Vocation and the Objective Context

[Era Might]

I'd like to hear people's thoughts on vocation from an angle I don't see addressed much. Usually, the stress on vocation is finding a good match for one's talents and personality, but the other half of that, I think, is finding an objective context where these things are not just welcome, but positively needed. I'm speaking of vocation in the broad sense, one's unique Task in life. We can see in many lives of the Saints how they had to force their own Task, because it was lacking in their objective world...they had to take destiny by the throat. I think especially of Teresa of Avila, whom the novelist George Eliot uses as an extraordinary case that most people can't live up to because the objective context is lacking:

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Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve. That child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order.

That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. Their ardor alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse.

Of course, a person has to make due with the actual life they have...most will not find the objective context for epic heroism, which causes a lot of difficulties and, as Shakespeare puts, makes calamity of so long life. Often, this thwarts our vocations, because we learn to settle, whether it's settling for a middle class dream, or an ecclesiastical career, or a mediocre religious life. Maybe a better word than settle is we learn to get along, we cease to be actors in our vocation, and instead we just play our part, waiting to die. And I'm not talking about the cult of finding your Greatest Life or Following Your Passion, which is just American ideologies at work. I'm talking about real vocation, what it means to have the finite and historical lives we each have, and how to seek that Vocation when it has no objective context to unfold in?

Edited April 26, 2016 by Era Might

[BarbTherese]

When I first shifted into my previous parish and as I have stated before - a group of suburbs with residents of dire poverty in the main and the area beset by social problems of every kind.  When Bethany as a way of life first began to unfold it happened accidentally nor then did I consider it a way of life until my SD pointed it out to me. Then I was a resident in a rather middle class type of suburb - I was in the workforce and renting the house.

Eventually our government housing authority contacted me saying that they had a house for me.  This would more than halve my rent - the house and grounds were quite run down nor was the house new at all, far from that.  But it would be a roof over my head that I could afford.  I shifted in without knowing much about the suburb at all except that during marriage I would drive through it on the way to our beautiful Barossa Valley and its' great restaurants. 

Very quickly I became aware of the terrible poverty and social problems including crime - and I went into shock (what my doctor called "culture shock").  A few years down the line and by then having got to know many fellow residents quite well, I realised that I was where I was because God had brought me there not so much to 'minister' to my neighbours etc., although there was that too, but to learn and for a new conversion.

I soon viewed my neighbours as it were through new eyes and I valued and cherished them............and as just one of them (although I had since made secret private vows). I could freely mix and they held nothing back about what they really did think about many subjects.  My thirty years in that suburb and parish changed me completely - totally...........and all my gifts and talents were coming into active play.  I felt useful with a mission and apostolate.

The interesting part about it to me is that as a child for as long as I can recall, my heart always went out to the underdog even if that underdog was in the wrong and their own fault.  At times, in school, that got me into hot water at times.

In my previous suburb and parish over many years I began to find not only the ends, but I was able to make them meet.  My whole life began to make sense for me.

Why I am here where I live now - still government rental housing - and in a middle class suburb really makes me feel like the proverbial duck out of water.  But life I know unfolds - there is a reason but I can't sight it yet and I may not indeed this side of Heaven.

My personal feeling level at this point is that I am NOT living my life but I am just waiting to die.  I am heading towards 71years old.  I did say to my SD (priest religious) "Seems I must live like a hermit, but it is not what I signed on for". He just laughed.  It has occurred to me that in religious life one could be transferred anywhere and it just might not be to one's taste and preference.  I guess I have been transferred here.............not at all to my taste and preference!  But I firmly believe there is very good purpose and reason...........I just can't see it.  I don't seem to have any objective context here, but that does not change that all I think, say and do has value, great value and perhaps more value because it is not to my taste and preference but I go on in Faith and trusting confidence.  I would go back to my previous suburb and run down house in a flash out of this modern unit with walk in pantry and lovely garden.  Most of the time I potter around the house and garden, go to Mass Sundays and other days when able, carry out my duties for St Vinnies, strive to be nice to all around me..........and sit here and rot.............. to my senses.   I pray every day but I am not the kind able to pray constantly or consciously for very long periods.  I would make a lousy hermit as choice.  I dunno maybe over 70years of age is an age when things do start to rot physically, mentally and emotionally - but it seems to me not with everyone.

