Preparing for Confession

"In this life many things happen in which we play a shameful part. Those of us who are strong forgive themselves and go on. The weak wallow in their shame and allow it to devour them. There is no one of us who is without sin, child. There ought to be some comfort in that."
The Duchess, Through a Glass Darkly, p607

There is no one righteous. Not even one.
Romans 3:10

Comfort. Yes, there is comfort in that, I suppose. But I don't want to be comforted by my sinful state. I want to be cured of it. I don't want to continue doing the thing that is sinful. Confession will do me no good if I don't stop doing it. Why continually confess the same thing over and over and over? Seems like a pointless exercise in futility to me.

This is not to say I don't do it.

For example, among the many things I must confess is being judgmental. I've passed judgment on many people. Not my job. I'm not supposed to judge the tree, just the fruit. I know I have judged many a tree however. I'm working on that, but you see my point. It's silly of me to keep doing it and I know it. So I must be watchful and not do the sinful thing. The prayer says "He came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief". (emphasis mine)

Abba Paphnoutios, a great desert father, was going along one day on his way and there he saw two men committing some sin. The thought of his passion said: "Look what great evil they are doing!" The eye saw them and immediately the thought flared up, trying thereby to attack the purity of the Saint's soul by judging the brother or also by his being tempted. Having watchfulness, however, he was being vigilant, immediately his mind was enlightened and he said to his thought, "They are sinning today, I will sin tomorrow. They will repent, but I know myself to be a hard man, unrepentant, egotistical, and thus, I wont repent. I will be punished since I am worse than these two. And what do I have to do about these careless sinners, since I am a much greater sinner and more passionate?" And speaking in this manner and putting a lock on the provocation of sin, he was saved and didnt judge the brothers who were sinning.
Watchfulness Prayer and Confession, Elder Ephraim of Philotheou

I fail so often in my watchfulness over myself, my thoughts and my mouth (Psalm 39:1). The Lord tells us to watch. But not doing so, well, I am being disobedient again. The Lord have mercy on me.

I am looking forward to confession. I want to feel clean again. I don't hope to maintain anything without the Lord to help me and keep His watch. Praise God that He never sleeps nor turns His eyes away...Once I actually allow Him on duty.

Relevant Verses
Romans 3:9-18
Psalm 39
Psalm 141:3-4
Psalm 121

Thought for the Moment

"Never return evil for evil. Do not be vengeful; do not return evil for evil. The evil of your neighbour is sufficient. If you return him evil for evil, you double the amount of evil in the world. But if you do not return him evil, he may yet burn out his own evil through repentance, and you will then have lessened the evil in the world by your patience and forgiveness".
St. Nicolai Velmirovic

I'm about to whine. If you do not want to deal with my whine at this time, move along.

Sometimes I wish I was a different person. Then perhaps the things I've gone through wouldn't have happened. I wouldn't have done X that wouldn't have caused Y that wouldn't have resulted in Z because of my sin. So I get the 2x4 upside the head and am told, nay, ordered to deal with it because this is a consequence of what you have done.

But then again some things out there had nothing to do with me and I still end up with the fuzzy side of the lollipop because of other people's sin against me for which it seems they get no recompense whatsoever, but I still get the blame.

I don't get it.

I'm stuck today. ~sigh~

She Who Has Believed

Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.
Luke 1:45

Weak

"...No matter what trials He sends us, if we have faith in Him and confidence in our prayers, He will give us the strength to bear them. When doubt assails you, do not despair - kneel before an icon of the Savior and pray; you will feel better at once. The tears you have just shed came from your heart. Always be guided by your heart rather than by your head, and your life will be transformed. Happiness does not consist in living in a palace or enjoying a large fortune; these can be lost. True happiness is something that neither men nor events can take from you. You will find it in Faith, in Hope and in Charity. Try to make those around you happy, and you will be happy yourself."

