While I can know in the intellect and try, try again to "owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another" (Rom 13:8), it is not easy, and I so often fail. The commandments, we are told by Jesus, culminate in loving God and loving others as ourselves, or as God loves us. He loves us perfectly.
Awaking this morning after a dream, the pain was so great that it took actual effort to embrace it the same as if I would embrace less pain or some uplifting miracle that thrills. Then I consider that God's love, always, is the miracle that thrills, and His love is freely given even despite my forced efforts to not be grumpy, to not think about physical and various temporal, emotional, aspects, that for years my life has had to forfeit.
I'm practicing forcing that which is not natural to me, such as making myself embrace much higher pain today, and the reality that my pain is still worse now than before surgery, even though the pain doctor concluded it is better, for he wants it to be. He is very compassionate, and so he embraced my saying that my lumbar does not feel as "blown out" as it felt at times prior to surgery, and he let slide my saying the pain level is worse still, am yet on higher pain meds than before surgery, and left left foot and lower leg goes numb after walking.
I am pleased with the lumbar feeling more stable, yet I am also all right with the reality. When I turn off the ice pump as it has started causing a horrible itching when the skin/tissues gets too cold, the nerve pain is full-on awful from lumbar down hips and legs into feet. This I am practicing embracing with love and joy, for it is like forcing a smile--of which studies have shown a forced smile releases endorphins, also, as does a genuine smile. Over time, I hope in God my embrace with equal praise of God the painful and the good will become natural and autonomic.
And perhaps I can practice love in this way, as well. For my love of God and of others and probably somewhat of self, obviously needs improvement. Love comes from God; ability to love is a grace of God. Am praying for the grace to love increasingly, steadily, responsibly, and unconditionally. Yet again, thinking of R, the man who was given the amazing ability to transcend physical pain and love all others and all of God's creation, to view all from a point of gratitude, I realized what a miracle and most blessed gift!
I'm focusing on how wondrous even a small portion of grace to love others as God loves, to love even when exhausted, or to love despite my other flaws and imperfections, to love such as how saints came to a point in their spiritual progression of loving those repugnant, to overcome themselves to that degree to embrace lepers as well as those who were about to kill them. (Thinking of the martyrs who accepted death at the hands of enemies, and like St. Thomas More--like Jesus--forgave before horrific deaths.)
I might write separately on a thought I've had, and that is that my life has been formed by suffering for many years, and it seems suffering has altered me. I am not seeing that the alteration in some aspects are for the better. Thus, I am accepting more so, the realistic need to be limited, to appreciate and see what is becoming more understandable, that the Lord keep me in protective custody, that He provide more solitary confinement.
I am exhausted from suffering, and I have far less custody over myself when in higher pain than before, with consistency of more pain and being older, as well. As I've mentioned previously, this recent spine surgery, now over 15 weeks ago, has been more than I anticipated in the suffering and recovery. I'm not able to manage much other than myself, and even that is challenging. So I've accepted letting go of quite a bit in the way of interactions.
While I have great remorse for my inability to, for example, be a trusted friend, an active or engaging friend, parent, parishioner, and I recognize my flaws and limitations, just as a child who immaturely gets in trouble is reprimanded and put in time out or is "grounded" or sent to his room, I need to embrace the good of restriction.
Love is boundless, but my body is not. Focusing on the cross of Christ on the wall across from where I'm lying on the bed, I place my trust in Him to teach me, to grace me, with the love of His heart, with the ability to love boundlessly yet without the temporal aspects that can distract and taint holy love.
For whatever various reasons, valid reasons even if not excuses for doing wrong, some children with too many activities, too much stimulation, too many people to contend with, or lack of sleep or other ailments, do better in moderated, quieted and focused environments. I'd say that is me! I've been in over my head for years, being just as the Lord told me in 1988--"You are too easily drawn out into the world; you need this [suffering, pain] good strong reminder, or you will be off, drawn out again."
With great hope in God, as I ponder today's Mass readings, I am filled with God's hope and assurance, in faith, that I will be able to love, to learn to love, in increasing depths and degrees of love, including that of loving God in Himself and others as God loves. This must be done in a far greater temporal and spiritual simplicity than previously, and in stricter separation from the world, in the silence of solitude. I must avail myself to learning love, to receiving God's grace of love, bit by bit, or if He wills, in some miraculous infusion. I am facing my limitations and obstacles, and by what modality of learning is best suited for my particular body, mind, heart, and soul.
Perhaps without the years of suffering, especially the physical pain, or had I not pushed to continue as "normal" as possible in temporal aspects, I might have learned how to love one another to higher degree, to love God in Himself, to not fluctuate like a kite in too strong of winds and without a tail.
So we will see how it is this way, more simplified and not drawn out, in God's protective custody. The famous advice from a desert father is pertinent here: Go into your cell, and [alone with God] your cell will teach you." I'm also reminded to employ, in practical and whatever other ways, the Nine S' which are the platform of my hermit rule of life, the perfect rule with is the Gospel Rule.
(Mercy! Even trying to live the Gospel teachings is not successful when I've got too many temporal pots on the stove, and a major one threatening to boil over, being constant pain, and others such as my human flaws and foibles, and this interest or that, and another my mystic self, and then family and friends--too many pots on the stove when I can barely think straight to literally cook something for myself. It is not worth the missteps, the causing hurt, or of trying to keep up beyond my capabilities. I'm giving over to God, to be retrained, to relearn love...to love, to love to learn to simply love.)
The Nine S' given me years ago--the first three given me after my hermit profession and vows, the remaining six by the Holy Spirit, over several, ensuing days in late 2000, early 2001; they are:
silence...solitude...slowness; suffering...selflessness...simplicity...stillness...stability...serenity.
From Romans 13:8-10:
"Brothers and sisters:
Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another;
for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
The commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery;
you shall not kill,
you shall not steal;
you shall not covet,'
and whatever other commandment there may be,
are summed up in this saying, namely,
'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'
Love does no evil to the neighbor;
hence, love is the fulfillment of the law."
God bless His Real Presence in us!
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