the spectrum heart cathedral system

Lamentations 2:17

Heb “commanded” or “decreed.” If a reference to prophetic oracles is understood, then “decreed” is preferable. If understood as a reference to the warnings in the covenant, then “threatened” is a preferable rendering.
[That's a KEY DISTINCTION! Covenant warnings, i.e. curses for infidelity, are NOT "decreed" in the way an oracle IS, because the curses are ALL preceded with "IF you do not obey"?? It's not a declaration, even though it IS a Promise, punctuated with "WILL happen" verses. But God does not "decree" any of them. His entire intention is that they CAN be avoided and SHOULD be; there is a GREATER "will happen" attached to OBEDIENCE!! So His "threats" are just that– possible outcomes that the threat itself is meant to help prevent entirely. Decrees, on the other hand, are SUPPOSED to happen and GUARANTEED to, regardless of conditions or response.]

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Hapax legomenon detour https://biblehub.com/hebrew/6314.htm
pugath: Cessation, intermission, respite
...denotes a pause, respite, or loosening of pressure. It carries the sense of a brief breathing-space rather than a permanent cessation, highlighting an interval in which anguish might slacken before resuming. This semantic range prepares the reader to feel the tension between continued suffering and the yearning for mercy.
[Oh that's a hard hit. Somehow I never considered that a particular mercy given may just be a breathing-space. "The anguish will resume." It's like ocean waves, and isn't that painfully resonant to my heart. There is calm, and there is chaos. How blessed it all is.]

In Lamentations 2:18 the city personified is urged, “give yourself no relief; give your eyes no rest”. Here the term serves as a command to withhold any easing of grief until the petition for divine intervention is fully poured out. The poetic voice intensifies communal lament by denying even a momentary let-up, pressing Judah to exhaustive repentance and supplication... genuine contrition cannot be abbreviated.
[The words "exhaustive" and "abbreviated" are SO IMPORTANT. So is "UNTIL," which is really the KEY to the others. We're not called to "exhaust ourselves" in acts of repentance and prayer without any hope. The reason WHY we're even pleading for divine intervention TO be "poured out" is because GOD HIMSELF PROMISES TO DO SO. Don't ever forget this. THAT'S what AMAZED us throughout our reading of the prophetic judgment oracles-- even after the most brutal & bloody declarations of doom upon the sins of His people, God offers hope. Even if it's a solemn, dark hope-- "I will not completely destroy you. I will discipline you, but with justice; I cannot let you go unpunished"-- it is STILL REAL HOPE. God will not destroy us completely. He is a God OF mercy, a God of COVENANT, and by THAT fact alone we have a solid foundation FOR imploring the EXERCISE of that faithfulness and compassion, which MUST happen at some point because if we repent, discipline cannot be indefinite; the whole point OF discipline is to lead us TO repentance so we can be HEALED. So we CANNOT "take a break" because, if we do, isn't that just implying that we don't really care that much about BEING healed?? We HAVE to exhaust ourselves like a marathon runner exerts every last ounce of energy in his body to reach the finish line first. We HAVE to pour OURSELVES out if we "expect" God to do the same in response. In any case, holy sorrow is purgative. It sanctifies us AS we weep. To seek "relief" from THAT is indeed unthinkable. "Abbreviating" our contrition, "shortening" it, is just as outrageous an idea as trying to "abbreviate" a love letter because "I'm too tired to write so much" or "there's better things to do." NO! Contrition and love are indeed connected, and to "abbreviate" EITHER shows that you're NOT REALLY FEELING EITHER. So God effectively prevents us from doing so, BY intensifying our suffering, to the point where we CANNOT "take a break" because our hearts really ARE that shattered. THIS IS A REAL GRACE. We should THANK God when we are driven to such depths of repentance that we HAVE an ocean to pour out before Him-- because He will meet it, when the time is right, with the unfathomable deeps of His Divine Mercy. You just have to wait until the holy tide comes in.]


