Those of you readers of this blog who know me well are aware of the fact that sometimes in the past I have gotten interior locutions – allegedly from Jesus, or Mary, or the Holy Spirit…It is right to always say “alleged” because otherwise if we are convinced that every inner experience is valid without corroboration of a spiritual director, the devil can tell us anything and we will believe it!  Psychologists of religion usually say that we cannot have a direct proof that such experiences are from God. For Catholics anything that contradicts magisterially proclaimed truths of the faith we know comes either from us or the devil. But with anything that passes that test, it can still come from our unconscious minds.  The best test for such as these is the fruits. So I like to pass on any such locutions that come to me if I find that they are more beautiful than anything I could write, and that they bring peace.

Such a one is this that came to me today in prayer, allegedly from Jesus:

“To be My bride (as a Dedicated Widow,  I am a bride of Christ – see www.rondachervin.com Options for Widows) is to be like Me both as I was on earth and now as I am in heaven. So, in your soul there must be the partaking of the pain in the hearts of all those you meet; sometimes hidden pain and, at the same time, feelings of the joy you will one day have in heaven.  Do you understand?  That this pain and joy  fluctuates in you moment by moment is part of the cross of being not only active in good works but also contemplative.  I could take away the pain part, but then you would be less like Me, and ultimately much less the holy self you can become with My love expanding your heart even more.  Peace is not the absence of pain as you wish it would be. Because you have such conflicts with others in your life, you want to avoid partaking of the many layers of pain in their hearts and souls, but you cannot become closer to them without such participation."

I came upon some interesting ideas about poetry in a book written many years ago about Gestalt Therapy by Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman.

“Poetry is an antidote the obsessive verbalizing or too much abstraction…Speech is good contact when it draws energy from and makes a structure of the three grammatical persons, I, Thou, and It; the speaker, the one spoken to, and the matter spoken about; when there is a need – to communicate – something.”

“A poem is a special case of good speech. In a poem, as with other good speech, the three persons, the content, the attitude and character, and  rhythm mutually express one another, and this makes the structural unity of the poem. For example, character is largely choice of vocabulary and syntax, but these rise and fall with the subject and are rhythmically distorted from the expected by feeling; … the rhythm gathers climactic urgency, the attitude becomes more direct, and the proposition is proved…the speaking activity of the poet is, as the philosophers say, “and end in itself; that is, just by the behavior of the overt speech, just by handling the medium, he solves his problem. Unlike ordinary good speech, the activity is not instrumental in a further social situation, as to persuade the listener, to entertain hi, to inform of something, in order to manipulate him for the solution of the problem…

“The poet is concentrating on some unfinished subvocal speech and its subsequent thoughts, by freely playing with his present words he at last finishes an unfinished verbal scene, he in fact utters the complaint, the denunciation, the declaration of love draw on the underlying organic need and he finds the , the self-reproach, that he should have uttered; now at last he freely draws on the underlying organic need and he finds the words….His Thou, his audience, is not some visible person nor the general public, but an ‘ideal audience’. 

“At the same time as the overt words are forming, the poet can maintain the silent awareness of image, feeling, memory, etc. and also the pure attitudes of social communication, clarity and verbal responsibility. Thus instead of being verbal stereotypes, the words are plastically destroyed and combined toward a moral vital figure. Poetry is therefore the exact contrary of neurotic verbalizing, for it is a form of concentration…

“Verbalizing easily serves as a substitute for life; it is a ready means by which an alien personality can live instead of oneself. The only inconvenience is that the verbalized meal, encounter, etc., does not give nourishment… pleasure, etc.) …reminiscing and planning is not really memory or anticipation at all, which are forms of the imagination, but it is something that one’s concept of oneself is telling to oneself…people talk often just to save face and avoid the anxiety and embarrassment of silence, revelation, or self-assertion…verbalizing protects one’s isolation from both the environment and the organism.

The tone of such verbalizing is monotonous. In poetic speech, on the other hand, the rhythm is given by pulses of breathing (verses) by the gaits of locomotion and dance (meteres), by syllogism, antithesis, or other beats of thought (stanzas and paragraphs), and by the intensification of feeling (climax), then diminishing into silence….the poet attends to the subvocal murmurs and whispers, he makes them audible.”

