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Thursday, March 3, 2011

Reading

Reading a doctoral dissertation on the life.  It is very easy to read, so don't let the type of work it is hinder one from reading any volume.  This "book" is mostly of the spiritual life, of Bl. Angela de Foligno yet the times and biography are necessary to understand her mystical existence.  

Reading Angela is very helpful in returning to more spiritual understanding and connecting.  The Da seems to be seeking elsewhere, having been curious about a Billy Graham book and now one by a Methodist who quotes the typical Merton and Nouen and otherwise writes about what Methodists do not know except through what they read of Catholics' writings.

Figure that out.  To me, if one wants to progress in Christ in each present moment, reading books by people who have never experienced the Eucharist or the sacrament of reconciliation does not make sense.  Well, curiosity.  He says he is just curious.  Didn't curiosity kill the cat?

Now to return to here to my spiritually directed assignment: continue praying for how God desires to use me, if and when, in His Church.  Plus do good, spiritual reading, and also to love, of course, as best one can in the midst of experiments with dangling projects, not much different than dangling participles or prepositions.

Still, again, it is repeated: One can not be what one is not.  Only be oneself. This is the rub in relating, as well as in how one does even practical things.  If one's way of perceiving is not as others', then they start wanting things to be given them in only ways that they can easily perceive rather than for them to try to learn something new and different, to see and think more expansively, perhaps, or at least to try to see beneath the surface even just a little.

So we have recipes, for example, and they are not written out in the typical format.  That is because the cook does not cook in typical format but rather prays through cooking and creates what the Creator allows.  The cook uses up whatever is on hand, and makes do, and the outcome is never the same but is always outstanding due to God, of course, and cooking in Christ in the present moment.

But if others do not want to read the process, which is trying to teach how to perceive, think, and exist in a different way than routine, then the point is rather lost, and the way of perceiving will not be learned or tried.  If it all takes too much time, then that is a problem to begin with.  We have to always make sure we have time, as God gives us time as a gift.  If we cannot read through 500 words explaining how to utilize the gifts God has given us, and at the same time prepare a practical recipe, then the point is missed.

And there we have it, and that is why we have dockers and floaters in this world, or spiritually speaking, the temporal and the mystical, the thinkers with the brain and the thinkers with the heart.


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