Struggling with Lent

This year I am struggling with Lent or at least with what I have chosen to do for Lent.  Maybe that's good, it shows I chose something I need to work on, my relationship with food.  This has been a long ongoing affair.  Sometimes I abandon my self to food, letting myself melt into its arms.  Other times I break up with my chosen addiction and shun it almost completely.  What I think I am learning is that food and I have to just be friends.  Friends that can enjoy each others company at times but we have to see other people.

What does that even look like?  I have no idea at this point but with Gods help I can make it.

Sexual assault is a ProLife issue

Being ProLife to me means respect for life at all times.  It means respect for people and their persons.  I can not destroy the body of a person in my womb because I have to respect that persons right to their own body.  The right I have to control my body is superseded by that persons rights, I won't die if I have to give them room for a while.

In the same way though I have the right to my own body, meaning I have the right, within reason, to control who touches and who does not touch my body.  Sexual assault and rape violate my person and therefore in my mind are not ProLife.

I know this is contrary to what most people who believe abortion is a right.  They think we don't believe in a persons right to their body but that is so wrong.  That right is so inviolate that it means I can't kill someone else out of convenience.  It also means that I don't have to allow someone else to control my body by sexual assult

Only God knows

I have a very bad habit of assuming that no one will like me.  So I don't let people in, especially those whom I like.  I hide myself from them and turn myself inside out to become some sham version of the person I think they want me to be.  So, they don't ever get to know the real me and relationship stays shallow because I won't let them in.  The funny thing is that when they get tired of trying to get to know me and leave, I assume it's because they caught a narrow glimpse of me and rejected me.

But, God knows me, and He loves me.  Horribly imperfect as I am, He loves me.  To Him i am not too wrong for words.  To Him I am beautiful and unique.  He made me and He has a plan for my life. That plan includes all the mistakes I've made, he can use those mistakes.  I am not too broken, He is the Potter, I am His clay.  I am His work, the one who made the stars, made me, and you for that matter.  How can I look at the beauty of His creation and not know that I too am beautiful and special?  If He made the mountains, the sky, flowers, and zebras, He made me.  Even more amazing He made me in His likeness, and He is all beauty.

If I truly believe this I have to carry this out into the world with me.  If God can love me then other people can love me if I let them.  I have to give them a chance to see me.  I begin to think that if I let them see me, then I will see them too, and seeHim in them.

Detachment 4 - reality

I begin to see that detachment is so hard because it deals strictly with reality and not the fakery stories we tell ourselves are reality.  We tell ourselves that this or that will make us happy, or giving up this or that will make us happy, but if you can never be too rich or too thin can either of those things make you happy?  We live our lives running after the things that have no real value and so can not make us happy.  We get a little more money and power or whatever we pursue and get a little kick that never lasts so we have to chase after more and more of whatever it is we think we lack.  Our life becomes the chase.

Detachment is stopping the chase or at least it starts there.  We stop running and sit at the feet of the Master and drink in what truly satisfies.  But to do this we have to let go of our ideas of ourselves.  We don't throw them away we just let them go.  We aren't rejecting the idea of being the best whatever or the most we just let go of it and let it drop to the ground.

You don't speak for me - Women's issues?

Who gave the Pro-Abortion side the right to speak for me?  I never did.  Why is abortion the ONLY thing they consider a woman's right?  It isnt a right I want, and by the way a right is not something you just want.  I want universal access to education for all people, not the right to end lives because they are inconvenient.  I want an end to hunger and homelessness for all people.  I want everyone to have the right to freely elect their leaders.  These are women's rights because they are human rights.  Only when all people have have the same rights will we have a free world.  No one has the right to end another life, ever, period.  If we lived 100 years ago we might have needed to execute murders to keep others safe but that is no longer the case.  Life is the ultimate right.  Don't tell me what to think and you have no right to speak for me.  I am a woman, and I can speak for myself.