Authorship traditionally attributed to Jeremiah places the word within a prophet’s theology of covenant discipline.
• The siege conditions explain why any thought of “relief” would appear almost treacherous; the people are called to sustained mourning that matches the magnitude of judgment.
[IS THIS WHY WE HAVE AT LEAST ONE NOUSFONI THAT "CRIES FOREVER"??? Does she FEEL the FULL WEIGHT of our past sins, with such a pure heart that relief truly IS treacherous for her? God bless her if so. We need to learn her name. But... here's a second, connected thought: who is aware of the JUDGMENT? That "eternal mourner" doesn't have that sense in her resonance. Someone else carries it... someone Red, I'm sure. It feels very close to Cannon's essence, to be blunt. She LIVED the judgment, in a way, or at least those in her bloodline did. But... this is key, this is important. The mourning for consequences, for sins, is vital, absolutely... but we ALSO need an equally keen awareness of the DISCIPLINE ITSELF. We need a nousfoni whose role is to partner with the Mourner, even if not directly, for the sake of sober prophetic recognition of the just discipline that CAUSED her weeping. She is a font of emotion, at heart, expressing the bottomless grief that HAS NO WORDS in truth. So those MUST be supplied, even revealed, by someone else. We NEED to have THAT active recognition and expression, too, a "prophetic role" really, in order to truly feel the WEIGHT of the TRUTH of our history, and to TRULY process and learn from and heal from it. We cannot do that if we won't look squarely at the JUDGMENT that DID fall upon us. Such ignorance only runs the real risk of missing the moral lesson God was trying to actually teach us.]

Theological Themes
1. Uninterrupted Repentance: The refusal of respite echoes Joel 2:12–17, where wholehearted, unceasing turning to the Lord is demanded in crisis.
("Truly, the day of the LORD is awesome and very terrifying– who can survive it? Yet even now,” says the LORD, “Turn and come to Me with all your heart in genuine repentance, With fasting and weeping and mourning, until every barrier is removed and the broken fellowship is restored; Rip your heart to pieces in sorrow and contrition, and not your garments.” Now return in repentance to the LORD your God, For He is gracious and compassionate, Slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness, faithful to His covenant with His people; And He relents His sentence of evil when His people genuinely repent.")
("Who knows whether He will relent and revoke your sentence, And leave a blessing behind Him, Even [an abundance of crops so that you CAN offer up] a grain offering and a drink offering-- from the bounty He mercifully provides you-- For the LORD your God?" ..."Perhaps He will change my mind/ reconsider/ and treat you with mercy. He might turn from His wrath and bless you with enough grain and wine FOR offering sacrifices to Him.")
("So blow a trumpet in Zion, warning of impending judgment! Dedicate a fast as a day of restraint and humility, call the entire nation to a solemn assembly. Gather the people, sanctify the congregation... No one is excused or exempt from the assembly. Let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep between the porch and the altar, And let them [cry out in heartfelt prayer], “Have compassion and spare Your people, O LORD! [Have pity on us and save us! Do not make Israel, Your inheritance and Your special possession, into an object of disgrace/ reproach/ ridicule! Do not turn us over to be mocked/ despised/ scorned, our very name used as a humiliating byword among the Gentile nations! Why should it be said among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’ Don’t let us become a joke for unbelieving foreigners who laugh and jeer at our sufferings, saying, ‘Has the God of Israel left them?’”)


2. Divine Justice AND Mercy: By suspending relief, the text magnifies the weight of divine wrath while simultaneously implying that true relief lies only in God’s eventual compassion.
[NOTE THE "EVENTUAL". God ALWAYS gives compassion, because He can't NOT; it's His NATURE.]

3. Corporate Solidarity: The imperative is directed to the entire “wall of daughter Zion,” illustrating that national sin requires communal intercession without interruption.
[This feels very System-relevant. We can't "take a day off" in repenting for our sins, OR in "interceding" FOR our broken ones. To neglect that duty of "seeking salvation for the lost" shows that we don't value their souls as we should. Every day, our heart SHOULD mourn for past sins and lingering sins, and should DO something about it, even if all we can do is pray-- which is sometimes the most powerful and effective thing we can do anyway. But the "national" emphasis is very important. It means, for us, that, as parts of a System, everything each of us does affects EVERYONE ELSE IN HERE. So we HAVE to have this mindset, this "all as one" perspective, a sort of spiritual patriotism perhaps? "No man is an island," and no nousfoni is either, in a much more literal sense-- all our hearts and souls ARE connected, intrinsically. So, to KNOW that even ONE of us is living in sin, MUST move ALL the rest of us not only to intercession but to mourning, and righteous anger, and heartfelt zeal for their repentance. We aren't living in that sort of urgency yet, and we need to. Thank You God for this impetus.]

