Translating a World on the Edge

We human beings often become chained to our usual ways even though some of our actions are not good for us, and may even be very destructive to ourselves or other people.

We know we need change, but as life itself shows us, there is no change without action. An object, a person, and a fictional character, will continue in its existing state unless it is changed by some external force.

The external force may come through another person or persons. It may come through a physical event. It may even be something that threatens our very life. Still, without some external force, the tendency of any person is to do nothing, to remain unchanged–the same as a vase left for years on a table, collecting dust and cobwebs until someone comes to move it or dust it.

We know that God can take action to change us, and we refer to God’s action in our lives as His Grace.

Except we often think of God’s grace as a feel-good, feather duster; something to cleanse us gently and peacefully. But when we are not easily cleaned–which is often the case–God’s saving grace cannot be peaceful and sublime. In fact….

Sometimes grace is violent… sometimes God wants His life in you so much that it’s going to come in ways that mean you’re going to suffer. Not because He wills it but because He permits it. It says in Hebrews “I will shake you.” And I will shake all created things until all that is left is what is uncreated, what is unshakeable. Put simply — ‘Sometimes I’m going to let you suffer. I’m going to shake you free of all those things that you’ve put in place of my grace, in place of my life in you, until all that’s left is my life in you. Until all you can cling to… is me.’ – Mark Hart

The above quote is from speaker, Mark Hart, to a Catholic Life Teen group, I was struck by its weight. That grace is often uncomfortable, even violent, is the undercurrent of much of my fiction.

Without grace, Paul Dunaway in Mary’s Mountain would not have changed his indulgent ways because he enjoyed money, sex, and power too much. But it costs him.

In A Hunger in the Heart, the question of whether Coleman Puttman Bridgeman III can bring himself to forgive his mother–the woman he believes killed his father–will cost him.

In Birds of a Feather, ten characters struggle with the same outpour of grace. And it costs each one of them.

Grace is an external force. It is an intervention into a misguided, but comfortable situation, and more often than not, grace is uncomfortable. So yes, grace can heal us, but the process of our accepting it can be painful, even violent. And suffering may be its cost. Will we pay it or not?

The notion that grace is healing omits the fact that before it heals, it cuts with the sword Christ said he would bring. –Flannery O’Connor

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Mary’s Mountain, my novelette is FREE on Kindle TODAY thru Friday; June 8 -12. It’s a short read, so I hope you’ll take me up on my offer, and I would very much appreciate a review on Amazon!

Mary’s Mountain is a story about Tolerance taken to the extreme. It is Paul Dunaway’s struggle to re-shape his affluent but joyless life, while the opposing forces in an out-of-control, politically correct America he helped to create, threaten to take him down.

A description of the infamous Institute of Tolerance found in the novelette: Today, inside its progenies, rigid rooms are covered in fiddle-faddle flowers and sentimental hearts beating warm and fuzzy pizazz into nearly every state of the union. Outside each building, a neon sign blinks: Tolerance Today, Tolerance Tomorrow, Tolerance Forever! The signs have fingers, virtual reality, to motion the people inside. The signs move. The lights move. And the people inside are moved, to tolerate anything.

Mary’s Mountain is somewhat futuristic, but not entirely. Already our history is being revised, and we accept it. Already Truth is being debunked, and we swallow it–especially if what is replacing Truth agrees with our personal opinions, or tickles our indulgences. Already our religious faith is being challenged. Already our right to privacy is being meddled with by our own government…think IRS scandal and more.  Already, our country’s enemies are at our throat, and yes, they are called terrorists.

Why don’t we fight back against any of this? 

We have become tolerant cowards, we have become tolerant of coarseness, we have become tolerant of laziness, we have become so tolerant that whatever we are fed by the media, entertainment industry, and the government, we gobble up like a favorite dessert.

We are supposed to be flesh and blood human beings, on the lookout for ourselves and others; but instead we’re becoming dry sponges.

