Translating a World on the Edge

We fight for what we love.

And we love what we fight for.

Sound the same? They’re not.

We’ll fight for the things we love right now–members of our family, our home, our allegiances. We’d fight for these anytime or any day.

But then there are spur of the moment situations we may be forced into, where we must fight, and only afterwards discover that we’ve come to love the thing we’re fighting for. It may be a principle, it may be a person, it may be something we never imagined.

I did not know I loved the Catholic Church until I became a young teen and had to defend her.

I did not know I loved life, and babies in the womb, until I nearly lost one of my own.

I did not know I could love an enemy, until an enemy became a friend.

I did not know I would come to love simple things, until simple things were all I had.

I did not know I was able to forgive, until the lack of forgiveness nearly got the best of me.

And on, and on, and on.

We love what we have to fight for because these things make a great impression upon us. In fact, they cut into our hearts and change us inside. They change the perceptions we have of ourselves and of others.

Where does the strength of this Fighting Love come from? I believe it comes from God’s grace, sent to us when we need it. In the Catholic Church, we call this sort of grace, Actual Grace, which refers to God’s interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification. Actual Grace is prolific–it has to be for imperfect Human Beings who are famous for ‘starting over’ again and again. If we ask, and allow Him to do so, God will intervene in our lives each time we need Him to.

This is Fighting Love. The kind of grace we need to get through this life, and into the next one.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, no one can disagree that today’s world is obsessed with things sexual. Sex not only drives us as individuals, but also our society as a whole. We’ve come to a saturation point of sex in advertising, movies, music, books, and even changes in our language; all to accommodate this beautiful God-given drive within us that is now, so misguided.

“Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God,” said G. K. Chesterton.

All of us are looking for intimacy. All of us are looking for love. And what is the true definition of God? God IS love. So it is God we are looking for–even when we sin, or maybe especially when we sin.

This is how Evil uses us. This is how Evil changes the image we see of ourselves in the mirror of our hearts, replacing it with a false image, and false desire.

Addictive sex is one of many counterfeits we accept in place of a fulfilling relationship with God. There is a very good article about this: http://www.pureintimacy.org/ The page is sponsored by Focus on the Family and surely worth a read.

Personally, I don’t know how much more we, as a people, can take of this saturation of sex and still remain ‘higher than the animals.’ Because the sex drive in a human being, meant to be loving and pro-creative, is being debased to the level of a garbage dump.

In the media, it’s all a matter of giving people what they want. And if this is what we want, we are surely getting it, to the great detriment of the goodness God put within us.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” – Albert Einstein

Well, that would have to be the imagination of our Creator. With a magnitude that is inconceivable to us, only God knows all and understands all.

The root word in “imagination” is image. God used his imagination to create us. We are made in the image and likeness of God. We are made with memory, imagination, and will.

Free will.

For Human Beings, it is our memory that leads to imagination. And imagination causes us to freely act.

We use our memory to recall events of our life, and those events can stoke our imagination positively, such as the memory of our best Christmas or Thanksgiving so far, and that leads to next year, and then the action of how we’ll create an even better Christmas or Thanksgiving.

Memory can also stoke a negative imagination. Someone did me wrong last week, and then the action of how will I get back at him?

Our memories are entirely our own. If we choose to re-hash and re-hash past hurts, it is no one’s fault but ours that we are miserable. It’s no wonder that our lives seem dark and confusing.

We have an imagination that can alleviate that.

Our imagination can bring light back to our lives when we look at the bad situation with a different perspective. Then with our free will, we can choose to ‘act out’ in a positive way.

All this, through our imagination. But too often, we don’t, or won’t, use it.

It’s our imagination that allows us to move on and keep going, because it allows us to forgive. Our Creator never remembers our sins once we’ve repented them. If we are made in His image and likeness, and by His imagination, then shouldn’t we try to do the same?

“God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else—God is in this person’s life. You can, you must try to seek God in every human life. Although the life of a person is a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. ” ~Pope Francis

Think of the stem of a rose. It’s not particularly beautiful. In fact it has thorns. We don’t look at the stem, except to avoid it. Instead we look only at the beautiful flower.