While the specific noun appears only once, its theme resonates:
• Psalm 77:2 is an individual analogue of unrelieved lament– “In the day of my trouble I [desperately] sought the Lord; In the night my hand was stretched out [in prayer] without weariness; My soul refused to be comforted... Lord, You have held my eyelids open [preventing any sleep or rest]; I am so troubled that I cannot speak... Has the Lord rejected me forever? Will He never again be kind to me? Has His steadfast lovingkindness ceased forever? Has His mercy vanished? Has His promise failed, canceled and unfulfilled? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Or has He, in anger, withdrawn His compassion and locked away His tenderness? Then I said, “This is my anguish, my grief, my wound– I am sickened by the thought that the sovereign One might have become inactive, that the power of the Most High is no longer the same... what hurts the most is that He no longer seems to help us; His faithful ways with us seem to have changed." But Then I thought, “To this I will appeal: the years when the Most High stretched out His Right Hand. I will solemnly remember and gratefully declare the great works of the LORD. Yes, with all my heart I will recall and ponder the amazing things You did long ago, and I will tell and testify to others about Your ancient miracles wrought among Your people! I will reflect and muse on all your works; I will thoughtfully consider all your awesome deeds. I will meditate on all Your actions with awe and thanksgiving. They are constantly in my thoughts; I cannot stop thinking about them. Your way, O God, is holy [far from sin and guilt]. Everything you do is right and holy. No 'god' is as great as You– there is none who is great like our God! You alone are the God Who performs miracles, Who works wonders. You have made your strength known among the nations; You have demonstrated Your power among the people. With Your Own mighty arm You redeemed your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph... Like a shepherd, you led your people as Your flock. You chose Moses and Aaron to guide them, taking them by the hand, to lead them to the land You promised."
[I posted (and expanded the quotes of) practically this WHOLE PSALM because it is a PERFECT & POWERFUL ILLUSTRATION of the MOVEMENT OF "PRAYER WITHOUT RELIEF"– The refusal of comfort & rest is NOT meant to stay stagnant in moping despondency! The whole POINT of "not taking a break," of NOT seeking relief, is to DRIVE THE HEART INTO DEEPER DEPTHS OF FAITH that would NOT be possible if it kept "coming up for air"!! The abject lack of all consolation effectively forces the lamenting soul into the MOST BRUTAL HONESTY in prayer, because prolonged inner anguish means wounds are OPENED and LEFT wide open– and they are ABLE TO BEGIN HEALING in such a state. Ultimately, inevitably, and most importantly, though, this Psalm shows how even in our most agonizing awareness of judgment and doom, crushed beneath its weight, IF we only USE that to DRIVE US TO GOD and STAY THERE, even if all we're doing is sobbing out our terror that maybe God has abandoned us, the TRUTH is, He HASN'T, and our very NEARNESS to Him THROUGH repentant prayer that REFUSES TO LEAVE & SEEK COMFORT ELSEWHERE– not in some masochistic despair, but in the reverent awareness of such comfort being undeserved and unfitting and actually an obstacle to this opportunity to deepen and fortify the foundations of our faith; the bath of comfort would only douse this refining fire, and truly it is beautiful as it is terrible, just like God– PROVES that Truth in due time, because proximity to God ALWAYS TRANSFORMS & SANCTIFIES & HEALS. Paradoxically, your "pugath" WILL come, FROM God, even IN your tears and sighs and sufferings, whenever they are offered up to Him in sincere and unrelenting prayer, and your will surrendered to His Will with TRUST & GRATITUDE & LOVE. Suffering, especially under just judgment, is meant to RESTORE us to God. So why would we seek "respite" prematurely? Why not humbly accept whatever pain God wisely deigns, for however long it lasts, KNOWING He only does so to CURE us of sin's disease and TEACH us virtue? Why seek "relief" from the very treatment for your spiritual cancer? God has only cast you into this furnace to remove the dross from your soul. He wants to make you into gold. He can't just "take you out for a minute and stick you back in". No, you must remain until the good work is wrought in you, and if you stick it out, it will be. God's salvific purposes never fail, so do not resist them or seek to escape, or He will just have to "start the process again". But He won't give up on you... So don't give up on Him.]
("Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless, and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible, look kindly upon us, and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments, we might not despair, nor become despondent, but with great confidence, submit ourselves to Your Holy Will, which is Love and Mercy itself.")

