It takes my breath away

{I am not entirely sure what this post is. It all just came to me the night I wrote it, and for some reason I feel like sharing it.}

My journey home to the Church was astonishingly smooth, even easy, once all the gears clicked into place and the movement really began -- God had paved the way for me for years, slowly preparing me for Truth, for Himself. And so many of the common struggles or obstacles to acceptance of the Church's Truth I just did not have. It was all deliciously and mysteriously True; for some things, an answer at long last, for others, an answer I had never sought, but made perfect sense, and awakened a thirst in me that never subsided. On those things that surprised me in my own uneasiness, I never doubted their truth or the Church's wisdom, only knew that there was something in me that needed teaching, healing, or awakening, which continues to this day, and is in the "littler" details of spirituality, for the most part. God always sends just what I need, when I need it and when I am ready for it, to illuminate some aspect of Truth for me that I hadn't seen so clearly before or even avoided facing. So often His Truth and Love lay bare some truth about ourselves we don't want to face or deal with or see. But once the unpleasantness, discomfort, or pain has passed, a peace comes, even delight! Oh yes, even delight as you exult, wonderstruck, in the sweetness and sheer deliciousness of this new-found Truth. Yes, your soul has grown and been transformed just a little bit more in Christ.

My journey into the Church has been and always will be a kind of Dance, learning to follow His lead, to not push or pull away or force my will, or drag my feet -- a dance into the grace and piercing Beauty of God as manifest in His Creation and in His Church. To dance with the rhythm of the Earth's seasons and the Church's seasons, to dance to all the beauty of the treasure chest He's given us, to revel and exult in all therein. Sometimes I feel like it is a perpetual discovery of beauty and loveliness and grace and hope and love. There is always something new to nourish and feed my soul, to heal my wounds, to startle me out of complacency or apathy or laziness. There is never a lack of ways He stirs and awakens the yearning inside me again. I look back to just a few years ago, and marvel at how even then I felt awestruck at all that had been given me, and wondered at how I could possibly go "any deeper" than I already had, to know more beauty than this, to go even deeper into the love of God, to be even closer to Our Lady. Yet I was taken deeper! And how. It takes my breath away even now at the thought that there could possibly be more -- more beauty, more love, more depth to all this, more to wonder at, more than what has already been given to me?! And yet that is the astonishing reality. There will always be more.

He sings a love song to me in my sleep and whispers invitations to trust and holy, wild abandonment. His eyes draw me to Him in longing, but I am driven away by my fear, distrust, and awareness of my sinfulness and weakness. Yet, like the poem, He only draws closer to me, sweetly asking if I need anything. "Who made the eyes but I?" He asks, the infinity of love in His eyes haunting me in my dreams, a gentle Presence throughout the day that begs my attention, to be present to His Presence, too.

Christ asks for a home in your soul, where He can be at rest with you, where He can talk easily to you, where you and He, alone together, can laugh and be silent and be delighted with one another. ~ Caryll Houselander

God desires nearness. He would like to be with you to the end of the world. He is a beggar for your love. ~ Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar

Our Saviour says: "Go into your room and pray," but by 'room' you must understand, not a room enclosed by walls that imprison your body, but the room that is within you, the room where you hide your thoughts, where you keep your affections. This room of prayer is always with you, wherever you are, and it is always a secret room, where only God can see you. ~ Saint Ambrose

Sometimes it comes to me, through some echo of the Beauty, some glimpse out of the corner of my eyes, a reflection as in a mirror, when the infinite reverberates inside me, a hint of a Voice that calls my name -- and then this ache, the ache that fills my whole being -- swelling up into tears and trembles and shivers throughout my body. It hits me with a gasp. Ache is so feeble a word for something so intense and deep, extending into the very recesses of my heart and soul, reaching out towards the infinite. It's an ineffable, inexpressible ache, ache, ache, ache! Words are suddenly burdensome and clumsy (though it is often then that a rush of words will descend upon me). There is no earthly way this will be completely translated into human language -- so small, so limited, so narrow -- how could it possibly enclose and express something of the Infinite and Uncontainable? Only with hints and shadows and flickers of the fullness of the reality. It is then that I long for someone, somebody to hold me close to their own heart in my aching, to shelter me in my sudden vulnerability to the expanse of this wide and wonder-full Cosmos --- yet I scarcely ever speak of this to anyone. Yes, in bits and pieces like here, but in those actual moments, I am alone in my humanness. I don't even mention it to my parents, the longing, how could I possibly make myself so painfully vulnerable, even to them whom I know love me so, so much? No, no...I can't even try to explain it to them. Not in full, not when it so evades capture by words. I need someone who already knows and can share the ache with me, and wrapped in embrace together, breathing together, hands pressed together, ache together, not needing words or speech, to be able to weep openly and freely when we have been pierced so deeply with such acute awareness of our exile, for a simple glance into each other's eyes to know that the other knows. Oh yes, they know. And for that to be enough.

