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[prismaticbleed]

 

Thanksgiving Mass

Cemetery visit
DAD VISIT!! 🧡
He wants to buy me winter boots?? That's really sweet. Gonna go to BOSCOVS TOMORROW WITH HIM to do so!!
Man we haven't done something together in YEARS.


José is BLASTING Spanish ballads haha. God bless that dude.

BK at 2pm THAT'S 21 HOURS FASTING BRO

Already allergy terror over ONE TINY BRUSSELS SPROUT.
Legit had to take Benadryl to stave off the panic attack. This is insane.

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GUESS WHAT WE'RE DOING TODAY.

"Is this desire to see Jesus capable of fulfilment in our present state, and, if so, how? The promise I want particularly to speak of is, 'He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father... and I will manifest Myself to him'. 'If a man love Me,' said our Lord, 'He will keep My words, My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our abode with him.' This shows that the vision is made to the heart and soul, and it is made to the man who walks steadily in the path of obedience. Do not lose sight of the condition! We must cultivate that holiness without which, we are told, no man shall see the Lord. Each one of us has an enemy whose ceaseless object it is to hinder us from seeing Jesus. 'The God of this world hath blinded the eyes of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ should shine into their hearts'... Do not put this matter off till a more 'convenient' season. Seek Him earnestly, very earnestly, in the pages of His Holy Word, where He does reveal Himself, and if only you do this persistently and believingly, you must succeed."
I never understood that PROMISE in this light before. But its strikingly apparent: if Jesus comes to abide in us, we will inevitably "see Him"; He is sharing our most intimate living space!
But break it down:
1) Jesus will "manifest Himself"-- a word meaning "to clearly reveal to the eye or the understanding, open to view or comprehension"-- ONLY to those who LOVE HIM.
2) IF we truly love Him, we WILL keep His Commandments.
3) This manifestation happens because the FATHER loves the person in question???
4) This manifestation occurs THROUGH the Father AND the Son making their abode in the lovingly obedient heart.
5) Therefore, this manifestation is not "visible to the eye," but to the eyes of the heart, which alone are able to see the Truth, which is in the Spirit.
6) This vision, this abiding, this revelation, HINGES ON HOLINESS, which is apparently rooted in OBEDIENT LOVE.
7) To reemphasize: YOU CANNOT SEE GOD WITHOUT HOLINESS.
8) The devil will do all in his power to rob us of this "sight."
9) The last line is a beautiful paradox-- it claims we CAN see Jesus IN HIS WORD, through faithful persistent searching. This seems to imply that we can "find Him ourselves." But we cannot. An atheist can have Scripture memorized and yet never see Jesus in it.
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"In every corn of wheat that finds no congenial soil there are undeveloped possibilities of harvest... of undeveloped lives. [Yet] one of the first things to arrest me in Christ Jesus is His influence in developing the lives He touched. Jesus touched nothing which He did not adorn. What, then, were the great forces Jesus used in developing undeveloped life?
The first was His central truth that God is love. We all know how love develops character. That was the first power that Jesus used. He said to a repressed and fearful world, 'God loves you'.
But there was another power that Jesus used. It was the human instinct of self-surrender. It is the glory of Jesus that He called self-surrender into the service of our self-development.
Lastly, and this is the crowning inspiration, our Lord expanded life into eternity. Our life shall go on developing forever, [in the Light] and in the Love of God. I know no thought more depressing, as life advances, than the thought that all effort is to be crushed at death. But if death is an incident and not an end, if every baffled striving shall be crowned, [then] I can renew my struggle after every failure. It is that knowledge, given us by Jesus, that has inspired the development of Christendom."
1) All seed needs "congenial soil" to develop. That word means "suited or adapted in spirit, feeling, temper, etc.; compatible:," and etymologically it means "partaking of the same nature or natural characteristics"-- essentially, "kindred".
