The Sea Fogs by Robert Louis Stevenson - Read Print

The Sea Fogs by Robert Louis Stevenson - Read Print
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Never, Never A Mosque at Ground Zero

Never, Never A Mosque at Ground Zero

War

The Christian faithful are still in their individual foxholes.  "Scattered on every hillside...without true shepherds...none have sought the weak, the lost, and the wounded."  And assuredly, few really defend the Sacraments of the Church.

Ella Fitzgerald

Il est bien difficile d'égaler cette pureté de musique qui mêle à la nostalgie un goût de tristesse ,de melancolie, mais en même temps, de reflexion et d'envies ...
A elle seule une poesie que le temps n'effacera pas.

The Monster Within

The Monster Within

Everytime I felt I've made an improvement, I stumble. Everytime I think I am making strides ahead, I fall. My head knows what I should do, but I don't do them. I would love to say I love You Lord, yet nothing in my action express that.

There is a monster in me that won't go away
There is a monster in me that cannot be caged
There is a monster in me that's running rampage
There is a monster in me only You can save...
You
Out of My Mind 
Fallin' 
A Different Take
"I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing." - Romans 7:18-19

O Son of Man

The word of the Lord came to me:  "Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves!  Should not shepherds take care of the flock?  You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock.  You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured.  You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost.  You have ruled them harshly and brutally.  So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals.  My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill.  They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them."  ~Ezekiel 34:1-6

Real Footage

Pope Leo XIII
Pope Leo

From Light her Lamp again

About The Greeks Again:

The Greek origin of the word peacemaker is "Eirenopois." This time, it comes from two words: Eirene ("peace") and Poieo ("to make" or "to do"). Eirene (or Irene) is the Greek word for "peace," such that the Greeks made her a goddess. She was the daughter of Zeus and Themis and was often depicted as holding a cornucopia, scepter, and a torch. I imagine that wherever she showed up there was a sudden calmness in the room, and let's not forget she carried a torch for light. In the midst of quarrels her presence must have caused Greek men to stop and re-think their anger (mythology).

To Make It Happen:

Now, the word "Poieo" has really blown me away already. It means "to make [something]" or "do [something]." In fact, let's just say it means, "to make it happen." What's the use of talking about something if you can't make it happen? We all have dreams about our future, but if we don't stand up and make them happen they will only be like shrunken trees refusing to produce fruits. Peacemakers are the ones who make peace happen. They see conflicts and they intervene. They see trouble and they provide the way out. The best thing is, they can do this in subtle ways- doesn't have to be through a big speech or iron scepter.

To Exhibit True Genes:

I know why "peacemakers" will be called the sons of God. God's name is love. Many of us have asked this question at some point in our lives, "why do bad things happen to good people?" We forget that the prince of this world has only one mission: to "steal, kill, and destroy." This is why bad things happen to good people. But if we can be like our Father, we will propagate His goodness in the world. To propagate His goodness, we must have His "peace-making" genes, worthy of a Nobel-peace prize.

Suffering

...nihilistic emptiness...before meaningless suffering...is what makes people...suffer.

Love Again

"Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within."

~James Arthur Baldwin

Ye Olde Double Binde

                                Double Bind::Incredible Fracture

¨       “Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy. Though I fall, I will rise. Though I dwell in darkness, the LORD is a light for me.” (Micah 7:8)

Voices, voices, voices…..

‘Accept yo’self, accept yo’self, accept yo’self

       No one else does tho’’

“Come on now, everyone falls down, everyone crawls now and then…”

Then they get up again….you cry if you want to….that’s what we all do…

If you think you’ll never move on…

you’re wrong, baby, wrong, you’re wrong, baby, wrong

We can fly, share a bottle of wine….Why, baby,

“Come on now, everyone falls down, everyone crawls now

and then…”

If you think you’ll never move on…

you’re wrong, baby, wrong, you’re wrong, baby, wrong”

Like a Butterfly:  “ She’s a Butterfly”

like a purest light in a darkened world

almost magical

makes you wanna cry---she’s so beautiful

everywhere she goes

everybody knows---she’s so glad to be alive

God bless the butterfly….never let her wings touch the ground.

