Christian Hermit, Mystic, Beloved Soul of God: Dead to the World in All but Body

I'm trying hard to just get up from bed today, and I pray to be able to ignore the sharp pain in my spine at the area where the two-year-old new fusion ends at the L-2 and L-1--not worry that I've done something or perhaps the deep tissue massage therapist did (unlikely her) that will cause me to have to undergo more spine surgery.  Praying I've done nothing in lasting damage.  The knee is painful but have on brace;  will try the back brace up high as I can get it--see if that helps the sharp pain.  The disorientation seems better with the pump med release increase but need it increased more so that I can better get up; still have to augment with oral medications.

This Arachnoiditis is a grind to endure, a progressive grind, but a relatively slow grind.  

Called the financial advisor, also a good friend and fellow Catholic--but truly and mostly a very good soul, a marvelous Christian.  Going to sell an investment that I was never that keen on due to what to me is an immoral place and pathetic form of entertainment per a Las Vegas hotel investment. Sure, they put on entertaining and decent shows, but all else is decadence in my view of matters.  Going to pay off someone I'd said I'd gift due to the years of help and putting up with my pain and moaning and the downcast and frustration that goes with rather debilitating pain. it is best to do what will attempt to meet the needs per the others' perceptions.  And the perceptions might also be accurate, and perhaps even more should be paid than this extra amount.  But I need to get it off my mind and done rather than my original thought to do it in segments of smaller payments, which I call Penance Payments, for any and all aspects of which I've been a burden and said or done things that the other was hurt by, even if, of course, I did not have bad intentions.

I just don't seem to be able to express thoughts well or maybe too well at times, or easily trigger other as I increasingly have little filter, or maybe haven't had a filter for years with the pain and fatigue that goes with it.And surely knowing this, I could discipline myself, bridle the tongue, just listen and not comment, don't make suggestions or try to help with ideas. Just listen in silence or have a little statement of encouragement, such as, "You are doing great (or well or as best anyone could, etc), and you will figure it out, I know you will.  You will succeed!  I'm so proud of you!"  That would be better than concrete suggestions or agreeing if the person is upset over someone or a situation involving others.

But mainly sometimes people are just ready for me to die or be out of their lives, give them a rest. And in fact, I am actually as if already dead in most temporal regards except this body of pain and the responsibilities of trying to get up and function and tend to upkeep of this temporal dwelling place where my body lives mostly on the bed.

I keep asking God to please help me see and know what are the lessons He mentioned to me in a dream last week, a spiritual, lucid dream the likes of which I've not had in some time--as it is harder for me to perceive and listen and be aware given that I have become more adept at distracting my mind with all types of distractions temporally in attempt to get away from the body of pain.

Perhaps one lesson is to let go of people and not have any expectations, especially those whom I love most--family.  To leave it as "love and prayers", as I mentioned to one who more directly expressed not wanting contact.  That does not mean I cannot love and pray, for I can love others without them loving or liking me, even if it baffles me how especially family persons can decide to dislike someone over what are essentially, idiosyncracies or thoughts or words, I suppose, that trigger and get twisted by the other, and before long I am on the outs when my intention is to be supportive and helpful and to love even if tough love can always be part of love.

So I have this lesson to learn:  love and pray.  Do not share thoughts or suggestions.  And also, stay clear.  When someone does not even want a gift, that is a fairly strong message of having had more than enough of me, when I am barely in others' lives at all--except, I suppose, residing in their heads as an annoyance or trigger point.  I consider a relative who has since being a child, she says, disliked her mother.  No amount of years of talking with her, trying various therapy techniques including mirroring and cajoling, using opposition,  discussing Christian principles of which she would identify herself as Christian.  No amount of explaining her mother's personality and upbringing and career and talent in art--nothing seems to dislodge the dislike and the sense that her mother lives in her mind and might continue to even after her mother passes.  

All I can and ought and must do is:  Love and Pray.  That is what I will do on the other side--that which I hope in God and pray will be the case!  That I will love and pray, and also experience God's love for me regardless if there is any other loving that goes on by others for one another on the other side.

Another lesson is likely:  Patience. I am impatient to have Jesus come back for me and take me with Him. I feel as if I've made such a bungle of my life and not succeeded in anything I'd hoped to do that would be helpful to others and as a parent, to be a very good parent which was my hope and goal, also.

Another lesson or lacking is:  Discipline. I have always lacked discipline it seems to me.  Or maybe the more recent situation has made me realize that I definitely now lack discipline. But I think in the past, too, discipline has been not strong in my existing and going about daily life.  Yet I have discipline in some ways, such as in the very slow progression of trying to do manual labor--or whatever will force me out of bed and try to bring order out of disorder in my immediate surroundings.  

However, with too much pain now, and fatigue, and being brought low in what seems more than being humbled but being that crushed seed yet without germination to grow--I am barely functioning, and I'd not know how to get this all finished and sell and then go where and do what? Succumbing to being fully bed-ridden except up to get something simple to eat in bed or bathroom--I'm not quite mentally there because of the temporal mess I'm in that would not be possible to finish and sell or even get rid of stuff that I no longer can use, such as most of the clothing in the closet--items with waists. The pump bulges and I have to leave open the fly and wear suspenders to keep up anything with a waist to it, and I have one pair of baggy overalls that I've purchased, but am not quite ready to get another to have two to switch off, and wear those exclusively. It's akin to wearing a bag or sack, this lightweight version of overalls made in China by underpaid women in sweat shops.