Some days I can give thanks for being here from my heart and I seem to be getting to a somewhere..............most of the time I hate it big time and feel as if I am nowhere and my somewhere gone somewhere or other.  Maybe, just maybe, I am in another sort of "culture shock" and things are yet to unfold for me.  After all, I can recall in my previous suburb not long after shifting there sitting on the back steps and crying my heart out, I was so unhappy and so deep in culture shock.

Maybe I am just getting old.

PS........I did not ask to be shifted here.  I nearly dropped the phone with shock when the housing authority told me I HAD to shift.  I thought that I would die in that old house.  I loved the joint! The housing authority pulled the house down some time after shifted and a few more years down the line, they built a new house and sold it, rather than renting it.  The good thing about being here is that I am not far from my brothers and their wives and families - and we all get along great.

[BarbTherese]

But I can't live in their pockets day after day..........we would not be getting along great for much longer I strongly suspect.  They are all younger than me and they have their own lives to live.  I don't let on about my feeling level.........which is not at all my Faith level, which comes from a different place to feelings.

[Era Might]

Thanks, Barbara. I had a good friend with a similar experience, he retired in his early 80s, pulled up roots from the city, bought a house in the woods, and tried to find his vocation after what was a remarkable life as a scholar and professor. I don't know if he ever really found that vocation, at least within himself. He remarried at 80, to another wandering soul, and his illness which killed him within just a couple years drove her away, so he died alone. But having known him, his friendship was vocation enough, though that maybe didn't do him any good, even if it did everyone else good. Maybe we shouldn't wonder that most don't find a vocation, but wonder that anyone does...after all, isn't that why we create heroes and saints. Like most ideals, it is the striving that matters...and we learn again and again that it may be better to travel hopefully than to actually arrive and find something we didn't know was going to be there.

Edited April 26, 2016 by Era Might

[BarbTherese]

 

3 hours ago, Era Might said:

Thanks, Barbara. I had a good friend with a similar experience, he retired in his early 80s, pulled up roots from the city, bought a house in the woods, and tried to find his vocation after what was a remarkable life as a scholar and professor. I don't know if he ever really found that vocation, at least within himself. He remarried at 80, to another wandering soul, and his illness which killed him within just a couple years drove her away, so he died alone. But having known him, his friendship was vocation enough, though that maybe didn't do him any good, even if it did everyone else good. Maybe we shouldn't wonder that most don't find a vocation, but wonder that anyone does...after all, isn't that why we create heroes and saints. Like most ideals, it is the striving that matters...and we learn again and again that it may be better to travel hopefully than to actually arrive and find something we didn't know was going to be there.

 

Back into Phatmass to copy a PM from an old friend and give her my email address.

Excellent and an important question posed in your thread.

Thank you very much for the above, Era - your comments above landed in my Inbox.  I think your comments are very true and a moving story about your "wandering soul".  I do hope that at death he felt some consolation and certainly now he does absolutely.

I do think it is better to travel without expectations if one can. 

 I do sometimes wonder if I will die alone.  After all when one lives alone at over 70yrs age death could happen at any time and this applies at any age.  But then I feel I have enough in today, without getting into a purely imaginary tomorrow.  I will have no alternative but to deal with whatever in any tomorrow.

From my viewpoint just now reflecting without rationalisations, I do very much believe and even feel that I do have a vocation and call from God.............I guess I just feel that He aint keeping 'His part of the bargain'........to be honest about my feelings.......almost as if He wagged a carrot at me in my previous suburb and one I thought was the whole of my future - and then whipped the carrot suddenly away.  It is not feeling that I do not have a vocation, it is a feeling of not understanding it at this point.  What it is in content.  Of course, Faith tells that indeed He is keeping 'His side of the bargain'  and that He knows best............I just cannot find consolation as I once did in those comments which does not, to date, undermine my belief in them mentally.  He is keeping 'His part of the bargain' of course, I just don't understand it.  I can present what I do believe without feeling those comments as operative on my feeling level.  To date, thankfully very thankfully, Faith trumps feeling........but just, by the smallest fraction and the smallest fraction carries me through.