Writes Carla, my poet daughter, who I sent this to: “It is interesting, yet  like you, I’m not altogether sure it holds up – there is something almost magically subconscious about a poem that tends to defeat interpretation. You’re not like Ariadne carefully releasing a strand of thread to save yourself, I guess – more like throwing up 100s of balls and following however many you can until you reach some kind of join and couldn’t find your way back even yourself…”

I realized a while ago that of all the paintings, wood-cuts, and prints I have of religious art on the walls of my small room,  I didn’t have any of the Resurrection!  My favorites have always been the ones of Mary Magdalene’s meeting with Jesus Resurrected outside the tomb.  That scene, called Noli me Tangere, is for me an archetype of how Jesus is present but can’t be possessed so I must always be stretching out toward Him.   I tried to persuade my daughter, the artist, to make a copy but she was occupied instead with helping her twin, the daughter with lymphoma.  So I got some acrylics and 12x10 poster paper and tried to make a copy myself of Giotto’s painting of that scene.  The first 2 times came out comic, but by the 3rd time my rendition is less unconventional, folk-art-like still,  but still pleasing to me. 

The very few times, maybe only three in 30 years, that I have tried to draw Jesus, I felt a great need to portray Him smiling.  On the contrary, for pictures of the Crucifixion, I prefer the most dreadful, such as Grunewald’s Altar Piece. I am describing this endeavor thinking that some of you who, also, are not artists in any sense, might give a try at painting Our Savior for your own inner satisfaction. 
I think that older people have a great need to do some things that are not part of our usual agenda. 

From the responses I am getting to my Redeemed Eccentric Blog, I realize that some of my poor well-wishers are imagining that I am only eating octopus in various Vietnamese Sauces. Not at all!  What I am being served by the dear Vietnamese Sisters would cost me $100 a day it I went to restaurants, with great variety of chicken, pork, beef; all kinds of sauces, and amazing coconut desserts!  Since the kitchen is closed in the summer when the seminarians are off on internships, Vietnamese families in Connecticut bring all kinds of food to the 25 or so Sisters here still in the summer.  This is quite luxurious for some who tell me that in now totally Communist Vietnam in some villages there is no rice or meat; only sweet potatoes.

Redeemed, maybe or maybe not, Eccentricity?

The only reason I am risking writing this on the blog for anyone to see, who knows, anyway, maybe there are only 5 of you reading this stuff and all of you old friends, this is a run-on-sentence isn’t it?, is because the web-master is a super-redeemed eccentric as everyone knows who actually has visited him, and whose wife told me that one reason she married him is because she thought it would be fun!  In any case, I know he will love this account of my redeemed, maybe or maybe not?, eccentric morning and he, the web-master, Jim Ridley, will especially love illustrating it.

I am somewhat manic-depressive and this takes the form of getting crazy and terrifying ideas in the middle of the night, because the devil prowls about at night seeking who devour (as it says the readings of Compline, the night prayer of the Church. 

 But in the morning I wake up in manic mode with amusing ideas such as this one written to my, also 77 years old, twin-sister, Carla De Sola, who will be visiting me next month:





“Heh, sweetie, if we are losing it anyway, maybe we should lose it together, if, after your visit,  you decide to move in with me.”  (I live in Connecticut and she lives in Berkeley, CA).

This was followed by brainstorming, with a co-author, a proposal from the editor of a publishing house that we write a book on what the Saints Said about Purgatory as a follow up to What the Saints Said about Heaven (See goodbooksmedia Book Salon)  The first line of my Intro, I thought, could be:
“If you were slated to move into a hotel for 100 years, wouldn’t you want to check out the accommodations beforehand?  So, don’t you want to buy this book so you can know about Purgatory, where you likely will be for 1,000 years?”

Anyhow, here is more about my eccentric morning.  After a perfectly sane experience of Holy Mass of the Sixth Sunday of Easter in our beautiful chapel, I returned to the little cell-like room I live in here at Holy Apostles College and Seminary where I barter teaching philosophy for room and board. 

As a Redeemed Eccentric, (heh, I’m starting to like this appellation, a new nick-name to fit my 77 crisis?),  I have on the door to my ground floor room that faces the road where everyone enters the campus a hand painted sign with a picture of a castle and, in bright red the words “Ronda’s Interior Castle.”   This came from agreeing to let an artist friend who wanted to volunteer teaching art of old folks in convalescent homes to use me as a guinea pig since I am very poor at art but wanted a change from non-stop prayer/teaching/and writing. Before hanging my masterpiece on the door, it occurred to me that it could look strange to people coming to a seminary if the first thing they see is this plaque with a woman’s name on it. We are known for our loyalty to the magisterium, and women seminarians are not “our thing.” I consulted the Rector, who smiled and said that he was brought up in the 60’s so this sort of thing doesn’t bother him!  It was a very happy moment with “my boss.”

