Reverie

Ever seen someone who just looked like they belonged to a different era? She’s like that.  Every movement carries delicacy and I’d rather cut than to say a coarse word in her earshot. She walks like a waltz and her gaze like a forbidden secret, one that your father hasn’t told you about yet regarding women and the way they make you feel.  Yet, she’s not terribly ethereal.  Garish taxi-cab yellow polish tries in vain to hide gnawed out stubs of nails. Her flaxen hair just adds to the way her brown eyes claw at you.  She makes you exhale the way you gasp when walking into those old law libraries, rows upon rows of books; tile after tile, feeling like you’re looking into eternity, and you remember to breathe only since you’re about to pass out and the spots come out across your eyes. Have to touch, have to reach out, see if she’s really there; perhaps a vision, a fantasy, an Angel. Just as I’ve memorized her every fiber and cell, she’s slipping away from me, weaving between the crowds with the ease of a creek between boulders. But she’s weaving me behind, floating through the crowds on the subway platform. Then, then she’s just gone. Perhaps an angel.

Back to me, my dragging raincoat and battered briefcase. I only ground myself to the spot on the platform just to keep from being pushed over the edge onto the rails, and I can’t but help and believe that the Angel would come back, and I could gaze at her one more time. Never enough, though as much as I want it. And what could she want with something disgustingly wretched like me? Angels don’t get involved with us, do they? They’re there with God, doing His better Will and we’re just milling around down below hoping for the most minor of crumbs to fall from the manor-owner’s table. No, the lovely angelic sight won’t be around until she’s needed to whisk me away.  Better for me to be taken when my lungs are clogged and cackle like an old hag under the chains of emphysema, and my hair natty and gray. At that time, wouldn’t I be wandering though – lost in another time and completely unaware of my surroundings? I’ll be like my Angel, from another time and place with only a few traces of the times to bring someone back out of reverie.

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I have not read St Gemma's autobiography, but after Lent I'll try to find the book.  I've promised to not by anything new during Lent unless it's absolutely necessary (i.e., deodorant).  However I did find a website that transposed the autobiography from Italian to English, and then posted it up online through permission of the Passionists.

I hadn't been aware that she was a nun, since she had been so sickly.  I wonder if Jesus puts mystics into the convent since it's the best way to assure that they have spiritual directors and care?

St Gemma definitely inspires one to want to be a Saint.

The website about St Gemma: here.

Some Thoughts About Japan

I can't watch the videos any more. Or look at devastating photographs.  I don't turn on the radio to hear about possible nuclear meltdowns (whatever that means, no one's bothered to break it down for non-physicist me).  I'm not hiding under a rock, I know what is going on. Rather, I'm not seeking out footage, airwaves, etc.

Psychologically, it's mind-boggling. Emotionally, it's heart-wrenching.  Spiritually speaking: I'm not asking what God has done, but what He has permitted.  I'm asking what I can do spiritually to help out.

Pray, united with the intercession of the Angels, Saints, and Our Lady of Akita.

-- edited 9:30pm --

Consider the lost Souls:

• no Last Rites were available
• no Consolation
• their Guardian Angels
• the demons tormenting and spiritually attacking them
• the moments of doubt of a benevolent God

Consider the resulting damage:

• Nearly inconsolable grief
• Doubts of God's Mercy
• Turning away from God
• Anger at it all
• statement's like the psalmists'  Where is their God now?
• Spiritual attacks of doubt and despair

a quote about the Holy Cross

"My daughter, if the Cross was not felt, it could not be called a Cross. Be certain that if you stand beneath the Cross you will never be lost. The Devil has no power over those souls who weep near the Cross. My daughter, how many would have abandoned Me, if I had not crucified them. The Cross is a very precious gift, and many virtues can be learned through it." -- Jesus to St. Gemma

Lenten Reflection

Lent is a solemn and sober season.  It is at once my most favorite, and one that I do not always look forward to with eagerness, but I do look forward to it with a certain spiritual sobriety and longing.

In 2008 I fasted particularly strongly: no noise, music, or auditory stimulation at all. The only music, conversation etc occurred every Sunday at Mass.  It took me a good two weeks after Easter to turn the radio on in the car.  I cannot fast that way this year, however I am curtailing my music choices.  I'm cutting certain practices out, and resuming some spiritual reading.  What I mean by cutting certain practices out, is not like giving up chocolate or not watching television to gain more time to read.  Rather I'm gouging out unsavory practices: habitual sin. I know that it's going to flare up before it ceases, but it will end.

As Lent is somber, there's a pervasive element of despair.  It's the desert season: without water, without seeming refuge; exposed under scrutiny however painful.  It's a time that I give myself permission to spiritually flounder, and I pray for it as well.  I know that I need pruning and trimming.  It's a difficult process, but in being aware that I need to go through it, I have to let it occur.  I do not like it.  I do not willingly seek it out in joy.

Do we enjoy scrubbing the toilet? No, but wouldn't you rather have a clean toilet to purge into when you've got food poisoning?  Well, it's the same spiritually. We need to enter into Lent and it's sobriety to purge our Souls.