• Isaiah 62:6–7 “Give Him no rest until He establishes Jerusalem” — watchmen adopt the same posture of relentless prayer.
[...That term still gives us Rorschach vibes. I don't think the Core that loved him ever gave up on him. Maybe one day he will actually anchor into the Outspacer spectrum. If so, I wonder if the Scriptural use of the term-- like this-- will become his true role. Lord knows we do need someone like this.]

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Return to Lamentations 2:18

Heb “day and night.” The expression “day and night” forms a merism which encompasses everything in between two polar opposites: “from dawn to dusk” or “all day and all night long.”
2:18 Heb “the daughter of your eye.” The term “eye” functions as a metonymy for “tears” that are produced by the eyes. Jeremiah exhorts personified Jerusalem to cry out to the Lord day and night without ceasing in repentance and genuine sorrow for its sins.
[...I'm getting major Infinitii, Jay, and Xenophon vibes from these two notes together. That has deep implications, especially for Xennie. She is indeed the "daughter of [Jay's] eye," i.e. of Infi, and therefore, especially since she resonates VIOLET, maybe her "hidden" and even "true" role DOES have to do with tears? Considering her status as a child, too, by "God-intended means," her having a function associated with weeping in sorrowful repentance would be absolutely relevant...]

2:19 The noun (levav, “heart”) functions here as a metonymy of association for the thoughts and emotions in the heart. The Hebrew (levav) includes the mind, so in some cases the translation “heart” implies an inappropriate division between the cognitive and affective. This context is certainly emotionally loaded, but as part of a series of admonitions to address God in prayer, these emotions are inextricably bound with the thoughts of the mind.
[THIS IS SO POWERFULLY RELEVANT TO HEADSPACE, ESPECIALLY FOR THE CORE(S)!! At some point I think we DID make an "inappropriate division" between our thoughts and emotions... maybe we've always had one, and never realized it until now. Actually I think our REAL problem is making a distinction at ALL. Differentiating between thoughts and emotions is something I cannot properly do right now?? How strange. This is a topic we definitely need to both discuss and feel together... and hey, there's a distinction. "Thoughts" means "to talk about," an external action, and "feel" is "emotions," wordless and internal. So when it comes to the Cores, the Hearts of the System, who are ALSO the ones who MUST do the most thinking, or else... HAS there been an unnatural breach here? Funny how I'm asking this AS a Core, or at least, as someone who is assumed to be in that role. But even as it's obvious that I'm thinking, what with all this typing, where is my emotion? Where is the "deeper" function of my heart? AM I "feeling", or am I just being affected by everyone else's feelings? The nousfoni assumed to be Cores have been complaining, or rather mourning, that for YEARS, they have felt "incapable of love." WHY. Is this comment the key? "Emotions are inextricably bound with the thoughts of the mind," NOTABLY in PRAYER? Do we need to change our thoughts in ORDER to experience emotions? Can ONLY GOD DO THIS for us? Are the emotions we "need" to feel (again, or for the first time) "hidden" or "locked away" IN prayer? IS THIS WHY OUR "PRAYER" HAS BEEN SO STILTED AND MECHANICAL??? IT'S ALL "THOUGHT," NO EMOTION---UNLESS WE'RE CRACKED-OPEN AND EXHAUSTED. That's when the thriskefoni get kicked out, because THEY DON'T FEEL. How bizarre. How revelatory. How did we NOT REALIZE THIS. It's WHY we "dislike" and "avoid" the rote prayer rituals, the monotonous ever-repeating cycles that are always "rushed" and "never good enough," prayers that feel more like courtroom recitations than a child talking to its Father. The only thing we do that truly "feels" like prayer is when we're so bloody tired that we can't "pray" all the cards, and we end up just talking to Him IN our tiredness. DOES that count as prayer? It's the only time we ARE giving Him BOTH feeling and thought... I wonder. We really do need to redefine our prayer life, then, without the crushing guilt-fear of omission and neglect. "If we DON'T say all the prayer cards we DON'T REALLY LOVE GOD," the thriskefoni panickedly protest. To them, there is "only ONE right way to pray," and it is by the script. But their hearts are never in it. I've NOTICED that, for example, when Julie is fronting in the bathroom and she pauses of her own will to just read one little prayer card on the wall, she prays it with her heart, because she's NOT trying to "make the qota," she's just worshipping, quietly and momentarily, but truly. She prays as a person, not as a machine. There's a big difference there, between a lover and a laborer, between a friend and a flunky. The only way FOR our heart TO be in prayer is for the SYSTEM to be in prayer, as our prayer, because we ARE our "heart"-- it's not just the Core, although their function is to be the coalescent kernel of it. I want to talk about this more in depth in a journal-- just what exactly it means TO be the Core of the System, the Heart of the Spectrum-- which would, really, BE a Prism, now that I think about it. But their role MUST be held as a WHOLE, a unity of both thought and feeling, of emotion and logic, of cognition and affection. The Core must hold them together in an embrace in their own person... or, perhaps, persons. Maybe Infinitii's death dealt more damage than we realize. There's so much to ponder here. In any case, PRAYER is STILL at the very heart of the heart itself. Without that connection to the Heart of GOD above all, first and foremost, our own will wither and die... and maybe that is what has been happening.]


