Exhaling

Comment by gypsy

May 22, 2007 @ 10:29 am

WOW

Kathryn, you’ve blown my socks off with this revelation, with these insights..

Food, food, food for thought.

I was about to say that some of us do not dare to bear His light too much, lest we skew it — and that is based on seeing others (if not also myself) fall down and cast it into the mud.. but all comments are hushed/trumped by the WOW..

Thank you. I’ll be thinking.

Comment by kathryntherese

May 22, 2007 @ 10:35 am

Well, it’s warm enough for bare feet

Thinking is good. Someone told me WOW means “WithOut Words.” That works, doesn’t it? Sometimes, we are speechless…

And you are right that we often skew His light. His light can only shine clearly when we are free of obstructions, when we have surrendered all that fractures that prism into the wrong palette. He shines clearer in the pure of heart, the truly free. That’s our goal.

Comment by gypsy

May 23, 2007 @ 9:40 pm

Sometimes I can feel it happening, can feel His light decreasing while I am increasing mine. Gah. It’s enough to make someone duct-tape her hands to the fishing pole.

Whether folks say, “Print this off,” (as they do in the midwest, yes?) or say, “Print this out,” (as they do here in Purgatory, N.E.), I’m going to print this out and tuck it into a certain area that’ll be sure to accompany me to Adoration on the 1st. Want to think about all this there, too.

“..to be, like Mary, a drop of water ‘lost’ in the wine.. ”

“..mysteriously separated.. remain, with Mary, at the foot of the Cross..”

whew

Comment by Ann

May 24, 2007 @ 2:57 pm

I remember reading on another blog of how some Mass goers when approaching the altar do so with a belief that St Joseph walks behind them, his hand resting lightly on their shoulder…now this reflection of yours Kathryntherese, introduces me to another companion..a most welcome lady who above all others has earned her place at the Eucharistic table. Now we are three…and then of course there are the angels…it just gets better and better.

Comment by kathryntherese

May 24, 2007 @ 5:09 pm

Yes, Ann, this is beautiful. I, too, ask Joseph to accompany me to the altar, to teach me how to receive his Son. St. Joseph is special to me, though – I took his name as a secular Carmelite. I am Sr. Mary Joseph of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Surely, Joseph can quietly accompany us as well; we are never alone!

Comment by gypsy

May 25, 2007 @ 9:37 am

*[smacks self in forehead.. she is called "Sr."? Why don't I know these things?? I've joked about cleavage with the woman at least once.. Oy. Should I be this embarrassed, I wonder.. or even moreso?]

Oh hi there, ladies. Beautiful sentiments, all.
Great food for thought. I guess I always felt I go up to Communion alone. Not against anyone accompanying me, but I will face Him alone one other day in a final Communion, and so this is preparation, as well as celebration, but great food for thought, here.

Comment by kathryntherese

May 25, 2007 @ 10:25 am

Ha! It’s one of those quirky medieval things that we don’t advertise as Discalced Carmelites – when you join as a secular member, you choose a religious name when you make your Promises (not vows) because you are now a member of the Order. We don’t use them in public, but we do remember each other on our anniversaries.

Are we ever really along, gypsy? I don’t think we are – there is never a moment of our existence that we are alone, and we are rarely alone with Him even at prayer. Our Angel is ever with us, and will present us to Him for our final and eternal Communion. Mama Maria is always with us, and will welcome us there too. Our patron saints, and those on earth who have helped us on the way, will certainly be there to welcome us (I have a half-dream in which two good priest-friends/directors are reaching down over a cloud to drag me up and present their exhausting charge to Him at last!).

We must singularly make the choice to belong to Him, and we must personally take responsibility for our choices, but we are aided and guided by so many! Personally, I need all the help I can get.

And it’s interesting that, although I ask Mary and Joseph and my angel to accompany and guide me to altar to receive Him, I am keenly aware in the moment that Body is presented to me that I “ALONE” am saying that AMEN. I alone am assenting to that truth, that Presence. I alone am opening my own heart to welcome Him.

