Upon reflection, any harried response in the midst of multi-tasking risks being a near occasion to the many sins involving a lukewarm heart.) The supposedly singular unforgivable sin somehow manages to be Legion in manifestation.
Context: My accepted and sworn state in life is husband of a non-believing wife.
I have reason to wonder if my bishop might have expected me to seek an annulment, which would have been open and shut, before my Confirmation. Rather, in sufficient understanding to make a binding choice, I declared my intent to follow St. Paul's guidance in this matter.
To avoid any possible scandal, I'll go directly to very recent events.
After regular and earnest prayer for kindness and patience; not for the sake of my soul, but explicitly for the sake of my wife's "Life is only worthy of attention in the midst of physical non-abstract action." soul. (She's not an xyzist of any kind. Temperamentally, she lives in nature as nature presents itself. She could be happy among hunter-gatherers.)
But... Instead of being granted heroic patience, kindness, and calm,
I was given an occasion for hair trigger anger in reaction to a humiliation by my wife in the presence of other known-to-be-good men and husbands. A year ago, this would have been an explosive situation. I managed to keep it together, while being sure that my words, calmly but clearly spoken, were heard, just as my wife's quite possibly devil-inspired words had been, seconds before. She went about her work, and I went about mine. If the past is any indication, she will not remember more than making a joke, that I have, again, proven too fragile to take... "Can you say, gaslighting?"
Where I'm going with this is that God may want one thing of me in my response to Him for the sake of my soul. For the sake of another soul that I'm sworn to love, He might want something radically different.
Attempting a global response to this first full, (fulsome?) reading of just the words on offer. (Audiovisuals, later if God so favors me.) Because I am calm and momentarily reconciled to being me as merely, I am, in this never to be repeated moment. Praise God!
(Global as compared to a particular observation on the first fragment of a shattered mirror to prick me after allowing it to fall on the stony ground I seem to favor when the Word of God is being broadcast.) Imagining myself to be the fertile soil? I wish! I look back and have reason to weep!
But that was when, and this is now. (Tempted to go all tangential.)
I say, no to Satan! All that I can say, if I think about it. "Resist not the evil one!"
(I had an Episcopel priest, a recovering alcoholic, who expected to eventually die from his addiction, who credited his wife for his yet being alive... So close was he while not exactly getting it... Maybe he did, before the hour of his dying, I do not know.) Anyway, this nudge because he often said, "Our BEST thinking has given us this hell on earth."
Hoping this is a memory I am supposed to remember.
I can only be in your hands, Dear Lord, whether I want to be or not.
Wanting that right now! Please help me love You, (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) in my poverty of spirit and lukewarm heart, to love You more than I can ever love any other created person or thing.
In this doubly fallen state, I now dare to imagine this as a where and when to (Not to begin, exactly,) but with a new hope, to allow You to do for me that which I cannot do. (For sure, I can manage loving less the other (s), but that is not what You want of me. How could it be? On every front line I have, or may yet, turn my attention to, I am to love what You Loved-Into-Existence more than I already can and do. On the highest ground on which I may stand, I am to offer UP to You all that I am. Trusting that this worm that I am is sufficient clay and dust for You to Complete the Work You Began. Let me just continue to see You! You ask so little of me: Why should I expect to fail while keeping my eyes fixed on You, Who cannot fail?
For this I should be glad. Just as glad as I can be. And ever more glad day by day in taking up my cross as but the least I should aspire to: Mercy and not Justice, You Desire to Be. Amen!
Anyone who can read a new essay in The Atlantic Monthly, you will find an essay by Caitlan Flanigan (True Catholic) on, "Heroic Masculinity," in reply to the reality of toxic masculinity. Probably the best thing I've read this month!
THAT creating a profile was insanely frustrating. I did not have that half hour to cast away from what really matters to me right now...
Sorry. Sorry. I'm supposed to be over petty anger. I see that I am not.
Praise God!
Edit: I see that my profile was not changed after all that.
Praise God, nonetheless.
(((May I add, Bridget, that it looks like Substack is insisting that your free public conversation is not being treated as other than a rule abiding subscription whatever?))) Imagine this as shyly offered as the wilted flower it is. Sometimes, it is proper for the bearer of minor imperfect news to feel ashamed.
