The Light in the Woods

#4 – THE LIGHT IN THE WOODS – NOVEMBER 2005

©Aubri Dennison 2005

11/7/05 Insights from Prayer        I feel guilty when the busyness of the world gets me off track with my prayer and devotions. But it’s after such times, when I kneel down to get re-acquainted with God after a stint of focusing on my worldly commitments, that I realize that in reality God has always been there – it’s only in my human weakness that I feel He’s “taking me back.” We can’t imagine the scope of what He’s able to do despite us. Even when we’re not praying, He is with us, and we can glorify Him by doing what we do with the traits He appreciates – kindness, care, justice, patience, understanding, love. His commandment was that we love Him, and it’s good during prayer to praise Him, but He also commanded that we love our neighbor, and we do this also during times we aren’t praying and it shows in all we do. That is how we can pray without ceasing; and do unto Him when we do unto the least of our brethren.

11/8/05 Reflections        I worry that any act of charity I do would be hopelessly small; a drop in the ocean of need. I ought to learn that the Lord is capable of magnifying my works, and to remember that it isn’t all about what I do, but what He does.

11/9/05 Reflections          God created the universe, and from this foundation nothing else can be made without His grace – from the raw materials used, to the brain cells of those who would put the raw materials together in a unique way; all are gifts of a Divine Creator. We can add nothing by ourselves. In the same way even the intangibles have been given to us – especially our basic, inalienable rights. And yet there are those so enamored of themselves that they want to endow others with rights God never intended, and in order to get away with this they have to espouse the theory that God doesn’t exist or, if He does, He leaves it up to us to gift ourselves with rights. Understanding that all things come from God, I accept and obey His order.

11/12/05 Reflections      Christian in-fighting should be an oxymoron, however it’s just as real today when there’s more unity than ever as it was during the dark times of secular-reaching popes and Reformation. Our goal is to please God, no matter what our religion or sect, and we’re doing a poor job of it if we’re arguing over how to do it. Disrespect among Christian sects is every bit as devastating to our goal as fighting between Muslims and Christians, Jews and Muslims, or Jews and Christians. All monotheistic religions are right-minded and all cultures contain good people as a majority – this is what pleases God and puts us on the road to enjoying our salvation. We could work miracles through God’s grace if we could unilaterally declare peace with those of other religions, and we can start by declaring peace among Christian sects.

11/13/05 Insights from Prayer       It just now dawned on me, after 50 years or so of religious awareness, the whole point of the incident where Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the cross on His way to His crucifixion. I was praying to thank the Lord for helping me with a problem, and to ask Him for confirmation of what I expected – that in obviously helping me with my problem He also is assuring me that it isn’t vain or ungrateful for me to want to solve the problem. I had been worried that having been given a cross to bear, I should accept it with a smile instead of asking for help in getting rid of it. Jesus appeared never so human to us as He did during the Passion, and He accepted help with His cross even though He knew and accepted that His burden was given to Him by God according to His divine plan. But in the Garden of Gethsemane, He prayed to be freed of His burden, and later when Simon of Cyrene came along, Jesus accepted help with His burden. So no, we aren’t expected to bear our cross just for the sake of acceptance. It’s OK to ask God to free us from the suffering He’s given us; it’s OK to ask for help to lessen it or eliminate it completely; it’s OK if the answer is no – Jesus tells us there are things that have to happen, not all of them good, in order to fulfill the divine plan. It’s OK, He tells us by example, to try to lessen or eliminate our cross, but in the end the important thing is to have the faith to accept it either way.