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“Somewhere along the way my faith got smaller. I thought this was part of growing up. But I started to lose my way. “Where there is no vision, the people perish,” as the scriptures say. I was wasting my life on pointless self- indulgence and hurting those I loved.”---Mark

Voice of Truth:  “This is for My Glory…”

The shock of ending job and relationships ……adjusting to life in a new country at the same time, right on the heels of …such devastation, has really changed me in a number of ways. After terrible languishing, I have begun to think more about what it all meant.

A faith that can still have doubts. God is a god of the lost sheep, the prodigal sons and daughters, the father and mother of us all. And we're all God's children. I started this blog because I want to share this good news with the world.

===================================

In other words, ‘What are you goin’ to do with it…about it?’ 

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After the Rain: "I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to Him for that reason."---Elie Wiesel

She's A Butterfly

God bless the butterfly

Give her the strength to fly

Never let her wings touch the ground

(God bless the butterfly)

You opened doors I closed
You gave me strength 
So I stand tall
You treat me like a rose

"I want reassurance that His desires are better than mine. Even as I try to be more like Jesus, I don't want an assignment such as He had, it was a difficult one and He suffered. Which part in God's Word does He say that our lives on earth will bring joy not suffering?"

Friend::Such an Epitaph

That is an important statement.  To call one 'friend.'  How integrally and longingly needed but oh, so rare.  Chesed belongs here by its intrinsic nature.

Chesed

Appropriately, 'chesed' is discussed on this day of all days:  Holocaust Rememberance Day.

                                     A Moment of Silence.

                I promised to remember.  I have remembered, Margaret.

Beersheba, the place of the covenant

--> The Oath at the Well

And Abraham reproved Abimelech because of a well of water, which Abimelech's servants had violently taken away.  Gen 21.25

There is always reason in my madness.  Even David feigned madness before Abimelech.  It is absolutely imperative to never throw our 'pearls' before the swinedom of ignorance which always will devour us.

Desert Fathers

http://wordfromthedesert.squarespace.com/meditations/2010/1/15/life-of-st-anthony.html

We Must Love

Rachmana Liba Baee,Rachmana Liba Baee, meaning "G*d wants our hearts."

G*d wants us to have a heart connection with Him. And if we are to have a heart connection with G*d, how much more so are we to try to achieve such a connection with G*d's creatures, our fellow creatures! It's hard enough to love a stranger, but does that extend to our enemy as well?

“We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” (1 John 3:16)

In Leviticus 19:18 the Torah says that we should "love our neighbor as (we love) ourselves." The Hebrew reads ve'ahavta le're'acha kamocha. Reah, meaning "neighbor," has also the same spelling as ra'ah, meaning "bad" or "evil." So it could also be understood as teaching that we should try to love our bad or evil neighbor as ourself. This makes sense, because through the act of trying we could ignite a change and turn him around. We may fail in the end, but we need to try just the same. To give up trying is to abandon hope for a better world.
Many people react instinctively and mimic our actions or emotional states. Some people may respond to a loving gesture with love. The answer to darkness is light. The answer to hate is love. But hard core evil is oblivious to such gestures. Such evil is beyond the pale. But only through showing love can we learn to tell the difference between redeemable evil and unredeemable hard core evil,

The Torah thus is teaching us that there is a special value in comforting the sad, even those who intend us harm. Perhaps the act of kindness will awaken them to do teshuvah and repent of their ways.

Bo; the Heavy Heart

Missin' You

Shemot

Shemot; Love and Surrender
There are two kinds of surrendering. There is the surrendering out of love and there is the surrendering out of fear. This mirrors the two ways to serve G*d.

Wherefore Freedom?