This --- oh, this! I long for this, to have a companion in this life, a true companion on my spiritual journey, a fellow pilgrim. Not just a friend, though I cherish dearly all whom I have, and are fellow pilgrims -- brothers, sisters -- in their own beautiful way, but my soulmate, my life's helpmate. Where, oh where, my Lord, is he? Where is the human heart who knows this ache that flows in my blood and dwells deep in my bones, whose heart was made to beat next to mine in this life? He who will help me stand when I stumble or fall, who will love me in my weakness and imperfection, and for whom I can do the same? He my appointed companion on the journey home to You.

For so long have I felt this strange lack, like something is missing, and the separate ache of not having those eyes to look into that reflect a heart that knows and understands. Long have I sojourned in this my desert. I am a perpetual unrequited look of recognition.

Wounded by Beauty. I am irrevocably wounded by Beauty. And oh, what an exquisite pain it is! I need a man who is as intoxicated by Beauty as I am. Who positively craves it and longs to swim in it, drink it in, sinking ever deeper into it, or rather, Him, He who is Beauty -- He who Is. Beauty is Truth is Goodness is Love is Life. I want to dive with him into the Beauty of God's Love and never resurface. To swim with him where the water is sweet and the brightness of the Sun doesn't blind. For our souls to be intertwined and bound together, for thoughts and hopes and pains and heartbeats and breaths and flesh and lips and hands to be woven together -- And twain shall become one flesh. To be joined in communion with him and to learn communion with him. To be drawn out of our isolation into communion, for a glimpse of that ultimate consummation for which we were created. For love to grow betwixt us and within us; love is always creative: to gaze upon our love and learning-love embodied and new and astonishing.

We are like fish on the land, gasping for the water which is our breath, yet so terribly unaware we are even gasping, dying. And so I walk to the shore of His River, the unending abyss of the Sea of His Love, and all the while I had been dying unknowingly, starved for Beauty, starved for Truth, starved for Love, the currents of this sweet Water pull me in, and suddenly I am drowning in Beauty. For so long have we been dying, suffocating little fish on land, that when life floods us, we are bewildered and think then that this is death, and insanely fight to swim to the surface, back to the barren land of death that we had grown so accustomed to. Darkness seemed as light, lies seemed as truth, death seemed as life. But in swimming, in fighting, we suddenly realize we've been plunged into life. As we slowly allow ourselves to become more and more alive, we become drunk on this Water of Life, and beg to be pulled ever deeper into its depths, to sink more and more into its wondrousness and deliciousness. Life, we cry! Awash in the stories redemption sings, we are astonished at the blood now flooding our veins, at our hearts which beat ever stronger. Where we had only bitter emptiness now overflows with grace's fruitful abundance. We thirst with an insatiable thirst for more. The thirst for this Beauty is never fully quenched.
There is always more.

Heartsickness

{I began this post on the Friday that the very last Harry Potter movie was released in theatres - July 15th. I wrote much of it then, but only finished it up now, the 21st of August, after watching Goblet of Fire at home. Here you will find much rambling thoughts on Harry Potter and what he means to me and my life.}


I am not just a mere fan of Harry Potter. Sure, I might call myself a fan, though you'll never catch me using the silly term 'Potterhead' or whatever. xD No....I am much, much more than just a fan.

