Farmer’s Almanac

Remove grace, and you have nothing whereby to be saved. Remove free will and you have nothing that could be saved.      Anselm of Canterbury

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As Oracion was leaving the home of her estranged sister, the home where she sensed she was no longer welcome, where she had found not hospitality but the remains of an evil priest’s poisonous flowers in a window box, there was an instantaneous change in the atmosphere.

Though there was no apparent reason for it that Oracion could intuit, no breeze or wind shifting hair about her face, or tossing dark branches of trees across a moonlit sky, the temperature had plummetted suddenly, from sixty to about thirty degrees.

Oracion instinctively wrapped her cloak more tightly about her, and pulled its hood further down over her face not so much to disguise her appearance, for it was night anyway (and when traveling, she found night was best) but because it was so cold. It was also as if to shelter herself from something yet unknown, advancing behind her.

Indeed from somewhere behind Oracion, down the cobblestone alley through which she hurried like a silent vision to some and a disturbing nightmare to others, below many shuttered windows and many bolted doors, Oracion become aware of a possible second hurrying presence, although she had heard nothing audible.

Strangely, her companions Alacrity, Velocity and Joy had not become aware or alerted by the presence of a stranger behind them approaching stealthily, or if they had, they made no show of it.

In fact this evening her godmothers had cloaked themselves as a Great Dane, a German Shepherd and a mischievous frolicking alley cat, solely for Oracion’s pleasure and amusement. The first two now flanked her side, and the latter was casually distracted by a single, dry leaf tumbling rebelliously across well-swept cobblestones like the last laughing hold out against order, high society and sophistication.

This thought, this odd leafy analogy, passed through the back of Oracion’s mind so half hazardly (just like the leaf) she made a casual, mental note to examine it later when she wasn’t being stalked by a possible executioner.

Yes, it was a very strange night indeed, so unusually silent, motionless and now cold, but the canines continued to stride in undisturbed sleek formation right next to her, their soft velvet fur as unruffled and smooth on their backs and their necks as when Oracion first buried her face in it and kissed them as dogs a few hours previous.

The suddenly incarnated “dogs” had seemed to smile at her in return, in deep reciprocated love, devotion and obedience, but now their wide canine grins and lolling tongues seemed to express only idle amusement at their sister cat’s antics.

If they were undisturbed by the stalker, could it be because the mysterious stranger was not an enemy, but a friend?

She remembered the lessons Father had taught her as a child centuries ago, about the meaning of the weather, when Oracion had bent down to carefully place precious, tiny, pearl-like seeds into holes Father had dug in rich, chocolate brown earth with his well worn, much larger, and much stronger hands.  Dropping temperatures and silence could mean many things, he had told her, but two she recalled now were someone imprisoned, or someone being sacrificed.

As Oracion halted and turned around to look she let her hood fall back, boldly exposing her easily identifiable pale face and features. She would not be afraid this evening.

And there he was.

He was a lone dichobot, not advancing upon Oracion and her animals aggressively, but looking rather startled himself.  In fact the robotic dichobot looked frozen, frozen in the street –  and frozen in time.

The smooth, heavy, all concealing body armor had revealed his presence to Oracion out of shadows when it reflected the moonlight and now he stood motionless, in the middle of the street facing her, uncertain whether or not he should move forward, approach or even if Oracion were friend, foe, or perhaps illusion.

Slowly he removed his mask, and when their eyes met and she read the sadness in those ancient eyes of yet another time, it almost moved Oracion to tears.  But in another dimension, it would never have come to this. In one, they would have embraced, and in another, Trock and her would have valiantly fought side by side, and been willing to die for one another.

In another yet to come, perhaps they would.

Quickly, Oracion redrew the hood back down about her face and started running away from Trock as swiftly as she could, because having seen her, he would obey his vows he made to his master to kill Oracion, or be killed.

And if he tried to kill her, how could she obey her vow to her own father to help set Trock free, without hurting him in the process, while defending herself?

As all the possible scenarios and possible outcomes of this unfortunate meeting played themselves out in Oracion’s mind, as unexpectedly and randomly as a leaf – passing over sterilized cobblestone upon some mysterious air current –  Oracion felt herself reaching for her sword just to make sure it was still there. Instead, she found herself grasping the coarser hair of horse’s mane as she herself was lifted high, and swiftly carried away from all danger, on the back of a giant destrier stallion, escorted by two noble canines that now barked excitedly at its side.

Lenten Grievances

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Oracion, upon hearing her neighbor was sick, dared to venture into the village one evening by light of the remaining stars. She donned a simple black cloak which was roomy enough to hide herself, and her offering for the poor – which in this instance consisted of waxed candles, fruit pastries and clover wine, a bundle of hearth pumpernickel, a bundle of rye, and a pound of soft, sweet cheeses and herb butters.

Oracion had packaged the gifts in pale papers and wrapping twine, placing them carefully into a small, moss-lined basket, adding as if in after thought, a clutch of gypsy blue violets, gathered before dawn on the previous day.

As she drew nearer the house she was marveling at how her flowers  (those that grew in Oracion’s hidden part of the wood) were different,  and she hoped they might bring her friends a secret kind of joy and health.  Indeed, flowers that grew freely seemed to benefit from a wild sturdiness not intrinsic to most.

Oracion recalled in comparison, the stunning genetically cultivated flowers she had marveled at in the priest’s chambers, so long ago when she had been imprisoned there, which were all perfect, identical and grew artfully arranged in rows – but which were somehow strange, and without heady fragrance or longevity.

They grew in even numbers as well, not odd, and they bloomed for just one day, then curled up to rot like obedient expendables.

Oracion was aroused from such botanical contemplation when the house which she sought loomed suddenly before her, modest in size and well shuttered.  How ironic that a row of the priest’s day roses had perished recently in a tidy window box attached to the dwelling, and as per usual, there remained just a neat pile of thorns, for it was night.

Ascending the porch steps, Oracion thought she saw for one moment – behind the shutters, though closed – curtains fluttering slightly in a cool evening breeze, then realized the windows were not open at all to welcome her, such a night, or any heady, woodland breeze borne fragrances in anticipation of spring.  And the windows not only were shuttered and curtained, but had also been sealed.  There it was.  She saw it plainly now;  a pane of thick, sealing glass.

The cleansing had begun.

And what Oracion really had seen behind the glass –  someone drawing the curtain aside to peek out from within  – which would once have been welcoming  (it’s our beloved friend, so come let us open the door) had turned furtive and cold.

The Dichobots had already been here, and Oracion was to be shunned.

She had drawn in such a sudden, startled breath, that she almost dropped the carefully laid basket at her own feet, as if the added weight of realization, loss and sorrow in her heart had also caused the small basket gravitational pull, and her own rare wild violets to tremble, wither and collapse.  Then Oracion caught hold of herself, considering.

She would not disturb her friends in the night.

She would leave the gift basket however on their steps without gift card or note, and in that manner, and in only that manner, could the small offering still be used.  This way in the morning her beloved could still take part in it, and be nourished without excuse, blame or shame, nor threat of scourging or punitive dispatch.  They could not be punished for any reason at all.

For though Oracion’s guilt was imaginary, as long as it was still imagined by some or by one, she would not share it with another, especially not with those that she loved.