For the next episode of redeemed eccentricity you need to have the back story.  Some of you who have known me from way back know all about this. If so, just skip to the next paragraph. About 7 years ago, when I was living in Morganton, N.C., I started worrying about ENSURE. This is because I always worry way ahead, and was remembering the look and the taste of one sample spoonful, when my mother was slowly dying of old age, 15 years ago.  Since I have upper dentures already and only 7 hold out bottom teeth, ENSURE is not such an unrealistic possibility.  

Then, maybe the Holy Spirit, reminded me that in the 19th century all old people without teeth ate gruel, but the French, ate their incredibly delicious puree soups. An older friend of mine sent me an 1890 style manual grinder.  At first I followed her gourmet remedy for potato and leek French soup but leeks are kinda expensive. So, being miserly, I thought, this is the redeemed part – why not convert all the left-overs in my fridge into an each day totally different mixture – call it Garbage (pronounce with a French accent) Soup, and then all the money I save I can give to the starving via Mother Teresa’s nuns!  Believe it or not, the most interesting mixtures work, especially for gourmands like me, such as pieces of pinapple slices pureed with hotdogs!  Of course, I offered a bowl of these concoctions to anyone who happened to drop by the house.  Very few liked the soups, duh, and one grandson, asked what his idea of hell was by a scoffer, replied “Hell, is eating my grandmother’s garbage soup.”

Last summer, visiting my daughter in California, I happened to notice that the 1890 grinder had turned from fake silver to dark brown from rust.  It occurred to me it might not be that healthy! Duh? But where do you find an 1890 grinder that isn’t an expensive antique?   I decided to drop this hobby, especially since I was planning to live most of the time at the Seminary where I have a tiny bathroom sink so that it is hard to fit a contemporary food processor for washing.

Now, here is the dilemma that confronted this redeemed eccentric today.  The Vietnamese Sisters I am teaching are taking turns cooking me a hot dinner each night, since the seminary kitchen is closed all summer when the seminarians are all away on internships.The sisters cook in their semi-cloistered convents. So each evening one of these lovely young Sisters appears with a tray of delicious foods.  But they bring me 2x what I can possibly eat and they tell me also I must eat it within a day because it will spoil even in my tiny little fridge. You will say, why not eat the left-overs for lunch? Yes, but some of it, such as octopus strips was hard to get down the first time!

Horrors!  Waste of the left-overs! Enter, maybe, maybe not, the Holy Spirit, with a redeemed eccentric solution.  I bethought myself, during Holy Mass, mea culpa, that before even manual grinders or food processors, women and girls sat at wooden kitchen tables with forks and mashed up food and made it into soup!   And this soup tasted different each day!

So, now picture the old crone. (A spiritual director said I shouldn’t use this term any more. After all, crones are not a little demonic. But I love the names old hag and old crone because self-deprecation is one of my favorite past-times). Here I am in my little cell at an old wooden desk (I don’t have a cutting board) mashing up 3 days of left-overs into 3 bowls with Brahm’s Double Concerto as background music. 

The money I will save on canned and bottled snacks for breakfast and lunch because of eating instead Vietnamese Garbage Soup, I can send to the starving in Calcutta.

Is that redeemed eccentricity?  I think so. If you don’t, google Cromwell, Connecticut to find the number for the paddy wagon!  

I am learning from the Vietnamese Sisters I am teaching this summer. In Vietnam when a man speaks to someone else about his wife or a wife speaks to someone else about her husband they say not “my wife” or “my husband” but “my home.” !   Isn’t that sweet!  If you are married, try it on your spouse!

My daughter, Carla, the one fighting lymphoma, once said that I, her mother, wear her like a cross around my neck, but now in this crisis, she writes:

If I am then these outspread arms
That hang on chains here on my mother’s chest
Then let the joints find oil and let the limbs
 Have patience, wait for God to do the rest.

I wonder if we sometimes box Jesus, Mary, and Joseph into their holy card images, and don’t think that they are also involved in beauty that came after the year 100 AD. For example, maybe they also love when a composer writes an incredibly beautiful piece that bring joy and soaring to us.   Maybe they also love the Beethoven Sonata Pathetique that I hear in my head all the time now since my grandson is practicing it.

