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Interruptions and eruptions

3/27/2017

Dear Readers of my Blogs,
There will be a short hiatus in these blogs for a lovely reason.
I was asked to do a Mission in a parish Church far from my new home in Corpus Christi. Since my lap top died, I am not sure I can get on another one while I am gone. So you might not get another Blog until after Easter. You could pray for the victims of my mission!

In the meantime, this post is going to be different in that it is featuring the graphics of Jim Ridley and his prose with a short intro from me.
It happens that I had an angry fit in the presence of several of my dearest friends. I apologized profusely and went to Confession. I wrote Jim that I might allude in my blog to the cause of the meltdown so that he might then illustrate it graphically, including the hilarious response to my apology I received from the offended friends.

Here then is an abridged account of the eruption of Mount Saint Ronda:

These explosive seismic incidents barely register on our defective Richter scales. We are not all ace defusers on your Soul Commander's bomb squad. We wouldn’t know which wire to clip - the red, the yellow the blue…

Nor are we trained as a first-responder medics to perform triage after detonation. Our default reactions to such brouhahas is to let others do the witchy brewing while we tend to the ha-ha-ha’s. Considering the etymology of that delightful word: French, orig. brou, ha, ha! exclamation used by characters representing the devil in the 16th-cent. drama; perhaps a distortion of the recited Hebrew phrase bārūkh habbā beshēm ădhōnai “blessed is he who comes (in the name of the Lord)” (Ps. 118:26), we all together focus on the Hebrew and inwardly sing the psalm verse.

Love is the medic, Love the defuser. Beyond that we see all such voluble Vesuvian verbiage as ultimately eternally valuable. After the molten magma erupts, the streams of lava steam into the sea, cooling the flaming effluvium into a rising accumulation of rock, which eventually evolves into an island that becomes in God’s good time a habitable paradise of lush flora and exotic fauna.

Blessed is she who comes in the name of the Lord.

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The carrot and the stick

3/22/2017

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I often think about how much truth there is in many cliché phrases such as the carrot and the stick.

Here is one of my applications.
Before Vatican II, some Catholics only came to Church every Sunday without fail because they were afraid of Hell. (The stick) Then when many priests and catechists stopped preaching and teaching about Hell, they just gradually stopped coming regularly. I think Jesus is sad because without fear of Hell, many don’t come to Mass just out of love for Him and His Body and Blood (The carrot.)

On the other hand, some of us true believers, can make it seem that only the stick counts because people are so evil that they never do anything out of love without a stick!
The reading today of Jesus with the Samaritan woman suggests that Jesus reminded her of the stick by mentioning her 5 husbands and her present lover, but then quickly lured her with the carrot by speaking of the eternal life He, the Messiah, wanted to bring to her.

A message it seemed to me came from Jesus to me:
Just as a mother watches her toddler, first fall every few steps, trying to walk, then gradually less and less, when I am teaching you through a spiritual director how to improve, I am not alarmed that you still make many, many mistakes. I just want you to hold My hand more and try again.

I have a friend who shows great loving kindness to my battered heart. I was thanking God for this love and I thought what will it be like in heaven when we come into the full experience of the loving kindness of Jesus in His mercy?

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UMBROUS RUMINATIONS

3/13/2017

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SUCH AS THE FOLLOWING:

Do you think that Jesus is only present to you
when you think to pray to him during the day and night? It seems to me that Jesus was telling me that He is always present and wants me to avert to that presence often, either to let Him speak to me to advise or encourage me, or to just be in silence closer to Him.
The obstacle is that I think my own thoughts, deeds, and feelings
are more important than His presence.

I am grieving the divisions in the Church. The specific grief came when talking with a Catholic about the recent University of Berkeley riots. This person insisted they were caused not by Berkeley students but by gangs of violent people who infiltrates protests. I realize this person associates Berkeley with peace movements, but I associate Berkeley with rebellion against sexual ethics leading to abortifacient contraception and abortion. This is especially on my mind because I read an article about how new French laws now put in jail any pro-life person who even hands out a leaflet about alternatives to abortion to someone going into a abortuary. And I am thinking that this would have happened here if Hilary had won the election.