"...Do not forget your responsibilities; you must set an example and earn the respect of others. The trials you are going through will teach you that life is not just a pastime. Think of all the good you can do! And all the evil! I have prayed much for you, and believe that Our Lord will hear me and help you."
Lost Splendor, the Memoirs of Prince Yussupov Chapter XIII

Holy New Martyr of Russia, Grand Duchess St. Elizabeth Fyodorovna

It is always good to know that where I am weak, there are those who are strong and will pray for me and provide wisdom to me. The lives of the saints are wonderful sources of wisdom and comfort to me. I often find so many parallels between their struggles and mine and it's good to see that I don't have to succumb to passion and temptation. It's not inevitable.

It is, however, hard.

But it can be done and each time, by the grace of God, it becomes a little bit easier and His power would again be shown perfect by my weakness.

Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.

Relevant Verses
2 Corinthians 12:9-10

Dryness

Dryness makes us seek God for Himself. Strengthens our Faith, Hope and Love. Purifies our soul so we can reach for God. Creates a vacuum only God can fill. Increases our thirst for God. Increases our desire for holiness. Helps us practice the Beatitudes. Gives us an appreciation of suffering and leads us to pray without ceasing.

Dryness leads us gently from vocal prayer, where we learn to speak to God; to Meditation, where we think of God; to Contemplation, where our heart merely gazes upon Him with a love too deep for words.
The Gift of Dryness in Prayer, Mother Angelica

I've not gone to confession in a long while. At least since October. I plan to start the new year trying to rectify that. I think a lot of my current problems can be addressed by confessing, taking communion and drawing closer to the Lord. I feel far from Him sometimes. And it has nothing to do with His proximity to me, but with my faith wavering. And my faith is wavering because I've been relying on myself too much the past couple of months.

Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.

See Also
The Dark Night of the Soul, St John of the Cross

On My Conversion

"Once the decision was reached, it proved a difficult task to make it known to her relatives. She writes to them at this time that she is "intensely happy," but that it pains her to cause grief to her beloved family. And yet her determination was firm, "I am sure God's blessing will accompany my act which I do with such fervent belief, with the feeling that I may become a better Christian and be one step nearer to God." Explaining the reasons for her decision, she writes in a letter: "Above all one's conscience must be pure and true... many will -- I know -- scream about (it), yet I feel it brings me nearer to God... You tell me that the outer brilliance of the church charmed me... in that you are mistaken -- nothing in the outer signs attracted me -- no -- the service, the service, the outer signs are only to remind us of the inner things."
Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna on her conversion to Orthodoxy

Delightful, Sought Out, Not Forsaken

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,
and her salvation like a burning torch.
²The nations shall see your vindication,
and all the kings your glory;
and you shall be called by a new name
that the mouth of the Lord will give.
³You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
⁴You shall no more be termed Forsaken,
and your land shall no more be termed Desolate;
but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her,
and your land Married;
for the Lord delights in you,
and your land shall be married.

⁵For as a young man marries a young woman,
so shall your builder marry you,
and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you.
⁶Upon your walls, O Jerusalem,
I have posted sentinels;
all day and all night
they shall never be silent.
You who remind the Lord,
take no rest,
⁷ and give him no rest
until He establishes Jerusalem
and makes it renowned throughout the earth.
⁸The Lord has sworn by his right hand
and by his mighty arm:
I will not again give your grain
to be food for your enemies,
and foreigners shall not drink the wine
for which you have laboured;
⁹ but those who garner it shall eat it
and praise the Lord,
and those who gather it shall drink it
in my holy courts.

