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VIS-A-VIS

10/31/2016

Why is it better to talk to spiritual directors face to face vs. on e-mails or phone calls? I think it is because when the mentor is plunging the two- edged sword of truth into us to overcome our defensive, denial mechanisms, we can better receive that sword if we are seeing the merciful look in the eyes of the mentor!

I like Face to Face confession for the same reason.

Another conversation, this time allegedly with Jesus:
Ronda: Why do I have the deep need to have a literary man close to me?
Jesus: Oh, the author of the greatest book ever written, the Bible, the Holy Spirit, isn't good enough for you?

I remembered a hilarious saying from a woman at a prayer group
30 years ago! “I have a Joan of Arc complex. I tie myself to the stake and hand out matches!”
If the shoe fits?

I have these sweet conversations with, allegedly, Mother Mary. Here is one you might like, especially if you are over-extended:
Ronda: Is it awful that I care so much about my orderly agenda?
Mary: God made you that way with the plus of doing prodigious amounts of things for the kingdom out of zeal and order, but we need to temper the negative side of valuing work more than love sometimes – that sweet intimate love of God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, me, Joseph, your angel all the saints and all the humans we give you to love. Treasure the intimate times more.

A dear mentor got me onto reading a book of Dean Koontz. Though the genre is foreign, it is full of Catholic themes and, I am told, he has become more and more Catholic since his conversion many decades ago.

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NEW VENTURE

10/28/2016

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I am excited about a new venture. Check this out. At the same time click on programs when you enter the station on the web and see all the other great programs you might want to listen to and even come on with questions, etc.

EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL?

Sometimes I notice that I and others do a sort of mild, mild, emotional blackmail on others in this kind of conversation:
“Heh, I leave you messages on e-mail, face-book, etc. and you don’t get back very soon….so I don’t count? (Implication, after all I do for you, if you really love me you HAVE TO conform day by day to what I want back from you.)

I don’t think this is very Christian. I don’t think that Jesus tells us that if we miss one of the prayers we usually say every day because we are busy that this proves we don’t love Him!We need to accept the limits of human love which include the differing agendas of family and friends – some want to make contact every day but others either can’t, or just don’t want such a daily dialogue…
But Jesus always wants to dialogue with us!!!

Check this out for a dialogue!

Inter-faith dialogue partner of mine who is a serious reform Jew, a lawyer, but also a long-time democrat, who praises our Church mostly because we are so social justice-minded:

Ronda, I suppose that you and your friends aren’t one-issue voters for the President?

Ronda:
You suppose wrong. Heh, look! If all Catholics in Germany had voted against Hitler instead of thinking that he was promising to lift them out of the depression, and that was more important than that he was a crazed anti-Semite fanatic…. wouldn’t that have been good?

My Jewish interlocutor:
I never thought of that analogy. I do think abortion is wrong, but I don’t think making it illegal will change much.

Ronda:
So we shouldn’t have outlawed slavery but left it to everyone’s choice? It’s 60 million babies, much more than 6 million Jews but you don’t care????.....Until we saw the pics of the concentration camps no one believed it but TV won’t show what abortion is!!!

Interlocutor:
I think Trump is a fraud and doesn’t care about abortion at all.

Ronda:
So Lincoln started out not as an abolitionist but he finally got the right idea. Just look at the platforms. Hillary is totally pro-abortion from the get-go.

Interlocutor:
So, I see what you are saying, but still I care too much about social justice to vote against Hillary….

Ronda:
So, when she wins and takes away tax-exempt status from the Catholic Church claiming that we are discriminatory about gay marriage and funding abortion, will you volunteer to join a Catholic team of lawyers to defend us?

Interlocutor:
Hillary may appoint Pope Francis to the Supreme Court….

So, since this conversation took place in a restaurant where I made my points at the top of my voice screaming at my friend….I thought maybe it was sinful of me to show such rage….not because I’m not right, but because it falls under Von Hildebrand’s definition of self-righteous anger being loving to hurl denunciations from the throne of truth. Couldn’t I have said all that in a softer voice????
May you’all also have fun like this in the weeks before the election.
Lord, have mercy!

Boasting:
Now and then someone gently calls me on boasting too much. I blush! But this week I got a new insight into boasting. In a certain way boasting is Pelagian (the heresy that we don’t need grace since human nature is good and produce good by itself). How so? Because when I boast I am putting all the merit on my works instead of on the grace that enabled me to do them! It is a form of ingratitude!

When I reported this to a person who accused me of boasting, he replied that I should
avoid boasting about this insight into boasting
and just turn the “Ronda-volume down.”

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Flounce Not

10/2/2016

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Well, dear friends, we are reaching a new period in my old age where I can’t remember what I wrote to you before or only thought I wrote, so just skip anything repetitious repetitious repetitious for you!!!
My daughter, Diana, came up with this amusing image – when we are in a state of pique over something we shouldn’t flounce as we depart…whether it is leaving a job or a relationship! I thought, I shouldn’t even flounce in thought about such matters.

I read every day the book of meditations Jesus Calling by a non-Catholic Christian mystic,
Sarah Young.
Here is for today:
Worship Me only. I am King of kings....I am taking care of you! I am not only committed to caring for you, but I am also absolutely capable of doing so. Rest in Me, My weary one, for this is a form of worship.

Though self-flagellation has gone out of style, many of My children drive themselves like racehorses.

They whip themselves into action, ignoring how exhausted they are...My invitation never changes: Come to Me all you who are weary....rest peacefully in My Presence.

It seemed to me that Mary was telling me, using my lingo as she so often does in other alleged locutions to people in the past and present, that obsessing about the future is a form of being a drama-queen. If I was more meek I could day by day ask to be an instrument of love. My holy family will let me know what I must do when it is the right time. “This is not the right time. We know it is a big cross for you to trust vs. to plan! It is a form of “wealth” and pride.

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VIS-A-VIS

NEW VENTURE

Check this out for a dialogue!

Flounce Not

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