2:19 "Lifting up the palms or hands" is a metaphor for prayer... Heb “on account of the life of your children.” The noun (nefesh) refers to the “life” of their dying children (e.g., Lam 2:12).
[...more gutpunch relevance, especially with that crossreference, which is to the children starving to death in their mother's arms, and fainting "like wounded warriors" from their devastating hunger.]

2:20 Heb “Look, O Lord! See!” When used in collocation with verbs of cognition, (raʾah) means “to see for oneself” or “to take notice”. The parallelism between seeing and understanding is often emphasized in Scripture. Integral to battered Jerusalem’s appeal, and part of the ancient Near-Eastern lament genre, is the request for God to look at her pain. This should evoke pity regardless of the reason for punishment. The request is not for God to "see" merely that there are misfortunes, as one might [mechanically and detachedly] note items on a checklist. The cognitive (facts) and affective (feelings) are not divided. The plea is for God to watch, think about, and be affected by these facts while listening to the petitioner’s perspective.
[This actually adds a gamechanging layer of meaning to prayers where we plead for Jesus or Mary to "look upon us" and/or "upon our sorrows/ afflictions/ sufferings," notably with "eyes of mercy". Those are prayers of lament in this regard, and we both echo and join with ruined & repentant Jerusalem in her anguish, as her children, even across the ages. I never realized or even knew this, but now it is so powerful, so humbling, and so heartachingly beautiful– because we, now, have seen Jerusalem’s hope fulfilled in Christ, and our laments over our lingering sins carry that truth of eschatological consolation within them. God DOES look upon us, ALWAYS, with PERFECT love and mercy, FROM THE CROSS. He watches us without fail, without obstruction or distraction, and with meticulous fatherly care. He thinks about us in every single moment, from all eternity even, with unwavering focus and wholehearted interest. He is so profoundly affected by our pain and sorrow that He feels it in His Own Heart– not just "with" us, but "WITHIN" us, with no disconnect between our immediate experience and His full participation in it. Jesus is the literal PROOF of this, inasmuch as He us the Incarnate PRACTICE of it. So yes, God DOES notice; God IS looking, and God DOES see, and God DOES understand, even more than we can comprehend... and, yes, He has infinite pity on us, displayed with utmost tenderness in the Face of His Sorrowful Son.]

