120823

 
Mom called, apparently B GOT ALL THEIR JOB APPLICATION RESPONSES TODAY.
MARY ANSWERED OUR PRAYER!!!!!!!!! LEGIT A SMALL MIRACLE.


BK 1340. Everything went well today.
However, we did like... NO typing. I apologize.
This is mostly raw pasting right now. We will type on it on the laptop later, God please give us the time to do so.


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Universalis was both beautiful & powerful today; not only did I seriously tear up but I said "wow" out loud even in the chapel, I couldn't help it =

"The reading introduces Satan, the Tempter. The final bit is a ‘Just So Story’ of the animal world, explaining how the sinewy snake came into being: the proud, fiery serpent lost its legs and was reduced to being a mere big worm."
BACE TALKS ABOUT EXACTLY THIS!!!! I'll never forget how that STRUCK us when we first read it-- how the devil's pride and personality made the tempting itself so much more horrific, knowing what he was doing and how it affected us now. It felt like watching your parents getting murdered in slow motion.
It shook & changed us, like witnessing a bombing; it forced us to take original sin and its consequences very seriously. We NEED to reread it.
But yeah, the ancient serpent lost his legs-- all his limbs, arguably. What does that symbolize, in our eyes? He can no longer stand tall. It was an absolute stripping of his pride. He is now forced lower than all other beasts. He must crawl on his belly, undignified and dirty. He has no feet with which to step on others, or to shake the dust from. He doesn't even have arms to raise in violence or to "manipulate" the environment with, how fitting. But he does have poison.
...

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Last day of this reading plan =

"Even though we will probably never experience a Christmas Eve as eventful as the one Scrooge just lived through, we can choose to wake up Christmas morning and live our lives differently. We can choose to wake up every morning and live differently. We can choose generosity toward others. We can choose to pursue joy in every circumstance. We can choose contentment over complaint. We can choose the mercy of judgment. How? By embracing the One who embodies all of those qualities: By embracing Jesus. The hope Jesus offers through His birth is a “today” hope and an eternal hope. It never ends, and it never changes. If we choose to accept His saving grace and be forgiven— in ways that far exceed Scrooge’s transformation— we can be made wholly new. Will you accept that transforming hope this Christmas?"
...oh my gosh that's what's holding Infi back.
I haven't accepted that grace of forgiveness for hir mortal sin.
I know we confessed it on Divine Mercy Sunday, but... was it not an explicit enough confession? Did we hold back enough detail & circumstance & consequence for the actual sin to be hidden & undisclosed? Were we not sorry enough? Were we unable to be sorry enough because we wouldn't look at the whole thing, let alone admit it was real?
...Infi died and took it all with hir. Ze held ALL the firstperson memory & agony of remorse, that unbearable realization that hir heart had been lethally misguided, that ze had embodied Jeremiah 17:9 to its awful fullest, that ze had been infected with an indelible and incurable evil under the semblance of love. 
...

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

"Maybe you were walking with Jesus a long time ago, but you’ve fallen away in recent years. Maybe this is your first time hearing about a hope that can change everything. Whatever your circumstance, choose today to say yes to Jesus. Like Scrooge, we’re called to come face to face with our shortcomings, admit to God we are sinners, turn to Jesus, who paid the price on the cross, and willingly walk towards the new life offered through Him. It’s as simple— and life-changing— as that."
1) We've NEVER been this close to Jesus before, even as a child, and that's staggering-- because we are WRETCHED and nowhere NEAR as close to Him as we are literally starving to be.
2) ...I don't think we have ever truly understood what hope Jesus embodies & gives. We surely haven't ever thought it possible for us, especially the blissful yet terrifying idea of being made new.
...
3) That seeming "stock phrase" just hit me like a 2x4 to the head. It's supposed to be so succinct. We're saying "yes" TO JESUS, only & entirely. No exceptions. Everything He IS, we must agree to-- as assent that He IS those things, AND as assent to RECEIVE them THROUGH Him.
So, "what is" Jesus, to be agreed to? Look to Mary. Hear her "Fiat?" THAT'S IT. She accepts Gabriel's message AND the unknown future of the Child now fused with her own. She said yes TO JESUS, and everything He was and is forever.
...
Stop rambling. Speak from your heart, not your ego.
...

Now for System relevance.
Jesus, when we say "yes" to Him, CALLS us to=
4) come FACE TO FACE with our "shortcomings".
5) Admit TO GOD that WE ARE sinners.
6) Turn to Jesus on the Cross, where He alone "paid the price."
7) WILLINGLY walk towards the new life offered through Him. There's a lot here.
1) willingly. This is a CHOICE 
2) walk. This is an ACTIVE, CONTINUOUS MOVEMENT.
3) THE. there is NO OTHER. No alternative, no substitute.
4) new. There has never been something like this before.
5) life. NO DEATH.
6) offered. It is NOT forced, or imposed, or even mandated.
7) through. Not by, or from, or with, or anything so secondary. THROUGH. This is direct, tangible, intimate, unitive.
8) Him. Only Him.