A Distance Learning student with quite a work-ethic:  one of my students with work due this Sunday night wrote me that she is doing 2 weeks of work ahead so as not to fall behind because of her wedding day this weekend!!!!

Can you picture me at an American Legion Bar-B-Q?   A new friend, a Jewish lawyer, practicing his faith Reform style, who likes to dialogue with me about Jewish/Catholic matters, schlepped me along to this American Legion meeting – he was their lawyer awhile back, in order to talk religion with me going and coming back!   I realized I had never met a member of the American Legion. Or if I did, I didn’t know it. So there I was at a table on the picnic grounds making small talk with elderly Legionaries.  Since most of them were Vietnam vets, I enjoyed telling them about our North Vietnamese monks, now studying English to get degrees in theology, who carried the underground Catholic Church throughout the war years with 100 members each in 4 Cistercian monasteries eating bean sprouts and rice. Apparently something in the mostly formerly Buddhist mentality of the North Vietnamese Communists made it possible for them to tolerate monks if not priests.  “With God all things are possible.”

I went to an ordination of a seminarian to the deaconate.  If you are not around seminarians, you may not realize that already at the transitional deacon ordination they make the promises, so it is a huge moment for them. Since our seminary specializes in late vocations, I find the backgrounds of these older men fascinating. 

This one’s former occupation was driving a large bus around the country full of a rock band and their instruments!   Various personal tragedies woke him up to want to do something of greater eternal worth with his life. 

It was wonderful to see his still very handsome face beaming with joy after the bishop laid hands on his head.    

Those the Lord loves He chastises.
Those He saves the Lord baptizes.
And though it may seem to be a flood 
of pain and blood, a stern and wooden form
it is only by scraping hard a man gets clean.
 It is only in pain and blood a man is born.
Then, let me be born a man.

How many Fathers, seeing their small sons,
Have gathered them close into their arms
And spun them dizzily around.
But I, blind as the mud to that delight
Cried out in my fright and surprise
And buried my eyes and sobbed aloud.
You have lifted me up and thrown me down.
You have carried me close and held me in the night.

And I – I wandered here on my own legs
Carry me back on Yours, and bring me home.
O Father! Do you even hear my please?
Is heaven deaf with age; do You even care, or see
This foolish lamb embraced by wicked thorns?
Or do they keep it from wandering far away,
Close to the Ram entangled next to me.
You filled a chalice with its blood and wept.
Teach me to only step where You have stepped.
The world is treacherous, its pathways cruel.
Say where to go with your kind Shepherd’s rule.
I’ll touch my mouth where Your own lips have touched
And know the cry of salvation here is such:
The wicked must drain it to the dregs

My heart has flown from my chest to seek a home,
And won’t return with any olive branch
My chance for rest, when all the water dries.
The stars moved from their fixed place in the skies,
The earth has swayed in madness, the heavens flee –
Or is it Your steps I feel as You fondly carry me?
Let me lean by head upon Your rock-strong arms.
Feel Your breath upon my neck, and close my eyes.
And know that all is well, O God of Storms,
For You rock my childish heart with lullabies.

I am teaching a Distance Learning course in Philosophical Anthropology.  For those of you who studied at Catholic universities, this course has had many name changes. It used to be called Philosophy of Man. But that became “politically incorrect” so it was changed to Philosophy of Human Nature, but now, for reasons unknown to me, it is called Philosophical Anthropology.
One of my students, a vet from the war in Iraq wrote this in one of his responses.  I thought it was absolutely terrific, and asked his permission to put it on my blog:

A Peak Experience 
by Nathan Wagar:

I've had so many (peak experiences), it's a bit difficult to even narrow it down to a hundred, it seems. One that springs to mind is when I became baptized conditionally (long story involving non-existent baptism records) into the Catholic Church while I was deployed to Iraq. Before I tell the brief story, a bit of background is necessary.
Our first Iraqi interpreter was captured, butchered and hung from a light pole in the middle of the city. He was replaced with an old man, and that old man became the bane of my existence for several months. He was lazy, always tired, always complaining, and out of breath after the most menial of tasks. One time he actually just laid down on the steps going into the vehicle, on his back, and started snoring. This is while we are out on mission in the middle of the city, mind you. I personally loathed this man, in fact we all did, and we were trying to figure out a way to get him replaced.