For plants, and for people, this means we need a place where we can take root-- we need an environment that can meet our needs, that can properly nourish & sustain us, that will give of itself to us so we in turn can enrich it in time... we need acceptance, cooperation, harmony... we need community, empathy, family. We need a foundation. But corn cannot grow in sand. Wheat cannot grow in clay. Acorns cannot grow in mud. You get the idea. We need a hospitable ground, a secure & solid place where we can settle in to survive.
2) JESUS IS THIS PERFECT SOIL FOR OUR SOUL. He cannot hinder life; His very existence promotes & preserves it. Everything that takes root in Him will flourish forever. However--
3) JESUS'S TOUCH IS WHAT GIVES LIFE? I need to drop the metaphor. A life may be completely undeveloped due to sin and its miseries-- just like mine. But Jesus can touch that life and jumpstart development there against all odds. How?
4) LOVE. I keep rereading that line. "Love develops character." That's the entire story of the System. It's the story of every Outspacer. I could honestly cry. Our entire existence is a blessing. We've survived by sheer grace. The absolute core of our being is Love and that is the power of God. Not us. WE are a gift ourselves. JESUS ALONE enabled us TO feel and live this love, because IT IS FROM GOD. If God didn't love us first, unconditionally and entirely and mercifully, and PROVE it IN CHRIST, we wouldn't even know what the word meant. But we see its total and perfect definition in the Face of Jesus. That's honestly a fact. In our blackest fears, in our bloodiest nights, even when we were far from formal religion, God was with us. We ourselves were proof. Christ was making Himself known THROUGH us. Remember we ARE Baptized, we ARE Confirmed, we HAVE received the Eucharist even back during the Julie days, when our doing so may have been monstrously irreverent but we didn't know, we were so ignorant and lost and scared. But Christ was with us. And although we didn't know Him personally yet, although He was still just a "part of our religion" and not yet a Friend, even though we didn't even understand what He had done for us and why... He loved us so much that He never stopped gently yet irresistibly drawing us to Himself. And He did that THROUGH OURSELVES.
I want to type so much about this. It's why I and we REFUSE to let anyone destroy the Archives, although they have destroyed virtually everything else. We still have written records of the truth of our history, and the fingerprints of God are all over it.
God has used each one of us for His Loving Purposes, as ourselves, for each other, and yet also as His instruments and for Himself. It's a beautiful dance, even if we were completely ignorant of it as it was occurring-- perhaps that was the only way it could happen, as it kept our ego out of it entirely; even if we were ignorant only and never malevolent, we still would have been an obstacle, because it takes total self-abandoning surrender to be used by God and we were not capable of such radically sacrificial trust back then, when we didn't even know God AS God-- we're not yet capable of it now, either; God give us the grace, please, in proper time, but please give it.
But... God taught us about Himself through our inner life. No one can deny this. We have all been signposts leading to Him, in one way or another-- but there is only one Way, and that is Christ, and HE has been reflected in our existences ultimately. That's inevitable, actually necessary, for there to be any truth in it, and there is-- which I can only say because the end IS and has been always explicitly GOD. We consciously work to bring each other to Him. Still, even before we reached this point OF Knowing Him enough TO do so knowingly, God was doing the same without our conscious awareness? How do I even phrase this. Let's just be completely honest and list examples. That's where the truth is, not in talking in circles around the heart of the matter.
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5) SELF-GIVING.
6) HOPE.
7) This all ultimately affects the HARVEST!!!
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Daily Catena quote is 100% what Laurie was CREATED TO BE and honestly Lord we NEED THE GUTS & GRACE TO BE LIKE THIS AGAIN=
"Are you angry? Be angry at your sins, beat your soul, afflict your conscience, be strict in judgement and a terrible punisher of your own sins. This is the benefit of anger, wherefore God placed it in us." (St. John Chrysostom)