We once considered wrong as some action against the commandment of God. Now many of those wrongs have been propagandized to seem right. And worse, we’d better put up with it, or else be called bigots, or racists, or religious zealots. In other words, we are being asked to tolerate the intolerable.

What is honest tolerance anyway? And what is intolerance?

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen said: “The important point here is this: Tolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons. Tolerance applies to the erring; intolerance to the error…America is suffering not so much from intolerance, which is bigotry, as it is from tolerance, which is indifference to truth and error, and a philosophical nonchalance that has been interpreted as broad-mindedness.”

G.K Chesterton said: “Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.”

The question in Mary’s Mountain, is whether Paul Dunaway will continue to indulge in his so-called broad-mindedness, or return to his honest convictions, enough to become a white-knight for America.

I do hope you’ll read Mary’s Mountain while it’s FREE this week, and let me know what you think.
https://youtu.be/d89wrQOB5dw

by Juditu, 2005, MorgueFile.com

Sometimes I’m a whiner. I complain about a negative situation, even find comfort in my complaints; yet I don’t want to give it my all and do what it takes to fix the problem. I’d like to be a champion, but I don’t want to suffer through what it takes to win.

That’s when I remember the Crow.

There was a Crow, half-dead with thirst, who came upon a Pitcher which had once been full of water; but when the Crow put its beak into the mouth of the Pitcher he found that only very little water was left in it, and that he could not reach far enough down to get at it. He tried, and he tried, but at last gave up in despair and went off whining, “I need some water, but nothing good ever happens for me!”

But he became thirstier and thirstier.

Then a thought came to him. Except it was a thought that required a lot of effort on his part and he didn’t know if he wanted to exert himself that much.

Still, he was getting thirstier and thirstier.

“Oh, all right,” he said to himself. “Maybe I’ll try my idea.” So he found a little pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the pitcher. Then he started complaining again, doubting himself, and he was just about to quit when something started to happen inside the pitcher. He went for another pebble and dropped that into the Pitcher. Another pebble, and on and on.

At last, he saw the water rising up near the reach of his beak, and after casting in a few more pebbles he was able to quench his thirst, and save his life.

Little by little, the crow won because he did the work and didn’t give up.

Complaining and whining does us no good. But a well-thought-out, positive action, and a lot of sweat can literally change our life, and  one day, maybe even save it.

by DuBoix, 2012, MorgueFile.com

This is our time. Yours and Mine.

We might have been born some years in the past, or in the future.  But we were not born then.

We are here now. Today, in this particular world.

Our life is NOW.

This is Our Time to make a difference.  And we will, one way or another. It may be a good difference or a bad difference, depending on whether we base our time here on Truth, or Lies.

But it counts.

We may make a difference in a very personal and singular way, with only one person. But if we give our loyalty, kindness, and  love to that one person; he may give the same loyalty, kindness and love to another person, or to many people. And in turn, they may pass it on, too. A real domino effect.

And it counts!

We may not be someone who likes to work up close with others, but we work anonymously on the sidelines, taking no credit, no facebook publicity, no bows, at all.

It counts.

We may be people who pray for others, those we know and those we don’t.

It counts.

We may raise our children to love God, to love themselves as creations of God, and to treat others with respect.

It counts.

OR

We may not give, but only take. We may not work for anyone except ourselves. We may allow our children to lie and bully others. We may never give the problems of anyone else a passing thought.

All that counts, too, but in the opposite way.

Let’s make a difference in our time, in our world, that will not hinder, but benefit ourselves and others. So that when we leave our time in this world, we’ll have left it better, not worse.

By dpawats, 2004, MorgeFile.com

There are times when we go through anguish in our lives. We may feel abandoned and alone.

We may have lost a loved one. We may have lost a job. We may have ruined ourselves in addiction, or in anger or jealousy, destroyed a relationship. We may have a child or parent or spouse who is sick, and we are the caretakers. Or we may be ill ourselves with a disease that has changed our lives forever.

We may drop to our knees and shout for God to help us, but see no change in our situation. All seems hopeless.

