![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Slept until 10
Lots of death-adjacent flat nightmares. Deeply unsettled & ill upon waking.
BK prep, prayers, & cleanup took exactly one hour on best timing. Good to know!
Matthew Henry deserves an award for this amazing alliteration =
"Here is a precious comment upon a pernicious text; the counsel of cursed Caiaphas so construed as to fall in with the counsels of the blessed God."
Seriously man that is FANTASTIC.
BTW "pernicious" is TERRIFYING etymologically
I'm sitting here with the window open & fans off, first time since summer began, and it smells like autumn. It's beautiful. My heart is aching. We didn't see autumn at all last year, the year we woke up, and so we have NO MEMORIES OF IT outside of childhood (2000-2002). We miss our woods so much. God please, let us go up there many times this autumn, to treasure it & bless You for it.
...Still. we must remember it has changed irreparably, catastrophically. It will never be the woods in our heart ever again on this earth.
But we owe it at least this one last try. God, if it is Your will, please let us be there.
If not, we beg of You, please... give us an autumn forest elsewhere. Show us something close, something precious & unexpected.
Went to church early for confession
Penance is actually doing random acts of kindness
I really love that. I think it's the exact sort of penance we need to truly change our heart for the better. make sure to do that every day.
Ran home safely. thank God for showing his mercy even more when there's a higher risk.
at apartment, usual two old guys out front, always stop me to shoot the bull. they ended up talking about religious trauma in their life. shockingly they had so much grudging hatred for the organization of the church, especially in corrupt priests and schools. it broke my heart and made me very upset to hear that so many people hate the church because of the sins of the people-- Forgetting that Christianity is not about humans and our weakness, it's about Jesus. if we would all strive to focus on Him more I think we'd have a lot less problems.
Same thing with claiming that you "picked the wrong vocation". the guys were making rather off-color comments about that, citing examples of "former priests" they knew. just felt totally wrong. like HOW can you possibly BECOME A PRIEST and then, one day, decide it's "not for you"??? I don't think we pray enough about our vocations, nor do we ask enough if we're doing it for God or for ourselves.
Saw infi in heartspace when walking by the rosebush. I knew that's where they were; I could feel that space very clearly in spatial awareness.
I forget what we talked about, but I remember how they still were all ghostly-- you can't look at them directly, There's nothing to look at. its bizarre. The only thing I can see of them for sure are their eyes. They have a single eye on their face and no mouth, just like they should. and their eyes (wings included) are this beautiful soft charcoal black, with a sort of hazy rainbow cloud, like ink in water, threading through them. It's very beautiful. I know they used to have an oil slick look to their black but it's nothing like that.
I heard from them again later today, when getting ready for dinner. I forget why, but I remember reflecting on their name. And they clearly said that isn't their name anymore, and it cannot be their name anymore. It's because that name was a negative name-- It always inherently held a negation of something. And I remember them clearly saying, "I don't want to be associated with loss anymore."
During church, something about their heart or soul kept resonating. Not a ping, more like a broad resonance-- like a church bell echo.
They're reflecting the truth of what the Black energy is. It's stellating the night. It's putting Points of light into the blackness. Whatever their new name is, it's going to have to do with forgiveness. Forgiveness, mercy, gentleness, consolation.
The only way they can survive and live is if their entire identity is anchored into that. In fact, it's what they were supposed to be all along. The only reason they became a trauma-mirror Is because we were trying so hard to not hate the people that did scary things to us-- to not hate anyone who did or said things that explicitly reminded us of, or directly echoed, sexual abuse. We were, insanely, trying to become like them, to "empathize with them", because we wanted to forgive them-- to like them even. But... we became the sin instead of seeing the person trapped beneath the sin. And Infi was the absolute embodiment of that error, becoming the literal incarnation of every sexually-terrifying things we heard and saw in order to "get us used to it" and "love the people that did it to us." we couldn't run, we couldn't escape, so we had to "fit in." or so we thought. nevertheless it killed hir and us in the end. but we can't heal from THAT until we stop trying to "justify" the sin and instead CONDEMN it AS sin WHILE STILL FORGIVING THE SINNERS. that's the big shift. So now, THAT'S infi's job: to forgive And free them-- and us as well-- through that forgiveness, Without allowing the sin, Or trying to justify it or even saying "it's okay". Because it's not, & that's the whole point.
Clean all of that up I'm taking it on audio notes because I'm running very late today.
By the way I'm feeling very sick, like we're starting to run a fever, so I hope we can still get to church tomorrow. We're going to try!
DN= Criminally dissociated. Forgetting everything.
Typing too much. Oversocialized.
Couldn't taste anything or remember anything. Miserable.
Quote of the day fits perfectly with our penance =
"If you find that there is no love in you, but you want to have it, then do deeds of love, even though you do them without love in the beginning. The Lord will see you desire and striving and will put love in your heart."
- St. Ambrose of Optina
