Catholic Hermit: Clinical Hypnotherapy

In previous post, I mention Dr. H. calling and wanting to do clinical hypnotherapy over the phone, and that prior to this surgery he tried that in attempt to help get the pain level down through that means.  I know some people have a misunderstanding of clinical hypnotherapy, as it is not stage hypnosis by any means.  In fact, some of the "healer priests" actually are simply using hypnotic induction techniques.  I'm not impressed nor do I go for that, personally.

However, there is much good in clinical hypnotherapy.  I, in fact, am certified in clinical hypnotherapy.  I was hired by a police department once years ago to help a rape victim be able to remember what occurred and identify the rapists.  While the police could not use the taped hypnotherapy session, as it turned out, to arrest the two teens involved, the woman later on kept telling me how grateful and what good it did for her to have what was blocked in her psyche, freed.

It was the Lord's doing, not mine.  She understand when I explained that to her.  All good is God's.

Dr. H. helped me years ago after the first surgery, 8 years prior to my conversion to Catholicism and in quite a different time and place in my life.  He'd come to the house where I lived with my three very young children and where my parents had come to live with us for the three months I was in a hospital bed in the tiny den.  Dr. H. helped later, also, in his office, to utilize the therapeutic tool to help me manage the constant pain.

But it wasn't until after I had a supernal and unexpected, unbidden numinous experience in a clinical psychology course I was taking--in fact, it was a class on induction techniques in my clinical hypnotherapy certification--that I returned to Dr. H. to tell him about what occurred.  He was fascinated, and so we explored that experience, and lo and behold--more unfolded in his office, of some apostles and prophet, an angel, and then God Himself would speak while I'd be having visions that I'd describe.  It was all quite something.  Dr. H. tape recorded these events, and I later transcribed them.  

But after about five or so of these, we stopped.  I'm not sure why he did not want to proceed, but it was all right.  I always had the sense that it was upsetting to his mind view of the spiritual and religion.  He had been reared Catholic but left.  Yet he is spiritual and believes in God if not in certain terms, or religious construct.  I think the last time when God spoke and answered Dr. H's questions which had to do with his trying to understand just what on earth and in heaven was going on with these supernatural events, it got to be too overwhelming to Dr. H. in a way he'd probably not have even realized consciously.

For awhile, I think it was that he considered, and I did, too, that I was kind of psychic or something.  However, the Biblical and religious depth and reality of the personages was so great and indisputable that I knew from the various and numerous experiences I was given in private at home, at night, during the day, that the Holy Trinity was guiding me, was behind it all, of course!  Scriptures began to come alive to me in amazing ways.  It was a time of massive soul awakening.

Dr. H. over the years has helped countless people through the excellent therapeutic tool and technique of hypnotherapy.  I find it a shame when people balk at its solid usage and the great success with all types of psychological and physiological and emotional ailments.  He has helped children overcome phantom leg pain, bed-wetting, behavioral problems, and a host of other ailments including some unusual cases such as the girl who saw auras around everyone she'd meet or see.

He helps adults quit smoking and drinking or other habits that hindered their lives.  He helps cancer patients learn to manage their pain and accept their coming death.  What is helpful, also, about Dr. H., is that he reaches people wherever they are in their lives--regardless of type of religion or no religion.  He continues to this day, into his seventh decade of life, often through utilizing clinical hypnotherapy to help people have breakthroughs that their conscious minds would obscure or hinder, thus impeding their healing of various problems.

But as for me, as the years have passed and the Lord brought me into Catholicism, and then through various levels and dimensions of His Real Presence, and continues to do so, with more and more guidance and luminous unfoldings beyond the temporal realm, clinical hypnotherapy for me is sluggish, dull, dragging, and so far less than what the Lord has provided, unbidden and inexplicably, that I simply don't want to go through the hypnotherapy process.  

The distinction between the numinous of the Holy Spirit compared to the effect of hypno-therapeutic altered states is so great that finding a comparison is difficult.  I cannot even give the comparison of being asked to ride a tricycle after one has  driven a race care in the Indy 500 can do the distinction justice.  There is simply no comparison possible between such as the unbidden mystical ecstasies during Mass compared to the deepest clinical therapeutic state possible.  

And through the years of being drawn into His Real Presence, to a point of abiding in Him, or remaining in His love even in my worst of spiritual slothful periods or that of acedia--spiritual dryness--or darkest nights of the senses or soul, the thought of seeing if through clinical hypnosis we can try to enhance the healing of the bones in my spine post-operative now, I just don't see a point.  For I know with a supernal assurance deep down in, that the Lord has the healing all in hand, all within His purview and power.  