I never know where to begin when telling my Harry Potter story, but I suppose it would do to start by saying that at first, I was quite prejudiced against the Harry Potter books. I thought, looking at the books' American covers, that they looked quite silly and uninteresting. So I paid them no attention. Haha. Until one day when I was at a family friend's house for the day, and their little ones, much younger than I, liked HP and wanted to watch the first film, which had recently come out on DVD. This was August 2002. Begrudgingly, I said I would watch it with them. The rest, as they say, is history. The movie was unlike anything I even remotely thought Harry Potter would be like, and I was hooked. In the same way as I had done earlier that summer, when I had loved The Hobbit so much the first time I read it, I promptly read it again upon finishing it, I watched Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone a second time that day. Soon, it was time to go home. All I could think about was how much I wanted the books, the 4 which were out at that time. When I finally got my hands on all 4 books, I fell even more deeply into the stories, and it would be a long time before I emerged to even consider breathing anything other than Harry Potter.

That year was my 6th grade year. I won't go into a lot of detail here, but suffice it to say that it was a hard year, a dark year, for me. At 12 years old, I felt utterly alone in the world. Even my parents felt strangely distanced from me. I felt like I was in a room to myself, locked up, and no one, not even me, had the key to get inside. The pain -- I cannot even describe. The Harry Potter books became my solace, my hope, my haven in a world that suddenly felt alien and separated from me. An ache deep inside me was at last awoken in full, when only stirrings had I known before. I cannot even begin to tell you how many tears were shed, each and every night, almost. It was here that I learned how to cry quietly, silently, making no noise as I cried myself to sleep. Inside these books was a place that felt like home beyond what mere words can express, here were friends, true friends who would be like brothers and sisters to me. Words such as yearning, longing, aching came to define my life, and really, still do. At the same time, however, my immersion into Harry Potter carried an unexpected twist -- not only had it become a source of nourishment, a balm to soothe my bleeding soul -- it had become also my poison, the sword that wounded me. For I found that my longing had grown bitter and harsh over time, and no longer bore the sweetness and intoxicating joy and hope it once had. Something had gone wrong, inside of me. So I slowly, slowly made the decision to journey out of this 'land' that I had inhabited those many months, whose music to this day pierces me to my very core...

You see, something interesting and rather unexpected happened when I slowly 'emerged' from my Harry Potter immersion; though he no longer consumed my every waking thought and word that came out of my mouth, over time, he became part of the very foundation of who I am; Harry was absorbed into my very self, the fabric of my being, of what makes me uniquely me. I can no more separate Harry from who I am than I can separate my soul from my body --- which, even in death, is a temporary separation, false, and not meant to be. The body and the soul are to be forever reunited in the end, glorified and made perfect in God. For we are human beings: flesh and spirit. To 'extricate' Harry from myself would leave you with less than me. It would no longer be me, fully me. Only a piece, and incomplete.

Harry is now part and parcel of myself. This is why it hurts so much when he is attacked in some way by others, untruths said about him, slandered, belittled, or when others somehow, bewilderingly, just do not "like" or "enjoy" his Story very much. It is almost, to me, as if I am being attacked, and wounded, as this part of myself closes its doors to others' blindness and even sheer idiocy. I know it is not an actual attack on me personally, but still, it does hurt. As to those who just don't 'respond' to the story....I am not sure what to say, but that I cannot relate....that, in this area, you and I cannot relate, there are no binding threads between us. Perhaps in other ways, there are, but not in all.

I must say that if your soul does not resonate deeply with Harry akin to mine, then there will ever be a part of me that I cannot communicate to you, that is 'dark' to you, a part of me you cannot see or understand. This does not mean we cannot love each other and be friends --of course we can -- just that a very deep and sacred part of who I am remains hidden from you, and there is nothing I can do about that. I am sure, since God uses a myriad of things to reach His children, there are comparable things in your souls, perhaps, that I cannot grasp or understand about you for the same reason.

However, if you do understand what I mean when I speak of love for Harry, in some degree, in a similar way ...then a connection has been made, a bond forged. You know. A communion is shared, a gaze into each other that is rare indeed. And it requires no words, really, to express it. We can try, of course, as I do here, but we will both understand how feeble words are with something like this, when our words are so limited in the realm of the spirit, of the heart.