(Ex 8:16 among others," ...ko amar Hashem shalach ami veya'avduni-ko amar Hashem shalach ami veya'avduni-...thus saith the L*rd, let my people go (so that/and) they shall serve me."
In other words, the proper question we might ask ourselves is "wherefore freedom?"
Freedom without properly understood Divine ends necessarily devolves into a dark nihilistic morass. 
(Ex 8:10) "vayitzberu otam chamarim chamarim vativash ha'aretz." ["vayitzberu otam chamarim chamarim vativash ha'aretz"]
How often G*d Himself is missing from synagogues. There is no room left for Him for He is crowded out by the massive ego heaps and materialism run amok. So what this is really teaching us, is that when the spiritual is missing, from out of a heightened and disproportionate focus on the material, a foul temper then rules the day.

Sefer Chabibi Deepest Torah

MISHPATIM: from six to eternity

Eved Ivri

"Because Israel did not abandon me in the sixth year when he could have, even as the door was left open, I will be there for Israel for all eternity - and beyond."

Following on the heels of the Decalogue and immediately we read about the Eved Ivri [Eved Ivri] (Hebrew slave/servant). ..Why?.  Because the deepest understanding of the Hebrew Slave (eved ivri), is that he really is each and every one of us who chooses to remain with his ultimate Master, Hashem, and more poignantly, that Hashem reciprocates by choosing to remain with us...Sinai was the pledging of Eternal Love. Now we see that love being tested..
Upon insisting he remain with his Master, the eved (servant/slave) makes a declaration saying, AHAVTI ET ADONI VE'ET ISHTI VE'ET BANAI LO ETZEI CHOFSHI. (Ex 21:5)
[AHAVTI ET ADONI VE'ET ISHTI VE'ET BANAI LO ETZEI CHOFSHI]
This is usually translated as "I LOVE my master and my wife and My children - I will not go out free." But it is not "I love" in the present. It reads Ahavti "I loveD"- PAST TENSE! "In the PAST I loved ..." This is not to say that he doesn't love them in the present. Of course he does.

Note: This is the second time in five days that this has come before me. 
The certainty of keeping the Torah that was so clear at the smoking mountain becomes less clear down the long road of time's journeys. Hashem is saying, "You can go free if you really want to. You can be free of your obligations to me, and vice versa." But the eved says "NO." "And although the intensity of the romantic love may have faded, I still want to stay with you forever."  LOVE Because the root of love in Hebrew Is HAV, which means to give, know that all we have given to each other counts for something."
cf. Blog

Sefer Chabibi Deepest Torah

MISHPATIM: from six to eternity         by Rabbi Baruch Binyamin Hakohen Melman

Gentle Strength

How can strength be gentle? What do the Greeks mean by that? The ancient Greeks were very particular about horses. They said that a "meek" horse is one which responds well to control and slowly becomes one with its rider ("strength under control"). A "meek" horse is not timid. It is useless to ride a timid horse that hides in its own shadows.  Instead a "meek" horse is a willing, considerate team-player.   This is what I call "gentle strength." It is not that Lucy was not strong enough to resist, but after a while she knew who the master was and she 'decided' in the fullness of her strength to submit.

In the fullness of our strength, we can choose to submit. Submission is not stupidity, it is wisdom. In the quietness of humility we can learn the best secrets. In learning secrets we can obtain the key...the key that leads to the doors of leadership, substance, and wisdom. A quiet submissive apprentice learns more from his master than a noise-making one who constantly chatters about proving his worth. That's the skill of a "meek" horse. If it is submissive and humble it will learn its rider's secrets- the way the rider bends or the way he stays afloat...and it will undeniably be the best horse out there in the race.
This is how the meek will inherit the earth, by being submissive and humble to God first, to those in places of authority, to our peers, and even to those who we think know less than we do.

He served others, helped the sick and downtrodden, forgave sinners and brought new hope to the poor.

Can't Fix It

Still moving on and I can't fix it.  Being misunderstood by those whom you love is the absolute pits in suffering.  Christ knows that one, too.  The double bind is an awful dilemma--our cross.