In fact, it seems wrong to even try to mess with it.  For I've been told by the Virgin Mary in a miraculous vision that I've written about before, and including Christ in the vision, that I will find Christ in my pain.  A week or two ago I was told within that pain and suffering is not the enemy.  Now healing is not the same as trying to get rid of pain, but I simply know without doubt that Jesus is handling the healing in the way He wills, and a glimpse or touch of His type of healing is mega millions more powerful and perfect than what Dr. H. and I could attempt through clinical means even if of the realms beyond traditional medicine.

Even though I vent and fuss and am taken aback by such as this surgery's tediously slow and tentative recovery period, what I am being taught by the Lord is far better than the work-effort of mind to try to access through our hypno-therapeutic process, some type of "healing" of the bones.  I'm sure it won't hurt or hinder, these well-intentioned and charitable attempts to help, but it actually has no appeal to me.  The Lord has taken me elsewhere, has answered my prayers to increase my faith, has shown me my flaws and provided opportunities through suffering and pain, to recognize my flaws and what hinders me spiritually.  

At this point, even now, He slowed me down from the little physical progress I was making.  I'm in a setback from slightly overdoing the exercises and times to get up.  Today I'll not get up the 8 times; I have to take it easy and rest.  And with the setback comes the reminder to begin reading/praying the Divine Office again, and to get a notebook or such to write down prayer concerns I'm given rather than to haphazardly write on a scrap of paper or to trust my mind to remember, although in faith I do know that my angel Beth will also be praying for these intentions.  Yet, I will strive for more discipline and regularity, as I do pray in all the prayer formats.  It is not all contemplation, not all mental prayer, not all verbal prayer, not all prayer of union.  It is not all pain praying or kinesthetic tactile praying or labor praying.

I think Dr. H and I will be better off discussing the spiritual life, and if there is anything of what I share that can help him with his patients, then that is worthwhile.  For in fact, love heals.  The first major vision with locution of a saint that occurred in that classroom setting in 1988, when I was taking the clinical hypnotherapy course, was that message in the main:  Love heals.  Later I would learn, after I became Catholic, that the woman who appeared to me and spoke to the classroom of adult students, was St. Teresa of Avila.

And another time, when Dr. H. was tape recording one of the locutions while I described the visuals I was being shown at the same time, the message again pertained to love heals.  That was Luke the Physician and Apostle who spoke then.

Prayer, giving myself to God in prayer, in setting aside the distractions I've become too adept in utilizing for pain management, will do as well and in fact far better than guided imagery and a therapeutic induction into an altered state.  Or so it seems to me from experience in these matters.  I realize that the altered state can be synonymous to a certain degree, with prayer.  God allows all good.  I will pray and He will answer, if I am wrong in my simply not wanting to bother with clinical hypnotherapy after all these years.  I've been far, far beyond and away, through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Why go back to before, to less than, than to the All of God?

One unbidden experience in Christ cannot compare with the greatest of good that clinical hypnotherapy provides.  Of course, I'm not discounting that God works in good clinical aides utilized to help people.  He can very much utilize hypnotherapy to teach and to heal and to guide us.  God certainly did that the five or so times over three decades ago.  It just does not seem at all worth it to me to try that which the Lord, when He wills, provides so effortlessly and spontaneously, so perfectly.

Blessed the man who makes the LORD his trust;
who turns not to idolatry
or to those who stray after falsehood.
Sacrifice or oblation you wished not,
but ears open to obedience you gave me.
Burnt offerings or sin-offerings you sought not;
then said I, "Behold I come."
"In the written scroll it is prescribed for me.
To do your will, O my God, is my delight,
and your law is within my heart!"
I announced your justice in the vast assembly;
I did not restrain my lips, as you, O LORD, know.

~Ps. 40: 5, 7-8a, 8b-9, 10

And from Ps. 40:8a, 9a:

Here I am Lord, I have come to do your will.

In the morning I will try to explain some of this to Dr. H.  I'm not sure there is a point in phone call conversations, otherwise.  But the Lord will lead and guide in that, also.  My whole existence (not just a vocation), my entire being, is that of remaining in Christ's love, of union with the Holy Trinity, of being through, with, and in His Real Presence.  

It is not that there is anything wrong or not good about clinical hypnotherapy.  But my life in Christ is that much more and farther than anything other.  I did submit to surgery, but from surgery comes whatever is next, such as now the time period of this tediously slow and painful recovery period that is going to last some indefinite time unknown to me or others, medical professionals included.  