Years later, I would read a book, How Harry Cast His Spell, by John Granger. It made it crystal-clear to me why Harry meant so much to me when it did, and why it helped me how it did. Harry Potter is truly, like Narnia and Lord of the Rings, spiritual food in a spiritually starving world. I was spiritually starved, to be sure....and in Harry Potter I found such beauty, such Truth, that it filled my heart with a powerful longing for home and belonging and for adventure, magic, enchantment, the existence of things beyond my sight, of things beyond explanation, of epic battles between good and evil. I wanted very much to be able to fight for all that is good and true. I grew tired of cold, harsh, limited, sterile science and longed for Truth over mere physical "facts". (I have since learned that stripping science of its wonder and awe is one of the worst things the so-called "Enlightenment" did for us, though they left us a rather unfortunate legacy anyway, in many areas.)
I did not know for what I yearned with every fiber of my being (little did I know it was more a Who, not a what), though I felt it embodied best in words like home, true friends, beauty, magic, enchantment, adventure. Was this 'home' a place? I felt distant from my parents, whom I felt, at that dark time, did not love me (I know now they most certainly did and do). It took me not quite 4 years for me to find this 'home', but find it I did. :)

No matter what I say or connect it to down the years in my life, I will never be able to fully convey what Harry means to me. He is wrapped up in everything.


A lot of the time, I just feel generally sick, heartsick.


How is it that these songs have wound their way into my skin, flow in my blood and nestle in my bones? What is it that makes my heart leap into my throat and tears well up in my eyes when certain songs are heard, this ache, this ache that is so hard to put to words?! The characters, the people --- you love them, as family. They have, indeed, become family. And loving them like family, you grieve with them, laugh with them, weep and rejoice with them.

What maddeningly brief glimpses of Truth do we see, and make us pant for more? Whispers, hints, and reminders of Eden and our exile is felt all the more painfully. We look in the windows and see far beyond -- and within -- and our heart of hearts cries out for the home we never left, but are too blind as yet to see. Oh! The curse of Uncle Andrew Eyes! (and ears) Its poison seeps through us all. We live in a world of enchantment and wonder but have our heads in the sand, our eyes on the cave wall. Whither has the magic gone? Oh, does it hide in the forest like Old Narnia, beaten back by fear and hate, or does it perish with forgetting, like the gods of old? Or Tinker Bell, when disbelief struck at her beating heart. Or perhaps like Avalon, protected from our finding, and our abuse. With denial comes withdrawal, no longer wanted or respected in any way, and seeking solace in the hidden places. The stars they sing and dance in their courses, but deaf and blind we look away.

What powers and gifts lie within us, lost? Left beneath a tree's dark shade with half-eaten fruit among them. Some linger on, bent and weakened, but most are just a memory. What has our disbelief earned us? The ties that bind us one to each other all tangled and twisted and frayed, how great is our rebellion against the Weaver's hand.

Why does Hogwarts feel like home, unique and distinct from the way that Narnia, too, and Middle-earth, feel like home? Oh, to wrap myself in it and breathe it in deeply into my lungs!

Yes, yes, there is a chapel at Hogwarts, I am sure of it. And Catholic, too -- for Hogwarts was young and forming when England Mary's Dowry was. How did the Reformation -- a schism tearing the Mystical Body apart-- touch the magical community? What were, or are, their views of the crown?

Imagine, the Greatest Miracle ---of Love-- on an altar, in a magical school! The wizard priest whose consecrated hands thus bear Love Incarnate should tremble at the Deeper Magic, and so should all who take It into their flesh and bones. Here, the true Master of Death reigns, He the true bearer of all three Hallows.


It is with Harry that we journey through darkness, pain and strife, with him that we cry and laugh and love, with him that we forge lasting memories of friends and adopted family and school lessons and life lessons, with him that we swallow our fear to fight for what's right, good, true, and beautiful, with him that we learn that we must first die before we can rise from the ashes, and with him that we learn that unconditional, sacrificial love is the greatest, most powerful magic of all.


Oh, I am truly heartsick, and this sickness doth within me dwell for all my days, until I die.

No story lives unless someone wants to listen. The stories we love best do live in us forever. ...So, whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.