I realized this morning that, "The Wizard of Oz," (movie) is a widely known cultural frame which we share at a more than superficial level.
Modern secular mythology has not failed to harness new media to tell the essential stories we humans have always found necessary to explain to the next generation how to know the basics of surviving and thriving today.
The post-contemplation theme is addressed by noting that Dorithy's THREE companions have a deficiency in Brains, Heart, and Courage. Limitations that are resolved in preparation for Unity. Which is set to commence in Oz as Dorithy returns to her home in Kansas. Presumably to grow up into well-formed adulthood.
Remembering, as we should, that this is a secular mythology after all. We do have superior, indeed Perfect narratives, already. My prize being to get that this is an excellent bridge from what we should know, to what many in the world suspect and long for.
A few words, as they say, sufficient for the wise to recognize each other.
Just a note from the front lines. The battles are becoming fiercer.
Since I volunteered for spiritual war, as an overaged reservist, the situation may be desperate if I am being mobilized. Will this pass the censors? I can only hope.
I intended to begin reading your reflections this morning, but the enemy reached out and forced my hand, as you have so kindly noticed. If you have occasion to read some of my other posts, you may notice a pattern to what I have been engaging, within my sanctioned lay options. I say this in defiance of the timid censors, knowing, also, that I should not point toward what the Spirit has arranged to be hidden. That would be a failure of obedience on my part, or not. Discernment is so difficult for a lazy soul like me. Pray for me please, as I pray for you and all the rest...
Finished this most interesting chapter but of course I'm not there yet. I am still at the point of doing God's will because it is God's will or at least I think it is. But certainly not to the point of being united to Him, although there are times when I wake up totally full of love for God. But then it dissipates and I am back to the real world. And I was playing at Mass and singing and as soon as I thought how good my singing sounded I messed up the piano playing and had to stop singing to concentrate on the piano part. Just a little reminder from Our Lady that she is the one doing this through me and if I start to take credit she will be gone and I will be left alone to make a mess.
April 17. My birthday.
I should perhaps read the commentary here one more time before finally, catching up by taking as long as it takes to find yet more illumination in fixing a light bulb.
Meanwhile, one of five comments of mine on c10, "replying, we sing" has been replied to.
(Not to rush anyone, a few of my reflections were offed with some cost in pride-broken-into-humility, if not outright humiliation. A "vulnerable" reply might involve a cost in return, which I would rather wait for, when attention is not obliged to attend to greater duties, instead of already having a distracted reply. (Upon reflection, any harried response in the midst of multi-tasking risks being a near occasion to the many sins involving a lukewarm heart.) The supposedly singular unforgivable sin somehow manages to be Legion in manifestation.
I ask your forgiveness in advance.
Speaking of recognizing the Will of God:
Context: My accepted and sworn state in life is husband of a non-believing wife.
I have reason to wonder if my bishop might have expected me to seek an annulment, which would have been open and shut, before my Confirmation. Rather, in sufficient understanding to make a binding choice, I declared my intent to follow St. Paul's guidance in this matter.
To avoid any possible scandal, I'll go directly to very recent events.
After regular and earnest prayer for kindness and patience; not for the sake of my soul, but explicitly for the sake of my wife's "Life is only worthy of attention in the midst of physical non-abstract action." soul. (She's not an xyzist of any kind. Temperamentally, she lives in nature as nature presents itself. She could be happy among hunter-gatherers.)
But... Instead of being granted heroic patience, kindness, and calm,
I was given an occasion for hair trigger anger in reaction to a humiliation by my wife in the presence of other known-to-be-good men and husbands. A year ago, this would have been an explosive situation. I managed to keep it together, while being sure that my words, calmly but clearly spoken, were heard, just as my wife's quite possibly devil-inspired words had been, seconds before. She went about her work, and I went about mine. If the past is any indication, she will not remember more than making a joke, that I have, again, proven too fragile to take... "Can you say, gaslighting?"
Where I'm going with this is that God may want one thing of me in my response to Him for the sake of my soul. For the sake of another soul that I'm sworn to love, He might want something radically different.
Thoughts and prayers are appreciated.
Audiovisuals are a delight!
Attempting a global response to this first full, (fulsome?) reading of just the words on offer. (Audiovisuals, later if God so favors me.) Because I am calm and momentarily reconciled to being me as merely, I am, in this never to be repeated moment. Praise God!