Fast forward several months. I had just finished getting baptized and receiving first communion and confirmation, in a bombed out connex building that was being used for the Iraqi army. We did missions with them, although many of them were terrorists, and a few of them we even ended up killing later. I stepped out of the room with the priest into the main bay where all the Iraqis were, and the old man was standing right in front of the doorway, waiting.
“Did you receive him?” he asked. I wasn't sure how to respond. “The blessed one, did you receive him?” he asked again. Confusion slowly dawned into realization, and then shock. 

“You're not Muslim?” No, he was not. Apparently he was one of the few Chaldean Rite Catholics still living in Iraq. He proceeded to sit down with me in a room full of Muslims and began to speak about our faith, and his family's history. He showed me his cross that he had hidden under his shirt, and he talked about those in Christ that he had recently lost. He told me that it was my job to carry Christ on a “strong back” to the rest of the world, and soldiers for God would be needed “in these dark times.”
“You know, they are probably going to try to kill you” I said as I looked around and noticed the murmuring soldiers crowding closer.
“I have served him in this land for sixty years. I will not deny him for a day.”

I learned a lot from that old man. I don't remember his name, and I wish I did. He taught me the gravity of the decision I had made, the brotherhood that connected me across time and space regardless of culture, and the fearlessness that must go with it. He taught me never to judge a book by its cover, even if it's an old book, and he taught me that sometimes it takes someone else to lend a helping hand when you get tired. He never caused issues for us again, and sometimes when I'd see him walking in the distance on a patrol with us, he'd smile and do the sign of the cross.

I don’t think I mentioned that while spending a week with my daughters, one of my grandsons, Max, was practicing piano. The piece was Beethoven’s Piano Sonata – the Pathetique.  As soon as he started playing I recognized the music, but it had never been enough of a favorite to be part of my little CD collection.  Tangent: my husband adored classical music. He had huge speakers and thousands and thousands of records and then CD tapes.  When he died I gave all this to his best friend, Gabriel Meyer, who I knew would play everything again.  Since I always want to have next to nothing, this worked out fine and I am down to about 20 favorite CD’s. Anyhow, the combination of listening to the Beethoven Sonata with praying with my daughter in her cancer-pain, became incredible. That melody wound its way into the prayers and is still in my psyche now as some message that pain, such as that of Jesus, or our redemptive suffering, can be beautiful no matter how awful. I bet many of you know that piece inside out also. If not, google it.  

This summer is one of the only times I have been without either family or close, close, friends at the seminary.  I was anxious, because I never like to be alone, even for a few hours. I thought maybe this would be a good time to become so close to the Trinity, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, my guardian angel, and my favorite saints that I would be okay. So far so good. Besides, I am finding that I am less in hyper-mind, and hyper emotions without those I love to talk to most. Talking to the Trinity, JMJ, and the angels is less manic!  Smile! 

Besides, the Vietnamese Sisters I am teaching Way of Love to for 6 weeks are very, very friendly.  Since the kitchen is closed in the summer, they are sharing with me one Vietnamese hot meal a day.  Yummy!

In every moment you have an opportunity for choice of lesser or greater communion with God and each other; with all stories being of infinite importance, so each story is as valuable as your own.  All of this is related to some huge story which is God’s story, great than we can understand. My little box of interpretations is completely wrong; as when I say: “this person didn’t need this!” They are having the same opportunity to move into radiance. We don’t get to know if we have done what was needed.  There are millions of opportunities to do the thing we are asked to do by God. Surrender!  Grow the right shaped eyes to do what becomes obvious without asking why.

I, Ronda, thought of the passage recently in the liturgy of the conversion of St. Paul and Jesus telling the convert to go to Saul even though he knew him to be the persecutor. 

You get an impulse toward an action; like a command. You hear this thing that says “do this” that doesn’t make sense, but you obey. What gets in our way is so much scrupulosity.

We were looking at Rembrandt’s head of Christ.  Jesus is not just sweet, but also fierce to go through all he had to do. Jesus is strong, powerful.  Rembrandt’s face is more like a saint than God (as man).

When we try to solve problems in a human way, we are full of self-justifications, whereas Christ can do something different.  I am asking Christ, the real Christ, to reach all those I love, the way he is reaching me. I wanted to think it would be enough to have cancer and face these issues, and not have other problems with people. But I don’t have a choice if I want the real persons.

The following is a poem my daughter composed two days ago.