A photo of my angel for the day. My Filipino friend Mary pulled me up by my bootstraps, spending an amazing day with me. It was just the two of us all day long. We spent the day centered on mass, Benediction with the Poor Clares of Rocky River, and an evening adoration at St Charles of Borromeo, interspersed with two dining experiences. Conversation, weighty and unceasing, filled our time together. Silence filled our prayers. Mary is able to up the ante in terms of practicing prayer. Comforting, soothing, relieving, the day was a Godsend, resolving a vital issue in my life, cleansing before North Dakota. Mary is a woman working on a similar spiritual level. What that means I am not sure. What I do know is she functions profoundly at a high level as a contemplative. We talked and talked. Channeling the Holy Spirit, she convinced me I need to do nothing. Her importance was firmly assisting in the formation of a conviction to do nothing. The spiritual direction was so abrasive it broke me down into tears. What an incredibly hard day. We accomplished a minor miracle.

‘You do not understand. I am right. I can nail her to the wall, stripping her of spiritual authenticity. I have to do something Mary.’

‘No. James, you must do nothing. You are a man of a higher calling. I see that about you. James if you are a man of a higher calling you must conduct yourself as a man of a higher calling. It is not easy, yet the path you are choosing is not easy.’

‘You do not understand…..’

‘Stop justifying yourself. Do nothing. If you have to cry and deal with frustration so be it. I have heard everything I need to hear from you.’

‘That twenty plus page manifesto, what am I supposed to do with it?”

‘Nothing. You must not mail it to anyone. A man of a higher calling would do nothing with it.  It is good you wrote it and got it out of you, yet you must not do anything with it. God is calling you and testing you. She was only there to test you and force you to prove yourself to God. Of course, you can always fail the test if you so choose. Go ahead and mail your manifesto to everyone you named. If you want to fail, you can fail. Life will go on. However you know what God wants and that is for you to do nothing. I do not want to hear any more about you being right. It has nothing to do with your calling. Either you pursue a higher calling or you do not. I am tired of details that lead to confusion and delusion. I want to speak about a higher calling because I truly believe you have one. God wants something special from you.’

‘I will do nothing.’

‘Very good.’