¹⁰Go through, go through the gates,
prepare the way for the people;
build up, build up the highway,
clear it of stones,
lift up an ensign over the peoples.
¹¹The Lord has proclaimed
to the end of the earth:
Say to daughter Zion,
‘See, your salvation comes;
his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.’
¹²They shall be called, ‘The Holy People,
The Redeemed of the Lord’;
and you shall be called, ‘Sought Out,
A City Not Forsaken.’
Isaiah 62

Empty, Alone, Silent & Watchful (Redux)

“All of us, I suspect, have times when we’re made to suffer simply for being who and what we are, and we become adept at inventing means of escape…[T]he pain that comes from one’s identity…can’t be escaped or pushed aside. It must be gone through…”

“…I began to sense that this was exactly as it should be. God wanted me empty, alone, silent and watchful…I was suffering…and had to laugh at myself, wondering if I really were so dense that God had to resort to these extremes to get me to shut up and be still…
The Cloister Walk, p38-39

She won't make a sound
Alone in this fight with herself and the fears whispering
if she stands she'll fall down
She wants to be found
The only way out is through everything she's running from
wants to give up and lie down.
Stand in the Rain, Superchick

Yeah. I'm noticing that I can't escape from this. God isn't going to let me. I've always had a means of escape. Reading. Writing which more recently morphed into role play. I could find all sorts of ways to submerge myself into myself and escape what I was actually feeling.

I actually had a visualization of it; I would pack whatever it was that was bothering me away in a box, the clear plastic kind, and set the box aside on a shelf. Sometimes the box even had a label. I had a lot of things in these boxes--from old or unused rp characters ((player chars I especially loved and non-player chars with potential)), to things I wanted/needed to talk to people about ((from vague ideas to full on scripted conversations)). I even had people in boxes. People who intimidated me, people who irked my nerves, people I really wanted to tell how I felt about them--good and bad...

To this day I have warm, squishy feelings when I walk through the organization department of Target and when I am feeling especially anxious about my life I try to organize things and go for shelving and boxes. It's decidedly odd.

Disassociate, I think, is the word. I mean, from a survivalist’s point of view, it makes a lot of sense. Why hurt if I don't actually have to hurt? What purpose does it serve to actually feel pain if there is a way to escape it?

But...I'm supposed to be more than a survivor, right? There is supposed to be more to this living thing than getting out by the skin of my teeth, panting and dirty and scuffed by the hard knocks it took to get out from under whatever it is that has 'bout whooped me but good.

Lately though, my escape mechanisms have not been working. Hm. Maybe you should read "escape mechanisms" as anaesthesia.

I'm a reader and a writer so believe me when I say I've tried hiding from whatever this is in my books and notebooks, pens and keyboards. For fiction reading, I go for fantasy mostly with a sprinkling of hard scifi for variety. I have a decent sized list of favorite authors and can branch off that list using internet sites comparing similar writing styles and the like. Lately however, it's been a no go. I've stopped reading more books in the middle in the past few months than I can ever remember doing in my entire life. They just didn't hold my interest at all. Don't get me wrong, I have found a few that catch me, but honestly, if it wasn't for the time limit set by the library, I'd have a stack as tall as me next to the bed. And thank God for the library! Yeesh. Even my non-fiction is getting streamlined. I don't just gobble up any saint's biography or book of theology or any random writing/commentary by whichever ECF peaks my fancy anymore.

And then sometimes I can't read at all. I just open the book and put it down. Open it and put it down. It gets frustrating. No. It's more than frustrating, it's absolutely maddening. And don;t let's talk about the swill that I refuse to call writing that has been deleted lately. I can't even work up a good rant about current geo-politics or economics, let alone a decent set of characters and plot arc.

Sometimes the madness lets up and I can find some enjoyment in reading or jotting down some of my crazier thoughts that don't make it to the blog. I call those things Blog Fodder and save them for later elaboration--I don't want to scare anyone.

I've even tried watching movies and anyone who knows me knows that would be a wash. I mean, I like movies sometimes but it takes me forever to finish one because I get distracted by...whatever. I have to really really want to see it to sit through a whole movie at home. I don't seem to have these difficulties with documentaries though. Or cartoons. ~smile~

Anyway, over the last, say, five or six months, I've just been restless. There are moments of distraction that divert me from myself and masquerade as clarity, but the restlessness always returns. I'm simply unable to concentrate on anything except this...not pain exactly...Hm. I don't know the word really. "Pain" is too intense I suppose, but discomfort is too vague and not intense enough. I don't know what the word should be. Whatever the word, it keeps me going 'round and 'round like a cat in a cage. It's always there-- the same questions, the same need for answers, the same cry in the wilderness.

