It amazes me...He amazes me. His faithfulness. His trustworthiness. His tender care. His love...Him, Love itself.
After a few days of intense internal struggle, I find myself lifted above it all. Able, once again, to see the greatness of God. My hand in His I am truly lifted up on “wings like eagles” (Isaiah 40:31).
The oppressive dark cloud was overwhelming me...to the point that I felt constricted, constrained, confined - unable even to pray. And yet...
And yet, in the midst of that trial I was able to reach out – to call out with my heart – to God. And to reach out to my husband, and others, to ask them to pray with and for me. I also was able to stretch my will, exercise it, use it to choose to do what I did not feel like doing. Opening the bible - my husband by my side – we began to delve into the Word of God. Speaking it- listening to it. Seeking to make it part of us. And at that moment the cloud lifted. It was as if a physical burden had been taken from me. The difference was palpable.
What made the difference? The prayers that were being offered for me at that exact moment by my mother and little niece? Speaking and absorbing God's own words? Or was it the mere fact of my act of will – that tiny act of subjugation of my emotions to the truth – to the good – to the holy? Perhaps it was all three.
And now my heart and soul can once again glory in God my Savior – God, my loving and merciful Father – my Daddy. And now I can cry out with a joyful heart and see His loving presence everywhere and in everything.
Truly, “the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning (and every night, and every afternoon and....); great is your faithfulness.” (Lam 3:22-23)
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Learning to breathe...
As I was reading today about Shrove Tuesday and Lent I came upon Maria von Trapp's explination of Carnival.
Reading this, I learned a lot about Carnival including that it was orginally a period of time and not just one day. Perhaps I will go into this more at another time but it is something else that caught my eye, the truth of which tugged at my heart. The idea of the beauty and benefit of entering into the liturgical year.
To quote Maria:
"It is a pity that the Reformation did away not only with most of the sacraments and all of the sacramentals, but also, unfortunately, with the very breath of the Mystical Body — that wonderful, eternal rhythm of high and low tide that makes up the year of the Church*: times of waiting alternate with times of fulfillment, the lean weeks of Lent with the feasts of Easter and Pentecost, times of mourning with seasons of rejoicing. Modern man lost track of this."
And later she goes on to say:
"It should be our noble right and duty to bring up our children in such a way that they become conscious of high tide and low tide, that they learn that there is "a time to weep, and a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance." The rhythm of nature as it manifests itself in the four seasons, in day and night, in the individual's heartbeat and breathing — this rhythm we should learn to recognize, and to treat with more reverence. Modern man has become used to turning day into night and night into day according to his whim or pleasure. He has managed to lose contact completely with himself. He has lost the instinct for the right food and drink, stuffing himself with huge quantities of the wrong things and feeding himself sick. But worst of all, and this sounds almost ridiculous, in the process of growing up he forgot the right kind of breathing. Only babies nowadays know how to breathe. Every voice teacher can prove this sad truth...Again, it is our faithful friend, Holy Mother Church, who leads her children first back to nature in order to make them ready to receive supernatural grace. "Gratia supponit naturam.""
And so I am strengthened - and challenged - to enter more fully into the liturgical seasons and feasts of the Church; seeing there great beauty and a well-spring of graces to aid me in my quest to come to know and love my God better.
Today I will celebrate with joy and appreciation all God has given and shared and tomorrow I will enter into the penitential season of Lent with a heart more ready and willing to be changed.
*Bolded by me for emphasis
Reading this, I learned a lot about Carnival including that it was orginally a period of time and not just one day. Perhaps I will go into this more at another time but it is something else that caught my eye, the truth of which tugged at my heart. The idea of the beauty and benefit of entering into the liturgical year.
To quote Maria:
"It is a pity that the Reformation did away not only with most of the sacraments and all of the sacramentals, but also, unfortunately, with the very breath of the Mystical Body — that wonderful, eternal rhythm of high and low tide that makes up the year of the Church*: times of waiting alternate with times of fulfillment, the lean weeks of Lent with the feasts of Easter and Pentecost, times of mourning with seasons of rejoicing. Modern man lost track of this."