And although the scentless gasses emitting from the wicked priest’s genetically designed flowers were sure to have already altered her friends’ minds to some strange and curious degree, plucking and destroying memories and understandings from their brains as efficiently as dying day roses (leaving just their thorns) she prayed that in their hearts they would still know she had been present, and remember her name.

For they had been sisters once.

Shape Shifters, Part II

“It’s really about the trans fight.”  ~ Anonymous

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In that moment many things happened at once, because Oracion sometimes saw and heard many things, all at the same time.

Though she could not yet understand them as simultaneously as her brilliant companions could, Oracion hoped in time (when she had grown just a little bit younger) her mind would be as clear as Alacrity’s –  and her thoughts as fast as Velocity’s –  but that time was not now.

She was well aware of the priest’s snake, that she knew he fondly called Onion, as it hissed and slithered out of the open bedside drawer. The snake was raised up in an instant, as if suddenly balanced on the tip of tiny feet, that were somewhere hidden but now emerging at the base of a still undulating tail.  In that instant Oration also observed Onion’s fangs, the tongue, and two small fetus size bulges packaged within the snake’s body – one in mortal stillness, but the other still slightly moving (Oracion realized in horror) and trying to get out.

Oracion also noticed a flash of light about the fat snake’s neck, which registered meaningfully as her own diamond bracelet, constricting the poor snake’s breathing, but preventing Onion’s expulsion of dinner.  She drew back and screamed an inaudible scream – as the snake tried to strike at her face, even though Oracion did not really scream in fright. She screamed more in anger for that which the old priest was using the snake.

For since night was like day to Oracion, and although she knew what she saw during her travels was real and had real meaning, she also knew her guides and her Father would always protect her, even from snake venom.  The danger was never real. Therefore her scream was more a horrified outcry against evil and the horror of everything she saw and now knew to be true, rather than one of sudden fright – or personal defense.  The castle chanters were singing “decoy” anyway –  to inform her there was something else she must look at (though the word sounded more like a silent chime, as their words always did in this venue) even as Oracion was also made aware her scream, however silent as she was invisible,  had been heard in the chambers below.

She was made aware of this because in that same instant she heard men in heavy boots pounding ominously, as they ran up the stairs.

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The fact that the wicked priest seemed to hear what was silent was more significant to her in this moment than the fact that his guards now ran up the stairs with murderous intent, and it was this fact that did mystify – and somewhat frighten her.  For hearing what was silent was reserved to the shape shifters and to her Father’s people, not to those whose business was soul murder.

But nonetheless, even as Oracion struggled with her desire to help the second baby out of the snake’s body, and knew that second baby was also her (in some mysterious way), Velocity laid an invisible hand on Oracion’s own invisible hand. In the next instant she was transported to the evil priest’s closet, as if in hiding from the angry men with the monstrously loud boots.

If the old priest had stolen the secret to hear silent things, had he also obtained secrets to see secrets as well? Could he find Oracion here?

Could that be even possible?

Though the enemies had seen shape shifters in various formula and format, the shape shifters were the only ones left that Oracion knew of,  to see reality for what it actually was.

To the pathetic wicked priest, when he could see her, at least as far as Oracion could tell, she would always just be the deeply disturbing garden nymph, with wild eyes, too pale skin and a cloud of black hair, the one he had cast off into the forest for being too intelligent.  He probably had fantasized that the girl would be taken in by the other commoners he had banished from his kingdom, and somehow, as if through what he viewed as a lower, less than pristine class contamination, forget everything she had seen within the castle walls.

How could the old priest actually see or understand who Oracion really was, when he did not even deem her human, or understand how she could be present when his tap dripped, babies cried, or even when he had flash backs to his own mother, hundreds of years ago, screaming at him for some imagined offense?

But while in the closet Oracion sensed, if not smelled, the unmistakable odor of long decayed flesh, it was so dark that Oracion could no longer see anything either.  The priest’s closet engulfed her like a sickening tomb.

She could feel around with her hands, however, and though what she felt disturbed her much, it suddenly made her see clearer than she had been ever been able to before.

Alacrity was whispering something silently into her ear that sounded like “Fuhrer” then “bioethics” even as Oracion was hearing the voices of booted men, perhaps a woman, and some other visitors (good or bad she could not tell) right on the other side of the door.

“ok, Miss Spider…” a voice began.

Oracion felt skeletons hanging from hangers, their little bony feet knocking and clicking against her back, as Oracion found a place to crouch, making her own body very little by kneeling on the floor.

“they found her…has a business now…probably should have stayed away”

The bodies must have been stacked together and compacted quite tightly in this closet, pressed together to get in as many hanging skeletons as possible. Surely they could not have been all of this one priest’s kill Oracion thought, as her small movements disengaged a sprinkling of loose toes from several dry, ancient feet, but this clink, clink, clink of the bones, apparently, the outsiders could not hear at all. The men continued their chatter, as if they were women gossiping about the next door neighbor, not soldiers with guns in front of a closet containing ancient bones.

“very sincerely misguided.  It’s like getting a tongue lashing from a snake…all of her comments are crazy…starving children can’t talk…standing up”

But at Oracion’s own feet, another type of body lay… lifeless, but still warm.

A little girl, around seven or eight.

Oracion felt the small, still, familiar hands of the child, and her familiar, round cherubic face, the cloud of tangled hair as soft as she could imagine the silk threads of the blouse of a madonna, and impossible ever to comb… while the most brutal pain of all and heavy understanding suddenly settled on Oracion’s heart.

Would she die an eighteenth death at this moment, in an evil priest’s closet, just so she would understand, with dangling skeletons above her, and her third beloved fairy godmother,  dead at her feet?

“I don’t know what to tell ya…her father called the judge. The North Door ceremony, over expenses, music… accomplished. I realize depression –  but the only possibility is a mixed seed”

Oracion wept bitterly, holding the poor, lifeless body of Chagrin in her arms.

“the only thing to do…threats, sticks, making stars…hey, what are we waiting for…you know in theory his father’s outbursts pre determine dream obsessions, an isolated bath…maybe the tin man did what he did because she wouldn’t even get a book – a false prophet, to deceive the elect…”

“Father, be with me!” Oracion shouted, no longer able to bear this moment, but fearing the next –  her rightful anger and love for Chagrin suddenly igniting into a desperate urgency, and so of course,  Oracion’s surroundings changed once again, instantaneously.

She was back in her forest home with Alacrity and Velocity, and Oracion was running through the leaves and sticks and underbrush to find where she had put her most innocent Chagrin down to sleep earlier in the evening,  on a blanket of warm winter edelweiss.

There was another moment of excruciating grief and understanding in The Seeing.

For all daughters who see, also grieve.  And all mothers who see, also grieve.

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It was seeing the child motionless, the child that was at the same time Oracion’s child, and at the same time her fairy godmother, as still as that first motionless baby within the snake’s body, that ripped another bloody sword into the center of Oracion’s heart. For she had to look to see if she could ascertain the gentle rising up and down of the child’s chest, to see if there was any life left, but Oracion knew the moment of death had just arrived, when she had arrived on the scene.

For in that same instance, the moment Chagrin’s chest ceased all movement, the child was already shifting into her new form, and breathing life’s breath once again.

Chagrin was an even younger child now, her hair a prettier and paler shade than the paleness of that winter moon, and her eyes brighter than the sparkling diamonds in a once treasured wristlet band. For what these eyes had seen while asleep and would always see now, was what Oracion could sometimes see as well, or at least intuit –  the Constant Presence, the Father Made Known, Who lived where He Would – to be with them always.