~ J.K. Rowling

I can't take it in. (It couldn't be anymore beautiful.)

So.....yes, I know it's been months since last I posted. :/ I've just gotten busy, and yes, a lot has happened. Switchfoot concert, school (which, btw, is more than halfway through 1st semester already), so many feast days, my 20th birthday, the list goes on.... sigh.

Anyway, my apologies, I do have a very long post for you today, consisting entirely of writing. :P

I wrote it in the wee hours of the morning on Saturday, which I guess is still today, lol. I first posted it on Facebook, so for those of you who'd rather comment there, feel free. :) Thank you to everyone who has already commented there. Here goes....
_________________________

I want to live.

I mean live.

I am so tired of most of my dearest friends being so far away from me, with the only means of contact being chiefly the computer I am currently writing on. Yes, there are physical letters and phone calls, a step in the right direction, to be sure...and perhaps if I were more faithful in my letter-writing (ahem) I would find more solace in their tangibility, as with hearing your sweet voices.

But I am so tired of not living.

I want to love my friends (and family) in the here and now, in flesh and blood, with eyes to look into, hands to hold, voices to hear, presences to surround me.

I want to... get physical. Seriously - I want to get off this accursed machine and live life out in God's glorious Creation, so why does He have to keep blessing me so darn much with the internet? As much as it can be a problem....I have been so, so blessed through it. And even that is an understatement. Words could not even begin to express all that has been given me through this strange thing called the Internet. I have grown by leaps and bounds, I have become more me, I have laughed, loved, cried, learned, pondered...

So much music. So much that I have read, and grown by. So many friends!! And practically all I know (and love) about my Faith. I could go on forever. In so many ways, this truly is a miracle. And yet....

Curse it all, I want to live! I want to get my hands dirty in the wet spring earth, like Mary, Colin, and Dickon in the garden. I want to sew and sew all the clothes I drool over, feeling all the lush fabrics run through my fingers. I want to feel bread dough between my fingers, sticky-soft, while I knead, push, pull. I want to feel grass beneath my feet. Wind in my hair. I want to feel the rain on my skin, snow on my tongue. I want to feel fire's flickering heat. I want to marvel at rainbows and moonbows, to gaze up at the starry night sky. I want to dwell in blessed solitude, I want to dwell in communion with humanity. I want to be flesh and blood, because that is what I am. A flesh-and-blood, heart-and-soul human being. And I want to live. I want to be vibrantly, painfully alive.

I am tired of feeling apathetic and numb to things I should care about. I want to feel deeply. I want to look upon my Lord on the Cross, and weep. I want to be profoundly moved at Holy Mass; I want to be simply graced at Holy Mass. I want to love even when I don't feel.

I want to bless each and every thing.

I want a flesh and blood man to love, a man of God who will cherish me for all his days, and lay down his life for me. I want to be his soulmate and his helpmate, and he mine.

I want to labor in all the earthy physicality of bearing children, of giving birth to new life. I want to scream in agony and then experience the euphoria of holding my baby in my arms for the first time, forgetting any pain.

I want to journey through the precious, most beautiful, most noble task that is teaching Truth to new human beings. Of passing on the beauty of life to my children. Of teaching them to love and serve God.

I want to exult in all that is the messy, beautiful, glorious, painful thing we call Life.

I want to cry. I want to laugh. I want to sing. I want to dance. I want to write. I want to create. I want to pray. I want to love.

I want to live.

How can I divorce myself from all the queer artificiality that is this online world that has nevertheless enriched me so much? I will never be able to bring all my friends together in one place. Sometimes I feel so confused and conflicted....

And yet, for all this longing for Life, I know in my heart I will never receive it fully. Not yet. Not in this life.

And that....that is perhaps the bitterest chalice for me to drink from. For I long for nothing less than to be fully aware of life while I am living it. But as human beings, fallen, broken, imperfect, incomplete -- we cannot yet have this. Only in glimpses, tantalizing flashes, the briefest of tastes.

And I weep.

Essentially, I am longing for Heaven, for complete and utter communion, union, and life with and in God. I long to dwell in the Eternal Present with God.