Risk more than others think is safe
Care more than others think is wise

Dream more than others think is practical

Expect more than others think is possible
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Temptation

“All temptation is primarily to look within; to take our eyes off the Lord and to take account of appearances. Faith is always a mountain, a mountain of apparent contradiction in the realm of tangible fact–of failures in deed, as well as in the realm of feeling and suggestion—and either faith or the mountain must go. They cannot both stand. ...The trouble is that many a time the mountain stays and faith goes. This must not be. If we resort to our senses to discover the truth, we shall find Satan’s lies are often enough true in our experience; but if we refuse to accept as binding anything that contradicts God’s Word and maintain an attitude of faith in Him alone, we shall find that Satan’s lies begin to dissolve and that our experience is coming progressively to tally with that Word.” [The Normal Christian Life, (Fort Washington, PA: Christian Literature Crusade, 1961), p. 56]

The Wild Beasts

 ....to risk losing our balance and falling prey to the wild beasts waiting below.
This is from earlier posts...but it falls into the thoughts of Habitation of Dragons...those "snide little (*sometimes not so little) Christian sins...that are there to remind us of who we are...for some...especially those who are terribly wounded, (really wonder if deeply-wounded souls are not commonplace nowadays!), an unlooked for trigger pops us and wham! we wonder what happened to us.  On the mat, stunned, blankly staring upwards we first just have to stand up again...that may be the hardest step.
 Pro-Catholic site for culture war:
http://athanasiuscm.blogspot.com/

Reflections

Reflections from the Saints

Without humility, there is no way of conquering anger.

– St. John Climacus

http://actsoftheapostasy.blogspot.com/2010/03/subtle-slide-into-spiritual-pride.html

Weil Did Not Heed her Jewish Understanding of...

 TAFASTA MERUBAH LO TAFASTA.

It is said that it is harder to change one character flaw within ourselves than it is to learn the entire Talmud.

TAFASTA MERUBAH LO TAFASTA

Trying to do too much too soon will often backfire. TAFASTA MERUBAH LO TAFASTA. Taking on too much will leave you with nothing in the end   If we don't have vessels which have the capacity to contain this holy light energy, we will simply burst if we (attempt to) take on the full dose of Kedusha all at once. We must climb rung by holy rung up the ladder of Kedusha. To skip a rung is to risk losing our balance and falling prey to the wild beasts waiting below.
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This no aesthetic meandering.  To transgress proper boundaries, especially spiritual ones, often leads to delusion
and destruction...perhaps, in doing so, we sin by presumptuous pride to the extreme.
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On Weil:

What a terrible commentary.

"Weil's is the most comical life I have ever read about, and the most truly tragic and terrible." - Flannery O'Connor, letter, 1955

Lea Ann Payne wrote that 'Discerning the problem of evil and differentiating that from the Good,(is one of the major problems)…and this lack has given rise to the most crucial problem I’ve seen develop within the Church, that of a very real encroachment of alien gods(idols)….I will address two specific manifestations of this:

the rise of a Baal consciousness and of a new gnosticism within Christian circles---basically through Freud and Jung.

A.  The Need for Renouncing Baal---the god of sexual orgy
B.  the Need for Renouncing Gnostic dualism:  the problem of good and evil without the Cross '
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I would add another: equally dangerous for our soul:
C. The Need for Renouncing Legalism/Jansenism: Thank God for HIs Sacred Heart

Delusions

From the Itching Footnotes Blog:  'That troubling mystic Simone Weil wrote in Gravity and Grace: 

“We experience good only by doing it. We experience evil only by refusing to allow ourselves to do it, or, if we did it, by repenting of it.” As with so many of her gnomic sayings, I am not entirely sure what she meant by that. But I think it means that the aesthete’s and decadent’s life “beyond good and evil” is, in fact, a delusion; it is the embrace of evil as good. We experience good only by doing good, but we do not experience evil by doing evil, for in doing evil we make evil our good. The result is not life “beyond good and evil”; the result is the triumph of evil–a triumph more total because evil is not recognized as such. (As I Lay Dying: Meditations Upon Return, 25)'

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I am glad he prefaced Weil's name with 'troubling'.  Personally, I was drawn to her writings and its crystalline clarity and depth, but her self-destruction bent was dark.  She could not release her being to Christ, although she attempted it.
Lea Ann Payne's work is brought to mind here by his inclusion of this passage.  Her pastoral ministry has been concerned with the increasingly gnostic and Jungian inroads into Christianity and the devastating effects the inroads have brought to clergy and laity alike.