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https://biblehub.com/hebrew/2949.htm
tippuchim: nursing (for a long span of time), tenderly cared for, born healthy 
...portrays the tender wrapping or nurturing of a newborn. The term evokes the sight of an infant securely bound in soft cloths— an emblem of innocence, dependence, and maternal care. Its use highlights both the fragility of early life and the instinctive protection offered by parents. 
[Motherhood is still a totally foreign concept to me, something I am piecing together through Scriptural bits of truth like this. I've never seen, not with understanding or perceptive eyes, a mother "caring for an infant." I can technically visually imagine a woman wrapping up a baby like this, but to believe that the woman is doing that as a mother, from a heart-space of tender nurturing love, something profound and deeper than I can fathom-- I cannot wrap my mind around it. The thing is... I wonder if Infinitii can. I don't think any nousfoni ever could; human sexuality is so abjectly horrifying that it REQUIRES a daengel to process whatsoever. The culture I live in, or at least my personal experience within it, also makes that last point difficult-- the "instinctive protection offered by parents." Why does that sound like a novel concept to me? How sad is that? Why does my mind immediately assume that once a baby is born it's already "supposed to fend for itself?" "Don't be so needy," "don't burden me with your problems," "stop leeching off of me," "you're so annoying, let me live my own life," "I don't have time to feed you, I need to eat too," "how stupid you sound, asking to be held! For what reason? Man up and stop being so effeminate!" etc. Isn't that an awful way to think? And yet, that's what's in my head, connected to "babyhood." It's a shameful, detestable mode of existence, something people curl their lips at and scoff, something my... something my grandmother would do, in contempt of our weakness and dependence, when we were children. Why do I remember such things? And our mother always told us to "pull ourselves up by our bootstraps," "get over it," be strong and pushy and loud and angry like her, all hard edges, even when she was trying to be soft she never felt safe, never felt comforting, never felt like someone we could run to and be held. The very thought of my even wanting such a thing fills me with utter shame and guilt. How awful. No wonder I failed (?) at being a parent up here. Or maybe, I was never given the role?? Jay was a wonderful father, until he shattered. Maybe that's why the syskids have "nothing to do with me." Being female-resonant, and with our history and trauma, I am inherently incapable of motherhood, either literally or figuratively. Am I? Am I "supposed to," almost like a destiny, solely because of binary associations, like God has written maternity into the very code of female existence, and if I do not "mother" something, I am not merely a cosmic failure, but in open rebellion against Him? These are the existential fears that haunt me. I cannot solve them now, but at least I can acknowledge them. In any case, we do need to deal with this whole "mother" topic within the System. SOMEONE has to hold it, or many someones, to hold different pieces of it-- the trauma memories, the bad mother mirror, the good mother ideal, the actual mother to the syskids... outspacers might help too. This is a huge effort but it feels strangely vital to our healing in general. Bookmark this topic. Read more about in in Scripture, extensively even, as soon as you can. We really do need to understand this, not only for healing purposes, but also for identity purposes-- our body is female, and so that existential dread is a tangible reality every moment of our life now that the Core Bloodline has shifted into femininity for both religious and trauma reasons. And THAT would be WHY this topic feels so urgent. IT'S THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE TO CORE STABILITY.]

The noun appears once, in Lamentations 2:20, within Jeremiah’s funeral-dirge over Jerusalem: “Look, O LORD, and consider! Whom have You ever treated like this? Should women eat their own children, the infants they have nurtured?" There, the tippuchim– the “infants they have nurtured”– stand as the starkest possible contrast to the horrors of siege-induced cannibalism. The word draws the reader’s focus to tiny lives that ought to be cherished, underscoring the unnatural depth of covenant judgment that has fallen on the city.
[...I haven't given enough thought to the "tiny lives that ought to be cherished" in our System, both the "corekids" AND the paidifoni, because of that mother fear I just discussed. But this... this adds an extra horrible dimension to the reality of the children in the System, because we not only have a history of sexual trauma but also of food trauma... and the kids are, I fear, being strangled by both. I cannot, even for a moment, ponder cannibalism. it's too horrible. I don't think, and hope there isn't, any parallel to that concept in System history. We have the graves, but they weren't consumed. That's a depth of evil we thankfully never sunk to, at least as far as I am aware, and I desperately hope to God that I'm right, even as I beg Him on my knees right now that we never, ever, ever reach that sort of "siege point" in the future.] 

