I have ventured away from posting. WordPress changed the editing software and I did not take to the changes. I did not even try. I found the detachment beneficial. Many changes, many happenings, I am comfortable detailing nothing personal. Father Roger has returned to Tanzania. I figured out how to resort to WordPress’s classic editor, pleased to return to what I know. Enough is enough. St Francis of Assisi: “Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
The LORD God said: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.” So the LORD God formed out of the ground various wild animals and various birds of the air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each of them would be its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals; but none proved to be the suitable partner for the man.
So the LORD God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. The LORD God then built up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man. When he brought her to the man, the man said:
“This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called ‘woman,’ for out of ‘her man’ this one has been taken.”
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh.
The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Gratefully, this quote struck me. Maybe throughtout life, radical change was not the answer. Radical change may have been necessary, however trust, acceptance, and a slow process of growing in love with Jesus were my only means of employment.
Do not despair, thinking that you cannot change yourself after so many years. Simply enter into the presence of Jesus as you are and ask him to give you a fearless heart where he can be with you. YOU cannot make yourself different. Jesus came to give you a new heart, a new spirit, a new mind, and a new body. Let him transform you by his love and so enable you to receive his affection in your whole being. —Quote from Henri Nouwen’s book, The Inner Voice of Love.
Among the hidden roads of desolate, interior landscapes, I have found my thirsting and it has discovered me, An encounter on the dusty, deserted byways of the heart, That place where the potential of the human mind is stretched from one horizon to the next, seemingly without end,
A deep fright awakens, shaking the chains of compulsion, Fear builds walls anywhere the sand will listen, Sand castles that evaporate under the whispers of midnight’s motions, The lying winds; those imageless seductions,
So I was left naked, and in my nakedness the desert overwhelmed me, I could not hold back its boundless expanse, its tombs and monuments,
I cried out, I have had enough of seeing, but yet seeing is the only option, I have had enough of hearing, but yet the silence of the desert cannot be crowded out, Such is the bitter divorce when the matrimony between the body and the pleasures of this world is broken, When we fail to make covenant with the endless illusions of a fallen reality,
And yet, in the thirsting of the desert, a new peace awakens in the heart, Someone communicates a world that lies buried beneath the surface,
I have grown blind with my seeing, but now my eyes have been renewed, So I see without seeing, and in this there is greater satisfaction, I have grown dumb with my knowing, but yet my mind has been renewed, So I know by unknowing, and in this I have found a new peace,
I sleep, but still my heart heart ponders, I am awake, and yet there is a part of me resting in the embrace of the night, I have forgotten the world, and yet now I am truly a citizen of the world,
I have died only to find that now I am truly living.
There is another escape pattern, or game, which is very much like the ivory tower of intellectualism…it is the isolation game. Loners shut themself off from others, live alone, and tried to convince themselves that they like it this way. By entering this kind of solitary confinement, they succeed in evading all the most difficult challenges of human life and society. Loners assume the attitude of smugness; they smirk at organizations, laugh at the poor “joiners”, whom they look upon with a pretended attitude of superiority and condescension. They keep telling themselves that they are above that sort of nonsense.
Neurotics are torn between their inner need to push toward and pull away from people. Loners are neurotics who opt in favor of the pulling away for people. They retreat, and since they cannot relate easily to others, they play their game to avoid failures in human relationships. The ultimate effects are conditioned by what is inside of loners, the reasons for their withdrawal tendencies. If it is hostility that is predominant, it could eventually erupt into violence. If it is anxiety, it could result in compulsive-obsessive neurotic habits (for example, repeatedly washing hands). If it is paranoia, it will deepen the Gulf between themselves and the rest of the human race. The escapist pattern always ends in some kind of lonely tragedy. –Father John Powell ‘Why Am I Afraid To Tell You Who I Am?”
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