(Reference: “Renouncing False Gods and Appropriating the Holy” By Lea Ann Payne  cf. Jer. 2:23-25)

It has taken me my whole life to even begin the differentiation needed to distance my being's structure from these two ways of approaching the symbolic of our souls.  These inroads are much more dangerous for the soul and spirit than most people will ever know.
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Weil's intensity and depth, albeit at times creepy and delusional, did focus light on things most people would never even consider.  Her gnostic Existentialism, however, endlessly self-absorbed,  gripped her mind, soul and heart to the extreme.

The Passion

“He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted.” (Isaiah 53:3-4)
Hebrew: הפסיון של ישו‎,The Passion of Christ.

Love in Truth

What is humility?

       Humility is staying at the foot of the Cross of Jesus and seeing ourselves as God sees us.

Humility is a way of being and it is shown through a person's words and actions. A person who shows great humility is said to be 'humble'. A humble person doesn't seek to make themselves look better than anyone else even if they have achieved really great things. Instead they

recognize that they, like ever yone else, have strengths and weaknesses.

They try to use their gifts to help others and to overcome their weaknesses. As Christians, we believe that our strengths are gifts from God, to be used wisely to bring God's love to others and to bring glory to God. We also believe that God helps us to overcome our weaknesses, if we remember to call on His help. A person who shows humility, uses their gifts to serve God and to help others but not to bring glory to themselves.

Jesus' whole life was an example of humility. When some of his disciples were arguing about which of them was the greatest he said, "If anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all and servant of all." (Mark 9:35) Jesus was the Son of God and he could have used this to gain himself power and fame. Instead he served others, helped the sick and downtrodden, forgave sinners and brought new hope to the poor. In humility he was crucified with two thieves. He showed us that in order to follow him, we too must put others' needs before our own, recognizing that our gifts and successes are given to us by God and are to be used to bring God's love to others. We must therefore show humility in our words and actions.

…she understood the meaning of Jesus’ words, “Unless you become like little children you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mark 10:15). Therese was aware of her strengths and her weaknesses. She believed that every good thing she did was done with God's help and she asked God to help her overcome her weaknesses. Therese acknowledged that she was not perfect and sometimes she found it difficult to get on with others in her community.

"We must never search for what seems big in human eyes."

[We must not try to appear better than we are; I call it “we are never stronger than the weakest part of us.”]

"What matters in life is not great deeds, but great love."

Love's Dilemma: The Paradox of Love

The double bind is an awful dilemma especially for children.  While it is commonplace in an imperfect world among imperfect people, the psychological and emotional control of others through the double bind is dramatically disturbing and destructive when it is the primary dynamic of a relationship.

Notes: From another blog site:

1. When the victim is involved in an intense relationship; that is, a relationship in which he feels it is vitally important that he discriminate accurately what sort of message is being communicated so that he may respond appropriately;
2. And, the victim is caught in a situation in which the other person in the relationship is expressing two orders of message and each denies the other;
3. And, the victim is unable to comment on the messages being expressed to correct his discrimination of what order of message to respond to, i.e., he cannot make a metacommunicative statement.

There are two injunctions imposed upon on the victim by the other person basically. Also, it is a repeated experience. 

“The double bind is a recurrent theme in the experience of the victim and as such cannot be resolved as a single traumatic experience.”

The dilemma cannot be escaped in any way. The double bind experience is well summed up in the phrase “I must do it but I cannot do it.”

In addition, none of this is really clear to the victim. It is not a simple contradiction. The nature of the contradiction is really complex, and ends with the victim really WANTING to satisfy both contradictory injunctions and trying to, but not being able to. An inexpressible internal conflict is generated within the psyche.

