I will use this page to share my spiritual journey and how it led me to my devotion to Mary. Peace. Please feel free to respond and to share bits of your own journey as well.
I’m not sure where to begin so I will share this reflection as a starting place. Eucharistic Adoration is a physcal act of felt love. Saying Mass is the same. Taking the Host is a physical act of love. A bodily expression of feeling. It is our physical union with the ineffable, unknowable object of Holy Longing. It is the consummation of our love.
God is fully present in the Host in the same manner that we are fully present in each cell of our being. Each cell contains the full expression of each of us. In the same manner the Host contains the full and true physical presence of God. We, in the act of communion, have the miraculous opportunity to embrace and experience Divine Love. In that moment God comes to us as the physical expression of Divine Presence. As we take communion and allow our feelings of Holy Love and longing to flow, we become one with that Loving Source of all creation and our holy longing is filled. We give and receive, in our bodies, Divine Love. We become Love.
January 3, 2011
As I tell my own story you will begin to understand that these messages sometimes rankle me. I am not, in my personal beliefs, very orthodox. Nor am I pure or holy by church standards. I am deeply flawed and sometimes just not a good person… or it maybe it just feels that way. I do have a sincere and willing heart and a love for the Mother of God. I don’t know why exactly. It grates on my intellect. But I can’t help it. My heart goes out to her everytime I think of her. My senses are overcome every time I see her, and when she looks at me I am undone.
I struggle with sharing these messages. I don’t really trust myself but everytime I bring my doubts and misgivings to Mary, she says, plainly and simply, to share her words with you. So I do. I trust that whatever she wants you to find in these messages, you will find.
Peace to you.
February 14, 2011
More of my story. I am a southerner raised in that peculiar brand of southern Protestantism that centers around being “born-again” and “accepting Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior.” These terms seem pretty silly to me now. My parents took us to Methodist, United Presbyterian, Bible Presbyterian and some other kind of “reformed” Presbyterians churches. They never really settled in a church. There were always problems with something the preacher said in a sermon or something taught in Sunday school. I learned to be hypercritical and hyper-religious all at once.
My mother’s people were, I think. Methodist and Baptist, though it was never discussed. My father’s people were Catholics for many centuries. My grandfather’s generation left the church and by the time my generation came along, the family had adopted the general protestant attitude that Catholics wer some sort of evil christian-look-alike religion. They were all going to hell. I never bought into that.
The most meaningful gift I got for my high school graduation and the only one I remember, was from my great-aunt Beatrice Schroder. She sent me one of those prayer cards that said a donation had been made to a convent in my name and the sisters would be praying for me everyday for a year. I felt so blessed by that.
During High school I began seriously looking at my religious beliefs and began taking biblical study very seriously as well. I no longer simply read the Bible. I read it with concordances, multiple translations, hebrew and greek lexicons, and other scholarly works. I read Tertullian, Jerome, Augustine, Aquinas, Barthes, Guitierrez, Boff, deChardin. I also read Gorgius of Leontini, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Plotinus, Longinus, Catullus, Pliny, Suger, Boileau, Kieerkegard, Whitehead. Over the years I began to see through the facile contructs of many forms of Christianity and began to seek Divine Union through contemplation. My journey took me into explorations of Buddhism (which I still love), Neo-paganism (which still speaks strongly to my sense of connectedness to nature) and Roman Catholicism (I’ve already written about the power the Mass holds for me).
In that journey, I began to sense a feminine presence. A strong, loving beautiful presence. As I opened myself to listen and understand that presence, she appeared to me. She was the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus. Her presence grew stronger over a period of years. She became a pathway for me to re-enter the Christian connection to God that I had abandoned. (story for another post).
I could talk to Mary, even though I could not talk to Jesus and God was a big question mark. I meditated on Her presence. At some point I was drawn to the rosary. I bought a couple of small wooden rosaries just because I was drawn. I did nothing with them.
About 5 years ago Mary placed it on my heart to begin saying rosary. I resisted. Big time. I did nothing for about a year but the call was strong. I began carrying a rosary. Bought a nicer one. Then had a go at saying rosary but I changed up the prayers – made them more “ecumenical.”
Mary would have none of that changing up the prayers. Her instructions were simple and insistent. Pray the prayers as they are written. It was like pulling teeth, as the saying goes. But I did it. I prayed the prayers as written. Several times a week to start.
As I persisted in my practice, a beautiful ting happened. My soul transcended the words and I saw through the outward practice into the pure light of Divine Love – the heart of God beating throughout the whole of creation. I finally understood the purpose of Rosary. I finally let go of my grief and sorrow and allowed God to manifest where He had always been – in my own being.
About a year ago, Our Lady called me to daily recitation of the Rosary. I am fairly successful with that. I try. Life and laziness and just stuff get in the way at times.
Mary has appeared to me for years. But when I started doing Eucharistic Adoration at a small chapel near my home, her appearances changed and she began to give me these little messages as inner locutions.
More later.
Peace and brightest blessings.
May 14, 2011
I must admit I’m in a crisis – a spiritual crisis. This blog has been a part of that crisis. I have always felt a “calling” to do some kind of work for God. But at this stage of my life I can’t say that I believe in God in some kind of orthodox way. For me, God is ineffable, unknowable but there is something we can experience greater than the sum of the parts. We call that experience God and put all kinds of boundaries around it. While this boundary setting may be necessary in order for us to hold and share our awareness of God, it tends to become reified. We create insitutions and the boundaries we place around the experience become fixed.
I struggle. I don’t know what to believe. I know what I have experienced but I don’t know how to approach the notion of God in a rational and conceptual way that makes sense. I have nothing to hold on to. Religions are not an ends but a means. I can’t seem to find a religious perspective that holds my experience.
What’s more, I am awash in a flood of grief over the nearly complete rejection I’ve experienced from the religion of my youth. I can’t get past it and move into something healthy. I am bereft of a people, of a faith community. It’s hard to explain if you haven’t been there.
I think in writing this I realize that I am overwhelmed by grief and have no place to ground it. Mary has become my only touchstone to God. She is ever-loving and patient. She is infinitely kind. She is my true mother. There is some consolation there. I am the Samaritan woman at the well and Mary comes to tell me about love – to demonstrate the unconditional love of God for me.
So, to that sense of calling. I am not certain it is a calling as much as a mechanism for saying I don’t think I can or want to live this human existence. It seems to cruel and pointless. If there is a true calling in me it is this – you and I are loved unconditionally. Nothing you can do or say will separate you from the love of God. NOTHING. It doesn’t matter what any religious body or person says to you or about you. It doesn’t matter if you are despised and rejected by your own people. You are loved. I am loved. Unconditionally. If there is a call it is a call to be a vessel and conduit of healing graces, an instrument of divine peace and the presence of unconditional love to all beings. It is a call to practice that all beings may find peace, healing and liberation from suffering.
Peace to all beings.