I don't usually come out with my actual feeling/sense level, but I thought your question posed in this thread was a really good one and that got me reflecting about my own objective context or lack of it without rationalising anything - trying to state things as they are.  It is a good question because I think lack of an objective context is a common experience and sharing one's experiences can often help to lighten the load of another sharing a like experience "bear ye one another's burdens".  And for me, personally, writing is cathartic.

Being  member of ST Vinnies in my parish, I am interested in the spirituality of St Vincent de Paul.  The following landed in my Inbox last Friday.

 

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Posted on April 22, 2016 in Daily Reflection

“There is no state in the world that has not its bitterness and crosses, and which therefore does not make us desire to embrace some other condition.”
– St. Vincent de Paul

 

 

I have never found any comfort whatsoever in thinking about Heaven.  I believe in Faith it is there though Faith tells me nothing about it that my imagination can grasp anyway as to depicting for me what we do know about Heaven.  In these latter days of my journey, I have tried to find comfort in thinking about Heaven........truth of the matter is it just makes me feel even more miserable because my imagination can find nothing comforting on which imagination can reflect and tends to flit around on this and then on that we know about Heaven - and all in a futile quest to fill in some 'colour', images, details.........so mainly I avoid the subject mentally and interiorly.  What I (or any other) might feel and think cannot alter reality in any way whatsoever.  This has nothing to do with the trials of St Therese before death.  She was tempted to believe Heaven did not exist and a direct temptation on what had carried her through much - and at a suffering time in her life.  I am not so tempted - rather I believe it is there but that is all.

 

Quote

 

Like most ideals, it is the striving that matters...and we learn again and again that it may be better to travel hopefully than to actually arrive and find something we didn't know was going to be there.

 

Spot on to me again.

I think that the ideals of Catholicism and The Gospel are ideals that we (me anyway) will never reach, though aspiring and striving never fails. Nor do I kick myself all around the place if I fail.  Read somewhere that we should have absolute confidence in God's Love and Mercy since we are all His beloved children - and immediately on reading it, it internalised for me.   I think that what you have stated above is very true.  We need to be able to enjoy, find fulfilment in, the journey towards our ideals...........and just for me at this point only, I am hoping transitory only, there is no enjoyment to the senses whatsoever.  Maybe I got complacent and self-satisfied in my previous parish and I needed to be jolted out of that and that strikes me as a likely..............on the other hand it just aint cricket (fair) to me on the sense level to be honest!  On that sense level, I am weary of feeling I am getting somewhere here - only to have that somewhere just vanish.  I feel I have been through enough in my journey - obviously I  haven't.  A priest once said to me that I had had a lifetime of suffering.  I wanted to reply "Don't go soft on me Father", but I refrained.  Now I feel like screaming - "Lord, You just have to be joking! This aint cricket!" and in my way, I do.    I have always been able to put my investment in Faith ...........and find consolation and this as consolation is absent too.  When I reflect back, I have been in far worse positions that I am now and somehow went on in Faith.  So most days here, I put one heavy foot in front of the other and keep going.  There is absolutely no comfort, reassurance nor consolation in trying to tell me that all this has value - in trying to tell me it is a sign of this advancement or that - I experience such comments on the feelilng level as empty and cold and just "not getting it".  To me here most of the time, life is just one big heavy slog after another.

Yet contrary to what St Vincent de Paul stated in the quotation above, I do not experience any desire at all to be in some other vocation or way of life save in a fleeting moment.  Last night, preparing for bed and my spirit heavy, I thought to myself that perhaps I should try and find a good man and get married again (I have an annulment).  Maybe I should have my private vows dispensed.  All I could do was burst out laughing and go and make a decaf before bed and enjoy my own sense of the ludicrous and funny - and at least that lifted my heavy spirit for a while.  But St V de Paul's statement about bitterness and crosses I do get without finding any comfort in it whatsoever.  We are created feeling creatures and feelings are very important while not the whole of us.  And telling me I am in this night or darkness or that is no jolly help whatsoever and just not getting what I am on about.  Listening but not hearing.

And it's all Life................. and Life only............ I have no illusions that I am alone in all the above -  and, having lived and 'worked' in my previous suburb, I know for sure that I am not alone.  A quite common experience though I suspect perhaps many cannot articulate it and I remain unsure if I have.  C'est la vie.