He gives an example of such a dilemma in real life:

To Talk or not to Talk–to Somehow do Both?

I must talk to him or else all hope is lost. He will forget me, the love will vanish completely. He will have to move on.
But I cannot talk to him because he will not rediscover love for me during that process. He will gain satisfaction that he is getting some of me, and he will not be incited to analyze anything or make any decisions, and the casual talk will probably make the relationship really numb, dumb and unnecessary. Also, I cannot talk to him because I can’t keep talking to him and at the same time have to deal with thinking/obsessing about the possibility of getting back together. And those raised hopes will only result in disappointment, because, as I said, this option doesn’t lead to any renewal of love.

So I can’t talk, and I can’t not talk for two main reasons: nothing said will help us get better, and emotionally I cannot handle either.

To make the dilemma worse, I don’t know what I want, he doesn’t know what he wants; we’re both caught in the middle of wanting to go to the past and wanting to go to the future. How can I try to move on at the same time as thinking about getting back together?

But to make the dilemma better: luckily I trust God. God will lead us where he wants us to be. 

 In the psychosocial and emotional problems of the wounded:

But for some whose family/emotional/psychological dynamic worked out in constant dilemma, the double bind leads to an endless void of mazes to maneuver through with just about everyone.  Contact with others can be a torturous path to be avoided. 

Too, We learn that we cannot say things to people. When we were younger we had a fancy that we would seek and find relationships in which we could fully express ourselves. FULLY express ourselves. And then, experience after experience, and cultivated intuition tells us to draw boundaries often. There are some things we should not say. Telling the truth sometimes is the morally wrong thing to do....

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I have thought a lot about what he said...lately.

The Struggle to Love

I did not come up with that title on my own.  It came from the chapter in The Hidden Face by Gorres about the inner life of Therese of Lisieux.  At this point in my life, I have to continue with more intensity than ever this struggle for there continue the inevitable "double binds."  Personally, I believe these double bind 'paradoxes' in life are for some people their cross.  It has piqued my interest that she was deeply concerned about her ability to really love those around her. 

Amazingly I just found Friendship and Holiness by Msgr. Magee [National Conference Chicago August 6^th, 2004]. This article confirms what I have been experiencing from Therese's, Elizabeth of the Trinity's, and Elie Wiesel's truths of what God intends as friendship. 
Msgr. Magee wrote"...friendship will last forever. No greater love can someone have than to lay down his life for a friend: so friendship is not a convenience, but involves commitment and self-sacrifice, suffering and renunciation, perhaps of the ultimate kind. Friendship needs to be realistic, that is, grounded in truth and humility, not in fantasy or thinly-veiled selfishness.

A friend is not a means to an end, ...not there to be the object of my infantile or neurotic desires, but to be treasured like the “pearl of great price”....the goal of the Sacraments is the eternal communion of all men and women in God...(hopefully forever in Heaven)...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z9PVF27Btw&feature=related

Symphony

""Today, my charge is that you become someone who is in such perfect symphony with God, like the musical instruments in a 100-membered orchestra; a friend of God, not just His robot.
..remember that God called Abraham His friend, their friendship was such a remarkable one ...
a friend is one who is willing to share their secrets with you, (the secrets of the Lord is with them that fear Him and He would show them His covenant- psalm 25:14). God shared His secrets with Abraham and if He has shared some of His secrets with you, then i believe you are worth being called a friend of God. i may not have it all together but i know am His friend.

Relationships

"Be kind, everyone is fighting a great battle."

avodas Hashem

--- emotional problems are the direct result of being disconnected from God

…but separation from God is our lot…to try and dig out the thorn, and the pain is always there.

   We are always trying to reunite with God…we decrease pain when we draw closer to Him and increase our pain when we go away from Him…We may conclude, therefore, that we are all emotionally or mentally ill to some degree.  This internal imbalance may erupt

but more commonplace are the symptoms of sin…digressions from the God-given path…

our avodas Hashem…our balance…