Writing is such an integral part of my existence, including pain management. The pain requires "activity" of sorts to help distract, but the pain also needs lots of rest; so the body needs to take many breaks and sometimes is in bed for days or mostly in bed over weeks, or now it's been over a year. The type of pain over a year ago had more to do with the spinal cord increasingly being pinched off--nearly totally, plus the other nerves impeded and a disintegrated vertebra and bone spurs a' plenty. All that is repaired, but the pain post surgery has more to do with the Adhesive Arachnoiditis.
So it goes. Ordered some better quality B-complex that the pain doctor had told me would absorb best in the system. B-complex plus separate, added B-12 helps with pain, as does Vitamin D in far more amounts than a non-pained body. But I had some less-absorptive B-Complex here in Solus Deus Hermitage, and I like to be thrifty. I decided to use up what I have before re-ordering the B-complex methylcobalamin.
But I woke up this morning with the thought (brought by my angel or Holy Spirit or some caring being from the other side) in my mind of what might help the bodily fatigue and added pain. I also took an iron supplement and am trying to drink more water as well as with plant protein powder. I tend to not eat much as the body seems not to require much food, am more vegan than not--although I have no particular reason. I prefer vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes, grains; but I'm not rigid against eating meat or fish. Regardless, it will take a month, perhaps, to notice improvement if some of this draining pain and fatigue is helped by the methylcobalamin form of B-complex.
And yes, I praise God for being able to purchase vitamins and supplements of various types, and healthy food which tends toward a diet that is non-inflammatory type. As I have quipped in the past and it serves a very good purpose and with some humor as I age: We do our best with what we've got left!
Today is the 100th Anniversary of St. Joan of Arc's canonization on May 16, 1920. Pope Benedict XVI described her trial in May of 1431 as "a distressing page in the history of holiness and also an illuminating page on the mystery of the Church which, according to the words of the Second Vatican Council, is 'at once holy and always in need of purification' (Lumen Gentium, n. 8)."
At the time of the trial the Catholic clerics had their minds made up to burn her at the stake in Rouen's [France] marketplace. They were opposed to her politically as well as found her mystical gifts unnerving. She died by fire on the morning of May 30, repeating the Holy Name of Jesus as her soul left her 19-year-old body.
In 2011, Pope Benedict XVI said of St. Joan, "...the Name of Jesus, invoked by our Saint until the very last moments of her earthly life was like the continuous breathing of her soul, like the beating of her heart, the centre of her whole life...with her luminous witness St. Joan of Arc invites us to a high standard of Christian living: to make prayer the guiding motive of our days; to have full trust in doing God's will, whatever it may be; to live charity without favouritism, without limits and drawing, like her, from the love of Jesus a profound love for the Church."
I so love Jeanne d'Arc! This morning I listened to Leonard Cohen's creation of the song in her honor, sung as a duet with Jennifer Warnes, including creative juxtaposition of art representative of the saint. [link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtwUyDPXROQ]. In fact, I've been praying, asking Joan of Arc to help me find God's will and way for my embarkation to the New Direction. She is answering my request, helping me today.
While the ingredients, per se, of the New Direction remain on "simmer", ideas are solidifying in the metaphoric slow-cooker. Back up a day. Yesterday I had a lengthy conversation with Dr. H. I caught him up-to-date as best I could, on the CL603 dilemma I faced with the increasing lack of peace of the Holy Spirit that God willed what He had not desired for 20 years. I'd answered in writing the questions had been asked. But the major aspect for me personally, was the looming interview with a non-cleric that would be most difficult to avoid aspects of my inner life, my mystical experiences. The lack of inner peace grew.
Thus, Fr. V. emailed and suggested I email the bishop and explain--share my "story" with him so that he might understand my spiritual predicament as well as the conviction and vision/locution and other reasons why all these years, living the hermit vocation without public profession or as a diocese hermit, seemed God's will and also was best for hidden life other than my anonymous writing. Then, Fr. V. said, if the bishop approved of my living the vocation as I had been, or if not, I was to simply go forth living the hermit life God had chosen for me, and live it as a fulfilled hermit.