“I never left your side” she finally heard His Voice say in a voice that rang out though silent, like a loud crashing waterfall, in answer to the helpless cry she had shouted out to Him in the priest’s bedroom closet.

Chagrin’s laughter rang out as well and echoed merrily,  like a sweet musical note ringing loud and clear and finally free throughout the forest. And as the child sat up and reached her arms out to Oracion, Oracion beheld in them the gift of a small bouquet of edelweiss, clutched in a hand.

But Oracion knew she was no longer Chagrin anymore.

“Mother,” Chagrin called her, for the first time ever.

“I am finally Joy.”

Shape Shifting


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Oracion had been warned not to go near the new castle that was already old, that stood in danger of crumbling at the end of the wood.  It was there the wicked priest had taken the sun a long time ago, on a night so dark it lasted the length of three nights, and if not for the light of the moon, her kind would have died of grief.

Happy to be released, Oracion had made her new home in wood and flower, to trod upon moss and fragrant violet, ponder the graceful movement of heliotrope, and listen to chimes in the wind.

The three fairy godmothers that Father had given her were with her still.

Athough Oracion appreciated their companionship, she had to take care of them like little children, because all fairy godmothers will be, in some ways, little children. Subsequently, they often got tired and clung about Oracion’s neck heavily during the day, or pulled at her hair. Chagrin was the oldest, and was often found wandering off into the dangerous parts of the wood where the fog was deep, and had to be fetched before the child fell into the moat, or worse – got mistaken for Oracion.

If anyone found Oracion, the old priest would have her murdered instantaneously. If any of his servants dared to speak to her first, they would be executed as well.  And she felt it would have been her fault, although she didn’t think it was.

But she missed her friends.

The thought of burning at the stake didn’t frighten Oracion, but stoning did.  For her kind would be found guilty of knowing whatever sins the old priest had committed, and she would have been stoned for each one of his sins, as well as each one of her gifts, and each one of her fairy godmothers, the priest pocketing these things like plucked pansies into his robe.

And the moat into which she feared Chagrin would fall, was not like regular moats that Oracion had read about in story books when she was little (many lifetimes ago) or the one that had surrounded her own home in the Other World, but one that ran deceptively through pine and leaf throughout the forest floor like a giant, tangled snake set out to catch its prey.

Now that Oracion was even younger, she was very wary of this slippery inlet’s particular danger, and the fog that rose up from it in cloudy mists. It was the type of poisonous fog that had blinded some.

But the nights in the forest were beautiful because the fog never reached the sky, or obscured the moon.  And although the stars were falling now at regular intervals, the nights were getting brighter than ever before.

Some said these bright nights were day, and of course they had always been, to Oracion.

For it was in the night that Oracion could shape shift like the other children into invisibility and fly.

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Sometimes, after securing Chagrin, she would gather Alacrity and Velocity to her, and together they would slip into mysterious places forbidden, all walls dissolving in an instant at the touch of her hand. She saw books lining shelves that contained the hidden things, and passage ways that were really there, but hidden from plain sight, invisible to earth.  Once she found a bracelet of baguettes of exquisite clarity the old priest had stolen from her when she was just little. Then, as if he found it useless, he had tucked it into his bedside table drawer.

Yes, it was as if the priest just stole out of jealousy, yet when obtaining what he wanted, could not understand the things he had stolen,  in spite of their brilliance. Or perhaps, jealous of the shape shifters  (who could turn matter into other forms good) he had stolen the power to turn, but could not turn them good.

She hoped it was not that.  For for the first she had pity, but not for the latter.

And sometimes, during the night, Oracion found her real Father here and there in the woods like Aslan the Narnian beast, from a tale told in other demensions, and he drew her to him with more tenderness than ever expressed this side of heaven.

It was those nights Oracion liked the best.

But on one night, when the moon’s fullness made the castle more ominous and dark by comparison, Oracion found herself suddenly standing within its transparent walls in a place she did not wish to be, to view something she did not wish to see.  For Oracion was standing beside the dresser drawer that contained the stolen diamond baguettes she had once worn around her own tiny wrist, laughing, once upon that time.

Only the priest’s drawer had been pulled roughly open and the bracelet was missing – or changed. And, as if in desperate attempt so her kind would never find or want to look for such a priceless bracelet again, a monstrous black snake slithered out, raising its ugly head at Oracion to strike.

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Oracion’s Fire

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I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow and called out:
“It tastes sweet doesn’t it?”
“You have caught me”, grief answered,
“And you’ve ruined my business
How can I sell sorrow, when you know its blessing?”  -RUMI

 

He looked at her with undisguised and unapologetic contempt, but not before she caught sight of another expression that played briefly across his features; an expression not very unlike those that are known to depict fear.

This first, fleeting expression was one of being startled, that which a child’s face might possess when caught with a hand in the cookie jar, or the expression of a robber pulled over with stolen goods in the trunk of a car, or a sodomizing priest – facing a child ignorant of society’s standard of politeness and therefore not afraid to scream.

Yes, in that moment the troubled man looked very startled, as if she were some clever nymph that had emerged out of the woods with the purposeful intent to cast her spells upon him, or shed what was referred to in days of old  – as Oracion’s Fire.

This was just before the priest’s expression hardened into one of cold, impenetrable hatred.

It was in the preceding startled expression that the cleric revealed he knew not where to run and hide from such a deluge, and feared should he actually have to come in contact with the tears of the blessed – his skin would become instantaneously charred.

Did the mysterious nymph not know (in her innocence) he had no choice but to attack her then, for if her burning tears did not literally kill him, they would imprint upon him forever the evidence of his own guilt?

No, she had not known, but in retrospect, when thinking about that startled expression he bore her, Oracion knew that was when the wicked priest first devised his plan.  It was a plan to bear false witness against her, dispatch her… and started calculating the attempted murder of her soul.

Valentines

“Be with me”

– someone I love.

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My world is beautiful today.

Outside my window, the snow lightly falling before a gentle, gray background of trees does not appear bleak or desolate, but brilliant and peaceful, a contrast of shadow and light, a panoramic scene, just for me, while I write. I do not know if this is because of the gingerbread Valentine’s Day houses I’ve been making today,  or not.

What I mean is,  creating is a positive action for me –  inducive to pondering things of light.  Creating is a drawing away from the ugly.

Because the world can be so damn ugly at times.

I have found the accelerated hostilities manifested in social media lately as gruesomely fascinating and compelling as noticing an auto accident, in which the bodies have been thrown and strewn up, entangled in electrical wires just above my head. Travelers are reacting not with sympathy, or even comprehension and horror, just defensive reaction –  taking aim to shoot bodies down. I stare at my fellow passengers in disbelief.  It seems to me that they hear no reason. Can it be because my own voice has become unintentionally garbled, and my own understanding – impaired?

Or have all human beings suddenly lost the ability to speak civilly, and to calmly read?

Yes, the world can be so ugly at times that we all embrace cognitive dissonance, at time or another, and choose alternative facts, or an alternative reality.

We just want whatever we perceive as good to be true.

I remember as a little girl loving a pink, stuffed rabbit that my father bought me at the Post Exchange while we were stationed in Heidelburg, Germany.  I say loving, because I mean loving. I even argued this point with my mother.

