Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

"Hello darkness, my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again..."
Sounds of Silence, written by Paul Simon


"He's here!"
Legolas, speaking of the mind of Sauron, from LOTR: The Two Towers, the movie adapted by Phillippa Boyens, Fran Walsh, and Peter Jackson



Early every year, generally during Lent, I have a huge mood crash.

I heard the Chinese gong of tinnitus in my right Meniere's ear earlier. I have four separate tones and timbres of tinnitus that I hear bilaterally, every day, 24/7. The Chinese gong sound is not one of them. A full-blown Meniere's attack is coming.

In the last three or four years I've developed mood crashes in association with Migraine attacks too. Full moon next week, Tuesday I believe, the Worm Moon as this one is called. Full moons always trigger Migraine attacks.

This year, the absolutely perfect alignment, and my old friend has come.

Death. Impending world-wide disaster (be under no illusion, I've dreamt it in the last week and saw it--it's coming). Loneliness even, and that's an odd thing to trouble me. I relish solitude and silence, cannot get enough. A week from tomorrow will be 18 years since the last time I was with my ex-husband. I'm a sworn celibate since my divorce. It's...tough.

Longing for God that cannot, and I mean cannot be expressed. It's a soul thing, souls that have no five senses to process information. How does a person talk about an event that doesn't come into the mind through one of the five senses? How does a person continue to live like this? St. Teresa of Jesus tried to talk about it. Once she said that she died because she could not die. I understand.

It hurts, to want like this. To want God so utterly inexpressibly, to want that which by everything I hold to be right would be completely wrong, to want to be already past the coming purgation, to want to adjust time and erase the last two years completely from all remembrance. I smolder without being consumed for the future, that which for me may forever remain just beyond the tips of my sparkling fingers. The pain is...exquisite.

Darkness, my old friend, is never far away.

It's 3:00AM.


"....'Take my arms that I might reach you,'
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed in the wells of silence.
The Sounds of Silence, written by Paul Simon


"No one knows what it's like to feel these feelings,
Like I do.
And I blame you."
Behind Blue Eyes, written by Pete Townshend of The Who



Copyright 2007-2009 Parin Stormlaughter, The Carmelite's Habit, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. I do not grant reprint permission under any circumstances. Contact me to request permission to link. And remember that if my work gets published anywhere else, I'll pray for you. And perhaps take legal action. Rest assured, prayer is far more effective.

Transpersonal Psychology or The Christian Metaphysician

Transpersonal psychology, from Wiki.

A more perfect combination of applying health care, psychology, the arts, and mysticism/metaphysical studies to serve aching mankind cannot be found on this earth than in transpersonal psychology.

I was only two courses short of a minor in psychology back when Noah was unloading the Ark and I was getting my Bachelor of Arts degree.

New Age isn't the wave of the future. The individual, unique transpersonal quest is.

Are Christian and metaphysician mutually exclusive? XD

More to come. :)



Copyright 2007-2009 Parin Stormlaughter, The Carmelite's Habit, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. I do not grant reprint permission under any circumstances. Contact me to request permission to link. And remember that if my work gets published anywhere else, I'll pray for you. And perhaps take legal action. Rest assured, prayer is far more effective.

The Liturgy of the Hours or My Two Cents in the Fountain of Holy Water

In this "public prayer of the Church [the Liturgy of the Hours]," the faithful (clergy, religious, and lay people) exercise the royal priesthood of the baptized. Celebrated in "the form approved" by the Church, the Liturgy of the Hours "is truly the voice of the Bride herself addressed to her Bridegroom. It is the very prayer which Christ himself together with his Body addresses to the Father." Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) paragraph 1174

My mother wasn't feeling well the other day. I offered to get my spray bottle of Holy Water with Blessed Salt. She declined the offer at first saying she didn't know what it would do--I'm Roman Catholic and she's not, knows nothing about details of my belief system. I told her it was a sacramental and would direct the public prayers of the Church. I reassured her that Holy Water wasn't a magic charm or talisman. She finally agreed and later told me how much better she felt after I did my thing.

I read the "Office for the Dead" recently. The Office for the Dead is part of the Liturgy of the Hours, also known as the Divine Office.

I love the Divine Office. Of the devotions directed to be done by my beloved Order of Discalced Carmelites Secular, daily praying of the Divine Office was right up there with the prescribed mental prayer time.

The Divine Office is recommended for all the faithful. Participating in it strengthens Sacramentals. Assisting at Holy Mass strengthens Sacramentals too. Sacramentals direct both of these public prayers of the Church so the more souls who participate, the greater strengthening of faith and the faithful. Jesus had something to say about faith the size of a grain of mustard (Matthew 17:20 and Luke 17:6).

Sacramentals do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit in the way that the sacraments do, but by the Church's prayer, they prepare us to receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with it. For well-disposed members of the faithful, the liturgy of the sacraments and sacramentals sanctifies almost every event of their lives with the divine grace which flows from the Paschal mystery of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ. From this source all sacraments and sacramentals draw their power..." CCC paragraph 1670

Here's a great link from the EWTN website with more information about the Divine Office. Breviaries are available from Amazon (search Christian Prayer and the Liturgy of the Hours). Two books are available: the Liturgy of the Hours which is full length with the Psalter printed for each day and is frequently in four volumes; and Christian Prayer, which is a complete Liturgy book except that it contains the Psalter in a four-week repeating form and only an abbreviated Office of Readings. I use Christian Prayer as my breviary, plus the Carmelite Proper of the Liturgy of the Hours for our specific Feasts and Saints (the red book in the header of this page).