So I must focus on keeping the payment promise, and once that is easily done, focus on Christ and my love for God, and my love for others which includes letting them go live their lives without my being in them other than as we do with those who have passed--maybe think of them now and then in memory, good or bad. And that, too, is a choice.  I tend to choose to remember those who have passed on with good memories and to appreciate all the more with the passing of time and my gaining perspective in my own life, in understanding the trials or personalities they had in life and why they had them, and express gratitude with thoughts or sometimes a spoken word in the solitude and silence here.  But thought is as good if not better than sound, than verbal or written, as I'm coming to grasp. Thought and heart is what will be on the other side, when I am officially allowed to be taken from his earthly body and from this temporal world--and just look in on it and on those for whom I pray and love--family, friends, strangers, stinkers--and love and pray without anyone hearing or reading words or thinking about me and of course not seeing me.

This is more what dying to self is all about, which likely is the main lesson God wants me to learn before I'll be able to be taken away by Jesus and go with Him to where our souls go--the souls who love and try and believe in God and repent of our sins, flaws, weaknesses and maybe even our human idiosyncracies.

God bless His Real Presence in all of us!

Catholic Hermit Shares Message from Jesus

Does not seem often that Jesus speaks aloud, within, so clearly.  Or perhaps, in actuality, it is not often that this consecrated Catholic hermit is listening closely to His Real Presence.  So many distractions of the temporal world can interfere if not watchful, listening, waiting within the recesses of the mind, heart and soul.

So yesterday, after reading another homily of Pseudo-Macarius on detaching from the distractions of the "world" so that one can choose to think of God, be in God, the hermit thought-flashed its apologies that it struggles with  discipline and will to cut loose from the distractions.

Then the hermit broached in the interior conversation, the recent attempt to pray daily the novena prayer attributed to St. Bridget, one that is said to have been given her by Jesus to pray.  A friend had sent the brochure with the seven-paragraph prayer, each covering a different aspect of Jesus' life and Passion.  One is to pray the Our Father and a Hail Mary prior to praying the words of each paragraph.

This hermit go through four of the seven.  With each, there was an appreciation of the aspects of praying for forgiveness and to improve in areas of life such as giving up sins of the heart, sins of the spirit, sins of the body, and so forth.  But the hermit found itself re-reading and back-tracking sometimes mid-sentence.  Just could not keep the mind focused!  

Ah, the hermit decided to try again the next day, then the next.  And it was this failure to successfully read-pray through a lovely verbal-mental prayer, that this consecrated Catholic hermit bemoaned its guilt and lack of discipline.  How sorry!  Why was it that the hermit delighted in and had the will and discipline--even to cling to--these forms of prayers when it first converted to the Faith 21 years ago?  What has happened?  

In this vein of thought-flashing conversation with the Lord, the hermit proceeded to apologize and self-chastise.  Then through the silent din within of its conversation, the Lord spoke:

Just talk to Me.

Ah.  So simple, so pure, so loving, so honest, so understanding is His Real Presence!  Just talk to Me.

Perhaps He is pleased with the banter, after all, that the hermit puts forth in stream of consciousness, interior converse with God, with Mary, with various saints, angels, and souls known and unknown to the hermit who lived and died and live again in fullness of Light on the other side.

Just that morning, when the young helper and the hermit had a most difficult time unsticking a blade in a tool so we could change it, the hermit had interiorly prayed to the patron saint of tools, whoever that might be, to please help us.  Instantaneously, the blade mechanism dislodged, freeing the effort.
Prior, when we searched diligently for the blade we wanted to install, the hermit asked Little Child Jesus to help us find it, and prayed that aloud.  Lo and behold, the blade was found in an unlikely spot.  "Thank You, Child Jesus," the hermit cheered, but then a rude aside, "but why did You take so long?"  And then an immediate, "Sorry for being so rude, Jesus!  Thankful You helped us find it!"

The other day a friend's husband could not find a swimming pool leak.  His heart is doing poorly, and going under water, holding his breath, caused some frightening, bodily symptoms.  "We need to ask the Prophet Jonah to help your husband," suggested the hermit.  The thought had just popped to mind. Of course, it is the Holy Spirit Who pops these ideas to the fore.  We just have to snatch them out of thin air and put them to action.  "He certainly knows about underwater experiences.  Three days he was in the belly of the whale, and in reality is an archetype for Jesus' three days until resurrection.

Three days later, the friend emailed with much excitement.  That day, her husband surprised himself.  He found the leak after three days of underwater searching.   While he scoffed that it was in answer to requesting Jonah to help locate the leak, attributing it to another silly Catholic superstition (his wife is Catholic; he is not), he did say he appreciated the prayers, all the same.  That counts!  

His wife and this hermit thanked the Holy Spirit and the Prophet Jonah.  No doubts in our minds.

So the brochure of the prayers purported to be ones Jesus asked St. Bridget to pray and promote, remains on the floor here by the mattress in this fixer-upper, Te Deum Hermitage.  The hermit has decided to review the main points of each paragraph of worded prayers, to get the gist.  It has asked St. Bridget to please pray these verbal prayers on behalf of the hermit, as they are lovely prayers, and beautifully worded, but somehow the hermit cannot keep focus when reading them.

The hermit is going to just keep talking to Jesus, telling Him all, sharing all, asking all, loving all, and listening to all that Jesus has to say to the hermit, day in and night out.

"Just talk to Me," Jesus said.

That's good.  That's real.  That's profound.  That's the truth.  And that's simple enough for this tired out old hermit with work galore to try to tend to the prayer requests of others and to keep renovating this fixer upper it got itself into, to be able to pray with full and sincere body, mind, heart, and spirit.  Praise God!