I guess I can't hide from it anymore. As the quote above says, "God wants me empty, alone, silent and watchful". I just need to embrace whatever this empty silence is and watch what happens next. I am tired of trying to run away from it. It's tiring and frustrating and frankly, I don't need anything else that makes me tired and frustrated in my life. Especially something I'm doing that makes me tired and frustrated. There are enough people volunteering for that particular job, thank you very much.

What to do?

Simple. Fall back on the formula: Remember God. Say my prayers. Go to church. Forgive my brother. Keep the commandments. Okay maybe not so simple. But it is a start.

I do not think He plans for this to last long. I don't think He does. But then again I am not privy to everything He has in mind and that's okay. Right now, however, I just have to accept it instead of kicking at the goads. I don't like the idea--otherwise would I be trying to hide from it?--but I think I've wasted enough time trying to make myself "happy" instead of seeking joy.

St Benedict said: ‘Laborare est orare.’ (‘To work is to pray.’) Let us take that in this sense: we work in silence praying. We drink from silence praying the Prayer, the Jesus Prayer.

To be able to deepen the Jesus Prayer, we must turn to God. That is why it is so important to experience illness. So important to experience poverty. Deprivation. Hunger. Thirst. Such things make us turn to Jesus in the Jesus Prayer, to God the Father in the Our Father, to the Holy Spirit; and to depend on them for our very existential salvation. Only thus can we move beyond being buffeted by the winds of everyday life so as to base ourselves on the Rock in faith. And it is standing on the Rock that we pray.

And it is standing on the Rock that we can remain silent and pray, drinking from the silence while we work with our hands, our mind repeating in our heart the words of the Prayer in love of Jesus Christ, the Son, the Father and the Holy Spirit. May God be with us.
Orthodox Monk

Have Mercy...

"O Lord, my Lord, my joy, have mercy on me who am fallen..."

Christ the Teacher

All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the prosperity of your children. ¹⁴In righteousness you shall be established; you shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear; and from terror, for it shall not come near you.
Isaiah 54:13-14

A few months into the comedy-drama that was my life in 2007 I went to a Bible study at a friend's house. Things were fairly normal and then one of the participants pretty much told my story up to that point. She didn't know me from Adam's housecat and she laid it out from first to last. It was incredible and when it was over, I was surprised the song "Killing Me Softly" wasn't playing in the background it was just that uncanny.

When it was over, the two people in the group who did actually know what was going on with me, cleared their throats and suggested we go on with the study. The object of the study was to list words that described our current state of being and then locate those words in a Concordance and the verses that went with them.

Isaiah 54, Psalm 25, Psalm 55:12-14, 20-21 and Ruth 3:10-11 were the verses that came to me at that time. I've been trying to live by them ever since.

Right now, I am worried about how I am going to raise my son. He's going to see a lot of things that will contradict what I think I need to teach. How am I going to combat that? How can I say there are consequences to sin when he may not see any right now? How can I tell him there are things you just don't do when someone he loves is doing it? I've been worrying about this for a long time.

Then these verses came back to me today.

God will teach him. God will teach him. I don't need to worry about it (Psalm 25:17) because God will show Gabriel what he needs to know and will make him understand what he needs to understand when he needs to understand it.

Who are they that fear the Lord? He will teach them the way that they should choose. ¹³They will abide in prosperity, and their children shall possess the land.
Psalm 25:12-13

Once again, I need to remember what the Lord has told me and the promises He has made me and how good He has been to me during this time.

In spite of myself.

Relevant Verses
Isaiah 54
Psalm 25
Psalm 55:12-14, 20-21
Ruth 3:10-11