Private Vows in The Laity/Spirituality

[Guest]

  

Thank you MW.  The dramas (nothing major thankfully) keep on coming but very thankfully again, my psychiatrist and GP are back at their desks and I have face to face appointments are on the way. 

I had a phone consult with my psychiatrist and she is of the opinion that because I am an old/mature woman with a mental illness, I am being dismissed in some quarters.

The Lord indeed supports and sustains us - sometimes in strange garments.  I am not a hospital case, nor even an urgent psychiatric case, but have broken out in stress rashes.  These Covid days have turned all our lives upside down.  We are indeed blest here in South Australia where the epidemic is concerned!  I am especially conscious of those countries where Covid has exploded out  of control or near on out of control at this point.

Thank you for  your Post, MW, it has reminded me to not focus on the dramas and  my itching, rather on counting my blessings with gratitude.  Thank you very much again  NOwadays it is called redirection psychology.  I have known it as a shift of awareness.  Wikipedia, of all things, has an entry under "Cognitive Shifting" and it is rather good, although I did not read all of it.

I have just, at this point, lost my usual ways and motivations.  There is a time for everything in The Lord's Plans.
 

[Guest]

  

I I I have mixed with all sorts of people in my time.  I have lived a way of life I never planned to live nor was I raised to live it, far from it.  I have mixed with criminals, prostitutes, drug dealers and bikies, the poor and the outcast, rejected - these immediately come to mind.  I was amazed at the virtue I found in them all.  Amazed and edified.  Initially, I could be shocked.  But if one 'hangs in there' and hears their story, their journey, the virtue will shine through.  Well anyway, I have never met anyone, with thanks, that I thought completely evil.  I imagine that such does exist.  If I did meet a person I found as evil, I would run from them as fast as I could.  It would terrify me, I know.  But then I recall what my confessor and SD said to me when a teenager in a monastery "Unfailingly, you can depend on The Lord to give you Grace to cope with everything in your life.  But He does not necessarily grant Grace to deal with imagination".

One bikie, president of a bikie group, who happened to be my brother (dec'd at 29 in a car 'accident'), said to me "You have a great gift, you can make God, Jesus, Religion - the whole bit - understandable to the man in the street.  What are you going to do with that gift?"

Me:  "If I have a gift, God will show me the way to use it".

Since childhood in primary school, my heart has gone out to the underdog with compassion and concern - even if their underdog-ness was through their own fault and choice.  This would put me on the outside as well.

I used to try very hard to do my best in the way of life I called Bethany.  It kept unfolding in my path, in my journey.   From time to time I would have paroxysms of self doubt in all spheres and then scruples hit as well.  A general confession cured me of scruples in what I felt was a near on miraculous manner.  Then I read what St Mary of The Cross MacKillop had said:  "Do what you can and leave the rest to God"  At long last, I was able to let go of striving to do my best.  I was never aware of what my best was anyway - it always seemed somewhere ahead in the unknown.  Thanks to St Mary MacKillop, I was able to do what I could and then peacefully leave the rest to God and it has never deserted me.

Now I am in the last stages of my life at 75.  Again, I am living a life I never planned on living, far from it.  Both my parents were fully active up to the day they passed away.  I though I would be the same.  God has other plans - and gratitude and thankfulness does not come easy and resides in my will alone.  That is, I want and desire to be grateful and thankful - but I cannot, for the life of me, feel it.  In fact I feel anything but grateful and thankful, rather I feel the opposite i.e. cheated and resentful.  I desire ardently to be on the road I planned in this late stage of life.  I cannot do it for the life of me!

But, again with gratitude, I know that feelings really are like windmills in that they will shift here or there in the slightest breeze.  We do have control over what we might want and desire - but rather often control over feelings escapes one.   I know all this intellectually as fact - but it brings no feeling of consolation and support whatsoever.  Feelings per se are not sinful.  It is what one does with negative feelings that introduces either good or bad, morality, into the situation.

So I plod along literally in life now, labouring and short of breath with a heavy burden on my back ... all as it were ... - this is the way I feel. 

Feelings in part can tell me who I am, but they are not the whole of me nor of anyone. 

I do what I can, the rest I can Peacefully leave to God......as can every person.

   

[Machine_Washable]

On 8/10/2021 at 7:24 AM, BarbaraTherese said:

  

Thank you MW.  The dramas (nothing major thankfully) keep on coming but very thankfully again, my psychiatrist and GP are back at their desks and I have face to face appointments are on the way. 