We cannot be so aware all the time. It is humanly impossible. And I am learning to accept this. That all I long for, all that I have said, and all that I have not said here, is only to be found in its completion in the next life, when at last we will begin to fully live. "I don't belong here..." I am learning to drink to the dregs this bitter cup of Not Yet.

"God is at home," says Meister Eckhart, "We are in the far country."

From Thornton Wilder's play 'Our Town':

Emily: Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it -- every, every minute?

Stage Manager: No.

Saints and poets, maybe -- they do some.

My mother says it is the poet in me - the artist - that experiences those moments where I feel removed from whatever is happening, almost as if I were "watching" it, but not quite...I am still there, in the moment, but my awareness is elsewhere....it is my human limitations that prevent me from being both in that elsewhere, observing and seeing it in the context of Time, etc, but also being fully in the moment, living it...

I have encountered confusion from some people when I say things like "Every joyful moment is bittersweet."

But it is. Every joy, every beauty, is bittersweet.

Sweet, for obvious reasons.

Bitter, because it will end, and not return. Time, that horrid Thief, the clock keeps ticking...yet it is that same Time that gives the urgency to our lives. It will not last. "Life is short. Like a gunshot, and it's over. Live it well."

I am reminded specifically of choir concerts in high school -- how it was thrilling and wondrous to be in the moment, singing those glorious songs, to be "one" -- if but for a little while. Yet, once that concert was over, that moment could never come back. That time had passed. It was gone. It cannot be repeated. Bitter, and sweet, at the same time.

That is how I experience every joy. With the confounded awareness of how fleeting it all is.

And then, just as quickly as I enter that stream of awareness, I slip back into taking it all for granted again.

"They do some."

Sometimes I really hate it, as it prevents me from ever feeling just in the moment without going off into Elsewhere Awareness of the moment. It is a gift, but I must learn how to "wield" it. I need to learn how to channel it properly, so that it does not take away from life's dear moments, but only enriches my life. Oh, God, how can I temper this??

Ahhhh, life is truly bittersweet! I rejoice to know that "Nothing of what is is lost. It is not lost to God, nor to us."

And so, part of being gifted with this poet's soul are these little glimpses into truly living, of being truly aware. Of all the pain, and all the beauty, of all the terrible brevity of life on earth. I have moments where I feel connected to all that lives, to God within and without...and then, it is gone. Oh, must You torment me so? What a cross to bear.

And not just to bear, but to be crucified with.

More and more, I am seeing that God is guiding me to trust in Him, to release my attachments to the earthly things I love, that while good and worthy, are not the Ultimate Good, and will not last, nor could they ever be my Anchor in such a chaotic world. And so He wrests from my embrace dear friends, beloved animal family members, beloved teachers.....and not without kicking and screaming and crying on my part. What will it take for me to trust in You, and You alone? Oh, how far I have to go...

Emily:

I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another.

I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back---up the hill---to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look.

Good-bye, Good-bye world. Good-bye, Grover's Corners ... Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking ... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths ... and sleeping and waking up. Oh, Earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you!

Oh, God, that just hurts for me to read, and makes me want to cry. An exquisite sort of pain that both wounds and heals.

I have already written about this before, using these same Our Town quotes. I keep coming back to this in my heart. Over and over again. Will it always be so?

I am still learning. I am still growing. I am still fighting - both against all that keeps me from God, and even, in my sinfulness, against God Himself. I am a mixture of light and dark. I am a seed in the dark earth fighting her way to the light, yearning to unfurl her leaves and blossom. I am a caterpillar stuck in her chrysalis, waiting, waiting, waiting for when she will be ready to burst forth with wet wings, ready to fly. I am a baby in darkened womb, growing, becoming, totally unaware of how, when I get too big for that space, I will have to go through a painful birth into the light...

In spite of the fact that I will never attain to all that I long for in this life, no matter that it will always come intermittently, and has to be learned, cultivated: I will live. With baby steps, unsure and wobbly, I will learn to walk into my Father's arms. I will learn to let Him carry me, and not have to "do it all myself." I will trust - and not worry myself to literal death. I will bury my face in my Mother's sweet, starry Mantle, and hear her Heart beat the rhythm of love to me...the same melody that sounds from my Beloved's Sacred Heart, the Song of salvation. I will learn to let Him kiss me, to let Him love me, and not run away like some frightened creature. No - He is Love itself, what have I to fear? The utter assimilation of all that I am into Himself? Of being nailed to the Cross with Him, dying? -- but then rising with Him to all life and light? Oh, fickle heart of mine, when will you learn to love?!