It took a day to absorb the bishop's response. I repeated in my words in an email to the chancellor, to see if I was grasping the bishop's email to me. Yes, I had grasped it, the chancellor replied to my encapsulation, to wit: "I think I am grasping what Bishop means. A canon law does not seem to be necessary; it does not validate a vocation. It is but an official recognition, of which I do not need. I must simply keep on living the life to which God has called me. "
However, there remains the turning point, the major shift in life phase that I've been sensing with increasing magnitude and inner energy--if not some inner angst. Through the trial, of sorts, of build up of canon law approval process and the growing certitude within that God wanted me to in essence choose Him over the CL603 "official" recognition, I was taken through a desert all its own, of great sense of loss and abandonment.
I am brought to face the reality that I did not sense, do not--with increasing means over the 25 years of God's gradually removing me--fit in with the temporal Catholic world and not in parishes, per se. This is difficult to explain, for yes, I am part of the Body of Christ, but my purpose and mission involves the mystical realm, and the Lord has been showing me by His withdrawing me in more temporal, tangible ways over time--despite my lack of cooperation. Yet through various efforts all very good, of my offering my temporal gifts and talents to the temporal aspects of parishes and Church, the Lord always pulled me out although sometimes allowed what I'd offered to remain and continue in the corporal and spiritual works of mercy organized and developed.
But sometimes not; in many instances the Lord allowed the efforts to dissolve, which I could not understand the why, which added to the upset. Yet I would continue on, trying yet again, until the Lord had my angel show me to the Stairway to Heaven. The mystical ecstasy during Masses began and remained no matter prayer nor temporal efforts, for the mystical phenomenon to stop.
Yesterday Dr. H. asked me why I'd be wanting to develop, organize, lead or set up others to lead various good works in parishes or dioceses, when I had this inner life and also was called to the hermit vocation? I explained that I felt guilty, of sorts, that God had given me gifts and talents, educational background and skills, and I kept thinking it was wrong for me not to offer myself in that way to the temporal Church.
Indeed, in one major instance that the Virgin Mary came to me in a dream and instructed me in a major outreach I was to organize and lead--and also in a couple of miraculous grants bringing huge sums of money to a parish school and soup kitchen--those kept going even though the Lord plucked me out. Was a terribly painful episode. I have not understood other than a penance. Was soon after that the Lord made it known to me that He chose for me the hermit vocation--a vocation that I'd not have ever chosen for myself nor even knew much about at the time.
Yet as I write this now, I get it! For the first time in all these years, I realize the chronology: the soup kitchen the Virgin Mary had me develop and the grants written were prior to my hermit profession and vow; the other efforts afterward when I left the hometown and was called to a city, I was then in my hermit life. And while I had some assignments for God that I had to complete which brought their own trials and sufferings, the offerings in organizing and developing what would otherwise be excellent for parishes and the diocese--were oddly not allowed to flourish--and I emphasize oddly. There is no other logical explanation why my efforts in offering temporal gifts, talents, education did not flourish after being developed, and not even being able to be a lector or a sacristan lasted when the mystical ecstasies at Mass began.
God was enforcing and forming my hermit life; and He also was trying to get me to understand that I did not belong to that world. I was shown that, told it in locutions, and also told it in temporal ways. I literally had priests tell me as such; one listed very positive things of me, but said I could not come to his parish because a mystic like me--the parishioners would crucify me, and he'd not be able to stop them.
Then I moved to a location in which there was one small parish, and the priest was most uncomfortable with my presence; and the state at Mass was as if I'd be chained in hell. My (late) spiritual father told me not to go--to have spiritual communion in my hermitage. Then a new priest came a two years later, but he did not want me at Mass due to the mystical state. So I remained away and had spiritual communion until finally that priest had a couple bring Communion on Sundays when they were able.
Up to the past year and a half in this diocese. The Lord brought me here due to temporal aspects: financial feasibility, better climate for pain situation, pain doctor, and excellent surgeon (as it turns out desperately needed spine surgery). The parish priest wanted me to be at Mass but with needed caution, in a day chapel; but even being at Mass has not been for a long time due to the spine surgery, and now COVID-19: older adults are to not come to Mass until further notice, potentially not until a vaccine is available.