She insisted that I couldn’t really “love” a stuffed animal, because toys weren’t real.

One day she washed my pink rabbit, but not before removing the straw with which it was stuffed.  I came home from elementary school to find my rabbit gutted and its skin laid out upon her sewing machine to dry.  The fact that she restuffed Bunny later did not mitigate my trauma endured, and it felt like a cruel lesson in reality, my mother wished to impose upon me.

I had a conversation with God too, about this rabbit.

I said,  my love for it feels so real. You and I God, know my love for my stuffed animal is real.  So please God, wink, wink,  if Mommy is right and my rabbit isn’t real, could you please make it real one day, anyway?

And I hadn’t read yet, the story of the Velveteen Rabbit.

But almost half a life time later I was to discover that God had indeed granted my childhood wish.

For one of my very alive dogs, Cookie, has all the personality traits I imagined, and snuggling capabilities of my little pink rabbit, and not only that, my other very alive dog Kiwi, I swear is the reincarnation of a favorite stuffed squirrel.

I’m referring to the squirrel my Uncle Frank had given me, the squirrel that got lost on a long train ride through Germany, that I had dropped and slid down and back beneath the seats.

God is so cool that way.

But isn’t it funny how we long for things we do not yet possess, and sometimes cannot even see, as if we know in our hearts they are out there somewhere?  I think the very fact that humans desire there to be a God, and we desire Him to be good, proves that there is a God all along, and guess what, that God is Good.

The conceiving in the mind, for a mere human, does not necessarily create a reality, but it comes before reality, foreshadows it, like God conceiving our souls in His mind before He wills them into existence.

We as mere humans can see (in a sense) what is meant to be, and what was always meant to be, if our desires are good.

I struggled with doubt in this notion with regard to my dating life, in the search for my potential husband. This “search”  felt like a penitential journey across a barren desert with no sign of water, consolation, or relief.

Melodramatic?

Not.

I think the view o’ meter on Match.com flipped over at 15,000 views before I finally realized that there was no way I matched with any one of those 15,000 “viewers”.  And 15,000, I had to accept,  was only a tiny slice of all the people in the world, where my true love could be hiding.

Just about anywhere, hiding from me, like a cowardly, disgrace of a ne’re will show up, or a long since dead.

Do you hear me, boy?

Now, I had long since evolved from the cognitive dissonance and naivety that preventing me from seeing the red flags of a potentially abusive relationship. And (I’ll slap you silly if you think otherwise)  I did not evolve into an angry woman, or one in possession of a knee jerk post traumatic rejection of all men.

But I did grow into a woman, who at fifty, had earned and learned the hard way the ability to discern what social, emotional or mental disorders and scars my admirers might possess, or what traits made us incompatible, all before the second date.

No dating site could provide the man who fit me like a puzzle piece to mend old wounds, or create a beautiful, new picture of life –  with me.

But I longed for him.

Sometimes the desire was like a dull throbbing, an inner ache, or a subconscious dissatisfaction with what was and what is. Sometimes my desire manifested into blatant loneliness, a sorrow of tossing and turning in the middle of way too many dark nights of the soul. Sometimes I reached out in my dreams for him and he wasn’t there lying next to me when I awoke, although I thought I had caught the scent of his essence, like a rare cologne that was there, but not there, at the same time.  And sometimes I imagined my desire for him as painfully sharp as a razor’s edge, tearing through my flesh right around the heart somewhere.

And yet all the time I was aware I was desiring, and needing, that whom I did not even yet know.

This reminds me of when I was pregnant with my son and with my daughter. Pregnant women love the child to which they cannot yet connect a face, but when they behold that face they say “yes.”  They say “oh”.  They recognize that whom they loved all along (of course, I should have known!)  We instinctively pre know who is missing from our lives, and whom God intended to create or has conceived of from before the beginning of time.

But it doesn’t come as any surprise when I first spoke to him (the man I was meant to love from all eternity) by phone –  I didn’t recognize him as The One. Even though I had heard quite clearly in half sleep silent words “You will meet him in the midst of battle.”

What?

Hello?

Who?

Not on Match.com, a wine glass in hand, looking lovely?

My life at the time had indeed become a battlefield, a raging fight with powers indifferent or intent to abandon or harm my mentally ill mother, whose life I was simply trying to save. I had discovered that broken systems are designed to hide that they are broken, not help their innocent clients –  particularly those most in need. And I felt like I was the only one in the world who had stumbled upon this dark truth, this knowledge like an invisible but very real and suffocating burden, that I alone possessed.

So when I read his email, his words, his kindness, when I heard a voice that sounded in a strange way very much like a reflection of my own, when I noticed that this man actually listened to what I said and shared my own insights, it’s as if I didn’t believe that he existed at all.

He was an enigma to me, an anomaly to everything else with which I had always been presented.

And when I first met him in person close to a year later, when the man God meant for me laid eyes upon me in person for the very first time, he too reacted like he had been a doubting Thomas, who had to all but put his hands through my side,  before believing I was real.

Jonathan said something to me which I will never forget. He said:

“Thank you for being real.”

The love of my life had foreseen me in a dream.

I think those of us who have trained ourselves to stay in touch with the real world, so often hideously unpleasant or cruel (because someone’s got to stay awake for God’s sake) often have trouble comprehending life – when it is good.

When it is miraculously good.

An apparition – not?

Sometimes I still feel like I need to put my hand through Jonathan’s side, for he is too good to be true, but he is good, he is true, and he is real.

So this is my heartfelt Valentine’s blog of the day.

It is an entreaty to all the lonely, the weary, those who long for, something – or someone –  they cannot yet see.  If God in his brilliant generosity of design has really created a man for me, a man whom I desire with all my heart (because I would not settle for less) there must be a he or she is really out there, waiting for every one of us, who will not settle for less, whether we meet them in this life, or the next.

Don’t give up, folks.

We desire what’s good, because goodness is true.

It’s real.

Though there exists the wicked, there also exists the good in life, and though there exists dark, there also exists light, like a panoramic view outside my window, a very study in contrasts.

Even the dangerously mentally ill, even psychotics who try to kill us in our sleep, really can be good deep down inside.

Life is like a fairy tale, in which only darkness, evil and sorrow will be undone, and our heart’s desires (if they are good) will really all come true. So if we could take away the human stumbling block of time we would say, oh, now I see Lord, love was real all along.

We would see that love and relationships are the only things that are really “real” – after all –  because Love came first, always was, and always will be, and it is through this Love that all good things exist, and therefore will never end.

In fact, love stories are the only stories that never end…

so I say, we would all do well to live them.

The Death of the Church

“The birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus means that one day everything sad will come untrue…”
– J.R.R. Tolkien

paris-image-for-blog-ancient-mourners

My Lord was kind to me this morning.

He let me linger in that state of blissful soul suspension, halfway between what I call the “golden realm” of dreams and visions (that I sometimes can’t remember when awake) and the world of current existence, which is sometimes not so nice, and occasionally cruel.

Next to my bed sits an end table upon which I have placed a picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, who holds the Creator of the world in her arms.