And then…..

A voice tells us, “I love you.” A hand we didn’t expect reaches out for us, holds us, dries our tears.

In the lives we live as human beings–all of us will experience pain in some way. The important thing to remember is we are loved by God.

The remedy for our troubles will come from our Trust in God.

And then….

“He will come to us like the rain, like spring rain that waters the earth.” Hosea 6:3

Christianity is in danger of extinction. And no one can explain why as well as Dr. Peter John Kreeft.

Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., is a professor of philosophy at Boston College and also at the King’s College (Empire State Building), in New York City. He is a regular contributor to several Christian publications, is in wide demand as a speaker at conferences, and is the author of over 55 books including: Back to Virtue; The God Who Loves You; Heaven, The Heart’s Deepest Longing; Everything You wanted to Know About Heaven; Your Questions – God’s Answers; How To Win The Culture War; The Journey; Before I Go – Letters to Our Children About What Really Matters; and Jesus Shock.

Dr. Kreeft is a convert to the Catholic Church from reformed Protestantism. He earned an A.B. degree from Calvin College, an M.A. and Ph.D. from Fordham University, followed by post-doctoral work at Yale University. He has received several honors for achievements in the field of philosophy, including the Woodrow Wilson Award, Yale-Sterling Fellowship, Newman Alumni Scholarship, Danforth Asian Religions Fellowship, and a Weathersfield Homeland Foundation Fellowship.–From: The Integrated Catholic Life

This video is a MUST LISTEN.

https://youtu.be/lz5zcAm47i4

Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska was a young, uneducated, nun in a convent of the Congregation of Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Cracow, Poland during the 1930’s. She came from a very poor family that struggled on their little farm during the years of World War I. She had only three years of very simple education, so hers were the humblest tasks in the convent, usually in the kitchen or garden. However, she received extraordinary revelations or messages from Our Lord Jesus. Jesus asked Sr. Faustina to record these experiences, which she compiled in notebooks. These notebooks are known today as the Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska and the words contained within are God’s loving message of Divine Mercy.

Though the Divine Mercy message is not new to the teachings of the Church, Sr. Faustina’s Diary sparked a great movement, and a strong and significant focus on the mercy of Christ. Pope John Paul II canonized Sr. Faustina in 2000 making her the “first saint of the new millennium.” Speaking of Sr. Faustina and the importance of the message contained in her Diary, the Pope call her “the great apostle of Divine Mercy in our time.”–From The Divine Mercy Homepage, Marians of the Immaculate Conception.

The image above is available from http://www.catholicfaithstore.com

The following video is a wonderful explanation of this powerful devotion by Father Michael Gaitley.

butterflies by hotblack via morguefile

Most of us don’t like the connotation of the word, ‘struggle.’ It evokes thoughts of difficulty. We don’t like difficulties.

We don’t like bumpy roads that cause us to lose equilibrium.

We don’t like to climb mountains that exhaust our strength.

We don’t want to swim a channel that seems much too wide for our meager swimming abilities.

Except struggle increases our balance, our muscle, our talents.

Struggle is the fire that hardens the clay of our lives and turns an earthen vessel into something altogether unearthly.

Struggle can produce people who are out of the ordinary, simply because they have had to work hard.
Some of the most commended men and women in history came from a personal struggle with poverty, or loneliness, or a physical setback, and more.

But often, we parents, don’t like to see our children struggle. We want to relieve them of difficulty. We like to ‘fix’ them. We want to save them from anything that hurts–even if they’ve concocted their own unsavory situation.

We should let them know we are there for them. But I think there are times when we shouldn’t be too quick to ‘save’ them. We should allow them to ‘save’ themselves, to strengthen their wings from within.

The moth in a cocoon struggles to get out of it, and by doing so, it grows stronger—strong enough to fly completely away from the cocoon that once tied and bound it.

And there are many children who grow up in extremely difficult circumstances, then struggle to get out, and eventually fly away, too, just like the butterfly.

https://youtu.be/cSmImhbpt30