Edited April 27, 2016 by BarbaraTherese

[BarbTherese]

Just occurred to me.  I think probably married couples with a family experience similar when children 'leave the nest'.  They have spent many years indeed with children as their primary focus and then suddenly the primary focus is no longer there and they need to re-evaluate their lives and search for another primary focus.  Sometimes, they are so familiar with each other including all their faults and failings, a primary focus on each might not be as fulfilling as when first married before children arrived.  It is not experiencing, it now strikes me, as a lack of vocation so much as a radical change in the content of that vocation and needing to seek it out and not always so easy, a journey.  In the interim it might SEEM that one lacks vocation and objective context.   Good thought for me anyway at this point.  If the senses and imagination are not engaged constructively.......one might find oneself on a psychiatric couch, feet up.  A feeling I know well.

I know that one of my brothers and a professional and his wife (both practising Catholics), his wife equally a professional now have all (4) children fully independent in every way and in their own careers, all bar one married.  It seems to me that most all the time one of them has travelled to one end of the world and the other to the other end.  Both are pursuing their own interests.  My brother is retired but lectures now and then, often it seems to me overseas, in his profession, while my sister in law is still actively in the workforce as a University lecturer and researcher and travels overseas in connection with research.  It can be very difficult to catch up with them, although we do especially at Christmas and other general family celebrations.

[Gabriela]

I think there are plenty of opportunities for spiritual heroism in our times. Missionaries need every talent, and there are plenty of great missionary fields left.

Including our own.

[Era Might]

11 hours ago, Gabriela said:

I think there are plenty of opportunities for spiritual heroism in our times. Missionaries need every talent, and there are plenty of great missionary fields left.

Including our own.

No doubt, but I think that also hints at the problem. In order to find the vocation you have to abstract it, get outside the objective context and create a subjective context like a "missionary field." It's hard to find a needed vocation built into the natural contexts we live in, and maybe the people who do find it are precisely the ones who lack the capacity or leisure for abstraction...as in Barbara's example, raising children is a natural vocation, it doesn't require thinking, just doing. People usually satisfy the need to be needed by translating it to the economic market, supply and demand, though that requires a certain nature too...I doubt it would have satisfied a Teresa of Avila. But maybe finding a real vocation demands being uprooted. I'm struck in the Gospels how strongly Jesus resists his natural environment. He refuses to become the local holy man or miracle worker. The people tell him to stay, and he says no, I'm going to the mountains to pray. His mother and family come to him, and he dismisses even them. A prophet is not without honor except in his own home...maybe that's a secret to vocation, it can only be found in being uprooted, displaced, misidentified. In some ways the idea of a vocation only makes sense for prophets, for those who are at war with the natural or objective context. A plumber doesn't need vocation, he's a plumber, no more needs to be added...and a plumber no doubt enjoys a greater happiness than a prophet...that's the prophet's curse, to be swallowed up in the belly of a whale for trying to be happy.

Edited April 27, 2016 by Era Might

[BarbTherese]

A priest I knew pretty well said to me "I know what you are"

"What's that, Father?"

"A prophet"

"Back off, Father - I know what happened to the prophets"

"That's right"

I had a lot of problems raising my sons, my foster son from 8yrs, and my natural son from birth.  I knew how I DID NOT want them parented, I just did not know how I DID want them parented and it was a hit and miss journey all the way..........the agony and the ecstasy is raising children to me - and now they are in their fifties and it remains just like that, the agony and the ecstasy.

Having been married for 15 years I know that married life can ask sacrifices, mental stress and even at times perhaps even something of the heroic at times.......big time!  But then after my ex-husband divorced me, I discovered that living as a divorced woman asked sacrifices, mental stress and even something of the heroic now and then...........big time!  And nowadays, striving to live as I should (gulp!) under private vows in the single state, it all still applies.

As for a plumber...............oh man oh man, does that ask the heroic at times when I reflect..........and all in the service of individuals in the community and their needs for daily life............the worker indeed deserves his wage.

At the actual time though, one is busy getting on with one's life without making such reflections much at all.  It is hindsight that sheds light........ah well, for me anyway.  I just sort of get on with life as I can..........I fall, I get up, I fall and so on and so forth to date. The dance with The Lord of The Dance.

