There is power in the name of Jesus
to break every chain - Will Reagan

If ever there was a perfect song for an Unbound: Freedom in Christ workshop, this is it.

Today's word

chouse \CHOWSS\ - cheat, trick

A completely new one on me; I'm pretty sure I've never seen it before. I wasn't familiar with all of the uses of its synonym chicane, either.  

Reforming (phase 1), Our Personal History of Salvation (step 5), session 3

"`If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead.'" - Lk 16, 31

Okay, I realize that the reading for this session is intended to make me consider something very different, that it wants me to focus on my neglect of the poor. I'm not going to totally ignore that element. I certainly haven't done as much for the poor as I believe I am called to do, for their sake and mine. And while I think that my life would look much less material were my vocation singlehood, I don't believe I'll be able to offer that as an excuse for not tending to Lazarus.

But this prophetic word which Jesus spoke in a parable continues to resound through the ages. Why is it true? Because Moses and the prophets invariably point to the Savior through the millenia and in each word spoken through them. We cannot recognize the risen Jesus if we reject the law and the prophets.

Within the step, but not rushing through it

Since I have my retreat amid the Spiritual Exercises in step with the liturgical calendar now, and with the holidays coming up, and with the step that I'm currently in feeling as if I shouldn't rush through it, I will be spending some time on related writing between sessions.

Today I find myself reflecting on my lifelong self-indulgence and my daughter's (I don't know, probably daughters') focus on appearance. I can't help but believe that the latter is related to the atmosphere I created around our home when they were growing up, and has become a perpetuation of the former. "I'm a wreck, but don't I look great?" seems related to "I'm a wreck but let me escape it for a few minutes in the endorphines." Neither of those approaches deals with the rest of what's going on in our lives, though, and for me, that can be a scary thing to face.

I know that I am called to love and build up my bride, and I know that our choice of each other has resulted in a couple who share very few interests in common. I have long run from the latter aspect of our reality somewhat, because I have discovered so little that I can really do about it. I can only embrace her interests so much, and I know that it is the same for her, and we have found so little that we enjoy in common. I feel fortunate that we still love each other so deeply despite this, and that the frustration that each of us feels to varying degrees at different times does not overwhelm our love with a desire to turn away, to seek greater compatibility outside of each other.

I suppose it's also helpful that my own interests don't consume my attention to such a degree that I am able to just throw myself into them and let a gulf grow between us. Yet that hasn't kept me from feeling a void in my life that I have, until fairly lately, continued to fill in the same way I have always escaped from the unpleasantness in my life. I may no longer indulge that so destructively as he taught me to, but it has nonetheless remained a way of escaping for a while into something that consumes me.

It seems as if this personal history of salvation step may provide a means to see how my past echoes somewhat in my present, even if far removed from the level of harmfulness that used to be there. I'm grateful that the boundaries I put in place - with my therapists' help - have become so strong that they continue to fulfill their purpose, and I am grateful that God is leading me to progress even further from them as he calls me further up and further in.

The holiness and wholeness to which God is calling me is so much more than I have allowed him to immerse me in thus far. I seem to be finding in these Exercises an approach that doesn't feel like an interior battle.

Today's word

usufructuary \ˌyü-zə-ˈfrək-chə-ˌwer-ē, -sə-\ - 1.  one having the usufruct of property  2.  one having the use or enjoyment of something

I often know the masked word in Dictionary Devil puzzles. By the time I match up all the definitions, the masked word's definition, length and starting letter are frequently enough for me to identify it before the puzzle reveals it upon completion. Not today!

I am somewhat familiar with this word, though. I think the context in which I've heard it relates to maintaining a right-of-way through someone else's private property. 

 

Reforming (phase 1), Our Personal History of Salvation (step 5), session 2

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh . . .  - Gal 5, 16-17a

I know that I sometimes use my less pure thoughts as a way of escaping my stress and loneliness. But I also know that the thing that keeps me alive is the desire to be the person God is calling me to be.

Fortunately, the former are becoming rarer and briefer. I am noticing that things at which I never used to hesitate are now clearly choices that I am unwilling to make. But I still don't guard my mind to the degree that I should.

This lesson's reading continues through verse 23, but I really feel that the rest of the chapter goes right along with it.

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.- Gal 5, 24-25

Why do we expect crucifying the flesh with its passions and desires to be painless? I think that, early in my Christian walk, I expected the Holy Spirit to simply lift every negative impulse from me. I heard an interesting talk on the radio last week about Jesus, temptation and sin. The speaker wanted to address people's objection that, if Jesus' ever-present divine nature was such that it would be, in a sense, a contradiction of himself to commit sin - if he was in this sense incapable of sinning, because he would always exercise his free will according to his Father's plan for him - how could we accept that he was ever then really tempted?  As part of his rebuttal, the preacher asked who better knows the weight of the barbell: the one who successfully holds it aloft or the one who fails in their effort to fully lift it? Jesus knows the full weight of temptation better than we do precisely because he did not succumb to it.

I heard that either last Tuesday or Wednesday, as it resonated with the reading I received during prayer group last Tuesday evening:

What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to any one as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?  - Rom 6, 15-16

So when we choose the flesh, we make ourselves slaves to the flesh rather than to the Spirit. And since no one can serve two masters (Lk 16, 13), using the wrong things even as a brief respite from realities and frustrations keeps me from being fully available to God's will for my life.

Reforming (phase 1), Our Personal History of Salvation (step 5), session 1

“Mind-fasting” is the central technique of the Christotherapy together with the complementary “spirit-feasting.” - Tyrrell, Christotherapy as quoted by Step-by-Step Retreats

I first read this and cringed. It was not the first part of this step's overview that provoked this response in me. I find the idea of revisiting what God has delivered me from intimidating, especially in my current emotional dynamic. But I am going to trust that God will continue to supply my every need, including not letting me get bogged down in an unhealthy place.

But when I first read this, I thought of mind-fasting vs. spirit feasting as something that was likely to be utterly beyond me. My mind chews on things incessantly; I know I am more introspective and analytical than is likely good for me. Then I read on:

It means an emptying the mind from the thoughts, attitudes and desires discerned as harmful, a letting go of the destructive tendencies by the help of the Holy Spirit and sort of replacing it with authentic, life-giving inspirations and feelings. - ibid.

and I realized that I have already begun this process. We'll see where the Lord takes it.

Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, working death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. - Rom 7, 13

I had to fight against misunderstanding this when I was going through (and putting our family through) our personal tribulation. It was not the good thing that I had done that was causing the terrible circumstances we were experiencing. Rather, these were the result of the wrong I'd done, the brokenness in me that needed to be made whole. I was not being punished for confronting my sin, but the nature of confronting my sin meant dealing with things that had been previously swept under the rug to putrify.

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! - Rom 7, 34-35a

Thanks be to God indeed, that as I read verse 34a I am not overwhelmed by it as I have so often and so long been.