Incline your ear, O LORD; answer me,
for I am afflicted and poor.
Keep my life, for I am devoted to You;
save Your servant who trusts in You.
You are my God.
~Psalm 86:1-2
The question has come in the past few days. Which is first--hermit or mystic? Of what order, and why would it matter?
The answer has come, as well. Born a mystic, thus mystic of greater import. It is how He created me, who I am. The joy that I have been experiencing--that simple "happiness"--is due to my feeling protected, safe, here in this place He chose and allowed for me to be in, this Solus Deus "hermitage", as I may call it, or "anchorhold" or "dwelling," or other descriptive word. Here, I am able to be myself: be who God intended, created, and desires of me, moment by present moment.
And when I write anonymously, I can be myself. When I speak anonymously, I can be myself. When I have chance encounters, I can be myself. I can be who God intended, created, and desires me to be--for Him. Solus Deus, God Alone...and through Him for others.
Today I had a marvelous time at the paint store. It is important for me to paint the walls in Solus Deus to the standard of Omnia pro Deo: All for God. Yet now, manual labor is back in balance after what I had to learn when not in civilization, when in exile for the 5 1/2 years. Then I had to be stripped down to the physical and emotional and spiritual nub. Stripped, given death therapy--necessary, I realize, for this next phase.
I met a woman named Marchella who is a color specialist. She is far more; I so enjoyed her presence of Spirit. I learned some new aspects of color, and the selections I had sensed best, were confirmed, although she returned me to an earlier trim color of which I'm so grateful. This place is all planned out other than some surprise color in the bathrooms and laundry area. I will let the ones unseen yet welcome here, guide me as to what color for these small but utilitarian spaces.
The names are meaningful: Seapearl, Pale Oak, Cloud White. I'm using a combination, which she mixed together for me in a two-gallon bucket: Regal and Aura. There is always much in a name. The ability and authority to name aspects and things in the temporal, are gifts to us from God.
I hope to start painting a first upstairs' bedroom, walls only, on Monday. Tomorrow, the Sabbath, I am returning to what God asks and advises through Isaiah 58.
If you hold back your foot on the sabbath
from following your own pursuits on my holy day;
If you call the sabbath a delight,
and the LORD's holy day honorable;
if you honor it by not following your ways,
seeking your own interests, or speaking with malice,
Then you shall delight in the LORD,
and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth;
I will nourish you with the heritage of Jacob, your father,
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
When in the previous place, out of civilization and being stripped and struggling with immense manual labor, having to literally work my way out of what I'd gotten into--duped, yes, but allowed by God for my soul's good--I worked on whatever days God allowed my body to work. That included Sundays of which I was not ill with a pain siege or down due to one of several injuries. But now, there is no dire necessity, no death therapy to learn and experience.
After the paint store, I went to confession. It is a first sacramental confession in quite a long time, first in new locale.
(The last confession was in other place, out of civilization, and the priest spoke with me for 45 minutes about his special diet monitored by a hospital, and the weekly therapy sessions, complete with details of the other members in his out-patient group. It was fascinating in a way, for I learned much about such matters; I've always had empathy for people who struggle with weight. Yet I realized not a time of sacramental confession. I trusted in the Lord to hear my sins and forgive me in the days, weeks, months, and couple of years following.)
In today's confession, I briefly introducing myself to the lead priest whom I'd not met. My confession summed up my having essentially blocked God from full reign in my life, as a spiritual leper, a mystic, and also in the hermit vocation which I now realize is His protection of me, due to the other--the mystic. And thus, I have been hindering God's utilization of me, very much so. Due to the other priest in the parish using the term "spiritual leper" (did not want me to feel like one, but...) I finally had the enlightenment that a spiritual leper is exactly what I am.
Glorious! Truth and relief! I am so grateful for the priest's either intentional or unrealized, prudent wisdom!
I am to fully embrace and understand God's goodness in this, surrender to Him as Jesus loves the lepers, and all this singular event brought great relief and happiness! I am to be for Him who He intended, and this hermit vocation is His way of protecting me from leaching out into the world--and that includes the parish world.
There is a bit more, not much, for I already was taking too much time--maybe even close to five minutes. It seemed to me that a little background would help, but of course, perhaps not needed at all. The priest asked me what would be a good penance. I stumbled with ideas; so the priest gave a penance that was unexpected. He said he wants me to pray for his parishioners as many of them have experienced loss of what they were used to doing, especially those who are aging and their bodies facing set backs. He said he wanted them to have the "joy" that I have.
What? I told him each morning I wake up to realizing with an "ugh," that I am still in this body of tremendous, unrelenting pain. However, I have been blessed to grasp deeply the mystery of love and suffering, intertwined, and to unite myself with Christ on the Cross.
(It all goes further, but no mention for no time nor really need right then. But it includes my death experience and many other mystical experiences and understandings over the years, about suffering and victim soul opportunities, and even that now being older, I am in the end-run, and can look forward to graduating from this body of pain into eternal love and joy with my Beloved.)
Yes, of course! I will pray for his parishioners for them to grasp and understand, and to have joy in their suffering, for as Mary told me in a locution within the first year after my conversion to Catholicism, "You will find Him in your pain." (I did not tell the priest anything beyond that I will pray for his parishioners....)
But since confession and absolution, I have been feeling a sense of some aspect of my mission that I can try out. It has come with the sense I had when writing about St. Angela of Foligno--the other day in a blog post--that my writing felt constrained and constricted, much as my doctoral lead professor said my dissertation seemed a struggle, and noted that I am a poet at heart. Well, some of it had to do with my heart being created a mystic heart and a heart longing for Christ.
I'm thinking perhaps it would be more helpful to others to speak more, perhaps, anonymously. Or at least to write more of what now and then I write in my blog that I will write about thus and so--some spiritual matter or mystical experience which relays some spiritual matter. Perhaps it would be better relayed by my talking rather than trying to write about what is difficult to write. Speaking of it could maybe create a better understanding or "picture" of various occurrences and the potential hope it might bring others.
I will pray about this, and probably test it out again, and not fear as the devil tends to use someone or other along the way, to try to intimidate and inhibit. And that is the very thing that I confessed--that I have allowed my self to not be utilized by God for His will, and to fulfill my mission that he years ago in my death experience, told me right before He sent me back into my body: Rear your children and fulfill your mission!
My children are reared, thanks to His blessings and graces. But my mission--I have not fulfilled that, or so I am fairly certain. He has had to spend so much effort in pulling me back to Him from my leaching out into the worlds--temporal and parish both, and especially parish world in these past many years. If not physically, then I'd leach out in my mind and desires.
I'm a mystic first and always; I am a hermit in vocation as a vehicle for this life. I will be a mystic after this life; I will not be a hermit after this life. So I must, it seems, free the mystic to be what God wills, and that may require me to cast the nets, to be more willing to share. I can give that a try, perhaps even tomorrow. It is intrinsically linked with God, all that. And I have anonymity; but if that is stolen or destroyed by evil influence in others, then God will deal with all that.
If God does not want me sharing in other formats, or at all, then He will surely let me know. He always does, just like He finally got through to me why He has me to Himself, a spiritual leper, protected and loved.
I'll pray on this, anyway, and see what tomorrow brings. We never know the day nor the hour, after all. Tomorrow I could be able to be my mystic self with His Real Presence and not in this body! That reality is part of my joy, that is for certain. It is all good; it is all love!
God bless His Real Presence in us!
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