And all this back history helps me in facing what God has been trying for a long earth-time, to get me to grasp. I truly need to stop stressing and freaking out over what did not make sense to me, or seemed surely not right. I truly do not belong in the temporal Catholic world, not in the parishes, not in religious orders, and not as a specific CL603 hermit. But I do belong in His Church; I do have a "place" in the Church. I belong in the mystical Catholic world; I am to be a Catholic hermit but no need to be officially recognized as the canon law does not validate the vocation, anyway. God validates the vocation by His choosing and how one lives it. My "place" is in the mystical Church and as a mystic, which leads me to the embarkation in the New Direction.
There is a growing peace of understanding, of my letting go of that which I have not understood as to why I was to let go. It would be difficult for more temporally-utilized souls to grasp, for even I could not "see" why or how God would not want what seems so good, why I was prohibited one way or another or several. Even now, it is irrefutable, even down to the bishop's email which was such good news I could not comprehend what he was saying for a day. Needed to go over it and asked Fr. V. to go over it to help me understand if this means I can be what God chose for me--a Catholic hermit but in the way He wills. It makes much sense, of course, that the canon law recognized and diocese hermit in a parish would not be advisable or helpful to church or to mystic hermit.
And that is where the Lord has been leading me today in clearer understanding of the New Direction. It is actually where He's had me for some time--really since my angel told me I was being taken to the Stairway to Heaven shortly before the ecstasies during Masses began. I was being taken out of the temporal Catholic world, in essence as well as increasingly in tangible, practical, physicality. Even the canon law aspect for a hermit is suited for non-mystic, more temporal Catholic world persons. Perhaps that is even why the CL603 hermit who also writes of hermit life regularly, has been at odds with my Catholic hermit vocation and how God unfolds it, as well as my writing.
Different brushstrokes by the Master Artist on the same Masterpiece of His One Catholic and Apostolic Church. But frankly, I have run out of much at all to write about of the hermit vocation. It is a vehicle, is the vocation, to get a soul from one point to another in the spiritual journey. It will be my vehicle for life as I assume it will be for the CL603 hermit/s. Not often in history has the Lord called a hermit out of the vocation to some other of His purposes.
And while I've been shown that the CL603 hermit vocation has taken on a different format from the traditional historical hermit vocation, I have nothing more to write of the differences; I've written plenty, and it is not even subject matter that my mind, heart, and soul enjoys. That tells one, in itself, that my choosing what God chose for me as His hermit is best for a mystic soul who would no more fit into the canon law public profession and diocese recognition than I did in leading parish or diocese programs and outreach activities.
I've written much about hermit saints and hermit ways and hermit traditions and history, and hermit writings and wisdoms. I have written, though, also, of the daily type unfolding of my life as a consecrated Catholic hermit (not CL603 type), and of various other aspects of my spiritual journey which has been from my viewpoint both blessed and chaotic. But I really have nothing more to write on the hermit vocation "vehicle". I leave that to others to write-- CL603 in all aspects they desire or on whatever else of hermit vocation.
Back to yesterday's phone call. Dr. H. said he'd been thinking about me prior to our phone discussion, as we've known each other for 35 years. He said, he had to admit, that he would never want to have to live my life. We laughed. I wouldn't want it, either; but I've got it, and perhaps it will proceed with fewer--at least external--jolts and lightning bolts in whatever time remains for me on this earth, than the previous years.
But as for a New Direction, yes. I am getting it, Lord, my mind is getting it; and I am fully, whole-heartedly on board! Even my soul is eager and thankful and pleased with the New Direction! My hermit vocation vehicle remains as always, but it is like someone who has been driving a vehicle so long, for years and years, that it is as if driving and the vehicle are second-nature. There is far more at hand, before me, that God desires of me.
I see the holy mountain as through the clearing fog. Who is it that will climb the holy mountain? The Scriptures describe. Becoming a sherpa or finding one or several, will be helpful. I'm embarking in the New Direction. The plans are still simmering, but nearly cooked and to be served, garnishes to be decided upon.
God bless His Real Presence in us!
