The abdominal discomfort, the stomach nausea, the intestinal pain--could not get to sleep until 4 a.m. but between watching documentaries quite helpful on this little window to the world and praying to the Lord and praying for any souls of whom I've wounded, insulted, or offended--any souls who the Holy Spirit brought to mind--I was able to get up and be at the new dentist's before 9 a.m.
The crown is not his favorite or preference in material or aperture or formation, but he said the least invasive and simplest way to remedy the gap is to replace a filling on the molar beside it, and then fill the gap with some filling so food will not cause gum infection or disease. He noted, as I also told him the travails of this tooth's crown, that the roughness of edge of crown is now fairly smoothed.
This dentist, close by Solus Deus Hermitage, smoothed out a bit more, gave a tip on making a knot in floss to help get food out, and that he did not see in the x-rays taken that the tooth needs a root canal. However, if the pain persists over time, and after new filling and filling in gap from this crown and molar perhaps shifting, a root canal might be needed down the dental road....
So grateful for the second opinion, and while this dentist's personality is less sociable than the one I have appreciated and liked up until this crown ordeal--and being foisted to the son whose heart and temperament does not seem to be enmeshed in his new dental career--and while the cost is a bit more with this calmer, more sedate dentist, he is close by, younger than the dentist whose son likely will be the one by whom patients will increasingly be seen and treated.
Expunge the negatives! Go against my long-held flaw of going along with what is not best or is outright wrong, or of whom the inner sensing is waving red flags. I will make an appointment for a replacement filling, filling the gap between crown and tooth next to it, and make an appointment for tooth cleaning. Just do it, and thank God for the very good experiences with the other dentist, and pray for his son entering into the dental career--for whatever needs the young man may have in attitude, humility, and honesty.
As for my own body, mind, heart, and soul on this traditional date of January 6 Epiphany, I had prayed sometime in the wee hours, most sincerely and with depth of soul: Lord, please send help. I did not pray with exclamation or despair or desperation; I prayed with the weariness that so much suffering causes over temporal time and life of increased suffering of all types.
I admit I was rather hoping for a dream that I'd be consciously aware upon waking, or of a bilocation experience in which I'd be actually helping some soul or souls, as has occurred off and on in the past weeks, months, years. I thought perhaps one of my parents or my angel would appear to me, or Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, or even Melchior, Balthasar, or Caspar (tradition-held names of the three wise men or prophet-oracles from the East) who sought and found Jesus Christ the infant King!
Rather, the documentaries come along--one's I'd not ordinarily think to watch. This morning after the new dentist appointment, I needed to be in bed trying to manage the radiating pain with it's sickening effects. I watched a documentary by a young man with autism, who sought interviews with Native American healers, medicine men and women, as he thought their wisdom and experience might help him manage his anger and outbursts.
The interviews provided me with reminders of God's providence and the surroundings of His created, natural world. Some of the wisdoms included knowing we are here for a purpose, a holy and good purpose, and thus how we are born, such as the young man with autism, or one of the Native American healers discussed his daughter born with Downs Syndrome, or what aspects we have in our lives that are part of us, affect us, or are effects of--such as--suffering. The healers spoke of embracing and accepting as positive and all goodness and purposeful, what the world often categorizes as afflictions.
The healers also suggested various techniques for the young man to do anywhere, anytime, to connect with nature, with God, with his body, mind, heart, and soul in positive, healing, loving ways. The calm and peaceful voices and thoughts of the Native American healers were gifts from God. Help sent; help received! Oh--one healer emphasized praising God for all things, for our afflictions, for our purposes in how we came into this world and the experiences we've lived along this journey.
The autistic young man thus was given the positive reality of his autism, and a sense of worth for the ways in which his autism could help others with compassion, with understanding others better, with what the young man could teach others with disabilities--and that disabilities are positive gifts and opportunities--not negative flaws and burdens. Once more, we see the love and holiness that God brings to our lives, our bodies, minds, hearts, and souls, when we embrace gratefully with love and providential meaning, all that we or others have considered to be detriments.
A couple other documentaries watched last night were of the life after death research and also of those with more pronounced gifts in the inner senses--the inner sight, hearing, touch/sensing.... I prayed about the various and numerous mystical experiences the Lord has given over the years, and that I have not written in any organized manner of these showings, visions, locutions, insights, interactions--miracles.
In one of the interviews in one of the documentaries, a woman who had experienced a near-death experience, mentioned she'd not had anyone to talk with about the experience. All the interviewees commented that the death or near-death experiences had profoundly altered their lives. Some were helping others in different ways after the pivotal experiences, or found that their spiritual lives had been opened up upon their return. All said with confidence, that they no longer feared death, and that there is definitely life after death.
As Christians, and especially myself as a Catholic, I know with reality of what it is to die, and how glorious is passing over. I also know that suffering has value and is a gift--although pain and debilitation of body, mind, emotions do challenge us, especially those of us who have long-term suffering that in some level and dimension, we have agreed to suffer as part of our mission, and in union with Christ's reparative suffering. It seems we agree in heights of courage or in in being upswept in the Holy Spirit, in a time of great clarity of God's presence; we agree to that which, also, in the heights of suffering (seems more positive than "depths"!), se seem to question why we agreed to suffer, or if we even did! The conscious mind and body can balk when the going gets tough.