Mary gazes upon me serenely, as if compelling my own eyes to explore the face of her Son. As I do this in my half asleep state,  I hear the continuation of silent conversation in my head:

removing staples that are not there
[Your Father] left steps that are illegal
for you to drown in
Why do professionals have to say
“investigation”
She and I
we have serenaded a village
Now it was a bad part of a town
…
I’m emotionally [Hamilton] (?)
See red (blood?)
Tell me what you see
(I see Mary, kind, loving, holding my Lord)
There was no despair in her face
…
The blessed come across as miracles
of God’s Grace
Amazing how you like it
in fragments of time
See the book
is not written yet
Soliloquies [not withstanding]
(Traditionalists)
“An order has to be established”
“their position on the pope”
(but they really)
[have to chose between God and man]
…
The chair’s not filled
…
(Are You talking about masons now?)
…
“Water under the bridge”
“Don’t be left behind
in the rain”
“The bank’s closed”
…
(This is what Pope Francis said to the masons.. Then to whom were you referring, my Lord?)
…
When I’m in prison
let Me out

I shift in my bed.

Full consciousness beckons.

It is getting hard to hear (I am concerned I might not be getting something right. Ah – my poor mere humanity)  hard not to awaken fully, each time I scribble down what I have just heard.  I gaze at my picture of Jesus and Mary again, and find them still close to me, speaking.

I’ll just trust, and write.

Trump[‘s]
sweaty eyes know no pain
Distant drummers will shoot him dead
his horse
…
We’ve reached a breach in the system
It’s always in the breach
It’s always in the rain
Her blouse (Mary’s?)
was not made out of gold, or fine silk threads
I can assure you that’s right, My child
…
Run it in the press
A column of light
hurts like ice
shrapnels under the skin
in December
…
My joy is not of this world
but you have it in your heart
you possess Him there
understand like Black Jack
It takes  two
(I understand this to refer to the man I love)
Now, run
…
(Were her hands soft?)
As always
(May I have her too?)
You may
your desire among the ruins
maternal love
Now go
(Amen)

And as I will myself to awaken fully,  knowing sadly this will severe for the time being, this intimacy – I hear:

Clerics don’t remember the time I died either.

our-lady-of-perpetual-help
I get up, and out of bed.

I like my french press.

It is my morning indulgence, a consolation self-granted, before embracing daily crosses I find particularly distasteful.

But this morning as I patter through my lonely (save for the dogs, flanking my side) kitchen,  my thoughts still swim deeply, somewhere in that other realm.  I ponder it: “Clerics don’t remember the time I died either.”

As usual, what I heard in the night (or in the early morning) makes even more sense in the broad light of day.

The meanings are not always what I first assumed. “Distant drummers” may not mean musical drummers, or prophesize a literal, pending assassination.  But the words I hear inevitably confirm what I have always thought, or sensed in analogy format running through the back of my mind, as if from eternity. Safety is in the breach, that gush of water, or blood, which like grace, escapes in torrents only through a divided gorge.

Christ died, to end death. Thus His church would also have to do,  in time.

The bride is not greater than the bridegroom.

The Fine Art of Jewelry Repair

I was thinking about some advice I got recently from a dear friend to shorten blog posts.  I have gotten this advice occasionally from people.  It comes mostly from people who do not wish to hear what I have to say. ( I pause here to smile.)  But such advice also comes from persons who simply do not have the time to sift through admittedly meandering prose. 

I understand and foresaw this, this criticism, and that’s why my blog is called “Unraveled” with the byline “Tip: Pearls are Often Hidden in the Deep.”  This is my warning to the time limited reader that my blog –  for them – might be a waste of their time.

My blog is not intended for skimming.  Personal blogs are not text messages or a daily motivational quote, waiting conveniently for you on your iPhone.

And skimming…  imagine that concept for a moment, if you will.

As a chef, I say one can never learn, understand or truly appreciate complex recipes by skimming or reading only bullet points, by nature of the pastry dough and the Kirsch and the emulsion process.  Likewise, not all verbal arguments or causes are easy to simplify, expedite or bullet point, but that doesn’t make them less valuable.  On the contrary.

Life reminds of being ten years old in the shoe store, wondering why all the pretty small children’s shoes don’t fit my unusually big feet. I had outgrown the shoes, before growing into my own feet, but it was not my feet that were in error.  I could not stuff my feet into shoes disproportionately too small. Come back (dear friend) to my blog later (only if you want ) with a glass of wine in hand and an easy chair.

I have found the process of unraveling one’s life and the deeper mysteries in it (like those regarding the church) to find truth, is much like trying to untangle a fine necklace found in many knots in one’s underwear drawer.  It cannot be done hastily, or with generic eyesight, if that makes any sense to the unfamiliar.

pearl-rosary

Nor can anyone rebuild a fine necklace with cheap material or present it back to anyone as a present in abbreviated or cheapened format.  Pearl necklaces are much too precious for that. Rushing through life has gotten me nowhere.  One disdains the slow molasses-like drip of life until one realizes that only in the very rich molasses of life, lies the needed nutrients.

But be aware before blogging that many will not understand, recognize or appreciate truth’s value, or even its nature, no matter how you frame it, and will prefer the Lumistix children’s necklaces that can be purchased at Party Supply.  They glow in the dark.

I think Walmart also sells them and Walmart has Bonus Buys.  (Use the express lane. I’m not keeping anyone away. It’s cool how they’re so bendy.)

Seriously.  I have nothing against the silly and the trivial.

But I’m not in the Lumistix business.

I’m also not in the deep-fried-macaroni-and-cheese-coated chicken- wings-on-a-stick-business, which was actually recommended to me as an alternative at the very height of my European pastry shop’s success.

Finally, there’s a reason I did not eliminate the butter and flour from pastries, that which lent taste, quality, value, substance and even science to laborious, revered, time-honored culinary processes,  simply upon demand by American clients who had already made themselves unknowingly fat and gluten intolerant.

Am I having a flash back?

Do I resent or feel angry at persons for actually preferring what I consider of lesser quality?  No, I do not.  So please don’t imagine “tone” here.

It simply hurts when people ignorantly complain that what I produce with great effort (that they did not) is not what they would have produced, with less.  I wonder if they imagine it was meant to be the opposite of that which I intended.

Thus the anticipated rejection applies to my writing, and I believe everyone who has successfully come to terms with their own life understands it.  “Rejection” that is, and how embracing rejection – shouldn’t be rejected.  It is usually the unaware that prefer the easily understood, obtained or faddish over things of deeper value.

Man rejects the deeper values, because as humans, we reject the painful and slow paced.  We subsequently reject self-realization, preferring the comic book version of life. I am not leaving myself out of this self-accusation.

We think “Oh Truth, that can’t be found there, in the painful and slow”  but that’s precisely where Truth is found.  The unraveling process is by nature out of our comfort zone.  Our instinct is to simply yank at our own delicate pearl necklaces with a bible quote or modern axiom, in hopes to fix it, when we find it entangled. We think it is these things that can help us and help others as well, like something we can drop off at our neighbor’s doorstep at our own convenience.

While on our way, of course, to things of much greater urgency.

C. S. Lewis wrote a lot about this in The Great Divorce.

Quick fixes are not really charity.  What good is it to drop off, for example, a piece of needed medical equipment for an elderly neighbor, if one is not willing to also unpack and assemble it for her?

So… true charity and subsequent insight, is strangely related – to time.

Imagine that.