God's will per this hermitage and my involvement with it also is unknown at this time.  What I am to learn with wisdom and detachment, will unfold by His Grace.  As Catherine Siena once reminded me in a dream and locution:  It [faith] is not a set formula."  What we learn in the process of suffering and waiting and learning to discern, and of letting go of aspects and things of the temporal realm, and the more we return to his unknown, numinous delights, the greater our faith will be, and all else to be given us, as well.

Hypnotherapy can be like centering prayer techniques, but it is not techniques that I'm after nor desire.  I'm not interested in set formulas to enter into God's will.  I want to seek Him with love and live and learn per His wishes for me, no matter how slow or painful or long.  Just this setback from pushing ahead with getting up 8 times two days in a row, is reminding me that it is not worth it to get ahead of myself.

It is in patience, after all, that one possesses one's soul.  Seek and you shall find; ask and it shall be given you.  Jesus gave to me years ago through the marvelous tool of clinical hypnotherapy, but as the certification professor said in that class, this experience I had went far beyond hypnotherapy.  It was something else entirely he said.  Dr. H. had said when the mystical ecstasies started occurring, that they were not clinically reproducible.  He said they had to be from God alone, somehow.

There is no sense in going back, not in physical therapy setbacks nor in techniques helpful years ago.  Just keep going, simply keep going, as St. John the Baptist once told me, and added, "Now that is truly simple, is it not?"

Catholic Hermit Calling Upon John the Baptist

Somehow early morning, as in 4 a.m. or so, this nothing consecrated Catholic hermit awoke with oodles of pain in the liver area.  Could not get back to sleep but rested.  

I read the Gospel for today's Mass.  Ah, John the Baptist!  Such humility and focus of life mission and God's will for his life, what purpose he had and still has.

Am recalling a time when there were messages from St. John the Baptist to me of which Dr. H. tape recorded.  But something like that one does never forget, one who experiences such a blessed gift.  John the Baptist had plenty of wisdom and encouragement for me nearly 30 years ago.  And Dr. H. had some questions to ask him, as well.

One aspect that helps today is that of how he know how to go on before, and knows how it feels being different, and that he has great warmth for me, myself being called to a different kind of life.  But also, John spoke of how I can learn from the animals and plants of nature, how one cycle ends and another begins, over  and over.  He explained it as a type of spiritual metamorphosis, our lives of body and spirit, of soul; and that it takes great faith simply keep going. 

Yes, he emphasized toward the end of his exhortation and lesson, to "simply keep going!"  He said it is a simple matter to simply keep going.

Today I am trying to just keep going.  The lovely parish couple arrived with Holy Communion.  I had not even dressed yet, but that is all right.  Old, gray flannels with heat-thermal neck-to-ankles underneath are more modest than my usual habit: paint-and-caulk smeared jeans and a gray Army shirt (gift years ago from an adult daughter who was a military intelligence sergeant and Arabic linguist.)

So the couple and I chatted a bit, as some memories have been stirred.  And I inquired of their lives, and will be praying for their children and children's children.  A tree in the garden was noted for they'd like one of its type.  Happens to be a rather rare Chamaecyparis nootkentasis 'Van den Aker.'
I supplied the correct name of which initially I could barely recall the family let alone the cultivar specific name.

If they cannot locate one to purchase, as they would like, I offered this one as a gift.  I mentioned how it would already be quite tall for them, too!  Come spring I will be needing to sell off whatever trees people may desire, and then I will replace "holes" in the landscape with ones not chosen.  The lovely gardens of the past will never be again; and the trees have grown beyond their miniature and dwarf dimensions, in several cases.

More sanding and priming of tongue-and-groove boards, the 12-footers; and then up the ladder to hang a bit of drywall.  Then to the pole barn to rip the tongue off a board and rip a partial board to finish the closet's slanted wall-ceiling.  While donning the safety goggles by the table saw, I praised the Lord in all He has taught me in the past nearly four years of necessity in learning construction skills.  Familiarity with a variety of power tools has ended up being a requisite as well as blessing.

The finances have come to a point in which it will not be long before I must depart, finished or not.  Yet I consider John the Baptist and his freedom from attachment, his going about the desert and then preaching and baptizing by water those who came to hear the spiritual messages and warnings to repent.  I thought of how it was for John to be different, to be veritably a hermit-type in his vocation and life mission.