No matter one's vocation in life one can be assured that The Lord will see to it that one has sufficient problems, suffering and crosses in life to make a great saint of one.......dependant on attitude and perspective.  And when one fails and flunks out........even completely.......we are assured of God's Eternal Love, Faithfulness and Mercy in all circumstances regardless and a reflection on the Sacrament of Reconciliation brings it home to me how absolutely remarkable that Sacrament is and just how absolutely amazing and stunningly it proves that God's Eternal Love, Faithfulness, Mercy is indeed Infinite.

I love the Book of Jeremiah sort of especially - yesterday I saw my spiritual director, priest religious, and I was so happy when he burst out laughing at what I said about that totally amazing man, Jeremiah.  I think I might have been testing Father's humour as to whether he would be on my wavelength or not.  He is!   There is a sort of pattern in Jeremiah's approach to God.  He praises God to the hilt.............after God has got absolutely furious with Israel for its' terrible failures and promises them death and absolute destruction as it were and it does come about...........Jeremiah asks for Mercy...........God relents and promises Israel...........big time.  I think there is a sort of pattern for us in that.  I wont state how I described Jeremiah's 'pattern' to Father, however.  But he did laugh.......big time.

Jeremiah Ch29 V11-14

[11] For I know the thoughts that I think towards you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of affliction, to give you an end and patience. [12] And you shall call upon me, and you shall go: and you shall pray to me, and I will hear you. [13] You shall seek me, and shall find me: when you shall seek me with all your heart. [14] And I will be found by you, saith the Lord: and I will bring back your captivity, and I will gather you out of all nations, and from all the places to which I have driven you out, saith the Lord: and I will bring you back from the place to which I caused you to be carried away captive. [15] Because you have said: The Lord hath raised us up prophets in Babylon.

I came home from my SD transformed from a miserable state into one of Joy.  But this morning, miserable hit me again............so I went out and brought myself a packet of cigarettes and I am joyful once more.  Honestly, if I get through those pearly gates, no one can miss it seems to me.  My problem at this point is once the pack of cigs is gone, I am faced with giving it up again..........if The Lord will be forgiving and He is.  I'll deal with the problem as best I can AFTER the cigs have all gone.  What I plan to do with my grocery bill is cut out completely any luxurious and hope by the time my next pension arrives, I might have covered the cost of the cigs or come close to it.  Better I figure to waste $30 on cigs than to sink into a depressed state over stupidities.  I figure.

It's Life and Life only and Life, I love You!  Time for a decaf, cig and then Evening Prayer and Examen (gulp!) and then off to bed.  Tomorrow is a new birth and a new beginning..............with genuine coffee and a smoke.

 

[Era Might]

2 hours ago, BarbaraTherese said:

A priest I knew pretty well said to me "I know what you are"

"What's that, Father?"

"A prophet"

"Back off, Father - I know what happened to the prophets"

"That's right"

I had a lot of problems raising my sons, my foster son from 8yrs, and my natural son from birth.  I knew how I DID NOT want them parented, I just did not know how I DID want them parented and it was a hit and miss journey all the way..........the agony and the ecstasy is raising children to me - and now they are in their fifties and it remains just like that, the agony and the ecstasy.

Having been married for 15 years I know that married life can ask sacrifices, mental stress and even at times perhaps even something of the heroic at times.......big time!  But then after my ex-husband divorced me, I discovered that living as a divorced woman asked sacrifices, mental stress and even something of the heroic now and then...........big time!  And nowadays, striving to live as I should (gulp!) under private vows in the single state, it all still applies.

As for a plumber...............oh man oh man, does that ask the heroic at times when I reflect..........and all in the service of individuals in the community and their needs for daily life............the worker indeed deserves his wage.

At the actual time though, one is busy getting on with one's life without making such reflections much at all.  It is hindsight that sheds light........ah well, for me anyway.  I just sort of get on with life as I can..........I fall, I get up, I fall and so on and so forth to date. The dance with The Lord of The Dance.