I'm off to read Vespers, or Evening Prayer. This is Tuesday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time. Time to contribute my prayers to the Church for Holy Water, and Blessed Salt, and Blessed Candles, and such.

Who knows if my two cents in the fountain of Holy Water will be enough to Jesus-ify anyone? There are many, many pennies in there already.

Suffering and Christian joy, thy name is Parin. Conversion, thy name is Christian.

And may Almighty God bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. Amen.

Thanks, Aikichik, for modeling

Unconditional Love

We've had a thread going on the www.menieres.org bulletin board about unconditional love.

It's been eye-opening to read the opinions.

Once I set my will to love, I never rescind it. Ever.

I might not live with you, I might not talk to you, I might not pay you any attention if you've hurt me or threatened me with no apology or attempt to make things right, but if I have set my will to love you, love you I shall now, henceforth, and forever.

I said this to someone who has my unconditional love:

Need blood? You can have mine. Need new lungs? You can have mine. Want a new heart? You can have mine--wait, you already have my heart...

I'm not going to put myself in the way of someone who is going to hurt me, deride me, mock and scorn me. But if I love you, I love you. Forever and ever.

Amen.

Fix it or don't. It's all the same to me. Decide if you want to be friends or not. Your decision won't have any effect on whether I love you. That has been decided.

I'll continue to pray for you, love you, and do it all in the quiet of my heart. If you seem to me to need sweet reminding, I'll remind you. But I'll say this again: I'm not going to put myself in the way of someone who is going to hurt me, deride me, mock and scorn me. And encourage others to do the same things.

Unconditional love? Or tough love? Is there a difference?

Three Sisters or, What can I do for you, Grandson?

I don't talk about my First Nation ancestors very often. When I was growing up, that part of our tree wasn't...valued.

The Cherokee People are described here by William Bartram:

...Their complexion is a reddish brown or copper colour;

One of my mother's sisters had that marvelously beautiful complexion. All eight of the siblings who lived to adulthood were slightly more dark complexioned than my grandmother who had the fair complexion of the Northern Europeans (that I inherited from her and from my father's side). That has led them to postulate that the First Nation blood from family legend came from my grandfather's side, the Lambs, the first of whom came to Alabama in 1798.

I'll be doggoned if I can sort out which Lamb though. *happy sigh* This sort of challenge is why I love genealogy.

I imagine most any family line that's been on this side of the Pond for as many years as we have will contain at least a few ancestral lines illustrating the melting-pot aspect of American culture. My maternal grandmother Mayo's line came over from England sometime before1650 landing in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Our William Mayo, father of Valentine and his sister Sarah, was born in 1650. We're descended from Valentine's son James Mayo Sr. My great-grandmother Mary Alice Fisher who married Walter Steele Patton Mayo, was descended from Johann Adam Fischer, the Silesian Black Forest Baron von Fischerbach. The Fisher line came over, according to family legend, at the invitation of William Penn as part of his Holy Experiment. They were not Quakers but Roman Catholics. Still sorting out that legend too.

Anecdotally, Baron von Fischerbach's son Adam was said to have received the invitation, but that seems unlikely due to the fact that William Penn was stricken with a paralysis and deprived of his memory in 1708 and suffered a stroke in 1712, and Adam Fisher was not born until 1710. Perhaps his father the Baron received the invitation, but there is no evidence to support this. Just my thoughts.

My father's side has more specific tribal information. "Black John" Daniel Swindle, b. 1780 no DOD known, was said to have been Cherokee. That would have made his mother, Elizabeth Utz, the Cherokee connection but there's some information that she may have been German. Was Black John adopted perhaps? *another happy sigh* I love genealogy challenges...

As the birthdates and physical features speak, it seems like the Lamb First Nation connection may be closer to me now.

This time of year, the woods call to me through my First Nation ancestors. One thing my ex (whose maternal grandmother was full Cherokee) and I shared was love of the woods. He and I would drive to Cherokee, North Carolina, every year about now for time alone in the woods. I know how he's feeling about now. Scroll down a little ways in the Wiki article above about the Cherokee People to the photograph of the older man named Swimmer, put eyeglasses on him, and that could be my ex. :) No idea if they're actually related.

Anyhow...

No trip into the deep green, red, and gold places of the earth for me this year. I've got a new vegetarian recipe though, my version of the Three Sisters corn, squash, and beans. It isn't authentic in that it calls for olive oil (lack of fats in native First Nation diets was a serious health issue) but it's simple, delicious and will give you three servings of vegetables at one whack if you have it as a meal-in-itself. Have a nice piece of cheese and some grapes for dessert.

Check here for the recipe, posted on my other blog Sparkling With Crystals.

I felt like I should explain why I often refer to the Earth as my Mother. My Christian readers have wondered, hopefully. :) My natural mother frequently looks to the land to provide what she needs for free--always has, and she taught us to as well. Referring to the Earth as my Mother is not a non-Christian thing for me but rather an ancestral nod. I AM is my Father and He created the Earth. What a sign of His true love to have given to us such a wonderful planet that can give us what we need, for free.

Like many people, I'm an odd mishmash of cultures, sometimes clashing cultures. I cherish my ancestry and will research it until I can find no other "he married...she married..." to trace.

So sit down, Grandson or Granddaughter, have some of the Three Sisters hot from the stove, and tell me what I can do for you?

Dust you are, to dust you shall return...

"Dust you are, to dust you shall return. Repent! And believe in the Gospel!"
Formula for Imposition of Ashes

"All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any." I Corinthians 6:12 KJV