11/13/05 Inspirations     Infallibility and human frailty – what are we to believe when it comes to belief? Religions that broke away from the Catholic Church did so for the most part in protest of the papacy. Therefore they decreed that scripture only should be our basis of authority, and should be considered infallible. Oops! Parts of scripture are provably, historically wrong. Parts clearly contradict one another. Parts are missing; parts are found that my or may not be the Word of God. Parts are unintelligible. All of it has changed in translation, and all of it has been written by fallible human beings who have their own agendas to cater to. But the most telling problem is that not every life circumstance is covered in the scriptures, so by default there must be human interpretation and declaration of truth, no matter how badly we want to get away from it. Whether that means a Pope or a television faith-healing evangelist, we must have faith that, just as He did with the Bible authors, God will inspire our teachers, and because of that, all authority eventually comes from God. Only He is perfect on Earth — though He may inspire our religious, they are still human; that is why there are bad Popes and priests, bad evangelists and scripturalists. But most of us aren’t scholars – we need spiritual direction with the real, everyday conundrums we face. i don’t feel we should limit our means of getting spiritual direction to one or two sources or rituals. Bring on all the resources available for us to use, and whatever we question we can ask God about in our private prayers. When Jesus looked right at Peter and told him that the son of God must be taken prisoner and executed and Peter said “Bull, I wouldn’t let that happen”, did Jesus say “Boy, I made a mistake picking out this winner for head apostle”? When the apostles didn’t understand a parable, or doubted Jesus told them there would be fish where they cast their nets, or grew afraid on the heavy waves while Jesus slept, or told the women they were hallucinating Jesus’ empty tomb – did Jesus roll His eyes? Did He make a mistake in picking Judas Iscariot, who set Him up for arrest? Did He make a mistake in picking Peter, who denied Jesus three times even after Jesus told him he would? Was doubting Thomas useless as an apostle? No, the Lord knew exactly what He was doing when He chose the apostles, just as He does when He calls their successors, the bishops and popes. He knew they had human failings and would show them; that’s how we know not to worship them. But we venerate them as tools of God’s inspiration. In matters not covered elsewhere, when the magesterium of the true church gets together to proclaim their findings under inspiration from God as the head of the Church, we should take the Pope’s testament to the validity of this process as infallible doctrine, because there is no other authority available to us. That’s all papal infallibility means – someone has to interpret God’s will in these matters and it might as well be the present day apostles, imperfect as they are. It has been this way since Jesus chose the imperfect Simon Peter, and all the other imperfect apostles — when they erred, He didn’t weaken His mission and throw the baby out with the bath water. He enlightened them and moved on. We owe it to Christian unity to acknowledge mistakes when they’re made, use every tool in our arsenal to spread the word and show our devotion to God, treat each other as Christians treat each other, and pray always for enlightenment for ourselves and all others.

11/17/05 Reflections      When the things I hear spouted by the profaners get to be too much for me to take; when it seems like society is sinking and taking us all down with it, I have two thoughts I can meditate on that make my heart leap with joy and relief. First, I can always and everywhere take my problem in prayer to the only one who can stop these injustices. Second, no matter what happens, I myself can remain saved independent of what others do, and the judge knows that I’m not undeserving. To be on a first name basis with God is something we start out possessing, but to strive for perfection with Him is a special joy no matter how far along we are on the road. It doesn’t excuse me from trying to reverse the damage being done by the irreverent, but it assures me that if I fail I still have the support of the Lord. And when things look bleakest I can go to Him for comfort, consolation, and counsel. With Him I can’t lose.

11/18/05 Inspirations       “Having faith” doesn’t mean a whole lot if it’s only definition is that you believe in God. It’s only when you believe in God’s love that your soul is opened up and “having faith” produces the desired effect.

11/19/05 Reflections       So I’ve done all this praying and studying and listening to the radio but until I delved into it deeper it’s been like something the Catholic magesterium doesn’t want to talk about. Priest sex scandal? No, the fact that I in the past contracted into an “invalid marriage” and, when I was done having children, had myself sterilized. Because of this, I’m not in communion with the Church and may not receive the Holy Eucharist. Forget the need for converts, or potential reverts like me; forget that the grace we get from Holy Communion is given to us as sinners, not as pure people deserving to receive it. I’m not sorry for my marriage or my family planning and I don’t feel sinful because of these – if I were to go to confession and say I was sorry, that itself would be a sin and a lie. If I were to have my husband’s first marriage annulled on the grounds the Church requires so I could get convalidation, that too would be a trumped-up lie of convenience. The Catholic Church provides no recourse for a person who falls in love with a divorced person to remain a communicant, and no recourse for a person who wants to revert. What a terrible loss, for the person and also the Church. And even if I did think I had sinned and even if I was sorry and went to confession, when I walked out I would still be married and sterilized and unwilling to change the situation, so my sin would be perpetual. The only thing I could tell them was that I wouldn’t do these things again, but what would that prove, as I would have no occasion anyway to sin this way? So it’s a catch-22 – maybe I could go to mass and then afterward whip over to the Lutherans and take communion there! In reality, this is the kind of stridency Jesus was against when He accused His accusers of living the letter of the law and sinning against the spirit of the law. I will deeply miss the chance to claim my true Catholic heritage and there’s no doubt my ineligibility to receive communion will badly taint my joy of rediscovering my religious feeling. But I’m smart enough not to let this destroy my faith in God – I have that still, because I have the ever-present and unconditional love of God no matter how the Church tries to quell my relation with it. My relation with God is what counts to me most, and I will continue to strive for perfection in this. I still believe in the Catholic teachings and don’t need her permission to live out my life with God, but it would have been nice to have her blessing.