BERKLEY 1967

BERKLEY 2017

Praying about the dreadful conflict within the Church, Jesus seemed to tell me this:
“There is no peace without justice and no final peace, therefore, until the Last Judgment. You should work for justice on earth, as I command you to, but all the while loving forgiveness leads to greater peace in your personal life. Can you accept that you and this other Catholic working for different types of justice in the Church and the world often do not know where each other is coming from? And, therefore, forgive when you feel wrongly judged by each other?”

I have been reading the 3 volume Diary of Viktor Klemperer, cousin of the famous Otto. It witnesses to the daily life of Jews who became Christians before the War and were married to Christians and so, not always, sent to the concentration camps. Klemperer was one of those Jews who loved German culture before the Nazi time. Gradually, however, he decided that he couldn’t just say this was an aberration but that it had to have something to do with the German character.

I had this thought. Suppose the shadow side of German love of order (ordnung) was totalitarian control? And suppose the shadow side of French intellectualism could be cynicism. And the shadow side of American love of freedom, license?

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Horse Sense

3/5/2017

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First of all, let me christen the launching of the
WHY I AM STILL A CATHOLIC booklet series.

Click HERE or on the image above for access to the project's web page.

Now here beginneth the blog:

In a group of mine at Holy Apostles in Connecticut, based on my book Way of Love, Dave Bastoni was a member who actually owns real live horses which he keeps in a stable on his property. He told us often about how “healing” horses are in ways different than pets.

Here is one of his reflections:
Horses are prey animals and use all their senses to constantly monitor their environment.
In the wild, as soon as danger is detected, they run to safety.
For example,
wind can be a problem for horses because of what they hear and what they cannot hear.
What they hear is noise - the wind whistling, the rustle of leaves, etc - sounds that can make them anxious and aggressive. To them, any new sound is a threat until it can be checked out.
What they can't hear usually is the sound of an approaching predator. When things are quiet, predators can be heard before they strike.

As I watch this play out with my horses on windy days, I cannot help but relate this to our lives. Noise can prevent us from hearing the evil that surrounds us,
and can cause us to be anxious and aggressive.
Some of us know the value of quiet time in our day. We are simply happier and healthier people if we make room for it. A sanctuary where we can leave the noise, whether it be a room,
a chapel or even a barn.

My horses tell me the need for quiet in their lives. Great barn lesson for us.

I am looking through a huge photo book about Mother Teresa called Works of Love are Works of Peace. Looking at so many photos of herself, the Sisters, and volunteers tending dying people gave me the impetus to call up a member of a group of mine long over who I heard had bad cancer.

Generally, I am finding that in my new less busy retired life-style, it is especially good to pay attention to little nudges such as that from the Holy Spirit. If in doubt, do it, I now think, of course only if it is something good in itself.

Many mentors have advised me to avoid using the words conservative and liberal except about politics. Transposing these into Church lingo has the risk of making it seem
as if these are just 2 possible positions.
Rather, a person who believes every word of the catechism, social justice, and sexual morality,
is not a conservative but a Catholic!
Calling such a one a conservative can be a subtle way to write one off!

I read an amazing book by Rifqa Bary called Hiding in the Light. It is about an Islamic girl in the US with a batteringly raging father. Though not keeping the women hidden or in Islamic dress on the streets otherwise the family kept strict law including thinking it was right to kill any child who became Christian. I won’t give away the story because I so want you to read the book. It is astounding the miraculous graces Jesus conferred on this teen to run away from her home and seek asylum while becoming an internationally famous case when lawyers on both sides argued about whether since running away from home in a minor is a criminal offence she should be forced to return to her father who said he would kill her for being baptized.
A charming incident. A workman outside the house where I am living asked me if I was a Sister since I dress in a plain blue denim jumper with a large crucifix. When I told him I was a dedicated widow and what that meant he grinned from ear to ear.
“I’m like you. I’m a slave of Jesus.”

A surprising alleged response of Mother Mary:
Ronda: I had an awful nightmare – usual about being lost and can’t find my way home type thing and no one would help.
Mary: Now, give the anxiety behind the dream to us. Be thankful that nightmares release anxiety and are not true because in real life even awful crosses have great blessings attached.

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Interruptions and eruptions

The carrot and the stick

UMBROUS RUMINATIONS

Horse Sense

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