I am warmed with the reminder he had for me that he understands how I feel and that he has warmth for me in our kindred likeness in some regards. And perhaps, I think today, there is more kindred spirit between us than not.  And so I will get back to the tiny tasks of this and that in this hermitage while pondering John the Baptist and our likenesses, for perhaps there will be insight into greater purpose in my own present moment and what is to come.

For one thing, I am to write, and I am to write more and other than I have been in my blogs.  The transition from my time of preparation and wandering in the desert, the physical labor of carpentry and such will simmer and perhaps close off, and then there will be something other the Lord will have.  Another place, another opportunity, another adventure, another cycle of nature both temporal and mystical.

God bless His Real Presence in us!  All the more, love is the key for thinking with the heart!

Mystic Hermit Once Again Asked: How to Become a Catholic Hermit

This question, in slightly varying word construct, tends to repeat itself now and then from blog-reading enquirers.

There are older posts that I've written in detail as to the Roman Catholic Church's institutes on the eremitic life--briefly stated in 920-921 of The Cathechism of the Catholic Church and further addition in the briefly stated CL 603.

However, I view the questions of "Can I become a Catholic hermit?" or "How can I become a Catholic hermit?" and of similar wording and intent, to remind me of recently coming upon yet another recently formed hermit "community".

This one is under the direction of a diocese bishop, and there are a listing of requirements for one to enter their community.  I assume it is quite small for the location is given, and the entire town which would include the community has about 80 inhabitants, and judging by demographic information of population, the hermit community would be easily under ten, maybe way under.

Numbers do not matter, of course, especially in a hermit community.  It could be rather odd to have formed a hermit community, to begin with, as a type of hermit religious order--thinly veiled by using Church lingo to ascribe to it another strata within the Consecrated Life of the Church designations.

Within their requirements are also descriptions of which they provide instruction in their efforts, on how to become a hermit.  There are time requirements, as well.  One has six months to a year to get the feel of it in their midst, and while getting that feel of hermit life (according to their or someone's interpretation of how a hermit lives and has "being") they can spend an occasional day in an actual hermitage.  (And the hermitage they offer is no doubt according to how someone else thought it should be, also.)

Then there is a three-year period to learn more how to be a hermit but still live with a group of others learning to how to become a hermit with a little more time away to try out a hermitage for a day or two or so now and then.  And then there are a few more years to learn more about how to be a hermit, and then profession of final vows in the hands of the bishop to be a publicly professed hermit under CL 603 provisions.

I find it all well thought-out and the requirements specific and detailed enough to keep those who would be allowed in to a minimum within age range, marital status, health, financial standing, belief system, few to no responsibility ties to the secular world, etc.  All that just seemed like the regulations of any religious order, but groups do need guidelines, I suppose.  Structure.

Any one individual's life does well with some structure!  Any creature or plant life or creation of any kind exists within some structure, day-to-day and night-by-night.  

Thus a hermit's life would be no exception in the matter of some structure.  But what seems to me regarding if one can become a Catholic hermit or how one becomes a Catholic hermit--is that there does not need to be a joining of a community that is set up as if to teach someone how to become a hermit.  

Yet, I suppose, if one has not confidence (or what can also be foolhardy in overconfidence) in the Lord and has no spiritual advisor or director nor books extant to read on the topic by spiritual masters and also by late hermits experienced from hermit lifetimes and guiding souls--and if one meets the rather lengthy list of requirements and wishes to be considered for a community to teach you how to become a hermit...give it a try.  

The community I learned about is not quite the same as a lara--a group of hermits who live in a general vicinity in their own hermitages but are not in essence a quasi-religious order of hermits being taught to be nuns and monks much like postulants and novices in monasteries.

But to me, it seems sensible to pray and ask the Holy Spirit for guidance, and to ask Jesus to teach, and to ask Mary as the Queen of Hermits to assist, and even ask a priest or spiritual mentor to be a contact and advisor in the process as you discern and begin to live out either gradually or by jumping in feet first to living out the basics of hermit life in essence and substance offered in writing in the institutes of the Church and CL603 aforementioned above.

In ten days I will be celebrating 16 years since profession of my vows and priest approval of my Rule of Life (am not a CL 603 hermit), and of learning how to become and be a Catholic hermit, privately professed yet within the Consecrated Life of the Church.  I'm very much a novice yet as just recently the Lord has shown yet another phase now of prayer, study, contemplation, praise, and always new and challenging penances.