God rarely sends us on cold drop offs or pick ups, daily bullet points in hand, like letter of law. God wants us to sit in charity and hear the prolific woes of such elderly neighbors, even when we have our own prolific woes, drink one’s coffee with the low fat milk or powdered sugar substitute we cannot tolerate but they offer – so as not to insult.

In other words, be with them.

In paradox (which is always the language of truth) it might be that specific neighbor God is using to do you a service, give you a gift –  an insight you can learn from –  or even hand you the final key you need to solve something in your own life, to which your ego, assumptions or impatience towards them might have rendered you blind.

When I realized how I had to slow down and only then find Truth, that is when I started finding out what was missing in my life.  I found missing puzzle pieces to my life in silence, as if they were waiting for me all along in the dark. I found them in the most unexpected places, often the mundane and including the tiring.  Through reflection, sometimes gut wrenching angst, in the darkest nights of my soul, but sometimes in the very joy of LIVING (with the help of Mary the Mother of God who now eternally brings us the Fullness of Truth)  I started putting those missing puzzle pieces back together – like pearls on a string.

Pearls that I might have otherwise overlooked.

My blog is that careful realignment of my own necklace, just in case God has strung hidden pearls upon it with which others can also complete their own. I do not want to leave any pearls out, because who am I to determine their potential value to others?

So please, do not rush me.

It’s not the fast food, Facebook or addition of cute kitten pictures mentality that has anything to do with the preservation, revealing or sharing of truth.

Some truths, by nature, are so complex this side of life (like those involving the church) they are very much like multi-dependent pearls on a chain. If you leave one out, loose, or replace with artificial gemstones the whole necklace breaks apart, as soon as you put it back on.  You then cannot communicate anything at all. Your argument is flawed.  Works of art are detected fraudulent or rendered defective by the tiniest telltale assumption or missing element. If we rush the process of learning deep truths we will misunderstand them, and worse, mislead others in our very ignorance.

I realize my writing style and subject is not for everyone, but that’s okay. I do not market to attract the majority of readers.

My blog is also in no way a plea to hear me because I’m suffering, for if I’m suffering, most of the time I do not feel it.  My suffering is limited to the aches and pains every child of God possessing a human body must endure.  I write out of passionate joy and love for truth. It’s as simple as that. I blog because I Am, and to Give Voice.

So, if my story falls in a darkened forest (which it inevitably will) it will still make a sound.

It will make a sound because God is with me. I have found Him because I have waded through my own deep, and His love (like some accuse my words of being ) is endless, in nature.  Who would want to limit praise, read or unread, of Him Whom is Infinite? He is like and makes our lives like a beautiful, round circular necklace of pearls, a never ending, fascinating story or everlasting wreath.  One who truly finds joy, only wishes to express and share it, without expecting anything in return.

Treasure hunt, anyone?

Unwinding Keys

This is a philosophical poem I wrote about the terrorist attacks in Paris.  I think David Byrne’s music is a fitting orchestral accompaniment.

A headline in the news
They broke her eldest daughter
And victims were confused
With victims of the slaughter

paris-image-for-blog-candles

They spoke in ancient ways
With candles and with flowers
But refuge is not found
In stadiums or towers

paris-image-for-blog-gold-bassinet

Mad world you are so cruel
She wants nothing of you
Mad world you are a fog
Very few can see through

(c) Frances Maynard; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

Mad world you grow so dark
Darker every minute
Surrounding her with words
With which they hope to spin it

paris-image-for-blog-with-dove

She gathers up her young
And runs with haste to refuge
See chicks escape the rain
While great beasts drown in deluge

paris-image-for-blog-ancient-mourners
Can you hear her now?
She speaks in music’s silence
And paints a bright new world
An end to all the violence

paris-image-for-blog-wedding

Mad world you are so cruel
She’s in her bridal chambers
Singing of His love
And children safe from dangers

paris-image-for-blog-truth


Children take these keys
It’s in the breach, remind them
Unravel to your birth
And in the light you’ll find Him

                                         paris-image-for-blog-lourdes

Epiphany

In self-defense and in defense of the innocent, cowardice is the only sin.

–  Dean Koontz

baby-rockabye

When I realized that it is God Who sometimes allows our cradles to come crashing down, into the void or whatever feels to us like a dark, bottomless abyss (as we fumble around in the dark trying to catch our breath, disoriented and spinning, feeling like our whole life has been ripped out from underneath us) I also had to realize something else.

I had to realize that the only reason a good God would permit such a thing –  that is –  permit the cradles we were born into to fail,  is for the innocent to realize a greater good.  Or else, I had to cease believing that God is good, just, or fair – at all.

Persons abused in early childhood (sometimes by their own parents) must be held safe in Someone Else’s hands all along, for the universe to balance out “right”.  They must be held safe (as I feel safe now) for me to maintain my Catholic faith, or for me to continue sleeping peacefully at night.

When I asked God one night why, why I felt so intensely about “these children” and the adults they become, He spoke something to me deeper than my conscious state can remember.

But I caught the tail end of truth as I awoke the next morning, through that Silent Voice, that Gentle Voice of Revelation that has become as intimate as my own thoughts.  It said,  “It was thrown at you so hard it broke inside your heart.”

I had to think about that for a moment – what was thrown at me – what caused my own cradle to fall, and what caused something inside my heart to break.  Hadn’t the plunging cradle drop happened several times already, inside my own heart, so unexpectedly each time I thought I would die upon impact?

I cannot interpret dreams and interior messages infallibly, but I can recognize the truth of their many analogies in retrospect. Some were actual predictions of real life experiences.  My heart has indeed been broken, for myself, and for others.  I know this to be true.

And although I have experienced sorrow,  I have also found joy.

I can’t help wondering, however.

I can’t help wondering, if truth is the opposite of evil,  if abused children are really the chosen ones (special souls belonging in a special way to God – God being a God of infinite justice, proportion and balance) are these souls then invited into a deeper degree of intimacy with Him than experienced by most?

I am thinking of the proliferation of bloggers on the Internet with childhood stories to tell more harrowing and horrific than my own, who have carried the weight of the ugliest abuse on their backs like the most gentle beasts of burden.  They are trauma survivors who yet never became bitter, but on the contrary, hear God’s voice in the whisper of the wind, music, art, or paths meandering through forest and solitude.

Some find profound theology without any formal education at all.

It is as if truth plants itself sturdy and upright, like trees growing right in the middle of everyone’s life journey. We can never avoid them, even if we try to bypass or plant around them for years, covering up for others simply because it has become force of habit.  When we see truth we see it plainly, or not at all.

You were born innocent.

You were never deserving of your parents’ guilt.

Your mother might have never loved you (yes that is true) but I have loved you always.

I Am He Who Is always there.

I love you because through suffering you most resemble My heart, which was also broken by mankind, and I made you therefore –  especially Mine.

Whether God speaks to us in such manners diverse during childhood,  or when we fall from our cradles as adults, smacking ourselves wide awake on blunt and painful crosses, those with need and desire will awake, listen –  and hear.

Knowing God’s penchant for paradox, I believe cradle dropping is actually how hope is reborn, our personal Book of Revelation unpacked.

Can it be for some of the most severely abused that they were already baptized in the waters of their own mother’s womb, as if to pre-cushion the blow? Can it be these were assured of God’s grace and Continual Presence, before they even took their first breath in this dangerous and sometimes heart breaking, yet strangely beautiful world?

Can that be possible?