This is often the way we view people. We like the flamboyant, the showy. We pay attention to the beautiful, the successful. Most especially we pay attention to people we think will do something for us. We want flowers. We don’t want thorns. Thorns are dangerous. They can hurt.

But don’t we have thorns as well? I know I do. There are times when my own actions disappoint me so much that I feel very unworthy to be God’s child. But I am, and so are you. Even when– not if–we are covered by the thorns of life. God is in with us—-in fact, within us.

Between our thorns, no matter how thick, stiff, or close together they are, there is a small space. And often from this place comes the brand new sprout of something we may never have considered. It is tender and new in the beginning, but it has the possibility of becoming something gorgeous. We ought to look at others in this way, too. The thorns don’t take away from the purpose of the Rose.

Remember the jealous queen in Snow White? “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”

And when the fairest wasn’t her, what happened?…

The poisoned apple.

Jealousy and envy are poisonous traits to have in our personalities. No one wants to be thought of as jealous or envious. And no one wants the repercussions of someone who actually is.

Jealousy has been called Love’s Destroyer.

Throughout history, jealousy has been a destroyer of families, and of nations, too.

One personal trait that if seen to, i.e. fixed; could change lives for the better, but instead jealousy is often nursed by those who have it, until it becomes huge and destructive.

Beloved:
Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist,
there is disorder and every foul practice.
But the wisdom from above is first of all pure,
then peaceable, gentle, compliant,
full of mercy and good fruits,
without inconstancy or insincerity.
And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace
for those who cultivate peace.

Where do the wars
and where do the conflicts among you come from?
Is it not from your passions
that make war within your members?
You covet but do not possess.
You kill and envy but you cannot obtain;
you fight and wage war.
You do not possess because you do not ask.
You ask but do not receive,
because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.– 2 Jas 3:16—4:3

There are people who throw off personal responsibility.
These are the people who say, “Well, you know me. That’s just the way I am.”
What they mean is: You’ll have to put up with me because I’m not going to change.

But what if the way you are is hurtful?

What if you’re leading others astray, especially younger ones who look to you, who think you’re wonderful. Younger ones who love you—and who will follow you.
Shouldn’t we take responsibility for what we do around these impressionable ones?

Or, are we just too narcissistic, or even too lazy, to change?

Oh, how many excuses we can make for not changing! Not my fault, the way I was raised, my father left me, my mother left me, my husband left me, my wife left me, I didn’t have what everybody else had…blah, blah, blah.

They say stupidity is to continue to do what you’re doing when what you’re doing isn’t working at all.

It doesn’t matter anymore what happened in the past. We’re not living in the past. Now is what counts.

But many of us just ramble around, maybe to look busy, or maybe to avoid the effort of change. Because change is difficult. The status quo is always easier.

There are times when we absolutely need to put on the brakes, take a good look at ourselves TODAY, and start the process of changing what needs to be changed.

And today is the day to do it. Don’t t put if off until tomorrow–remember, tomorrow never comes.

We Christians are in need of a spiritual awakening. We are dulled to our own lives as children of God. We are blunted to examining the actions of our lives in that context. Have we lost our religion, big time?

Catholic historian Christopher Dawson, (1889-1970), an Englishman who strongly believed in the importance of religion’s influence on society, wrote: “A society which has lost its religion becomes sooner or later a society which has lost its culture.”

Look at our culture today. Read about it in the news. We, as human beings, are on front pages and prominent media screens, with scandal after political scandal, murder after gruesome murder–including well over 50 million aborted children since Roe v Wade. Seventy four per cent of students admit to cheating. Premarital and extramarital sex have nearly become the norm. And still, most people believe in God or in a higher power.

Of course, we are sinners. We’ve been sinners since evil reared its head in the Garden of Eden. We were sinners before and after the time of Christ and we’re sinners now. But after His awful Crucifixion, Jesus left us with the grace of His Holy Spirit, allowing us to experience moments of awakening if only we choose to recognize and make use of them.

Are there moments in your life when you’ve felt a Spiritual Awakening. Maybe it’s when you take a walk in your mind back to the place of your roots, your upbringing, or even recall a statement someone made that struck you. Have you ever wondered, “Do I really feel the way I feel? Or is there something I should return to, something bigger and more important for me?”

