That's All, Folks! Or So I Thought...

[Hemma]

That's great

[marigold]

Well I knew what to do. I wrote my own report for the visitator. But it was hard for me to know what to think about the whole thing. She can't be lying, but in some parts obviously she is. What about the other parts? As it is my former community and not my future one, I decided not to think about it any more but to leave things open. What should I do? It's also sad that we can't be friends like this, because she's so full of her fighting against the community.

 

I'm really sorry too, Senensis. It sounds like you've done what you can. I wrote to my former abbess a couple of months ago, just saying hi and how are you, and didn't get a reply. It happens. :(

[AnneLine]

Somehow I lost track of this thread.... and now I find myself out of

props!   :stamps-foot:

 

NOTE TO MANAGEMENT:  ........... :stamps-foot: ........... <<<== we need this emoticon!

 

So... here are a few comments:

 

 

I see what they did there. 

 

:giggle:   From now on I will think of the Trinity whenever I see my recycling bin!  

:heart:   :congrats:  :heart:

 

 

 

Well I knew what to do. I wrote my own report for the visitator. But it was hard for me to know what to think about the whole thing. She can't be lying, but in some parts obviously she is. What about the other parts? As it is my former community and not my future one, I decided not to think about it any more but to leave things open. What should I do? It's also sad that we can't be friends like this, because she's so full of her fighting against the community.

 

This is one of the hardest things about leaving a community / problems within a community / trying to stay friends with all without taking sides...  I think not getting into it, staying open to them, and praying for them is the best way to be loving to all.  And I take heart knowing that God willing, in Heaven we will all be gathered together in God's love and there will be no more factions and fighting.   And I will pray for both of you.  It's very hard.  

 

 

The image of God as the "Great Recycler" reminds me of another image that a priest friend of mine used:  God is like a GPS: even if we mess up the original path He had planned, God will always "recalculate our route." ;)

 

I very VERY much like that image.

 

 

I'm really sorry too, Senensis. It sounds like you've done what you can. I wrote to my former abbess a couple of months ago, just saying hi and how are you, and didn't get a reply. It happens. :(

 

:(   Same comment to you as I made to Senensis.... "may they all be One as You, Father, and I are one...."

Edited July 13, 2014 by AnneLine

[TheresaThoma]

I like the GPS one too. Something I have learned with my GPS that works with discernment, you just have to start driving and not worry too much about if you took the wrong street at first. It will get straightened around once you are moving.

[marigold]

This thread continues to be a total boon. I re-read it from time to time, and somehow it manages to actually chronicle what has happened in the last couple of years of my life. I don't keep a diary and would never write these things elsewhere, so I am really grateful that something inspired us to keep writing.

 

As of now, I'm camping out at my dad's house until 1054 is back from her vacays, and then we're moving country in order to be closer to the new monastery foundation. I don't mind living out of boxes but it means things are even more scatter-brained than usual. I've taken to wearing one outfit for the entire week at work because it's too much hassle to find fresh clothes in 2 or 3 different - occupied - rooms at 6 a.m. :) Thank God the kids don't care what I look like!

 

Please keep praying for us, and especially that St. Fanourios finds us a house. We thought we had one but then some awkward housing laws got in the way...

 

Tonight I'm gluing 300 photos onto 300 thank-you cards that are being sent to people who have given to the new monastery. :)

[Theotokos123]

God bless you in your new journey to that monastery. I think I know which one you are talking about. that priest has visited the states and I have heard of but never met him. I understand your living situation a little. today I moved back to my moms, I was living at the monastery Lord willing I will join in January from May until now and I haven't lived in this house for almost 8 years. I had my own apartment up until last November in which I moved in to take care of an 89 year old orthodox man I had known since my teens. I thought I would be able to live with him until entry into the monastery but he died on Sunday of the paralytic. it was beautiful because he waited for the priest who drove 4 hours, the priest said the prayers and gave him communion and he died at the last Amen of the prayer of the departing of the soul. life changing. two days after he died I had to move out of his house and really didn't have anywhere to go but the monastery I have been discerning with for a long time. It was Gods will. He has showed me things thru circumstances that really cause me to believe I am meant to be at this particular monastery.


right now all my stuff is scattered in the living room because my brother didn't have time to clean his room (my old room and current room now) before college..... so my stuff is scattered.....

[marigold]

God bless you in your new journey to that monastery. I think I know which one you are talking about. that priest has visited the states and I have heard of but never met him. I understand your living situation a little. today I moved back to my moms, I was living at the monastery Lord willing I will join in January from May until now and I haven't lived in this house for almost 8 years. I had my own apartment up until last November in which I moved in to take care of an 89 year old orthodox man I had known since my teens. I thought I would be able to live with him until entry into the monastery but he died on Sunday of the paralytic. it was beautiful because he waited for the priest who drove 4 hours, the priest said the prayers and gave him communion and he died at the last Amen of the prayer of the departing of the soul. life changing. two days after he died I had to move out of his house and really didn't have anywhere to go but the monastery I have been discerning with for a long time. It was Gods will. He has showed me things thru circumstances that really cause me to believe I am meant to be at this particular monastery.


right now all my stuff is scattered in the living room because my brother didn't have time to clean his room (my old room and current room now) before college..... so my stuff is scattered.....

 

And I think I know which one you are entering but let's not reveal it here!

 

That man's last hours sound like such a blessing. What an amazing way to go - hopefully 'painless, blameless, peaceful, and with a good defense before the dread judgment seat of Christ'... Like you said, it must have been a life-changing experience. I hope you never forget it :)

 

And I feel you on the living situation. It's not easy, is it, but I am really trying to see everything that happens as a good preparation and help towards salvation, which is what the monastery's aim is! If I can accept a little now, maybe I can accept more later on!