For many scapegoats and victims of childhood trauma (once they learn to reject the accusatory and blaming voice of the inner critic) the acceptance of deep and difficult truths not only seems to free them.  It seems to perfect from within,  a disproportionate spiritual insight, empathy and above average emotional intelligence.  These survivors are typically driven and spiritually passionate.  It is like it is they, not their disordered parents or even those who come from “perfect” Christian families, have a real mission from God.

Tell them I Am always here, and tell them I Am always good.

Tell them I Am a just God, not the accuser, the liar, or one who would cover up crimes against little children.

Innocent children, and children at heart, know these things. God reaches out to them or sends them His own mother.  I think of the Marian apparitions at La Salette.

Abused children have become the recipients of such messages divine, and are like brave soldiers that I believe should be recognized for heroic virtue, not ignored, or repeatedly have their “integrity” questioned.  Abuse survivors are now leaders ahead of and immune to pack mentality, and seem to rapidly fathom and instantly calculate the inevitable toll of societal indifference whereas others of “correct” and “properly catechized” familial influence often cannot.

Those who have experienced severe suffering act because they know to not act is to fear, and to fail in loving a God Whom they paradoxically see has been so generous to them, where the world has not. They measure and are acutely aware of the Urgency of Things, and are determined to leave no one behind, or ignorant of God’s love.

I remember reading a book on maternal narcissism which said daughters are more often scapegoated by narcissistic mothers than sons.  The victims paradoxically have greater degrees of mental health later in life, as compared to the narcissist’s “golden” (praised and spoiled) children.

The researchers who wrote this book determined that this was because the more extreme the false accusations against victims, the more likely scapegoats were able to detect that blame lied in the accuser’s pathology, and not in themselves.  These victims therefore were least likely to emulate or perpetuate narcissistic behaviors.

Victims who accepted they could never win their parent’s love, and embraced this grief, not only moved on but often thrived, while maintaining higher degrees of emotional empathy for themselves and others.  Those who allowed little or no contact with familial abusers fared the best, but ironically were often the only mentally healthy family members left able to care for aging loved ones.

And why do these complex, follow-up studies make me think of the Catholic Church, the still largely unacknowledged pederasty epidemic, the abused devout, the countless victims, mostly children and many grown survivors, some already writing their own trauma and recovery memoirs?

Well, as I once heard someone (other than my Lord) say:   it’s a metaphor, you potato with eyes.

Those abused by a prelate see the obvious first, like the scapegoated daughter of mother church, and see the duty to warn others, perhaps more naive siblings, or the golden children –  the “potatoes with eyes”, no matter what the personal cost.

Yes, the situation is really that bad.

For devout Catholics, this truth may hurt at first (indeed it will be scourging) but it will always set one free.

For that is Truth’s nature.

Truth cannot do otherwise.

Someone recently told me the solution to the church’s ills could be solved with one good man, as if that One Good Man had not already been crucified for having had the solution in the first place. My friend (a mere man) did not realize that man simply did not like the solution that Jesus Christ demanded, because man does not come off as the hero.

No, the solution cannot be man, when man himself is the problem, the corruption of the expression of truth, the visible hierarchy and the very mystery of iniquity.

I think it’s funny that when the anti-Christ comes he won’t be a child, or even a woman, and that he will be, well – a man.  I think it’s funny because traditionalist reactionaries were acting as if the anti-Christ would suddenly turn out to be Hillary Clinton, and they could just “vote her out”.

So let’s have another conclave.

Let’s elect yet another man and just vote evil out of the church.

No, the solution lies not in yet another sociopathic brute male or holy Saint Gregory the Great, but in the Voice of Truth, and in the Revealing, the Revelation of that Truth. The visible hierarchy of Mother Church has already abused the devout and the trusting, both on the “left” and on the “right”.

Truth is not a reaction,  but a Reality and a Revelation.

Let’s say it again.

Truth is not a reaction, but a Reality and a Revelation.

Think of  Bishop Timlin, the FSSP’s Saint Gregory’s Academy at Elmhurst, Pennsylvania, or West Virginia’s own Bishop Michael Bransfield, and the innocents whose lives were ruined or are being ruined by these entities.  There is no classification “liberal” or “traditional” that makes child abuse, or the shuffling of perpetrators, okay.  How many children do we have to sacrifice to this monster before we have our own epiphany?

The mass is in tatters.

Its remnants remain, like shattered victims, on the floor.

Open the door and let them out of My house where (and when) they are being imprisoned.

I will see and feed them.

We should be particularly humble and quiet so that we should not miss hearing This Voice, This Voice of God and Voice of Direction out of the mouths of babes, those children crying in the wilderness.  Because I’m afraid, if you’ll pardon the expression, the emperor’s not wearing any clothes.

All of us would do well to take notice of this, regardless of how hideously ugly man can be.

Many bishops in particular are not wearing clothes, literally, as well as figuratively. They are not wearing the rank or office they “appear” to possess, because of their own actions.

Once again, I’m referring to the abomination of pederasty and it’s cover up, not loosely stated (yawn) informal heresy or some minor liturgical (yawn) infraction, or even “allowing” people prelates assume not to be in the state of grace, to receive Holy Communion.  I believe these lesser issues circulate to distraction among those who deem themselves elect, to deceive and keep them mentally preoccupied. 

And no, it is not a bishop’s personal guilt, sin or culpability but his ACT of child abuse, his ACT of covering up child abuse and perpetuation of child abuse that automatically excommunicates him, whether or not this reality is acknowledged by church officials.  Calculate Catholics, for a moment in your mind, what this truth entails.

Invalid bishops cannot ordain valid priests, and non-valid priests cannot transubstantiate the Sacred Species.

A fraudulent church can only produce a foul smelling abomination of desolation, that it still demands we worship and adore, as if hoping we will do these things out of force of blind habit or misunderstanding of required obedience.  Remember the stigmatist, Catherine Emmerich’s warning, so many centuries ago?

“There was no office on in (the strange new) Church. But the sanctuary lamps were lit…In the cave below (the sacristy) some people kneaded bread, but nothing came of it; it would not rise”

The teaching that those connected with incest or crimes against children are automatically excommunicated and therefore lose their powers of office is as old as the Didache.  Perhaps this is because the early Christians were all too familiar with the connection between pederasty and the occult, as the pagan religions prevalent in those times manifested.

No such loss of office was ever incurred automatically through “lesser” priestly crimes, even those involving actual fornication and murder. The canon declaring pederasty or its promotion ipso facto excommunicates is still in effect, and was re-issued many times, including one hundred years ago, in 1917.

It is as if, in the same year when Mary appeared to more innocent little children at Fatima, and spoke to them of terrible secrets, the canon was re-clarified to prevent the obscuration of it’s simple and most obvious interpretation and tenants.

Can it be just a coincidence that there were stars falling from the sky in the Book of Revelation around this Apocalyptic lady,  Mary, the same version of Mary that seemed to appear in the sky at Fatima? Can it be just a coincidence that the “stars” in this passage, from ancient times, were thought to symbolize (in spiritual language) the bishops prophesied to “fall” from their position, and “fall” from their own power?