No matter one's vocation in life one can be assured that The Lord will see to it that one has sufficient problems, suffering and crosses in life to make a great saint of one.......dependant on attitude and perspective.  And when one fails and flunks out........even completely.......we are assured of God's Eternal Love, Faithfulness and Mercy in all circumstances regardless and a reflection on the Sacrament of Reconciliation brings it home to me how absolutely remarkable that Sacrament is and just how absolutely amazing and stunningly it proves that God's Eternal Love, Faithfulness, Mercy is indeed Infinite.

I love the Book of Jeremiah sort of especially - yesterday I saw my spiritual director, priest religious, and I was so happy when he burst out laughing at what I said about that totally amazing man, Jeremiah.  I think I might have been testing Father's humour as to whether he would be on my wavelength or not.  He is!   There is a sort of pattern in Jeremiah's approach to God.  He praises God to the hilt.............after God has got absolutely furious with Israel for its' terrible failures and promises them death and absolute destruction as it were and it does come about...........Jeremiah asks for Mercy...........God relents and promises Israel...........big time.  I think there is a sort of pattern for us in that.  I wont state how I described Jeremiah's 'pattern' to Father, however.  But he did laugh.......big time.

 

 

I came home from my SD transformed from a miserable state into one of Joy.  But this morning, miserable hit me again............so I went out and brought myself a packet of cigarettes and I am joyful once more.  Honestly, if I get through those pearly gates, no one can miss it seems to me.  My problem at this point is once the pack of cigs is gone, I am faced with giving it up again..........if The Lord will be forgiving and He is.  I'll deal with the problem as best I can AFTER the cigs have all gone.  What I plan to do with my grocery bill is cut out completely any luxurious and hope by the time my next pension arrives, I might have covered the cost of the cigs or come close to it.  Better I figure to waste $30 on cigs than to sink into a depressed state over stupidities.  I figure.

It's Life and Life only and Life, I love You!  Time for a decaf, cig and then Evening Prayer and Examen (gulp!) and then off to bed.  Tomorrow is a new birth and a new beginning..............with genuine coffee and a smoke.

 

God bless you if your biggest problem is cigarettes! ...but one of the Saints said that no man has a greater battle than the one who sets out to conquer himself. I think we can always find satisfaction in that, even if our objective context is lacking, we all have a common and unique vocation to overcome ourselves...to be less selfish, more generous, etc. That's hard work, maybe harder than going to Calcutta and feeding the poor.

Have you ever watched the 7 up series by the BBC? They followed a diverse group of children from your generation, every 7 years. The kids are in their 60s now, it's fascinating to see their lives and how they developed and grew and failed and succeeded. I think they have the entire series on Netflix.

[BarbTherese]

9 hours ago, Era Might said:

God bless you if your biggest problem is cigarettes! ...but one of the Saints said that no man has a greater battle than the one who sets out to conquer himself. I think we can always find satisfaction in that, even if our objective context is lacking, we all have a common and unique vocation to overcome ourselves...to be less selfish, more generous, etc. That's hard work, maybe harder than going to Calcutta and feeding the poor.

Have you ever watched the 7 up series by the BBC? They followed a diverse group of children from your generation, every 7 years. The kids are in their 60s now, it's fascinating to see their lives and how they developed and grew and failed and succeeded. I think they have the entire series on Netflix.

Nah, Era, not my biggest problem by far.  Just at the moment truly more problems than a cat's got fleas.....and I didn't need to sink into a depressive type state where everything looks bleak, any problems insurmountable mountains when they are not etc. etc.  I chose between the lesser of two presenting evils - depression or cigs to ward it off.  I have been where a depression can suddenly open up that big black abyss and one cannot climb out of it and just how terrible that state can be.  Of course, no way of knowing about the portending level of depressive type state .......... cigarettes may have been the worst of the two evils.  One just does what one can according to presenting lights and the lights I have further on may not be the lights of today - we journey and grow there too I think.

I have seen that series that followed children every seven years.  But not recently at all.  I don't know Netflix, Era.

About overcoming ourselves.  I agree that it is a very difficult quest indeed and lifelong for we shall never arrive at perfection.  That old onion keeps revealing new layers. At least nowadays for myself, I don't think I have arrived somewhere on some higher level of spirituality or something and that's a step in the right direction I think -  if I should perform some act that strikes me as a good act with good motives. I thank The Lord and then move on......often into the same old same old.  It is always hindsight that casts light for me as something positive rather than reflecting on today, other than in examination of conscience and not the 'tastiest of morsels' for me.  But I think that The Lord has been very good to such as I for I no longer kick myself all around the place endlessly for failure or failures of any kind.  It seems to me to do so is disparaging to the Infinite Love and Mercy of God.......while confidence and trust in His Love and Mercy as a support for going on regardless is, to me, witnessing to His Love and Mercy.