 

Got to head out to see 'that priest' now ;) and will reply to your email later!

[Theotokos123]

It was a blessing to be his nurse.....

I wouldn't reveal anything on this forum!

[marigold]

Thank God, we have finally sorted out a flat in the city we're moving to, and a car to get us there. I can't believe we're moving in two weeks. It's been unexpectedly fabulous living back at my dad's for 2 months - I feel like I've been on holiday in spite of having 3028391 things to do. Not having to cook or do laundry probably has a lot to do with it ;) 

 

One of the things I thought was going to be difficult, and hasn't really been, was not having a private room. And because of the peculiarities of our new place (assured it was not a converted 2-bedroom flat, but a 3-bed with no living room!) it could turn out that I'm in the same situation there. I wonder what God is providing for me in these situations... ?

 

In the last few months I've gone from 'hoping to be a nun someday' to working towards it with a concrete place in mind, and it's like Abbess Thaisia says in her Letters to a Beginner (an Orthodox classic for women monastics), from now on you treat everything that happens as the hand of God in your life. She said it with regard to entering the monastery, but I think it applies to any point in your life when you make a conscious decision for something... It's interesting how things start to take on a different significance. Whether it's me interpreting things in a different way, or that God is actually introducing new things because of that decision, doesn't really matter. It's an amazing way to live, like switching from black and white to full colour.

 

I'm so happy at the moment, and so impatiently hopeful and dedicated to this new monastery, it just makes me want to do this:

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9ZMn1STlts

[BarbTherese]

Rest assured, Marigold, it is God acting in your life, as in every journey in all things either good or not so good and no matter one's vocation.  It is probably more difficult to accept God is acting in one's life when things are going wrong and much easier to accept it when His Blessings are happy ones.  Once I learned about and then internalized the theology of The Permissive Will of God, I underwent a really positive learning curve in my journey that brought many positive factors into my life and put a piece of my personal puzzle into place for me.

 

Permissive Will of God : Catholic Catechism (scroll down to #311 to #313) http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s2c1p4.htm#324

 

Great news, incidentally re your vocation and I enjoyed the video.

 

 

[TheresaThoma]

Lol it seems like more than a few of us are living out of boxes at the moment! I'm currently living in my friends living room while job searching. I'm hoping to get my own place soon though. This is not what I had planned on happening but obviously this is how God wants it.

 

[BarbTherese]

Prayer for all

[marigold]

Rest assured, Marigold, it is God acting in your life, as in every journey in all things either good or not so good and no matter one's vocation.  It is probably more difficult to accept God is acting in one's life when things are going wrong and much easier to accept it when His Blessings are happy ones.  Once I learned about and then internalized the theology of The Permissive Will of God, I underwent a really positive learning curve in my journey that brought many positive factors into my life and put a piece of my personal puzzle into place for me.
 
Permissive Will of God : Catholic Catechism (scroll down to #311 to #313) http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s2c1p4.htm#324
 
Great news, incidentally re your vocation and I enjoyed the video.

  

Prayer for all

Thank you BT, for the interesting link and especially for your prayers. Yes it definitely is easier to accept providence when things are working out well! I think I may be on the first swerves of that learning curve you mention :)

[marigold]

Lol it seems like more than a few of us are living out of boxes at the moment! I'm currently living in my friends living room while job searching. I'm hoping to get my own place soon though. This is not what I had planned on happening but obviously this is how God wants it.

Yes. Bearing in mind what I said above, I hope not that it gets easier soon, but that you learn everything God wants you to in what he's provided! :blowkiss:

[marigold]

Something really special that has been developing is a knowledge of belonging to Christ in a way I have not experienced before. Though I am dedicated to the new monastery for as far as God wants to take me into it, I feel that the totality of dying and living with Christ is now something that goes beyond a hope for monastic life.

I used to say the monastery was the only way for me to be saved. What I think I have come to understand is the radicality of the call to all Christians (and that has definitely been influenced by the martyrdom of our fellows in Syria and Lebanon) and that the implication for me is the same whatever God brings. I still believe monastic life is the best response; 'let my whole life be evidence to God that I have understood'. But should he not grant that, I will still be choosing to die with him so I can live with him.

That probably means poverty (a sense I have been following in sheer trust since I first dropped out of uni to pursue entering the monastery), celibacy (never thought I would see myself volunteer for that outside the support of a community), and if not obedience to, then closer contact with my spiritual father than I might otherwise keep (the hardest one of all!).

In other words, putting God as an absolute first at the sacrifice of good things like career and family, no matter what. It feels weird to have written it out. And scary, because those are the things I would most naturally go for. All my life I've wanted to be a successful writer, and my natural element is a big family with lots of kids running around - but my attempts to fulfil those desires have always led me away from Christ. And their opposites - failure in worldly success, and loneliness - have brought me right to him. So they have to go on the chopping block! :)

I will bless the Lord at all times, his praise shall continually be in my mouth
In the Lord shall my soul be praised, let the needy hear and be glad
O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together
I sought the Lord and he heard me, and delivered me from all my tribulations
Come unto him and be enlightened, and your faces shall not be ashamed
This poor man cried and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his tribulations
The angel of the Lord will encamp round about them that fear him, and will deliver them
O taste and see that the Lord is good, blessed is the man that puts faith in him
O fear the Lord all ye his saints, for there is no want for them that fear him
The rich shall go hungry, but they that seek the Lord shall not be robbed of any good thing.