What wonder is our Lord! He reaches down to someone like me and touches my heart and soul, inspires my mind to loftier heights, me a nobody in this world of ours, someone easily invisible in a crowd. He reaches all the way down, down with His Holy Spirit, with His Son's loving heart to teach me and to love me. He reaches down so low to my hiding place and sees me covering my face with shame, and ever so gently moves my hands. Tells me He loves me for He made me. My repentant pleas heard, my sins forgiven, my desire is only to love Him and all that is of Him, my Lord my God. My Lord, My God live within me for they love me, they know all of me yet still they fill my heart with their divine presence. They have the Holy Spirit beside me guiding me and giving the gifts of Divine Love. How blessed am I to have a God so merciful and kind? So humbled I am that He lifts me up to see His light. Me- me... how preciously humbling.
So many lessons, so many trails, so many pains I have endured over these past few months, few years. But Oh! So much joy and love! Never a painful lesson taught, or sorrow endured without also God's loving consolation. Never a fear faced, or pruning cut made without Jesus' loving hand reaching to comfort me. No confusion too great, no discouragement too long before the Holy Spirit comes to comfort me. How humbled am I, how very humble I've been made to see without veil or darkness the immense love our Mysterious God has for everyone of us if we would just ask, obey, and reach for Him with true love no matter how far down we buried it in our hearts.
Our Father, God Almighty ask no more from us then He asked of Jesus His only begotten Son. Love, He wants our love pure and simple like that of a child. Love unwavering and unquestioning, it has been so long since I have felt love inside my heart. My pride, my fears, my life sealed off the warmth that I knew once lived there. So long since I had loved another in that deep intimate way, so long since I had a friendship that I did not have to shut off parts of my heart for fear.. fear they would misconstrue my filial love for something it wasn't. Sealed from the pain when all I thought were my friends suddenly abandoned me in my darkest hours. Love pure, warm, joyous has touched me again. It makes me smile and laugh and gaze at the world with wonder at God's mercy and compassion for his wandering child. Love He has shown someone so insignificant and injured like me. Our God is a loving God, his Son a gentle peace giving Master and brother, his Divine Spirit the power and deliverer of the Divine Love. All we have to do is ask and lovingly bow down.
---------------------
Woke up the other morning at 4 am, before my eyes I saw a book and a weird word as it's title. My morning addled brain struggled to read and comprehend the title of the book written on a dark background with a picture of pine trees a blue sky and what looked like an odd cabin in the foreground. Then I heard it as my southern brain wrapped around the word "Sobornost". LOL, needless to say that got me awake with a big "Whhaaatt? Sobornost? OK Linda, why are we seeing a book with a funny Russian word before our mind's eye clear enough to read at 4 am?" Ahhhh- it's one of those Madonna House books, has to be the art style looks familiar and it is the only place were I have seen Russian titled books around. Alright y if this is you working Holy Spirit let's see if we can find it on-line so I don;t go by there in the am and seem like a total crazy. Sure enough there it was,a book about the Holy Trinity and a generic description that didn't tell much to a caffeine deprived, half asleep night person. So trundled back to sleep wondering until the later more humane hours to wake up, move and think.
Long story short I don't know what it is about that house with the blue door and the nice people living inside but it has had a weird effect on me. The Holy Spirit has somehow given me a gift to end up going there and using it as a boot camp for my soul. LOL, except for the physical aspect I think basic training was a bit easier! Like I mentioned elsewhere when there my mind moves in a different way, the built-in flippant side of me shuts down, and not one visit almost has not revealed something about my self, my behavior, or given me an example of living a life focused on God realized. Went told my story in the morning and sure 'nuff there is a book there by that name and off to home I went to read it later after spending the day with Mom.
Took me over 5 and a half hours to make it through the first 46 pages. Not that it was a difficult read but there was so much to contemplate on and so many things that congealed things from previous contemplations I had had. So many simple yet profound concepts explained in a different way or just worthy of further contemplation. I'll write more later on the actual book and subject matter but I see how Catherine Dogherty built Madonna House on the principal of Sobornost and prayed to achieve it within the MH community and then to spread it eventually through the Catholic, Orthodox and Christian communities and onward.Thus uniting all in an ideal hopeand prayer to God. A truly beautiful unity between people and the Holy Trinity reflecting and infused with the Holy Trinity's perfect divine unity between God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. That is probably not a very good summation at all and much of it is my own opinion and grasp of how I see all this at this hour and day, so bound to change as time passes.
To describe this sobornost??? Some things exist in the intellect, others the visual, others the emotional... this falls within the realm of God it speaks to the heart and soul. Like golden threaded gossamer the clarity is seen in shifting rays of light only. Felt like a breeze blows over your skin, a whispered touch to the soul's truth. So simple, so very very simple that the understanding is grasped but the mind's desire to hold it is feeble for it reigns not in the mind's domain but the heart's. Love, once again it all boils down to God's love for us, our love for God, and our call to love all in loving subservience to the whisper of the Holy Spirit. It is about the Trinity's ever growing example of love lived within ourselves and with our neighbor and with God always the center and focus. A life like Nazareth and the perfect love and unity the Holy Family shared and how that love shared and spilled over to incorporate all who fell within that loving circle willing to fully partake. It is a vision of how the soul hungers for a more perfect way of living here on earth during our exile and hope for Heaven.
See simple concept so hard to describe in such finite words limited and constraining of something of God's realm with its infinite depths and levels.
OK more on this later on... somehow.. better yet get the book from the Madonna House bookstore yourself and read with an open heart "Sobornost" by Catherine de Hueck Doherty. More people should read this book and not just Catholics but all Christians at the very least.
No comments:
Post a Comment