I had a phone consult with my psychiatrist and she is of the opinion that because I am an old/mature woman with a mental illness, I am being dismissed in some quarters.

The Lord indeed supports and sustains us - sometimes in strange garments.  I am not a hospital case, nor even an urgent psychiatric case, but have broken out in stress rashes.  These Covid days have turned all our lives upside down.  We are indeed blest here in South Australia where the epidemic is concerned!  I am especially conscious of those countries where Covid has exploded out  of control or near on out of control at this point.

Thank you for  your Post, MW, it has reminded me to not focus on the dramas and  my itching, rather on counting my blessings with gratitude.  Thank you very much again  NOwadays it is called redirection psychology.  I have known it as a shift of awareness.  Wikipedia, of all things, has an entry under "Cognitive Shifting" and it is rather good, although I did not read all of it.

I have just, at this point, lost my usual ways and motivations.  There is a time for everything in The Lord's Plans.
 

You're welcome. I'm glad you are getting support. It's good to focus on your blessings. It is sunnah for us to say alhamdulillah whenever we are asked how we are no matter what is going on. This means "praise be to God". It helps remind us to be grateful. It's ok to get down and have low moments of bitterness or despair. But always remember that optimism is a sign of the believer. Learning to see the good in any situation and remain grateful to God is a habit of the believer. Good luck and may God bless you.

[Guest]

  

 

On 8/12/2021 at 5:30 AM, Machine_Washable said:

You're welcome. I'm glad you are getting support. It's good to focus on your blessings. It is sunnah for us to say alhamdulillah whenever we are asked how we are no matter what is going on. This means "praise be to God". It helps remind us to be grateful. It's ok to get down and have low moments of bitterness or despair. But always remember that optimism is a sign of the believer. Learning to see the good in any situation and remain grateful to God is a habit of the believer. Good luck and may God bless you.

                                         

[Guest]

  

 Solemnity (in Australia and other countries) of Our Lady body and soul into                                                                        Heaven - 15th August 

https://www.bpl.org/blogs/post/origins-and-practices-of-the-assumption-of-mary/

More about this Feast: https://www.catholicculture.org/culture//liturgicalyear/overviews/feasts/Assumption/assumption_feast.cfm

[Guest]

                                           Laughter can be good medicine

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/stress-relief/art-20044456

 

 

 

[Guest]

  

 

QUEENSHIP OF MARY - 22ND AUGUST 

(Because this Feast falls on a Sunday this year, normally the celebration of The Solemnity of Sunday transcends other feast days)

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/queenship-of-the-blessed-virgin-mary

[Guest]

     

[Guest]

   

[Guest]

                                                         

Giving thanks: my son and his wife and family are all now vaccinated - two jabs.  I get my second one on the 13th September.  We have tried to keep the rules as they unfolded and will continue to do so.  Thoughts are with those in Covid active areas and countries - also for those in the path of Hurricane Ida in the USA.  There have been so many natural disasters in our world bringing humanitarian disasters in the wake.

On Wednesday, in Australia, it is the first day of Spring.  Winter has taken its usual toll, just a bit more this winter than normal.   I am not at all a cold weather person - and would prefer a heatwave than the cold.  But with increasing electricity costs, there are many, especially perhaps the elderly, who will not put on their air conditioner even in a heatwave.  I am anticipating for us this coming Summer more extreme heat and heatwaves, as well as terrible bushfires.  I am conscious of those countries who have and are experiencing devastating bushfires.

As news came through of our scandals and other crimes, I wrote a poem with thoughts of perhaps, better a millstone, on my mind.  One line ran "as the earth erupts in pain".  And when our earth shudders and cries, we do too for indeed we are"children of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars"  (The Desiderata https://www.desiderata.com/desiderata.html)

 

[Guest]

  

 

 

 

 

 

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When a light is shone into a bright room, the light is not so evident.  But if a light is shone into a dark room, the room becomes bright because of the light - and it is very evident that the room has become bright because of the light.

[Guest]

 

 

[Guest]

                      

Trusting in God...........A Challenge Worth Taking?

https://catholicexchange.com/trusting-in-god-a-challenge-worth-taking?mc_cid=8a4d0cf899&mc_eid=1ea4a385a2

 

  

 

[Guest]

 

He really should have read the book.

 

.........................and all about reading the book:

 

 

Dealing with problems in life.....................