Continued prayer...

Just got word that the latest screening test for my daughter was also positive. So we now have 2 positive and 1 negative.

Your continued prayer is very much appreciated.

News flash

Latest news:

Vicar general canceled due to funeral, and have had prayer answered re. my daughter's diagnosis. Thank you for any prayers you were able to send up on our behalf!

How can I keep from singing?

I continue to be amazed and awed at the wonder of love as it has unfolded over the past few weeks. My deep, soul deep friendship with DiDi, Bella Dolce, is watering and nurturing me, and I am unfolding and stretching and reaching for the sunshine...

I didn't realize that I had been like a dormant seed, waiting for a lightning strike to set a blaze and release me into fruitfulness at her care.

I didn't know that I so needed the love of a woman. I always thought the healing would come through a man.

It is beautiful, and our joy is infectious. We are watching other women in our congregation begin to unfold as well, touching and hugging eachother more, laughing and seeking eachother out.

Yeshua is doing a mighty mighty work through this gift of friendship.

His mercy and caring and generosity are beyond comprehension, beyond all imagining.

How can I keep from singing?

My week in summary

So much happening, and so little time to capture it all...

A few highlights:

I was confirmed by our Bishop at yesterday's mass. The Holy Spirit was manifest; I pray for obedience to His will and attentiveness to His gifts. Now on to find out if there are any problems with validity if the Bishop calls you by the wrong name...

Last week my daughter was told that she screened positive for a serious disease. Still waiting for additional test results. Please pray that the previous test was a false positive, or was simply a sign of previous exposure.

On Thursday I meet with the Vicar General of our Roman Catholic diocese to discuss the problem of unorthodox teaching at the local seminary. So far my objections have been dismissed. Prayers appreciated for God's will to be done in this.

I am walking in joy and love, unplanned, unanticipated, undeserved, and indescribable.

Shakespeare on love (16)

O, learn to read what silent love hath writ!
to hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.

Sonnet 23

Shakespeare on love (15)

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs,
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes,
Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers' tears.
What is it else? A madness most discreet,
a choking gall and a preserving sweet.

Romeo and Juliet, I:I

Shakespeare on love (14)

By heaven, I do love, and it hath taught me to rhyme and to be melancholy.

Love's Labour's Lost, IV:III

Freedom OF

I've been meaning to throw this out to you for a few weeks, and now seems the time given the connection to Thanksgiving.

I've been wondering when the shift occurred from freedom OF religion to freedom FROM religion. Does the frantic fringe have any recollection that the separation of church and state was instituted to protect religion and faith rather than the other way around? Do they see that the very tyranny the founding fathers sought to protect against is happening now, to Christians?

How dark the darkness...

Happy random set of circumstances day?

I am back from Thanksgiving festivities, and wondering about something.

Why do we still celebrate Thanksgiving in the US? Isn't it a violation of the separation of church and state? After all, thankfulness requires two parties; the person giving thanks and the person being thanked.

I don't understand, therefore, how this can remain a federal holiday, given the fanaticism of the freedom from religion crowd.

I wonder how many years of it we have left...

To adore and obey

I was not born to be free. I was born to adore and to obey.

-- C. S. Lewis

A gift of sweetness

I woke again in the middle of the night, this time for a different sort of rescue.

I did something strange, in half wakefulness. I reached over, put my hand on my husband's head, and told him that I was going to give him some sweetness. I woke knowing that that was what I was supposed to do. It was not that I was to -be sweet to him-. I was to bestow a gift of sweetness within him.

I was to impart it.

Bestow it.

I was instructed to do it, and I did.

I fell back asleep quickly and forgot about it. But he came downstairs this morning smiling, and reminded me. He obviously liked it, and thought I was -being- sweet, which I was not, and I needed to explain it.

Astonishingly, he was not dismissive, though I did give him an out straight away, saying that I didn't expect him to believe it.

He asked how it was that I -knew-, and so I tried to explain the certainty that you feel when the Holy Spirit is directing you to action. In response, he said that he believed me, because the way I had said that I was giving him sweetness sounded exactly the way I described it. As gift. As a bestowing upon and within.

This has never happened to me before, in all the hundreds of times I've prayed for people. I told him that as well, and he was tickled.

He is in an open state.

Holy Spirit, come. Keep him in that place. Bestow on him many gifts. Shower him with your love.

No other fount I know

I have been thinking about blood, and in particular about menstrual blood.

One of yesterday's hymns was Nothing but the Blood of Jesus, and so of course, being me, I had to connect the two.

I thought about how Christ's baptism sanctified all the waters of the world, and wondered if his pierced side did the same for our blood, setting it apart and making it holy.

Women, in the cycle of life giving, pour out His blood in a perpetual flow of love and glory. A perpetual blood letting for the life of the world. A shedding of fecundity. A constant fount of blood and water, pierced like his side.

