A Day

“How strange, how strange it is,” she said, “that I am living and yet dead.”












She cried tears of flame
They licked down her face
"Come rest your head on my heart" she said.
And what soft, sweet burning He found there,
What soft, sweet burning in that wild thing that He had come to love.

So strange! Today and yesterday I felt such incredible inner turmoil that I became nauseous. During such times I only wait for it to pass and pray because I now know that it is only a time of desolation calling me to turn toward Him in a deeper way than before.
Mass has been so very difficult lately. As if an impenetrable veil lies between me and the Eucharist which I must ignore at every moment because no matter what I feel, I cannot be denied the pleasure of partake in praising Him!
My hair has been falling out for weeks and weeks (probably because of my hypoactive thyroid).
So strange! "Strange as it seems there's been a run of crazy dreams..."

There is an ever-deepening longing and thirst within me.

The heart
It breaks
and overflows
all at once
the longing to love
to be loved
which is greater?
unknowing tugs
first one way, and then the other,
until I am pulled so completely
that the strings of my heart
aren't bouncy or loose anymore,
but taut like a bowstring
and then what sweet, beautiful notes escape!


Yes, my heart is pulled taut. And yet loose too.
The smoky fog of mystery!!! Where will life go? Where shall He take me?
Which is more frightening? To not know? Or to know?
The footloose wanderlust to seize love, to run into the arms of life, of the world!
The enticing peace of self-gift of prayer and raw beauty in the convent!
Yes, the terrifying choice of joy shall lie before me soon and very soon.

I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and
danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life. ~ Tolstoy

We sleep to time’s hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to the deep shores of time uncreated, then when the dazzling dark breaks over the far slopes of time, then it’s time to toss things, like our reason, and our will; then it’s time to break out necks for home.

There are no events but thoughts and the heart’s hard turning, the heart’s slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times.

ANNIE DILLARD,

HOLY THE FIRM

Medieval Mystics

THE IMMENSITY OF LOVE
And so as the fish swims in the vastness of the oceans and rests in the deeps, and as the bird boldly soars in the heights and the vastness of the air, in the same way she feels her spirit roam free through the depths and the heights and the immensity of love.

"...She has chosen Him alone in love above all, beneath all, and within all, and so she desires to see God, to possess and enjoy Him with all the longing of her heart and with all the strength of her soul."

~ Beatrijs of Nazareth


The Paradoxes of Love
The storming of love is what is sweetest within her,
Her deepest abyss is her most beautiful form,
To lose our way in her is to arrive,
To hunger for her is to feed and taste,
Her despairing is sureness of faith,
Her worst wounding is to become whole again,
To waste away for her is to endure,
Her hiding is to find her at all times,
To be tormented for her is to be in good health,
In her concealment she is revealed,
What she withholds, she gives,
Her finest speech is without words,
Her imprisonment is freedom,
Her most painful blow is her sweetest consolation,
Her giving is her taking away,
Her going away is her coming near,
Her deepest silence is her highest song,
Her greatest wrath is her warmest thanks,
Her greatest threatening is remaining true,
Her sadness is the healing of all sorrow.

THE HUMANITY OF CHRIST
This is how everyone today loves themselves: they want to live with God in consolation, in wealth, and in splendor, and to share in the delight of His glory. We all wish to be God with God. But, God knows there are few enough of us who want to live as men and women with His humanity or to bear His cross with Him, and to be crucified with Him in order to pay for the sins of the whole world...

UNION WITH GOD
May God make known to you, dear child, who He is and how He treats His servants and especially His handmaids, how He consumes them within Himself. From the depths of His wisdom, He shall teach you what He is and with what wonderful sweetness the one lover lives in the other and so permeates the other that they do not know themselves from each other. But they possess each other in mutual delight, mouth in mouth, heart in heart, body in body, soul in soul, while a single divine nature flows through them both and they both become one through each other, yet remaining always themselves.


LEARNING PERFECTION
If you want to know this perfection, then you must first learn to know yourself in all that you do, in what you are willing to do and what you are not willing to do, in what you love and what you hate, in what you love and what you hate, in what you trust and what you do not trust, and in all that happens to you. You have to consider by yourself how you endure what opposes you and how you are able to go without those things which are dear to you. Of all the things that can befall a young heart, this is truly the hardest one of all: going without what we like. And when something good befalls you, examine to what use you can put it, and how wise and how moderate you are with regard to it. Try and remain inwardly detached in all that happens to you: when you are troubled or when you enjoy peace of mind. And always contemplate the works of our Lord, for these can teach you perfection.

THE DEEPEST ESSENCE OF THE SOUL
Now understand the deepest essence of the soul: what the soul is. The soul is an essence which is transparent to God and for which God too is transparent. And the soul is more than this: it is an essence which wants to give delight to God, and which preserves its worth as long as it does not fall away to things which are alien to it and which are unworthy of it. And when the soul preserves its worth, then it becomes a groundless abyss where God is His own delight and in which He forever takes pleasure in Himself in the fullest degree, as the soul does forever in Him. The soul is the way that God goes when He proceeds from His depths to His liberty, that is into His ground, which is beyond the reach of all things but the soul's depths. And as long as God is not wholly her own possession, she will not be satisfied.