And later she goes on to say:
"It should be our noble right and duty to bring up our children in such a way that they become conscious of high tide and low tide, that they learn that there is "a time to weep, and a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance." The rhythm of nature as it manifests itself in the four seasons, in day and night, in the individual's heartbeat and breathing — this rhythm we should learn to recognize, and to treat with more reverence. Modern man has become used to turning day into night and night into day according to his whim or pleasure. He has managed to lose contact completely with himself. He has lost the instinct for the right food and drink, stuffing himself with huge quantities of the wrong things and feeding himself sick. But worst of all, and this sounds almost ridiculous, in the process of growing up he forgot the right kind of breathing. Only babies nowadays know how to breathe. Every voice teacher can prove this sad truth...Again, it is our faithful friend, Holy Mother Church, who leads her children first back to nature in order to make them ready to receive supernatural grace. "Gratia supponit naturam.""
And so I am strengthened - and challenged - to enter more fully into the liturgical seasons and feasts of the Church; seeing there great beauty and a well-spring of graces to aid me in my quest to come to know and love my God better.
Today I will celebrate with joy and appreciation all God has given and shared and tomorrow I will enter into the penitential season of Lent with a heart more ready and willing to be changed.
*Bolded by me for emphasis
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Ad Usam - For our use
My sister recently shared this article with me: Ad Usam - words to live by.
It is a wonderful reminder that all we have, whether a lot or a little, is a gift; a gift that is given to us by our loving Father. And if it is a gift (not a right) we should be thankful for everything we've been given.
Oh to truly be able to keep this perspective; to have a heart full of thankfulness!
"Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song." Psalm 95:2
Let us be truly thankful for all that is in our possesion currently and remember that we can take none of it with us since it was not truly ours to begin with.
It is a wonderful reminder that all we have, whether a lot or a little, is a gift; a gift that is given to us by our loving Father. And if it is a gift (not a right) we should be thankful for everything we've been given.
Oh to truly be able to keep this perspective; to have a heart full of thankfulness!
"Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song." Psalm 95:2
Let us be truly thankful for all that is in our possesion currently and remember that we can take none of it with us since it was not truly ours to begin with.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Peace can only be achieved when we cease the wars within...
Here is a great section from Bishop Fulton Sheen's book 'Way to Inner Peace':
There are two great evils in the world: sin and suffering. Sin is mortal, suffering is physical, and the latter is a result of the former. What happens to the body as pain, and to nature in the form of cyclones, earthquakes and floods, is ultimately an echo, a repercussion and effect of what has already happened in the moral universe. When the big wheel in a machine is cracked, all the little wheels get out of order. As we eliminate sin, we eliminate suffering; as we love God, we cease to hate others. And thus we engage in fewer wars.
The more morality and decency and virtue there are in the world, the more peace there will be in the world. Wars are consequences of a moral rebellion. The Scriptures boldly affirm that war is the result of egotism and selfishness. When civilization is made up of millions of men and women who are at war with themselves, it is not long until communities, classes, states and nations will be at war with one another. Every world war is a turbulent ocean made up of the confluent streams of millions of little wars inside the minds and hearts of unhappy people. War is the final logic of self-will.
War is not necessary, but it does become an inseparable ailment of any world that abandons the supremacy of the spirit. Nietzche, after proclaiming the death of God in the nineteenth century, prophesied that the twentieth century would be a century of wars. There is a possible connection between the importance given to politics and the frequency of wars. In any era of history where politics is the major interest, war is the major consequence. This does not mean that one ought to subscribe to the dictum of Karl von Clausewitz that war is the prosecution of politics by other means. It does mean however, that since politics stresses expediency and pragmatism on a great scale that dedication to truth and morality are minimized. Since the latter are essential for peace, war becomes a greater possibility. When the people are interested in the raising of a family, the cultivation of virtues and the salvation of their souls, they act as a balance wheel against the power-motive of politics. But when both the state and the people give supremacy to politics, the stabilizing influence of society is lost, and with it come civil strife and discord and war.
There is much truth in the thesis of Pitirim Sorokin that as civilization in the modern sense of the term advances, there is an increase of war. There have always been more wars than peace. From 1496 B.C. to A.D. 1861 or in 3,358 years there were only 227 years of peace and 3,130 years of war; this makes 13 years of war for every year of peace. Within the last three centuries there have been 286 wars in Europe. [Ed. note: this has increased even more since Bishop Sheen wrote this, including the current war in the Balkans.]