3And there was seen another sign in heaven: and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads, and ten horns: and on his head seven diadems: 4And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth:


Canon commentators bemoan the fact today that the ancient historically revered canon, canon 2359, is suddenly not “respected or enforced” anymore,  but I have never heard a canon lawyer argue that the penalty of loss of office (and loss of powers intrinsic to that office) is not incurred by way of crime itself.  No canon lawyer can argue it is by way of – and dependent upon –  formal decree.

As well, although personal sanctity or lack thereof does not directly effect office, it does not mean personal sanctity is not relevant to validity of office.

Formal acts that go egregiously against the mission of the church and church teaching indicate that the prelate has no intention to generally “do as the church does”  in the first place.  Do men who seek to indulge and cover up their pathological urges against children really intend to do the mission of the church?

This is even more clear with canon 2359 than in the annulment “process”, because acts of adultery do not automatically invalidate a marriage, whereas pederasty does invalidate a bishopric, or any church office.  And “mere” acts of adultery and other sins are considered during a marriage tribunal because even these may indicate an invalidating intent or disposition on the part of the person – when entering into the sacrament of marriage.  However, if one possessed the pathology or will to molest one’s own children, they certainly couldn’t validly contract,  or ever fulfill “the mission” of marriage.

As well, a marriage does not “become void” BY the declaration of nullity.  It is determined never to have existed in the first place.

No one reasonably aware they are living in an invalid and abusive marriage should hesitate to leave it, simply because church bureaucrats have not yet declared it.  Likewise, no person aware that his or her bishop is not a real bishop (by this canon) should ever respect his false authority.

Notice the present tense used in the language of the canon (below).  The bishop’s ARE deprived of any office, and any act that allows a child to be abused in any way qualifies.  Do we really think God would not have been on the side of the children all along?

By the simplicity principle called Occam’s Razor,  it’s the bishops who are out –  not the children.

canon-2359

I believe the current situation of denial of this reality is far worse, mortally worse, than when the SSPX rejoiced when LeFebvre’s personal excommunication was lifted, but failed to acknowledge that the automatic effects of his schismatic actions remained in effect.

For God’s sake, can’t most Catholics read?  Can’t most Catholics see?

Are we all just a bunch of potatoes with eyes?

Blessed is he, that readeth and heareth the words of this prophecy; and keepeth those things which are written in it; for the time is at hand.

The trees in the forest and their fruits remain evident and very clear, like the backs of our hands, yet prelates don’t even have to plant around them because reality itself is simply being ignored by those who pretend to be in charge.

Reality is also being ignored by laypersons comfortable and indifferent,  like a cozy and justified  Catholic colored cognitive dissonance.  Most don’t want to take off their rose colored glasses to acknowledge the suffering of innocents.

Maybe the children will just go away.

These children flee the visible church anyway.

Maybe this means the children were bad, or just lying.

But psychiatrists will confirm the children were not, and are not,  lying.

No man gets up on a stand in a court of law and acknowledges to the whole world that Father So and So did this or that to his genitals when he was only ten, unless his whole life has already been destroyed anyway, and he has nothing left of this world to lose.

Could it be that prelates still wish to enslave and ensnare the devout by way of tiny, vine-like tangled rubric, so they can continue to abuse little children,  while ignoring the forest of law that sets God’s children, their very victims, free?

For if Christ’s Real Presence is no longer certain to be in a Catholic church or upon a Catholic altar, the time is now to flee to the “mountains” to protect our children and families, where God will certainly feed His flock directly in spiritual communion, by means of prayer life, desire and inner intent, as promised by countless prophecies.

If not now, when, I ask parents of good will?

What are we waiting for?

Pope Benedict, the pope who two weeks after his election declared the Vatican infiltrated by predatory homosexuals, already “fled”.

Could Benedict be the real pope recognized by the saintly Emmerich?

Perhaps Benedict, upon assuming office read the Fatima secret, and had the courage (unlike his predecessors) to say yes, it’s happening in my pontificate.  Perhaps he did not want to officially head the false church.

I am not the one to officially declare this so, but I know I would never trust my son or daughter to a church whose catechists are pre trained not to question or suspect a priest, but turn suspicion back on you or other catechists, for sexually molesting our own children.

I have taken the mandatory church approved “child abuse prevention” catechist course, and was chastised for questioning it.

Why are we to suspect one another, the parents, or a neighbor, rather than the priest the child accuses of abuse?

Why was there no mention made of cell phones, gifts, private visits and modern means by which abusers secretly communicate and entice child victims?

Indoctrination programs that one cannot question do not emanate from a church.  Readers and thinkers and those with a heart, please hear this:  They emanate from organized child abuse cults. What can be worse than fraudulent impostors and questionably ordained priests who sacrifice little children, our children, and then point fingers at us while covering up for the guilty?

For God’s sake and for the children’s sake, cradle Catholics, please wake up.

Your cradle has crashed and you are dangerously sleep walking.  Be brave and do not sleep through the three days of darkness. Your life and the life of your soul may depend upon whether or not you awake. 

Is it up to abused, threatened and traumatized children to determine which lines of the priesthood have not become compromised, which bishop’s hands have not lost the power to ordain, and which priests are real priests and therefore confect the Eucharist?

As for God, since He never abandons those children of good will who feel they must break with abusive parentage for the sake of survival, He will never leave those who obey His admonition to flee.  God doesn’t expect His children all to be canon lawyers, but He does expect us to hear His Voice, which is also understood as the Voice of Common Sense, or the Sense of the Faithful.

I used to think it was so sad that persons molested by priests as children ended up “leaving the church”.  What I realize today is that these grown children didn’t leave the church at all, because they ARE the church.  I grieve over my former ignorance and the fact that I too, once had many blind eyes.

The Church includes the boys the current “bishop” of my state, West Virginia, carted by the truckload to Gana Farms thirty years ago. Those who survived, survived because they figuratively “left the farm” and figuratively “ran for the hills”.  Let not the comfortable, the golden children, the potatoes with eyes, add insult to injury. Let not the victims be chastized for speaking out, for having the correct intellectual response or sense of the faithful type spiritual epiphany.

15When therefore you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place: he that readeth let him understand. 16Then they that are in Judea, let them flee to the mountains: 19And woe to them that are with child, and that give suck in those days.

Yes, I too, am of those who found my Father and her His Voice walking in the woods when I was just a sad and frightened little child.

And although my abuse at home, and by a priest as an adult, was not of a sexual nature,  I do not know where the bad men have taken my Lord, and that is what is most important to me.

I, like the other misfits and forgotten children, have had my blinders ripped off  and now see the monsters, those Beasts of Desolation spoken of in Revelation, upon the altars of the churches in my diocese and all over the world.

I have seen the monsters curled up in death grip like giant reptiles and serpents over and around furniture of countless altars, and through the eyes of too many fraudulent and demonic priests, to ignore reality any longer.

And although I do not know where they have taken my Christ,  and I cannot even be certain of my instincts upon which altars He remains, and am stumbling still trying to catch my balance, I do know where my Lord can be found.

He can be found wherever those innocent children who fled the visible church, and are fleeing the visible church today, possess Him.

For did not Jesus say suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come to me: for the kingdom of heaven is for such?  Has Christ not promised to remain with His children always? 

Trusting little children do not need man to provide God to them.

I, like all abused innocents, believe and understand the old adage that God can be found anywhere, and even in nature itself.  So for me, that is where you can always find me as well.

I’ll be with the children, wherever God’s children are, for there is God Himself. 

Going into the woods is going home –  John Muir