Perhaps it will be the same in the end – we will stand before Him, responsible for ourselves and knowing He loves us alone, but yet others will be there to welcome us as well.

Too hurried to say this well. I entrust this to your kind judgments to know what I mean!

Comment by gypsy

May 27, 2007 @ 1:56 am

Yes, you’ve said it well enough.

“we must personally take responsibility for our choices” (yes)

“I ‘ALONE’ am saying that AMEN. I alone am assenting to that truth, that Presence. I alone am opening my own heart to welcome Him.” (yes)

I, too, *know* I am never alone, and least of all at Mass, and in Holy Communion. No one is ever alone, not even the hobo sleeping in a tuft of tall grass alongside the tracks who hasn’t been to church in decades, who ever only waits for the next train, and the next, to wake him, and take him. He’d probably have it no other way, because it entails too great a loss of freedom, and he fears that would turn him into something less alive, something ugly. He has made his bed, and he lies in it without bothering a soul; he knows if he died there, only the crows would cry, now. But even if he knows he’s not alone, even if he suspects there’s more than moon and sun, perhaps he feels alone, like George when he was post-Lennie. And perhaps that simply describes our exile. Or maybe I’m coocoo. I dunno. But thank you for this food.

Comment by gypsy

May 27, 2007 @ 12:52 pm

And I wrote that instead of mentioning the “alone” moment, from priestly prayer, in being presented in spirit at the foot of the Cross on Holy Thursday eve once. The overwhelming sensation was aloneness. Not in a grand way, yet not in a dire way — that is where our life begins.. that Location could never be dire again! But certainly much as you’ve described alone, but also alone with Him insofar as not pointing to anyone else for some reason for one’s sin or failure to love or one’s bolting, either by foot or by metal. And alone insofar as yes, having chosen Him. It could be likened a little to Jane Eyre’s astoundingly private one-to-one, “Reader, I married him,” i.e., reader, I became one with Him, in love. It is indeed a personal choice.. we could not make it if it wasn’t offered us, tho’, and this one is offered by Him to each and all. It seemed many many many were around, but one is alone with one’s Jesus, There, where Unconditional Love waits for His beloved’s eyes of the soul to behold Truth. The Truth of sin, but the Truth of redemption also: love. The Truth of love. And the Truth of Thirst. To look up, then, is to see something astounding in the Eyes we’ve longed for all our lives. His atonement for me was personally undergone by Him alone, tho’ He was not alone. And ‘yes’ is the only word that comes to one’s existence, upon beholding Thirst, even tho’ we scramble into thickets now and then, because the commitment involves every drop of blood, every cell of flesh. But who would have Love any other way? He proves how much we were made for Him. And that is too much to think about on the way to our Communion with Him, so we walk to Him, as if we didn’t want to crawl, and we pretend it’s not utterly momentous each and every time. But it is. If Mary, Joseph, and angel are around then, and what a sweet and rational thought, then they understand our awe’s lack of formed thought about anything except the thank You.

Comment by Ann

May 28, 2007 @ 11:49 am

What Kathryntherese says about each taking responsibility for choice is true of course. And Gypsy’s example of the guy in the long grass is an example of this. In his case his aloneness is chosen, in other cases people find aloneness thrust upon them. And that’s when choice comes in again…accepting God’s will, accepting the cross yet coming together with other cross-bearers( and who isn’t? )at Mass…and there of course we meet the cross bearer who brought about our redemption,with his mother and his father, all now willing to help us. We do walk alone,it is true, each on a little path no other has trod, but always shaded from the sun by the breadth of an angel’s wings, and always in the presence of God. Thank you, Kathryntherese and Gypsy for this post…there is, as Gypsy says, food for thought.

Comment by aussieannie

June 2, 2007 @ 4:43 pm

That was exceptional reading! Thank you. You have expressed the living ‘with and through’ Mary so well at the most beautiful place on earth. I’m going back to re-read now…