Women should have the right to not fear being raped and to be made to suffer for unwanted pregnancies here and around the world.  We need to work for the day when no where in the world would a woman fear to say she had been raped for fear of being killed herself.  We need to work for a day when rape is not used as a weapon of war.  It needs to be unthinkable to violate any person.

In the past and still in parts of the world a woman pregnant outside of wedlock was doomed.  She couldn't marry or work so how could she support herself and her baby?  That should never happen.  We all make mistakes and things happen that we don't intend.  We shouldnt hold that against anyone. We should instead help them.  If we had done that from the beginning abortion would never have been thought of.  In a way abortion is our fault.

All human rights start from the most basic right, the right to life.  If we don't uphold that right then all the others can be taken away.  And all rights come from God not our governments.  If your rights come from your governement again they can be taken away when the government changes and when popular opinion changes.  Popular opinion can not change our rights.

God is in charge - Detachment 3

This next month I am in charge of doing our ongoing formation for my Secular Franciscan group.  Initially I thought of doing the formation on the Eucharist but as I prayed over it I kept coming across things about detachment so I decided to explore that topic for formation.  Well, several months ago I signed up for a talk being given by Fr Albert Haasse OFM that was held yesterday and guess what he talked about?  Detachment!  Before God was whispering to me about detachment, yesterday, he spoke rather loudly and in a New Orleans accent to me about it.

I actually wondered seeing so many of my Franciscan brothers and Sisters were there if I should change my topic.  I don't think so.  I think it was God telling to go for it and giving me some more input.

One of the ideas that Fr Albert talked about is how detachment and renunciation are not the same thing.  Renunciation is cosmetic, or as he called it "lawn mowing".  It doesn't get at the root of the problem.  You deny yourself what you really feel you need to be happy and so make yourself and those around you miserable.  Detachment is a process that gets at the root.  It starts with recognizing  the thoughts that lead you to the desire for whatever it is.  Recognizing the thought and asking yourself what is that all about allows you to begin to detach yourself from the things that hold you back in growing spiritually.

One of the other points I found helpful is the idea that when we are so attached to things and ideas we are insulting God.  We aren't trusting Him to take care of us, to provide us with what we need.  We are inessiance saying to God that He may have created us and the world we live in but we know what we need and we don't need Him to get it.  We think that these things will make us finally happy and we chase them.  We get angry with God because He doesn't give them to us when we ask Him for them.  Lord, make we popular, make that person desire me, give me success, give me money, but in reality we are asking God to give us a stone, when what He wants to give us is the Living Bread.  

Detachment 2

Today I heard the results of a survey where the American people say that organized religion is loosing it's influence.  The person who conducted the survey saw now as an opportunity for religions to prove what they are and why they should have influence.

I think what he says is true.  At a time of "popularity" of religion we often took it for granted that those of us in a church had faith and it was being passed on to our children, but was it?  Or was it really just something people did because it was the norm?  I think that is the truth of it for most people.  They belonged to a faith but it had little to no influence on how they lived and now the new generation is saying to us that won't work.

How does that fit into detachment?  We have to detach ourselves from the idea of external trappings. The cross on my neck doesn't make me a Christian, what I believe isn't the whole story either, but how I act.  I can't say I believe in the sanctity of life and then not support life from conception to natural death in all I say and do, and not be a liar.  If I believe that you can't abort a child but I myself  never am open to life, or only open to life on my terms, I am a liar.  Do I dress like a Christian do I wear a cross and think that the trappings of faith is all I need, or do I have the heart of a Christian?  Sometimes we have to detach ourselves from our preconceived notions of what it means to follow God, to learn to hear His voice and follow Him.

I think I begin to understand how the faith can be dead without works but how works can not save us.  We get so caught up in the motions of faith.  We think that because we fast or pray or attend meetings that we more holy then those who don't do what we do, when it is our hearts we need to change.  If our actions don't flow from our hearts our actions will be hollow.  If they flow from our hearts we will do all those things and more.

I need to detach myself from my idea of myself and go with God, with no preconceived ideas only a wish do His will.  Pray for me.