Cut off from food and hope in the Babylonian siege, Jerusalem’s inhabitants suffered exactly what the covenant curse forewarned... Jeremiah, eyewitness to the devastation, selects the image of swaddled babies to intensify the lament: those once cradled in safety now become victims of desperation. The breach between Israel and her God is thus painted in the gravest of colors— life meant for nurture is consumed in judgment.
[This hits SCARY HARD. God IS Life AND Love; to betray Him in a MARITAL context of Covenant inevitably means CUTTING ONESELF OFF from BOTH those core attributes of His– which are, notably, exemplified in motherhood. For faithless Jerusalem to be doomed to hunger to the point of eating her own children is a catastrophically literal manifestation of what was happening to their souls??? HOW could a mother eat her own child, even if she was starving? It shows that survival instinct had overpowered maternal instinct– the body had overpowered the spirit; selfish interest had overpowered selfless sacrifice. Those women, by their rebellion against Love Himself, had numbed their capacity TO love. Their souls were starving for God, for innocence and beauty and truth and goodness, and these virtues are reflected in infants, and I wonder if, in their blind and mad desperation, they ate such children to satiate their souls as well as their stomachs. "Cut off" from God by sin, suffering the inevitable curses of infidelity, the very "fruits" of mortal marital joy were being destroyed in the most awful manner– a jarring symbolic reflection of what God's firstborn son, Israel – His beloved daughter, Jerusalem– was letting the devil do to her. The idols he worshipped, the earthly kingdoms she courted, were false parents as well as false lovers. The only "fruit" such "unions" ever bore was either rotten or stillborn. But the evil one did not care– he was only interested in feeding himself, by devouring the lambs of the LORD. Satan is a ravenous lion, a merciless shark, a cunning wolf, who never stops hunting down the helpless little ones to be his next meal. Why does God let this happen? I do not know, other than that He put the power to prevent it in Jerusalem’s own hands. They AGREED to this horror EXPLICITLY, listed as a Covenant curse FOR infidelity to Him, their Husband– Who NEVER WANTED THIS TO HAPPEN, BUT WARNED THAT IT WOULD IF THEY LEFT HIM, WHO IS LIFE AND TENDER LOVE, BECAUSE WITHOUT HIM, WHAT ELSE IS THERE BUT DEATH AND VIOLENT HATE? God IS their Good Shepherd now and forever, BUT if they REFUSE to stay under His protection, and run directly into what He SAID was the predator's den, even after He AND His prophets tried MULTIPLE TIMES to hold them back and pull them out... well, one day, they're going to get bitten. They might even be eaten. That seems to be the extreme yet natural end of sin– consumption, destruction, devouring, not for gratitude and nourishment, but for either passion or poverty. In both wanton gluttony and desperate gorging, food loses its dignity along with the abused body. Sin just wants to swallow things up for its own benefit, either literally or figuratively– and in this siege brought on as the direct consequence of such arrogant behavior, Jerusalem is forced to enter into sin's own way of "living"... a lifestyle in direct spite of Life Himself, Who sin rejects utterly. What else would such a hellish mindset do with babies? They are a "burden," an "annoyance," a "curse," a "parasite"– profitless, expensive, exhausting, utterly "useless" and "of no benefit" to anyone, especially not the mother... except as food. And THAT is the HORRIBLE yet inevitable end of ALL persistent sin, of ALL idolatrous "marriages," as faithless Jerusalem has doomed herself to learn firsthand– when God is forgotten, and Self rules in His place, then love dies, life itself loses its value, and everyone else is just prey.]
[An equally awful thought = its like Van Gogh and the yellow paint. I get this exact way when I'm deeply depressed to the point of desperate distress; my immediate instinct is to BOTH vomit and overeat– to get rid of the poisonous feelings inside me, and to take in something good and pure and clean and right, because in my sinful condition, I LACK ALL OF IT. Truly the only REAL way to "get" such virtue is through God, by repentant outpouring of the heart in prayer & receiving grace in His time & on His terms, NOT by the demanding & forceful self-indulgence of stuffing my stupid face even with objectively healthy food. It's still a forn of idolatry. I'm still not going to God first & foremost & finally. My soul is still starving. Nothing will ease this screaming sobbing hunger except the Bread of Life Himself.]