So I've been praying for all those I've hurt or caused lasting wounds--for I cannot assume that people forgive as God forgives, or as readily as I am willing to forgive. Some I have wounded without intending, could be wounded for life depending upon their own spiritual development; to be able to forgive and then also to forget enough for the mental and emotional wounds to heal, for scars to not be noticed or forgotten--this is best for all of us, but not all grasp the needfulness of forgiving and forgetting. It can take years of life to do so, not only the forgiving but especially the forgetting part.
And I've been praying for God to use me as He wills--and for me to be more open and willing to spend time and give space to quiet, stilled contemplation of the Holy Trinity. I realized in the quiet of the long night and morning hours, that I have not only been avoiding God in these ways, but I have not been "giving" or availing myself to the types of gifts He has given me in this life--gifts of the mystical and interior life, of which He had told me years ago I would write, and that I would teach, and that I was to write of these matters of the spiritual and how men and women can stabilize their emotions through the spiritual--that of the Holy Spirit.
I considered the various souls I've encountered who have come to me from the other side, and the indications of their progression based upon some repeated cues and clues. Of how it feels to not be on this earth, of various messages given, and of course, the reminder the life after death documentaries gave as to our main purpose for being on earth is to love, to learn to love. I have not forgotten when the Lord told me that in the night years ago, in answer to a depth-question my son, then a little boy, had asked me at bedtime. Why are we alive? What is the reason we are born? What is the reason for all this--for life?
The answer came as I was awakened in the night to receive it, alert and astounded in the clarity and the profound simplicity of the answer. "The purpose of life is to love...to love to learn to love!"
I'm opening my heart and soul, I'm renewing an offering of myself to God, that He do with me whatever He wills and wants. I am agreeing to the suffering, and this includes of the spiritual work, the spiritual prayer and being receptive to messages and insights that I'm to write, and it includes my willingness to try to write more purposefully, and it also includes if He wills me to mostly suffer, or totally suffer, I will try, by and in His grace, to do as He asks and wants of me. That includes being prepared to pass over from this temporal life to ongoing progression on the other side, in whatever I am to learn that I have not learned here.
Mercy! I can even consciously think of many things I have not learned here! There are always the finer degrees of the virtues! I candidly look at my life and the wounds I've caused and people I've hurt--a type of life-review going on as I live and breathe. I consider the main purpose--that of learning to love--and to love to learn to love! I must learn to love those I also must free and from whom I'm to be freed for whatever holy reasons--for there is a holy aspect of separating out when God wills, and of drawing in when God wills. There is holiness when God wills or allows the weaving in and out of our temporal interactions and relationships.
I've also considered the compassion I can have for others, when I make time and avail myself to loving consider why others may act or react the way they do, and why I act and react the way I do. It is really not enough to "know" ourselves, but in order to learn to love, we must learn to "know" others, as well. In knowing, we will come to understand why some persons are only for a short time in our lives, or us in theirs. We can then understand why some physically die earlier than we or they'd like, or why people seem to emotionally or mentally die, or are as if dead physically or to us or us to them, while yet physically alive.
Concerning the hermit for whom I'm praying extra these three days of Epiphany, since confession, while it is good to have some light-heartedness and humor regarding the inanity of what could seem negative situation, the Lord has been pointing out to me why she may react to me and what I write--beyond her temperament or personality being more prone to certain other mindset than mine. I have been shown--reminded--that she has not had the opportunities I've had--that of marriage, of children, of marital love, of doctoral and post-doctoral coursework, mysticism, or of whatever else may provoke some hidden or unknown-to-her recessive desire or sorrow, regret or envy.
And while she no doubt has many qualities and experiences that I do not nor have had, perhaps my confidence and contentment with what I've been given and who I am could be an irritation. Or, it could be simply that having another consecrated Catholic hermit who consistently writes online, is somehow ego-threatening to the person. The Lord has been showing me how positive it is for readers to have the varying viewpoints and hermit vocation experiences, the privately v publicly professed types of consecrated hermit life in the Church. And, our views can help us to seek God's specific will in His guiding our individual vocations, plus hone our writing styles and topics.
Regardless, in loving the lady hermit for who she is and for her being a beloved soul of God's creation, my compassion, understanding, and admiration of her perseverance and her differing views and varied type of hermit life are increasing by the moments. My mind and heart are genuine and filled with love and joy for this hermit colleague.
The others for whom I'm praying specifically in these three epiphanic days, I have already considered deeply over time, and the Lord has shown me ways in which I irritate them, or have wounded, and He has likewise increased my compassion and understanding of these "loves" of mine despite the reality of my sins, and of their needing space or freedom, or of my recognizing that our time of closer interaction has in God's will and allowance, lessened or ceased--for now.
Always in our temporal lives, we must consider all in the Order of the Present Moment, and all experiences and interactions to be temporary: for now. We tend not to know what God has planned just around the corner or in the next moment, minute or day, year or decade.
From The First Letter of John 4:1-6:
"You belong to God, children, and you have conquered them, for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They belong to the world; accordingly, their teaching belongs to the world, and the world listens to them. We belong to God, and anyone who knows God listens to us, while anyone who does not belong to God refuses to hear us. This is how we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit."
Thank you, Lord, for having sent all manner and means of help this day! I know if I remain humbly aware and ever grateful, I will see and know that you are sending me help incessantly!
God bless His Real Presence in us!
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