LOVE'S MATURITY

In the beginning Love satisfies us,
When Love first spoke to me of love -
How I laughed at her in return!
But then she made me like the hazel trees,
Which blossom early in the season of darkness,
And bear fruit slowly.



















DRAWING CLOSE TO LOVE
I drew so close to Love
That I began to understand
How great the gain of those
Who give themselves wholly to Love:
And when I saw this for myself,
What was lacking in me gave me pain.

~Hadewijch of Brabant

Some old poems I found from several years ago

Some old poems I found from several years ago.....it makes me laugh to remember on what occasions I wrote them out, quickly in class over an infatuation, or in the computer lab when I was thirsting for Jesus:

To have Your feet before my eyes
And see those wounds which once were whole
Makes me die for You inside and all I can do is kiss You full
and gently with sighs from my lips.
This burning longing within me gives
Such pangs as hunger does.
And even as my love for You is satisfied
I long for more, and more You give me.
My senses are not my own and yet are heightened,
I am dizzy and lovesick for You.
My heart beats fast and stops at turns and yet is not my own
For I have held it out to You,
An imperfect offering of my life's incense
Which You have taken and kept and healed
And given back to me and yet it is still Yours.

"I have fought against my better judgment."

“…no young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman’s love is declared, it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her.” (Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen)

How long has it been since I’ve felt this way?
Gradual confusion has crept in,
For black and white have stained to gray,
And now I’m in up to my chin.
No love have I! – and yet great wars
Are being waged inside my head.
If love is security and peace
Then I am living, and yet dead.
No love is this! Impossible!
For I’m half agony, half hope,
You’ve lured me in unwittingly
Now I ask how I’m to cope?
It isn’t love! I tell myself,
For you madden me with what you do.
Your chivalry seduces me as do
Those eyes which they call blue.
It cannot be love! - and yet, I find
My heart stops now and then at turns.
The thought of you distresses me
And still something within me burns.
How long will it be till I recover?
When head and heart are friends once more?
For without true love I’ll not take a lover
But continue to wait with an open door.


Your gaze is too strong for me to receive
And for this I softly grieve.
I thought me a creature of mind, not heart,
Who strongly loved and ne'er was hurt,
I am dazed and confused for now it beats
And trembles....trembles....
This isn't love! (I do not think)
For I am a creature of mind, not heart.
And yet my heart within me beats...
He has seduced me and now I begin to see myself as He sees me
I am more and more myself with Him
Than when others saw me at my best.
With Him my radiance is ease, my ponderings soft, my passions fierce.
Before I feared the eyes of others, afraid of them seeing the real me.
And now I forget to watch myself!
For the love of Christ bubbles out in joy to each and every one.

Whatever He wants

Wow, I have finally gotten a blog!

My name is Sara and I am finishing up my last semester at Franciscan University of Steubenville. I am 22 years old. My eyes are scapular colored or forest colored - whichever you prefer. I like to talk to people, to get to know them, and to think about them long after our paths have parted.
I like good food, walks in the woods, and many other things. I don't have an easy time expressing myself. I am an extrovert - my energy comes from the inspiration and presence of others, whether or not they are beside me at any given time.



I guess I am getting this blog because I have a lot of things going on in my life right now...and this is a good way of trying to figure out what is happening to me and all around me.

Fact: I don't know what will happen or where I will go after I graduate.
Joy: God can do anything with me! If I let Him. And I want to.

Fact: I AM RESTLESS.
Why: I want Christ. I want all of Him. And something is holding me back.

Sin.
Comfort.
Fear.
Wanting others to like me more than wanting God's will for me.



On New Year's Day, minutes after the clock chimed in a new decade, I found myself greeting 2010 surrounded by the sweetest group of strangers. Elderly, British, hugging one another, hugging me, blowing noise makers for the joy of life, they were all a taste of what Christ wanted to communicate to me.
After depression, moving, suicide-related circumstances, sexual harrassment, and abandonment, I was done with everything. It was a labor to feel and not to feel. It was terrible to be invisible yet visible, loved yet unloved, feeling yet unfeeling, dead and yet undead, alive yet existing.
All this coursed around me as I realized that Christ was trying to remind me of all the promises He has made me. "I have prepared a home for you - it will be everything you desire and more."

Fact: I am afraid of desiring because when I have desired, what I love is taken away.

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness…We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as a way in which they should break, so be it.
~ C.S. Lewis

So there I was, surrounded by these beautiful people, and my heart was melting in spite of myself. It was then that Christ asked me. "I have been broken for you. Will you be broken for Me?"
I knew what it meant and I was too in love to care. "YES!" I told Him, with all my heart.
Little did I know what that "Yes," would mean for me in the following weeks, and more importantly, what they meant for Him.