I think our great saints have great things to offer and for us to aspire towards, but I think too that miserable sinners have also.

[Era Might]

19 minutes ago, BarbaraTherese said:

Nah, Era, not my biggest problem by far.  Just at the moment truly more problems than a cat's got fleas.....and I didn't need to sink into a depressive type state where everything looks bleak, any problems insurmountable mountains when they are not etc. etc.  I chose between the lesser of two presenting evils - depression or cigs to ward it off.  I have been where a depression can suddenly open up that big black abyss and one cannot climb out of it and just how terrible that state can be.  Of course, no way of knowing about the portending level of depressive type state .......... cigarettes may have been the worst of the two evils.  One just does what one can according to presenting lights and the lights I have further on may not be the lights of today - we journey and grow there too I think.

I have seen that series that followed children every seven years.  But not recently at all.  I don't know Netflix, Era.

About overcoming ourselves.  I agree that it is a very difficult quest indeed and lifelong for we shall never arrive at perfection.  That old onion keeps revealing new layers. At least nowadays for myself, I don't think I have arrived somewhere on some higher level of spirituality or something and that's a step in the right direction I think -  if I should perform some act that strikes me as a good act with good motives. I thank The Lord and then move on......often into the same old same old.  It is always hindsight that casts light for me as something positive rather than reflecting on today, other than in examination of conscience and not the 'tastiest of morsels' for me.  But I think that The Lord has been very good to such as I for I no longer kick myself all around the place endlessly for failure or failures of any kind.  It seems to me to do so is disparaging to the Infinite Love and Mercy of God.......while confidence and trust in His Love and Mercy as a support for going on regardless is, to me, witnessing to His Love and Mercy.

I think our great saints have great things to offer and for us to aspire towards, but I think too that miserable sinners have also.

You're a beautiful person Barbara, you remind me of my friend, the Wandering Soul. I understand very well what you're talking about RE: depression. For you it's cigs, for me beer. I think of the whiskey priest in the Graham Greene novel "The Power and the Glory." He kept on, not because he was a Saint, but because he had a vocation, despite his weakness. If there really is a Lord Jesus, I hope he knows, I love Him, despite all.

Edited April 28, 2016 by Era Might

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

Sorry i'm Charismatic Catholic Christian and vocation to me is very simple and vocation is Gods plan for your life and Gods plan pretty much is to receive/accept his Love for all people including you and if that is granted than if it is truly Gods love over time with your main focus on his Love you should grow in love for God and Others and with Gods love no matter what sub vocation (priesthood, lay single, doctor etc etc) you will succeed as scripture has told us that Jesus goes before us in all things. Deciding where God wants you as far as i'm aware begins with Him and ends with Him if we are truly open to his will which is Love than to me it doesn't matter as much where you go but whom you go with ie: go with the LORD.

Sorry to all the Charismatics that disagree with me and of course i'm not the dean of the Charismatic movement and truly God can do absolutely anything and however you discern who you are, what you want to do and why you want to do it just let it be done for Love, with Love, through Love.

 

God is Good, God is Love.

 

P.s and for some, half or most vocations can change at varying times, one example is for 10 years you may soak yourself in the Carmelite spirituality and another 10 years may be the Dominican Spirituality, etc etc. Just be open to the spirit of God and where he will lead you and always remember if you ever Go the wrong way that God goes with you and as with Joseph he can make Good out of any situation.

 

YahblesS.

Disclaimer: I always could be wrong  sorry i'm no prophet as far as i'm aware and conviction to me is the blessed assurance of heaven for those whom are baptized, believe and follow 'The way' to the best of there knowledge and understanding of what that is. Though if you all want an assumption about my statement as being possible, 50 50 or probable, i hesitate to do as such but can say honestly that i am speaking what is true to the best of my knowledge and understanding as to what is the truth.