All the new-age moral relativism & spiritual "feelgood-ism" we've been exposed to since ~2009 has severely crushed our ability TO feel this self-directed moral anger. It was kept alive solely by Nousfoni like Wreckage and Sugar and Scathe, when Laurie started to slip from her violent anchor, but then CNC basically chloroformed our conscience. That was ultimately why we swore to never go back, even if that decision caused huge & irreparable losses on both sides. We had no other choice, when we realized what we had allowed to happen to our heart, how softly rotten it had become.
We still have anger, somewhere, but it's buried in Nousfoni who need to be triggered out, usually through bad therapy or sxtrauma exposure. It's been labeled as "bad," "not allowed," "dangerous," by the somafoni at large because anger necessitates internal awareness. It requires a sense of self, and a sense of injustice, to BE felt at all. When you justify everything, when you refuse to be self-aware, when you insist that everything is okay and you have no rights to argue... then anger gets shoved into the subconscious, and we don't get anywhere in life or healing or honesty.
One good thing is that repressed anger WILL eventually wake up SOME deeper level of headspace. It starts to echo in there, in those lower caverns, and there's too much resonance for it to stay quiet for long.
But I digress. The point is, the anger we NEED to feel and WANT to feel is NOT offended or vengeful or irritated. The anger we are unjustly burying and denying out of false humility & proud demurity is ANGER AT SIN-- specifically OUR OWN.
That's why Laurie can't heal. That's why Infinitii can't resurrect. That's why NO ONE can move on from CNC, or SLC, or grandma's death. Feeling legitimate righteous anger AT OUR OWN SINS is the FIRST STEP TO HEALING!!!! We cannot heal if we don't expose the wounds AS WOUNDS, not only in their ghastly severity but ALSO in their AWFUL INJUSTICE. A doctor who is mending a patient's stable wounds must be both as completely honest about & aware of the gravity of the injury as he is angry at the fact that this human being has been so harmed. Felt properly, anger accompanies compassion; in that tandem it dignifies both the victim and the oppressor, insisting that the humanity of both has been compromised in the injustice done, and crying out for mutual restoration. Anger also gives mercy its weight, for that virtue is the most potent & sincere when it is "undeserved." Anger also empowers forgiveness-- again, because it recognizes and reveals a failure to live as Christ created us to live, and yet in that very conviction, it allows for repentance. You cannot "repent" without knowledge OF sin, and anger is the result of that knowledge. BUT. ANGER IS NOT HATRED. We can and should and arguably must get angry with ourselves for our lazy soul, our weak conscience, our distracted body, but we must NEVER HATE ourselves. Hatred of life is malevolent and it is of the devil. The ONLY thing we can righteously "hate" is SIN, for sin IS death and malignancy by nature; it is a non-being, and we must be entirely opposed to it as in war, for we ARE in a spiritual war as long as we are on this earth.
I'm starting to ramble. Lord I hope I didn't say anything heretical. I don't trust my own thoughts anymore, at all. I'm not schooled enough in Scripture yet. All I know is that Jesus Himself was indignant and angry at sin, but never at the sinner, and His anger moved Him to work all the more arduously to call those very sinners out of their fatal state-- even if that meant speaking or acting "in" that anger, such as being "brutally honest" in chastisement, and flipping money-tables. But there was never hatred of anything but the sin that blinded them, and He was thus moved to do anything He had to in order to awaken them to the danger they were in.
So, we need to open our heart to that anger again. We can't be so cowardly & stubborn. How the heck did we get like this? Where did this disgusting self-righteous resistance come from? THAT makes us angry. Lord, give us a heart humble enough to gladly accept Your harshest corrections, and strong enough to manfully stand the blows of chastisement without crumbling in self-pity. Make us a noble child. We don't want to be a simpering wet blanket anymore, however that happened. Give us Your Fire of Love and Justice. Burn all the sinful self-indulgence and sloth out of our soul. Give us true zeal and courage. Give us an ardent desire to know, live, and defend the Truth of the Gospel. Give us the grace to be angry at our sins, because they offend You and dishonor Your Name! But also give us Your grace of Mercy, that we may never despair or become vengeful over injustices, instead forgiving ourself and others through the Spirit of Christ, so that sin is disempowered and only Your Love triumphs.