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A very consoling & sobering Crosswalk article =

"The Christmas season is filled with activities, often to the point of filling our calendars and crowding out peace in our lives. If grief and suffering follow us into the holiday festivities, we might be tempted to just do more in order not to feel the sadness. But what we really want is peace, [which] won’t be found in doing more but in resting... you are allowed to gently decline invitations if needed, to keep your heart from feeling overwhelmed. Just don’t shy away from everyone, remembering that there is always peace and rest when your mind is set on Jesus. Whatever else you do, take time to read the Bible daily and spend some quiet time each day pouring your heart out to Jesus. Know you can always come to Him, and when you do, there is rest."
1) ...We're actually still crowding out our peace with scheduled events, unconsciously, even without access to a car. We still check everything in the bulletin, we still go to every Mass possible, we still spend hours every day praying or reading Scripture or doing chores. We don't take ANY time to think or feel. We are still using religion as a drug and that's terribly irreverent, to say the very least.
2) That's point two: there is an ABYSS OF GRIEF & MOURNING IN OUR HEART and we are blindly throwing truckloads of data & dogma & distraction in there to try to "fill it up" and it's not actually working. Like that Wednesday night where we broke down sobbing over jazz piano carols.
...
3) EVERY NIGHT I SAY THIS, secretly so. "I'm so tired." "When will I get to sit down and rest?" "God help me I'm exhausted." Etc. I need peace, and that means YES, I DO HAVE TO SIT DOWN AND NOT DO ANYTHING ELSE FOR A MINUTE.
But I can't stop running.
...
4) Ironically, I'm burning both ends. I'm declining everything but church, all but isolating, and YET it's BECAUSE I won't decline anything on my personal calendar, the "daily grind" which is REALLY burning me out.
...
5) Is my mind truly set on Jesus? If I'm treating my prayers as a chore rather than a conversation, then no, it's not set on Him. It's set on "getting done so I can rest." How ironic.
Am I afraid to STOP and TALK to Him, because that sorrow might come up when it's not being shoved down by nonstop motion?
...
6) We actually realized LAST NIGHT that with all this ridiculous faithpasting, we HAVEN'T BEEN READING THE BIBLE, and it IS MAKING US ABSOLUTELY MISERABLE. I am so tired of spending hours on transcribing devotional books & videos, then just parroting them back in different words and passing it off as a personal reflection. It's all become so shallow; we're not letting anything go deep. I'm sick of it.
We want to just STOP and RETURN TO JOHN 12 for heavens sakes. We miss it so much.
...
7) ...as I sadly said, we're actually afraid to talk to Jesus, because once we start "pouring out our heart," there's no stopping the floodwaters.
And yet, didn't Jesus calm the storms? Do you seriously think He wants you to drown, to gasp & struggle in the depths without any help, that it would be "for your highest good"? Why do you never see any other option for yourself-- just the detachment, the disinterest, the distance? You're still thinking Jesus would treat you differently than He treated Peter-- that His Mercy "looks different" for you.
...


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This fascinating bit from a USC article =

“Christmas requires the darkness. Children know this intuitively. The holiday we’ve spun from sugarplums and annual TV specials can’t exist without those dark edges where imagination blooms. Santa won’t come unless you’re sound asleep, or so we admonish our kids each year. And it’s not a coincidence that this particular holiday coincides... with the coldest, darkest days of the year. The safe and sweet Christmas we’re accustomed to today is a relatively recent invention. Much older is the notion that December is when monsters stalk the night threatening punishment and the veil between ours and the spirit world is especially thin... the sense that Advent was a “thin space” in time, when we humans have more than the usual access to the spirit world... And, for those of us who are Christians, this gloom heightens the joy that enters the world on December 25. The cold descends. The Earth dies. Monsters and spirits walk amongst us. And God enters the world as a human light shining forth in that darkness."
YES!! Like the Crosswalk article reminded us, Jesus didn't come into a "happy sugarplum wonderland," but into the dead of night, in a dark cave, in the piercing cold. This was entirely ON PURPOSE. Like in the very Beginning, the Light needed the deepest shadows to shine through in its fullest glory.
This ALSO ties in to the monsters. Jesus came into this season FROM "the spirit world" to VANQUISH those evil creeps on their own turf, in their prime time.
...