Stairway to Heaven

The other day while working in the Mary Garden, the nothing Catholic hermit passed through the Our Lady
of Fatima Rose Garden, and suddenly it dawned: that brilliant red climbing rose's name is: Stairway to Heaven!

What a fitting connection to the recent days' spiritual insights! Realizing that the Virgin Mary is ever on the Stairway to Heaven, nothing prayed the other morning after Mass, when walking by a huge statue of our Blessed Mother, at the Cathedral: Mother Mary, please take my hand and
lead me on the Stairway to Heaven.

Yes, now that the angel took nothing to find this stairway,
there is need to pray to progress on its steps.

Repeated lessons in not hanging oneself on others' sideways
crosses come in person, in phone conversations, in e-mail correspondence. Then there have been the personal sideways crosses to be chopped and burned. Guess it would be all right to toss them in the dumpster by the house being built next door.... Regardless, nothing has been busy stopping even the mental thoughts of its own sideways crosses from obliterating the freedom to follow Christ, right up those stairs.

Yes, the freedom: it is breathtaking in these views!

Progress is being made with those who catch on. The young woman whose mother tries to control from a distance is seeing that her mother's reactions to her move are not healthy--are sideways crosses. The woman who struggles with her elderly mother called the other day to ask, "What are my sideways crosses?" We talked a bit, and nothing said it could say its own sideways crosses, and gave some, but that the woman must pray to discover what hers are. In more conversation, she discovered one or two of them.

A young married woman called, and she has a mother who has been emotionally abused by her husband--the young woman's father. We talked about sideways crosses, and how to deal with them even if one is very emotionally involved, and how best to help siblings to learn to not become entangled victims of their parents' sideways crosses. The mother does not want to seek help at this time, and so there is really nothing that can be done for one who refuses to get rid of one's own sideways cross. Nothing, except PRAY and SUFFER. But how to suffer? To get down and bedraggled in the splinters of the other person's cross? No, Jesus didn't do that. Instead, pray and compassionate with the person, but not in unhealthy emotional entanglements.

Pray with love, suffer with love--and the suffering can be penances offered and also the words that are spoken when the other person is ready to listen. It can be a suffering to have the courage to say some direct thoughts, and to pray and discern and make sure one's motives are built upon and from within charity. It can also be a suffering to then modulate one's own emotions and personal involvement. Surgeons are trained in physician-patient detachment; helping someone see their own sideways cross requires a form of holy indifference. A sideways cross can otherwise develop: that of being overly entangled in others' sideways crosses. Yes, we must remember to chop up and rid out our own sideways crosses--sort of like taking the plank out of our eyes before removing the splinters in someone else's....

This freedom that comes from being rid of sideways crosses allows the soul to approach the Stairway to Heaven. In faith, nothing has asked Mother Mary to take its hand, to lead it up the steps.... It is all in faith, and so nothing Catholic hermit knows that there is movement even if it does not experience anything tangible other than the awareness of practice in dealing with other persons' sideways crosses and more so, in chucking or burning its own sideways crosses.

Much of dealing with other persons' sideways crosses is the same as dealing with our own: chuck them or burn them. A woman called and discussed her daughters' fussing a bit over some family heirlooms their grandmother allowed them to choose. Envy pricked their minds and emotions. Nothing mentioned to the woman that these issues are her daughters' tiffs--their sideways crosses for they have a sibling rivalry well into adulthood. It happens in most families! The woman can remove herself from their sideways crosses by directly asking to not be involved in their issues; or, she can ask a question of her daughters: Is this a necessary discussion or debate? It has nothing to do with me, what you choose of your grandmother's.

But, ah, it seems so hard to set some boundaries, to not get entangled in others' sideways crosses. But if we stand back and see how silly and time-consuming, and how these sideways crosses (our own and/or others) suck the freedom to follow Christ like gravity sucks dirty water down a bathtub drain--then it becomes far easier to set boundaries, to hack our own crosses and to try to show others that their sideways crosses are not tempting to straddle!

(That's about the only way one can hang/associate/involve with a sideways cross: straddle it. How absurd!)

When nothing sees Mother Mary standing on the Stairway to Heaven, the sideways crosses become ashes, and the ashes turn to filmy dust, and the dust wisps off in the breeze. The Stairway to Heaven, upon which one enters into freedom--the freedom to follow Christ as never before--allures the soul, mind, heart and body as nothing previously experienced. Yet, like the Virgin, the experience is subtle, ethereal.

The other day, when nothing spotted the Candicans in the gardens of the nursery, and the nursery owner recommended it as a replacement for the Glauca Pendula (has a scar that is causing this tree to suffer, possibly terminally), nothing said that the Candicans' needles create an ethereal effect! "What does that mean?" the nursery owner asked. Well....it means:

"Extremely delicate and light, seemingly too perfect for this world; heavenly, spiritual."

Such is the experience in finding the Stairway to Heaven. The Virgin Mary is on this stairway, leading us between earth and heaven much as the catalytic converter in a car purifies the air from impure to more pure....

For the very few nothing has encountered, who can comprehend the sideways crosses and the necessity in hacking and burning them, the Stairway to Heaven has been broached with the plea to please pray to be shown, to find, the Stairway to Heaven. And then ask the Blessed Virgin to take the hand reached out to her....

As nothing Catholic hermit's confessor said, "The Virgin Mary will always help us!"