It seems to me, that the Lord continues to be the best at unfolding a vocation such as a hermit vocation.  Consider the very nature of eremites and the long history going back into the ages of the prophets and prior to them.  Hermits have been, are, and will be.  Regularization of hermit existence or attempting to develop a standardized type of essentially a boarding school for hermits with the idea of graduating them after a certain number of years into hermitages that are pre-conceived by someone else, some other hermit, to me seems contrived.

That may not be nice for me to comment upon or offer my thoughts regarding such, but I can at least attest that my various hermit life experiences have been rich and holy as well as painfully instructive, when I've let the Lord unfold all details of temporal and spiritual elements in my hermit vocation.  I could no more tell someone else how they ought to have their hermit vocation formed and lived out, and less so to attempt to regularize the eremitic journey any more than I could choose the genetic make-up of a baby yet to be conceived.

Did John the Baptist go to a community of hermits?  No, or perhaps it would be called a prophet community--but his life and soul were in that of what we would conclude an eremitic vocation--in solitude, out in the desert, living simply, communing with God, learning his mission, eventually some following after him to hear what he had to share of God's imparted wisdom and his take on living from what God had taught him in solitude amidst silence and suffering.  Prayer, penance, praise--and then to proclaim the coming of the Messiah, Jesus the Christ!

I suppose all us Christians in some shape or format and in some place and time, have that mission.  We are to proclaim Christ in some manner, visible or not, audible or not, temporally acknowledged or not, lived as seen or not.  

Seems a simple prayer asking Jesus to guide our first and ensuing steps, bit by bit or sometimes in leaps and bounds, is a good start in becoming a hermit--or anything, any vocation, for that matter.  If He leads you to something such as a community that is designed to teach you how to become a hermit and to remain with them as a hermit, and you fit the various requirements, then that is an option for you.

Probably, though, if one prays and waits and listens and reads and talks matters over with trusted spiritual mentor or priest or in the quiet of your inner Tabernacle in which Jesus is always present to you and for you, by and by--sometimes quickly--events and nudges will occur, and you will realize that you are becoming a Catholic hermit and are living the hermit life with it unfolding over time which can seem like an eternity or not.

God bless His Real Presence in you!  Oh, and if the Lord leads you to a bishop and to seeking canonical approval as a hermit, that is good, too.  Or if the Lord prefers to keep you more to Himself, that is good, as well.  In this latter instance, you will not be approved in the eyes of people in your diocese nor be sanctioned by your bishop, but it is all right if you are or if you are not.  

My instinct and unfolding path has been that the Lord's will is what matters most; and that could perhaps include His willing you to be in a community of hermits to learn how to be a hermit.  Some  people do maybe need more regularization or feel more secure with more temporally provided structure than do others; and structure can perhaps seem more time-efficient or results-oriented effective than the seeming unknowns of the solus Deus and faith alone journeyings of the more pilgrim-type or John-the-Baptist type eremites. 

Mercy, this latter way can be dotted with scrapes and falls and missed-turns, revised do-overs, and try-agains in newly visible pathways.  This latter has been the Lord's will for me, and it can be harrowing, lonely at times, but also touched by unexpected graces.  I may yet be in my novitiate, for example, after nearly 16 years since vows! With Jesus as Teacher and Guide, we really don't have time or term limits.

I do know that in the third century or even among prophets, sometimes those who felt called by God would go to a seasoned hermit or prophet, and observe, ask questions, and live in a nearby hut or be kind of like an understudy, but that was not frequent. I think of Elijah with Elisha; but the Lord sent Elisha or provided him to take over from Elijah of whom the Lord was ready to take unto Himself and bodily remove out of this world.  

I really know of few specifics of desert fathers with understudies or at least if so, not for long.  The hermits might touch base with one another on rare occasion, or not.  Usually for one desiring to be a hermit and finding a desert father or mother who would be willing to give counsel, was just a question or so, a day of observing or being taught some great truth through a spiritual riddle.  Then off would go the more recently called-by-God hermit to build his hut or find a cave and start learning from the Holy Spirit and his angel, from Jesus and the Father, from the maternal protection of Mary: how to be a religious solitary, a hermit, an eremite.

But honestly, if you give the hermit life a try and a start, be assured that if it is not the Lord's will, He will also make that clear over time or in definite ways and means more quickly.  The Lord often uses life events and others to help us discern, but there is nothing like taking the steps one learns from various means of prayer and research and trial by error, to find out if one is called and how to be a hermit.

A Hermit Believes!

When reading this morning's Scriptures from daily Mass, the Gospel includes Mary's kinswoman's words of joyful proclamation.  It is truly a statement of great faith, that Elizabeth exclaims in exultation when the Virgin Mary arrives to assist Elizabeth in the last month or more of pregnancy.