From 1500 B.C. to A.D. 1860 there were 8,000 treaties of peace which were supposed to remain in force forever. The average length of these treaties was two years. It is likely that there was never a single year when the world did not have a war at least in one country or the other. Two other analyses have revealed that, since the year 1100, England has spent half, and Russia three quarters.
It is not a very sweet pill for our civilized world to swallow, to realize that the false prophets of the last century who predicted an evolution of man into a god, and the necessary progress of humanity to a point where there would be no more war or disease or death, were wrong, and we are now living in a century of war. It behooves us all to admit that there is an evil tendency when uncontrolled by morality and grace will devolve more rapidly than it will evolve. It is our views of the human condition that have been wrong; by denying the possibility of sin and guilt, we have denied the very existence of perversity within us which makes war. Not all will submit to this moral regeneration through self-discipline, but those few who will, will be the leaven in the mass of the world.
It is not our politics and our economics which have to be changed first; it is we ourselves. It is the wars within that have to be stopped. The remaking of the world depends on the remaking of the individual. The return of the individual to God is the condition of more peaceful times.
So how do we change our world? We change OURSELVES!
Now let's get to it...
There are two great evils in the world: sin and suffering. Sin is mortal, suffering is physical, and the latter is a result of the former. What happens to the body as pain, and to nature in the form of cyclones, earthquakes and floods, is ultimately an echo, a repercussion and effect of what has already happened in the moral universe. When the big wheel in a machine is cracked, all the little wheels get out of order. As we eliminate sin, we eliminate suffering; as we love God, we cease to hate others. And thus we engage in fewer wars.
The more morality and decency and virtue there are in the world, the more peace there will be in the world. Wars are consequences of a moral rebellion. The Scriptures boldly affirm that war is the result of egotism and selfishness. When civilization is made up of millions of men and women who are at war with themselves, it is not long until communities, classes, states and nations will be at war with one another. Every world war is a turbulent ocean made up of the confluent streams of millions of little wars inside the minds and hearts of unhappy people. War is the final logic of self-will.
War is not necessary, but it does become an inseparable ailment of any world that abandons the supremacy of the spirit. Nietzche, after proclaiming the death of God in the nineteenth century, prophesied that the twentieth century would be a century of wars. There is a possible connection between the importance given to politics and the frequency of wars. In any era of history where politics is the major interest, war is the major consequence. This does not mean that one ought to subscribe to the dictum of Karl von Clausewitz that war is the prosecution of politics by other means. It does mean however, that since politics stresses expediency and pragmatism on a great scale that dedication to truth and morality are minimized. Since the latter are essential for peace, war becomes a greater possibility. When the people are interested in the raising of a family, the cultivation of virtues and the salvation of their souls, they act as a balance wheel against the power-motive of politics. But when both the state and the people give supremacy to politics, the stabilizing influence of society is lost, and with it come civil strife and discord and war.
There is much truth in the thesis of Pitirim Sorokin that as civilization in the modern sense of the term advances, there is an increase of war. There have always been more wars than peace. From 1496 B.C. to A.D. 1861 or in 3,358 years there were only 227 years of peace and 3,130 years of war; this makes 13 years of war for every year of peace. Within the last three centuries there have been 286 wars in Europe. [Ed. note: this has increased even more since Bishop Sheen wrote this, including the current war in the Balkans.]
From 1500 B.C. to A.D. 1860 there were 8,000 treaties of peace which were supposed to remain in force forever. The average length of these treaties was two years. It is likely that there was never a single year when the world did not have a war at least in one country or the other. Two other analyses have revealed that, since the year 1100, England has spent half, and Russia three quarters.
It is not a very sweet pill for our civilized world to swallow, to realize that the false prophets of the last century who predicted an evolution of man into a god, and the necessary progress of humanity to a point where there would be no more war or disease or death, were wrong, and we are now living in a century of war. It behooves us all to admit that there is an evil tendency when uncontrolled by morality and grace will devolve more rapidly than it will evolve. It is our views of the human condition that have been wrong; by denying the possibility of sin and guilt, we have denied the very existence of perversity within us which makes war. Not all will submit to this moral regeneration through self-discipline, but those few who will, will be the leaven in the mass of the world.
It is not our politics and our economics which have to be changed first; it is we ourselves. It is the wars within that have to be stopped. The remaking of the world depends on the remaking of the individual. The return of the individual to God is the condition of more peaceful times.
So how do we change our world? We change OURSELVES!
Now let's get to it...
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