11/20/05 Insights from Prayer      I have given my problems deep thought and conclude what I suspected all along – it’s my faith more than my religion I need to cling to and it’s my conscience more than church dogmas which guides me. There are things I did after having left the Catholic Church that did not seem sinful to me and still don’t. There are things that didn’t feel sinful to me in the past that would if I were to do them now. I should go to confession, not to confess sins that weren’t sinful to me, but to tell the church that I’m OK with God, but that I’m sorry my past actions make me feel unwelcome in the church. God is my judge and the church is my guide– I will continue to receive the sacraments because of both of these influences, and hope I can get over the feeling that I’m receiving grace from God in spite of my church’s preferences. This is my church’s problem, not mine or, I need to remember, a very large part of the tribe I need to be in communion with. I’m certainly not alone in my beliefs; in fact I’m part of the majority. Religion isn’t a democracy – we take our laws from God – but when God leaves so many with a clear conscience concerning what the church considers a sin, it’s time for our teacher to review her reasoning, then re-instruct us.

11/20/05 Reflections        When I look back on what inspired me to seek out God as opposed to merely receiving Him, I realize it was the desire to feel as peaceful and focused as those I saw around me who dedicated themselves and their lifestyles to the Lord. So if we want to spread the word to others we must not only possess the grace we wish for them, but also have a humble but unmistakable outward sign of the goodness we possess and which is available and accessible to all. The benefits of righteousness must be there to see and for the unbelievers to covet; the filling out of the true manifestation of being right with the Lord will all come later through God-given, compounding grace.

11/20/05 Inspirations            Christ’s job is to gather all who accept God into God’s kingdom. Asking of the Earth, He uses us as His soldiers to spread His word. In this way we work for God and for our neighbor, according to Christ’s mandate.

11/21/05 Reflections      I have pictures and music in my head, and they work together to tell an uplifting and inspirational story of such grandeur that the whole world would be in awe of its emotion – if only I could let it out in a form that others could receive.

11/23/05 Insights from Study         The psalms have always bothered me the way we read them all the way through. Taken a few lines during a prayer, they’re a beautiful cross-section of types of prayer. But when you read them like you would another part of the Bible, it’s like self-gratification that we can praise and thank and supplicate and petition in such a grand matter. It’s like giving God gold and pearls when all He’s asked for is love. For the same reason, extreme mortification seems to me a self-serving rite. God doesn’t want that – it only serves us to make us feel pious. It’s OK to use psalms and moderate mortification to focus ourselves, as long as the goal is to serve God, not make us feel holier than the next person.

11/28/05 Reflections         This is my first anniversary of my spiritual journey beginning to re-connect with my beliefs and walk with Jesus towards eternal life with God. In this year of prayer, meditation, and study, I’ve found that among many of my problems trying to strive for perfection in God’s eyes, the one I encounter the most often is thought-wandering. I come across it almost every time I do a devotion — it’s not inattention; in fact it’s the opposite in that one reflection gets me interested in another and another until I’ve lost my initial thought. I’m so interested in so many things and delighted in the revelations my contemplations bring me, I can’t help but parade them all in front of my consciousness before coming to and getting back to the logical beginning. I can get confused, overwhelmed, and even disheartened – but I always have one defense that’s simple and always available. I can go directly to God in prayer and ask for the grace I need to stay on track, and be sure to tell Him I’m grateful anyway for the parade of insights, it’s just that I’d be better off examining them one at a time! It’s good to go back to basics, touch home base with a direct line to God, and come back out consoled by the one thing I’m 100% absolutely certain of.