Elizabeth who had been unable to conceive previously, was soon to deliver a baby boy who the world would forever know as John the Baptist.  Elizabeth was given a "sign"; the infant leapt in her womb when Mary stood before Elizabeth upon meeting--Mary who was carrying in her womb, Jesus the Christ.

These final lines documented in the Gospel carry import for any human being.

Blessed are you who believed 
that what was spoken to you by the Lord
would be fulfilled."

This morning, here in my unfinished, chilly hermitage, I pondered these words in my heart (as can be said truly) while making more Fortitude Fudge.  The kitchen is nearly complete, at least, and how lovely the quart countertops--cold and clean and just right for pans of fudge to set up properly.  

But the pain level of the body has been not setting up well within this hermit, and that means the emotions try to outbalance the mind, and the spirits risk faltering.  As in the spiritual ascent, managing pain is my forever-on earth contest; it may not be an achieved conquest in life.  I don't know.

I do know that in order to believe what is spoken to us by the Lord, we must listen.  We must listen to what the Lord is speaking to us.  And then we must have faith and great belief that what He says will be fulfilled.

The Lord may tell us messages through Scripture--broad as well as specific promises of our salvation, teachings that help us in daily life applications, example through His own life lived on earth.  The Lord may also tell us messages through angels--our guardian angel as well as various messenger angels depending upon the purpose and goal of the message.  

The Lord may speak to us in exterior and interior "words".  These are words that come so quickly and spontaneously, that we hear with inner ear mostly but sometimes outer ear--that we have to believe just in the fact that we heard some words that have special meaning in some way or other in our lives.  

The Lord may utilize other people to speak to us.  Sometimes these messages are difficult to accept, depending upon our degree of love and acceptance of the other person.  Yet, we ought examine all messages no matter the messenger, and discern truth, raw, unfiltered, or even falsely flattering the messages may be.

It is not always so easy to believe what is spoken to us by the Lord is going to be fulfilled.  But blessed are we if we do, or even if we try to believe, or even if we want to try to believe.  The Lord takes us where we are in our abilities to believe His messages and His fulfillment of His Words. 

(Perhaps the reason the angel told Zechariah that because he questioned the angel's message that Elizabeth would bear a son in their later years, Zechariah would be struck mute.  Zechariah, being a priest and older in years would be expected to have ability to believe an angel's message from God.)

This morning I've been pondering once again some messages from God and my weakness of belief.  I want to believe--such as messages about suffering, messages about it pleasing Him when I converted to Catholicism, messages even recently--such as to look at Him--or that He would guide my every step and path, or the message He delivered through my late mother, last spring in a dream:  You will have a place (and the means will be there).

I have faltered in belief on many levels.  Francisco just arrived and fixed the French doors.  As I see now, in hindsight, I could have fixed them with shims; but I did not know for sure if that would be the correct solution.  So I waited for a couple or three weeks, made several phone calls to remind the busy Raphael, as I also thought there was a leak in the pole barn roof.  When ill with the severe pain siege, the concerns increased as to how on earth would I be able to keep working on this place, finish it, have it salable as finances keep hitting new low's, and rock bottom is not far off.

What concerns did Mary have if any?  At first when the angel appeared and spoke God's message to her, she asked the angel "How can this be, for I have had no relations with a man?" She was not struck mute because of her wondering, her questioning.  Perhaps the quickening of the Holy Spirit in her body, how the Holy Spirit came over her, helped assuage what doubts might have come to a young woman hearing such news from an angel.

So it is that we must consider our degree of spiritual development, our ages, our attention given to listening to whatever God speaks and in whatever means He speaks to us His messages.  We must consider our availability to listening, as well.

As for me, a hermit of the 21st century who questions some aspects of the world in all its variations of groups of humanity, I need to very much question my own faith, and if I am truly believing, and if what I am believing is worthy of belief.  That means, am I centering my belief in His Real Presence, in His Law of Love, or am I trying to believe in other people, or myself, or in tangible and temporal aspects?

This hermit believes!  Yet, very much I must always add:  Lord, help my unbelief!

"Blessed are you who believed
that what was spoken to you by the Lord
would be fulfilled."

Fear Is the Flip-side of Faith

This wisdom was told the "nothing Catholic hermit" years ago.  Think it was John the Baptist who shared it in one of the first encounters, that Dr. H. taped at the suggestion of an angel or someone on the other side, entering this temporal realm to be of such great assistance in a time of learning and opening to the supernatural realities.  God Is Love!