Edited April 29, 2016 by Tab'le De'Bah-Rye

[BarbTherese]

16 minutes ago, Era Might said:

You're a beautiful person Barbara, you remind me of my friend, the Wandering Soul. I understand very well what you're talking about RE: depression. For you it's cigs, for me beer. I think of the whiskey priest in the Graham Greene novel "The Power and the Glory." He kept on, not because he was a Saint, but because he had a vocation, despite his weakness. If there really is a Lord Jesus, I hope he knows, I love Him, despite all.

Thank you, Era.  Being kind to myself, I think that a wandering soul is all about having the freedom to wander here and then wander there without problems.  I certainly experienced this in my previous suburb, I was telling my SD, I mixed with criminals, drug deals and prostitutes at times and I always took them just as they presented themselves to me and nothing about that mixing with them struck me at all as unusual for a practising and dedicated Catholic.  They took me into their midst knowing who I was and never excluded me because of it.

If one of those who know me very well read "You're a beautiful person, Barbara" They would laugh..........sure I have some ok sort of qualities - but man oh man, when you see that other side of me, stand clear!

21 minutes ago, Era Might said:

If there really is a Lord Jesus, I hope he knows, I love Him, despite all.

I am flabbergasted, Era. What a beautiful prayer!   Far more beautiful in fact than an 'atheist's prayer':  "Dear God, if there is a God, please save my soul if I have one".  Although that strikes me as beautiful too.  There is indeed a Lord Jesus and wish I could say more, but I can't - I would not have the words if I could. I think for those of us that do believe in Jesus beyond doubt, we have images that are not necessarily the real Jesus at all.   Artistic images of Jesus etc. can near scare the wits out of me - He is depicted often with such severity of expression at least very much so in the past.

One day, we will all know for sure.  I was telling my SD that in Heaven I would probably walk up to Cat Stevens and say "Hello Lord"  Cat would reply "Not me luv, that's Him over there".

We all journey with pictures in our mind of this and of that - images of our expectations of one kind or another.  Those pictures in the mind can be faulty and not at all helpful to us in our journey through life and we need to change those pictures.  No easy task and a journey.

There is nothing at all that Jesus, who is at once God and man still, does not know about us.  In fact He knows things about us which we do not - and have not brought into consciousness and, as it were, knowing all that plus all sins absolutely since the beginning of time to the end, He Loves every single one of us with a very personal Infinite Love and Mercy and no matter where our minds even actions may stray. Nothing gets by Him and nothing whatsoever can alter that very personal Love and Mercy.  "Father forgiven them for they know not what they do" and we don't to my mind.  We only THINK that we do........and this is fair enough.  He has created us thinking creatures not that we always think spot on and no drama at all.  He knows this, He created us.  We think and do what we can and leave all the rest to Him.  We are dependant creatures.

This would have to be the most beautiful statements ever: "I hope he knows, I love Him, despite all"..........and your use of capitals is telling.  How beautiful!

If you love, then you are there..........wherever it is.  God is Love - the very quality of love flows straight from Him and points to Him and moves towards Him who is Love.  All our intellectual reasoning can be faulty and fallible, while reason is important in our journey, because God is Truth and it is Truth of some kind that we are continually aspiring towards, to my mind...........couple that with love and we are on the way to God.  All truths will point towards He who IS Truth, and what is not truth can only point and even lead away from Him - with culpability or lack of it.  It is all a great mystery indeed, in fact an Infinite Mystery, in which we are just sounding brass and tinkling cymbals stumbling along the path of life - compared to Him.

First Epistle of St Paul to Corinthians : "[31] But be zealous for the better gifts. And I shew unto you yet a more excellent way. [1] If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. [2] And if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. [3] And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. [4] Charity is patient, is kind: charity envieth not, dealeth not perversely; is not puffed up; [5] Is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil; ..........................[12] We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I am known.

[13] And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity.

 

And so we know the very best way to travel in our journey - even though we can consistently fail in that quest ........... my failures, no matter how serious, cannot alter what is the very best way as goal and the very best of aspirations.

Truly, Era - your statement absolutely blew me over!  Beautiful!

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

Oh there is an error in my previous post and that is here...  P.s and for some, half or most vocations can change at varying times, ... it should say ' P.s and for some, half or most SUB VOCATIONS can change at varying times.' <ember>