Association Of Catholic Bloggers

I was wandering the woods in my amnesia,  Following the lights to scattered campfires, wandering to who knows where. The moon was full My heart was hungry Who am I? Where am I?  So lost, confused and crying. When my father held me as a baby, his heartbeat soothed my every tear. When I am close to Jesus, I am near his heartbeat too.  I am a baby in his arms and His Sacred Heart holds my heart in the safest place I'll ever be. As I grew older, my dad and I camped by the river. The heartbeat of the river soothed me in the intoxicating laurel thicket where we slept. Every evening, my dad's friend would say, “This is the life.” Years passed when I could not hear that heartbeat. All I could hear were chaotic sounds of need and fear, frantic crickets and cicadas seeking quickly fleeting mates. The moon was full My heart was hungry Starving, all alone. One day, I will find myself, floating on my back, nailed to my cross. I won't move there but I'll be f...

At the Secular Carmelite retreat I went to last weekend, I heard a message I didn't expect and it has changed the way I'm hearing scripture, liturgy and homilies. I have different ears somehow. The topic of our retreat was, "Rediscovering the Riches of Divine Intimacy," with retreat master Father Robert Barcelos, OCD. I had been wondering how to grow in intimacy with God, pondering how it was that I had been feeling stuck for so long and even having a hard time following through on my prayer commitments.  Father Robert said that Jesus loves us MOST where we are weak. He doesn't love us DESPITE when  we're weak, but loves us MOST when we are weak. It's his preference. Whenever Jesus picks a place of encounter, it is in a place where life is messy, shameful or overwhelming for us. Where did Jesus choose to encounter mankind, face to face, in the flesh, for the first time? In a dank, smelly stable, in the middle of the night. He coul...

I feel whiny today. Yesterday, I cried. Why, oh why, do I have to slow down? I hate it. I want to stay busy. Everyone who cares about me annoys me by trying to get me to stop. I want them to go away, since I'm too busy for them anyway. My therapist said I need more breaks in my day to take care of myself. My spiritual director said I need to keep doing Eucharistic Adoration for the next three months and then we'll re-evaluate whether I need to continue. I don't have to obey what he says, but I'm not seeking direction because I'm a genius at how to grow spiritually. My talents lie more in the realm of driving myself to the edge of psychosis and back. So, I agreed and I do what I agree to do. I realize that what I want isn't always what I need. I don't want to slow down. It's almost as if I feel the world will come to an end if I do. I used to play computer games non-stop at night, five and six hours at a time, to de-stress. But, tha...