Yes, fear is the flip-side of faith.

An example recently reminded this "nothing" of the great truth.  [John had also said one can learn much about faith in Luke 17.  Check it out.]

A dear one helping install cabinets has much physical strength and intellectual genius.  Working hard, there was much straining, intensity, and verbal noises and outcries associated with something very difficult to screw into place.  So "nothing Catholic hermit" assumed it had not the strength to screw in the cabinet bolts, especially after two right shoulder surgeries and given age and gender. 

Yes, by the groans and sighs and occasional shouts, and a few stripped screw heads, it seemed far beyond the capabilities of this hermit to even attempt bolting in a base cabinet.  Obviously, upper cabinets needed two people--one to hold up on the temporary horizontal support board, and another to pre-drill and then drive in the cabinet screws.

So when there still was work to be done on fine-tuning, and some could not return again for quite awhile due to work schedules, the electrician who has been helping with electrical agreed and was hired to help install the remaining cabinets and re-do a couple that had shifted.  He is a large and strong man, also.

Then when the evening arrived and there were still a couple more base cabinets to be finished, he said he was sure this old lady hermit could manage to bolt those plus build the base to which to screw into the floor and then secure the peninsula cabinets to that.  Yes, sawing and screwing to the floor was one thing, and shimming and leveling the base cabinets another--but there was much fear in attempting to bolt the cabinets to the wall and each other based upon how difficult it was assumed due to the sounds and brute force seemingly necessary.

Fearsome!  What if screw heads were stripped?  Had already had to remove a cabinet that another had bolted in, the head stripped.  Used the reciprocating metal saw blade, and the heat burned the cabinet finish. Fortunately had another cabinet that was gratis as cabinet man mistakenly ordered an extra.  God provides!

So into the mind comes the reminder from John the Baptist, the wisdom that fear is the flip side of faith, and to have faith!  To simply keep going, to simply keep going, and how simple that is, he also had said some 26 years ago.

With faith overcoming fear, the nothing Catholic hermit did the routine.  Pre-drill, then drive in the cabinet screw bolt.  First one bolt, then another, then another and another.  Went in quite easily.  Took out some screws that had been driven awhile ago by others and replaced with the proper screws.  (This was no one's fault; just had not been told what type of screws to use to bolt cabinets one to another.  Once we found out, it is a matter of removing and replacing the ones we can.)

Anyway, in a rather tedious and relatively unimportant task of the temporal realm, and one that will not matter to anyone else nor will be an issue again in this hermit's life as the kitchen cabinets are installed, the main if not only reason for this life experience is to have a reality experience in the great truth and wisdom that fear is the flip side of faith, and to overcome fear with faith.

Lots of extra tension and force and verbalizations don't necessarily assist us in tasks but rather are distractions and deplete the focus that silence and prayer can provide for a successful outcome.  Also, assuming something is too difficult based upon observations of how others may approach a project, and allowing fear to rule the mind and heart and thus the body, is giving into fear.  At least try, in faith, and pray, and then praise God regardless the temporal outcomes for all is a spiritual victory when faith overcomes fear.

Now, that is truly simple, is it not?  Yes, but learning it and practicing it takes some reminding and some practice, and how else to learn it than in the little details of daily life?

God bless His Real Presence in us!  Little children, let us love one another!

Settling Into God's Stream

Such a lovely time away from Te Deum House and into civilization but was quite ready to return.  The daughter has noticed the transition effort in being in temporal comfort and then returning to the hardships of this place.  

Dom Scupoli's writings in the particular chapters being read address sloth--not simply spiritual sloth but the temptation to cease working at a task when there are so many tasks as to be overwhelming.  He then asks of the reader to make the spiritual connection, as well.

There is great progress with the little grandson in mastering a youthful and very human tendency to grumpiness when something does not quite go his way, or when some project or schoolwork is frustrating.  He seems to respond to the little suggestion God gives his "Gaga" that each step and thought we take or have is a step toward goodness or bad, heaven or hell.  Just the little reminder, and he pulls right out of a bad attitude.  Ah, but his Gaga could do as well when the physical suffering exhausts the body, and the dark angels try to trip the mind and spirit. 

But there is progress outwardly here, and within, also.  The good is grasped more and more from what appears as otherwise negative.  A helpful conversation the other night with the spiritual father brought about his assessment of whether or not this "nothing" Catholic hermit is being moved in the direction of not belonging to a parish, or at least that God seems not willing active involvement if involvement at all, other than of love and prayer for all peoples on earth as it is in heaven.