(Global as compared to a particular observation on the first fragment of a shattered mirror to prick me after allowing it to fall on the stony ground I seem to favor when the Word of God is being broadcast.) Imagining myself to be the fertile soil? I wish! I look back and have reason to weep!
But that was when, and this is now. (Tempted to go all tangential.)
I say, no to Satan! All that I can say, if I think about it. "Resist not the evil one!"
(I had an Episcopel priest, a recovering alcoholic, who expected to eventually die from his addiction, who credited his wife for his yet being alive... So close was he while not exactly getting it... Maybe he did, before the hour of his dying, I do not know.) Anyway, this nudge because he often said, "Our BEST thinking has given us this hell on earth."
Hoping this is a memory I am supposed to remember.
I can only be in your hands, Dear Lord, whether I want to be or not.
Wanting that right now! Please help me love You, (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) in my poverty of spirit and lukewarm heart, to love You more than I can ever love any other created person or thing.
In this doubly fallen state, I now dare to imagine this as a where and when to (Not to begin, exactly,) but with a new hope, to allow You to do for me that which I cannot do. (For sure, I can manage loving less the other (s), but that is not what You want of me. How could it be? On every front line I have, or may yet, turn my attention to, I am to love what You Loved-Into-Existence more than I already can and do. On the highest ground on which I may stand, I am to offer UP to You all that I am. Trusting that this worm that I am is sufficient clay and dust for You to Complete the Work You Began. Let me just continue to see You! You ask so little of me: Why should I expect to fail while keeping my eyes fixed on You, Who cannot fail?
For this I should be glad. Just as glad as I can be. And ever more glad day by day in taking up my cross as but the least I should aspire to: Mercy and not Justice, You Desire to Be. Amen!
And thanks to the messenger!
As a new aside:
Anyone who can read a new essay in The Atlantic Monthly, you will find an essay by Caitlan Flanigan (True Catholic) on, "Heroic Masculinity," in reply to the reality of toxic masculinity. Probably the best thing I've read this month!
THAT creating a profile was insanely frustrating. I did not have that half hour to cast away from what really matters to me right now...
Sorry. Sorry. I'm supposed to be over petty anger. I see that I am not.
Praise God!
Edit: I see that my profile was not changed after all that.
Praise God, nonetheless.
(((May I add, Bridget, that it looks like Substack is insisting that your free public conversation is not being treated as other than a rule abiding subscription whatever?))) Imagine this as shyly offered as the wilted flower it is. Sometimes, it is proper for the bearer of minor imperfect news to feel ashamed.
Alas! I have no idea how anything here works.
For the sake of a less um, personal, frame:
I realized this morning that, "The Wizard of Oz," (movie) is a widely known cultural frame which we share at a more than superficial level.
Modern secular mythology has not failed to harness new media to tell the essential stories we humans have always found necessary to explain to the next generation how to know the basics of surviving and thriving today.
The post-contemplation theme is addressed by noting that Dorithy's THREE companions have a deficiency in Brains, Heart, and Courage. Limitations that are resolved in preparation for Unity. Which is set to commence in Oz as Dorithy returns to her home in Kansas. Presumably to grow up into well-formed adulthood.
Remembering, as we should, that this is a secular mythology after all. We do have superior, indeed Perfect narratives, already. My prize being to get that this is an excellent bridge from what we should know, to what many in the world suspect and long for.
A few words, as they say, sufficient for the wise to recognize each other.
Thanks for allowing our conversation to pause:
Well played!
At least we are by the Grace of God in the same frame, at last.
If I were in your RL presence, I cannot say you would not see a grown man weeping.
For complicated reasons he does not understand.
Just a note from the front lines. The battles are becoming fiercer.
Since I volunteered for spiritual war, as an overaged reservist, the situation may be desperate if I am being mobilized. Will this pass the censors? I can only hope.
I intended to begin reading your reflections this morning, but the enemy reached out and forced my hand, as you have so kindly noticed. If you have occasion to read some of my other posts, you may notice a pattern to what I have been engaging, within my sanctioned lay options. I say this in defiance of the timid censors, knowing, also, that I should not point toward what the Spirit has arranged to be hidden. That would be a failure of obedience on my part, or not. Discernment is so difficult for a lazy soul like me. Pray for me please, as I pray for you and all the rest...