No other fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Flower lined

While reading a Psalm I realized that sometimes the pit you need to be rescued from is beautiful and lined with flowers.

Have I already said this?

Our experience of unfulfilled desire mimics the pain of God. Through it we understand the frustration He must feel at not being able to give to the beloved one. Through it we participate in His suffering.

The soul feels what the mind cannot

My staunchly secular and rigidly rational husband had another nightmare last night. I pulled him from it's clutches when his moans of fear woke me.

In the dream he encountered an evil woman, deeply evil, who had the ability to know the thoughts of others. He looked through a white book she had authored, filled with grotesque drawings in raised purple. He realized that he was the only one who could see what she was, and as he thought this, she began to repeat it and move toward him. He tried to escape, crying out "No, no, no!"

It was at this point that I woke him.

I often rescue him from darkness in the night.

I find it interesting that this secular man, so certain of the boundaries of the rational world, can realize the existence of evil only in sleep. There can be no denying of it then. He feels it.

Male and female, He created them

I have been thinking about women, and the love of women in particular.

There is a feminine character to love, and a masculine. I can't speak much about the latter given that it would be mere observation. But I am getting a deeper understanding of the feminine.

It amazes me that God always wants to show us more. To take us deeper. Just when you think you understand, He takes your hand and leads you further. It is breathtaking.

When women love, they want to give fully. They want to give all. They want total consummation, total gift, total consumption. They give heedlessly, recklessly, without counting the cost.

Our God, in His wisdom, knew this, and made us to be complementary. Male and female He created them, because the swooning giving of two women would be too abandoned. Too unmeasured. We need a masculine reserve to achieve balance.

The feminine gifts soften the masculine reserve. The masculine strengths protect the feminine vulnerability.

He is so wise...

Why settle?

Happiness. I've been thinking about the idea of happiness.

We strive for happiness, thinking it the summit. The ultimate accomplishment. The ultimate state of existence. The ultimate goal.

But happiness is flabby compared to joy.

Flaccid.

In contrast, joy is blood-filled and pulsing.

But joy is always accompanied by at least a soupçon of pain; a whisper of loss or absence or some harder thing.

And so we content ourselves with mere happiness, to avoid it.

Turns out I don't particularly want to be happy.

Why settle?

To give and to receive

My BP has spoken of people who have a charism of love. In the past I have thought that this meant a capacity for giving love. And it does. But my beloved DiDi has shown me that it is much more. She has tremendous ability to give love, but also to receive it. She is all open arms and heart. I pray that I may also be both.

Be still?

God has been showing me how He provides realizations of Himself through other people.

This sounds so tame, when what I mean is so untame.

So wild. So excruciatingly joyful. So wonderfully heartbreaking.

He says to be still and know that I am God. Know that I am God.

Know me. Just as Adam knew Eve.

He sends us people so that we may know them and so come to know Him. Through mess and sweat and tears and blood. Through heart-pounding, pulse-racing, soul-wrenching love.

Through joy and grief, sometimes combined.

Through highs and lows and hurts and restorations.

Through passion, we know Him.

Lord, you are a mystery... It hurts to know you.

Please pray for time

Beloved reader,

It has been less than a week since I have written, yet it feels like an era has passed. Funny how time can twist and change shape based on what is unfolding.

There is so much that I am like a thimble trying to catch a torrent. I have no time to capture it, let alone process it and then form it the way He would have me.

Please pray for me. I hope to post a few drops soon. Pray for time.

Always yours,

Eva

Bashert

I was recently introduced to the Jewish idea of soulmate called bashert, at a theatre production of the rather bizarre "Clean House". After poking around on the web, I found the following description from an article on JewishJournal.com:

"A Jerusalem rabbi once told me that when we're born, God whispers the name of our beshert -- our soulmate or destiny. The cleft above our lips, he said, is where God places a finger, to silence our ability to reveal the secret."

Rather lovely I think.

Sacred scaring of the hard nosed

I've been thinking about Dr. C's comment re. the difficulty of some to accept the mundane as sacred, and will be writing more on that soon. I think the problem is connected to their abandonment of sacramentality as a whole. (Apologies if that was obvious...)

Both sides now

My beloved DiDi is teaching me many things. I am in awe.

Today I realized that she somehow stands on both sides of the veil.

It is as if it runs through the center of her, so that one eye sees the things of this world, and the other eye simultaneously sees the things of the Other.

I am in awe.

So sing!

"The reason people no longer believe is because believers no longer sing!"

--Friedrich Nietzshe

What is not said

Some of my favorite parts of the scriptures are things that are not stated. For example, what happened between the Holy Spirit and Mary once Gabriel left. More recently, I've been thinking about Lazarus, and what it must have been like after he was returned to life.