He thinks God is not willing this hermit to be in a parish.  What has occurred, is the rather fearful, awkward, leading to uncharitable, reactions of the parishioners and priests seemingly due to an atypical but not unheard of state during Mass.  And when the waters have been tested otherwise in small involvement, the nets have come up empty.  It is quite simple, and the reality is set out and becoming more a direction than coincidence or fault of anyone involved.  It just is as it is; and that is a good thing, for negative is merely the opposite of positive.  Change and adaptation:  Growth is at hand!

The reality of God's unique and individual desires for each and every soul is beautiful!  We grow and go in a flow, and the stream is not as predictable as we might think.  The spiritual father suggests trying the monastery for weekly worship; or if a parish for worship, then to anonymously and quietly come and go.  He does not think God wills this hermit to be a parishioner or belong to a parish.  Our conversation included those hermits who were not at all parishioners.  It was not easy to think of any of which we could identify in history, who were.  None came to mind.  The fact of privately professed, Catholic hermits being consecrated religious, helps define the difference and provides reason and understanding.

Mother Teresa was not a hermit by vocation, but neither was she in a religious order after she left it to follow God's call to "help the poorest of the poor." She also was not a member of any parish.  Much later she was called upon to formalize the women working with her, and the Missionaries of Charity were born and organized as a religious community within the Catholic Church.  

The spiritual father and "nothing" conversed on several noted persons in the history of the Church (including John the Baptist) who can come to mind, who were not in parishes.  If they had been in a parish setting, their religious lives and spiritual desires and emphases--well, one can ponder how that could be problematic with the every day efforts of many parish priests and parishioners.  

["Repent!  Repent!"  Now, that would not gain favorable inclusion, would it?  John the Baptist would not likely pass the scrutiny to give a program to elderly parishioners.  And  Jesus did not find loving welcome in His hometown temple, that is for sure, nor other temples of His day, either.]

We can also compare and contrast the various scenarios with today's parishes, as we exist in the present moment.  And a hermit vocation is not the same in the living out as that of a parish priest or one in a religious order, or a lay parishioner, any more than their vocations are the same in the living out as a hermit's vocation.

All this causes this "nothing" Catholic hermit to ponder anew its vocation and the chastisement over eight years ago by the Guardian angel:  "You have not been living nor honoring the hermit life that God has chosen for you and values very much."

That was a jump-startling event, causing more focus and effort in living and honoring the hermit life--which needed to be deepened through prayer, awareness, learning, listening and making some changes in outer and inner daily life.  We can see over time, no matter our vocations, the shifts and the wanderings, and then the herding and guiding that comes from His Real Presence in both tangible and mystical ways.  

It takes earth time, and it takes willingness to adapt and submit and to accept the gradual or sometimes blunt alterations.  Now is a time for adapting and submitting all the more to honoring the hermit life God has chosen and values for this "nothing."  

What causes the heart to sing?

That is a very good question to place beside various thoughts and actions throughout the day and night.  When a stream is flowing as God wills, the water sings as it tumbles over the rocks, or when it slithers silently--barely perceived in stretches of calm pools.

Nothing now must consider for worship: Mass at a nearby monastery.  [It is of a different rite, but that ought not matter in these circumstances.  Presumably, if the apostles were alive today, they would be priests of various rites in either the Western or Eastern Church.]  If "nothing" attempts worship again at a parish, then is to come and go without comment, politely decline answering questions if any, and ignore (as Jesus had said to "nothing" previously) the criticisms and judging from wary priests and parishioners. 

This entire process has nothing to do with anything other than discerning, now, more, the unfolding of God's will regarding group worship in a specific hermit's life.  

God does utilize situations in His created world and with His created people to help guide and direct His each and every created soul.  We are to cast our nets even if we have cast them before.  Time evolves, and the fish move along unseen in water's depths.  Nothing is permanent in this life--no matter if a hermit or monk or nun or priest or lay married or single person.  

We must live and honor the vocations of our lives which God has chosen for us and values very much, and this means there are shifts and adaptations and alterations along the way by which the Lord teaches us faith, hope and charity.  We must remember always that these three greatest of God's gifts go beyond a pew, some structural walls, a town, city, country or continent.

Once we begin to open our eyes underwater as part of the flowing stream, and within the proper, peaceful flow and elements, our hearts begin to sing.  Then we are living and honoring that which God has chosen--even if we see or find that outside the waters, there is hardship and contradiction.

God bless His Real Presence in us!  Little children, let us love one another for God Is Love!