I will do all I can to live. I will live in graced moments. I will praise God in times of sorrow and times of joy. I will adore Him in each season. I will take baby steps to living out the theology of the body in my each and every day - in relation to other human beings, to the Earth, and to my God. To live and love in my body and in my soul.

I will learn to unite my eros with God's agape, and thus love with a fuller love than either alone could be for me, to love with a love akin to God's passionate selfless love.

First, there is a certain relationship between love and the Divine: love promises infinity, eternity—a reality far greater and totally other than our everyday existence. Yet we have also seen that the way to attain this goal is not simply by submitting to instinct. Purification and growth in maturity are called for; and these also pass through the path of renunciation. Far from rejecting or “poisoning” eros, they heal it and restore its true grandeur.

This is due first and foremost to the fact that man is a being made up of body and soul. Man is truly himself when his body and soul are intimately united; the challenge of eros can be said to be truly overcome when this unification is achieved. Should he aspire to be pure spirit and to reject the flesh as pertaining to his animal nature alone, then spirit and body would both lose their dignity. On the other hand, should he deny the spirit and consider matter, the body, as the only reality, he would likewise lose his greatness. The epicure Gassendi used to offer Descartes the humorous greeting: “O Soul!” And Descartes would reply: “O Flesh!”. Yet it is neither the spirit alone nor the body alone that loves: it is man, the person, a unified creature composed of body and soul, who loves. Only when both dimensions are truly united, does man attain his full stature. Only thus is love —eros—able to mature and attain its authentic grandeur.

-- from Pope Benedict's encyclical, Deus Caritas Est

I will learn to let go ("Daisy, let it go..." ) all of the passing things of this life, no matter how lovely. And then I will finally be able to truly appreciate them.

And so, too, as regards this world, with all its enjoyments, yet disappointments. Let us not trust it; let us not give our hearts to it; let us not begin with it. Let us begin with faith; let us begin with Christ; let us begin with His Cross and the humiliation to which it leads. Let us first be drawn to Him who is lifted up, that so He may, with Himself, freely give us all things. Let us “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” and then all those things of this world “will be added to us.” They alone are able truly to enjoy this world, who begin with the world unseen. They alone enjoy it, who have first abstained from it. They alone can truly feast, who have first fasted; they alone are able to use the world, who have learned not to abuse it; they alone inherit it, who take it as a shadow of the world to come, and who for that world to come relinquish it.

--- Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman

I will learn to not loathe myself for all my shortcomings, to not look upon myself with hatred for all my failings, sins, and weaknesses. I will learn to rush to the fount of God's mercy. I will learn to pick myself up off the floor, or at least start to and let Him lift me. I will learn to let the fire of His love burn away all the dross from my soul. I will learn to let Him rip my dragon-scales off me. I will learn to let Him, Lion of Judah, lick me clean.

My task is learning how to live. And learning how to die. If we learn how to die, we learn how to live.

I want to burn out bright. I want to suck all the marrow out of life. I want to reach my deathbed with every drop of life and love poured out of me. Oh, God, I want to love! I want to live. And so teach me to die with You. Hide me in Your wounds.

Guide me on the way of love. Let me not run from love any longer, and all it asks of me - self-denial, temperance, trust, courage, sacrifice, self-donation.

I want to love. I want to live.

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken," said C.S. Lewis.

And so I set about preparing the ground of my soul to be (not so easily) broken, that love may grow and take root there.

Life is so short, live it well. I ask you to join me, as we step into the great Unknown and live life, as much as we can, in all our flesh-and-blood-and-heart-and-soul-ness. I refuse to be swept away by the floods of Nothingness and No-thing. I will dare to dwell in the mystery and the darkness and the pain and light-haunted shadows, and dare to dance all aflame with God's love in the vibrant and colorful, mere shadows-of-the-world-to-come, exhilarating, aching, weary, quiet, loud, everyday, ordinary, extraordinary Life.