Nobody talks much about the devil anymore. In fact, nobody talks much about evil at all, as if it doesn’t exist, as if anything we do is A-Okay as long as we think it is.

So NOT true.

The devil attacks us in our complacencies, where we are, through what we love. And sometimes the devil has a very attractive face–one that’s hard to resist. He lures us by our addictions, the things we think most about, the things we’ve tied ourselves to. He yanks on the chain of those addictions, leading us further and further away from what is good, to what is evil–until we become his devoted ‘pet.’ Then he’s got us just where he wants us.

No, we don’t want to hear this. We say, “Look, I am who I am, and who I am is okay.”

Well, that depends. Because we weren’t given life on earth in order to fulfill ourselves. Believe it or not, each of us has a greater mission than our own existence. There is a reason for our having been born. God knows our mission even if we haven’t yet discovered it. And it has nothing to do with evil, and everything to do with good.

To determine what is good for us requires an informed conscience—an objective conscience, based on what we know to be true. We have to be able to stand outside of ourselves and look into the mirror of what we are becoming. And then, we have to (pardon the expression but I can’t think of a better word)… ..we have to have balls enough to admit it.

The Devil is a liar, who will use any means to get to us–flattery is one of them. That misguided axiom we hold to–“I’m okay, you’re okay no matter what I do, or what you do” is one of his tools. We see it growing day by day in our present society. I think this children’s rhyme sums it up pretty well:

“Will you step into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly;
“’Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy.
The way into my parlor is up a winding stair,
And I have many pretty things to show when you are there.”
“O no, no,” said the little fly, “to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.”
“Come hither, hither, pretty fly, with the pearl and silver wing:
Your robes are green and purple; there’s a crest upon your head;
Your eyes are like the diamond bright, but mine are dull as lead.”
Alas, alas! how very soon this silly little fly,
Hearing his wily flattering words, came slowly flitting by.
With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew
Thinking only of her brilliant eyes, and green and purple hue;
Thinking only of her crested head — poor foolish thing! At last,
Up jumped the cunning spider, and fiercely held her fast.
He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den,
Within his little parlor; but she ne’er came out again!
And now, dear little children, who may this story read,
To idle, silly, flattering words, I pray you ne’er give heed;
Unto an evil counselor close heart, and ear, and eye,
And take a lesson from this tale of the Spider and the Fly.

Will we allow the devil to lead us wherever he wants to? Does he have us where he wants us right now?

Remember this fable by Aesop?

ONE day a countryman going to the nest of his Goose found there an egg all yellow and glittering. When he took it up it was as heavy as lead and he was going to throw it away, because he thought a trick had been played upon him. But he took it home on second thoughts, and soon found to his delight that it was an egg of pure gold. Every morning the same thing occurred, and he soon became rich by selling his eggs. As he grew rich he grew greedy; and thinking to get at once all the gold the Goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find,—nothing.

“To kill the Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs” is often used to express the idea of an unprofitable action motivated by greed.

So why do we want more and more of everything when we don’t really need it? (more…)

Are you a fun-seeker? What is “Fun” to you?
Of course, it’s different for each of us. But sometimes the “Fun” we chase can bring us heartache—-or a headache at the very least.

Maybe we ought to take a second look at the things we call “Fun.” Are they constructive to us as an individual? Do they forward us along in relaxation, helping us to smile? Or do they hinder us, inhibit us, and ultimately put a frown on our faces?
The media will be glad to show you what fun is—-buy a romantic trip, buy a car or even a motorcycle, have a bottle of whiskey or beer, eat your fill at one of thousands of restaurants, and so on. Buy. Buy. Buy Fun.

Are we being sold a bill of goods that fun is the same thing as happiness? Are these things really ‘fun’ or just what our ever-greedy culture says we need to enjoy ourselves. We often fall for whatever ‘they’ think. We should think for ourselves.

Each of us absolutely needs fun in our lives. We need the release of enjoyment. We don’t need the stress that’s often produced by the manipulators of our culture. Fun ought to be very personal, something we do for ourselves, and not for the wallets of others.