RSVP to the evil one

Why do I fight you?
and why do you scare me?

You try to convince me I've done something horrible,
ruined something precious, destroyed something vital,
made people hate me and caused the people I respect most to not care about me.
You are the accuser- accusing me of your own sly crimes.

It's not okay to give you any power
any attention, any emotion, any serious thought.

God is stronger than you,
and I can tell you, "No."

When I fail, it's because I'm ashamed to admit
you're getting the upper hand,
but if I don't, no one can know to help me fight.

Fear of the Lord is a healthy respect, a secure defense.
Pride is a toxin, slowly ravaging souls.
You want to keep tempting me to drink that pride,
like a sedative, to calm your attacks.

You work to scare me that life will disappoint
and will hurt me every time.
Fear of being hurt is the most stupid fear there is.
Hurt can't harm like losing my soul.
And you can harm me without hurting at all,
with the opiate of your empty promises.

Why do you terrify me that people don't love me?
Screaming those lies at me, night and day.
And that I am a bad person for caring at all.
You serve me self-pity and drama as food,
when I have the bread of eternal life.
Why, you fool, do you even try?

Since all you know to talk about is I, I, I and
me, me, me--
The only way to shut you up is not to think about myself at all.
You don't know me anyway.
The only "me" you know is the
prey you want to capture
in your quagmire of eternal pain.

I will drown you in your useless tears,
Lock you in a cell to shut out futile cries,
Your impotent lies. 

Hell. That's right. Just go there,
Now.
Suffer by yourself.
I won't be joining you.

-Laura Marie Teresa Paxton
06/11/2015

Prayers for Pretenders

With a stony heart,

It was hard to forgive,

the years you pretended

to be my Lord.

You accepted His praise.

You accepted His gifts.

You accepted His money.

You are a thief.

You took His devotion.

You took His love.

You distorted His holiness,

called Him a parasite,

when the real parasite was you.

You are not Him

and you are no mirror for Him,

for me, or for anyone.

Not once did you even try to be,

although you let people 

believe that you did.

You stood in His place.

You blocked His way.

You made promises 

you never intended to keep.

Why do it?

It wouldn't serve you.

It was my crime too,

to believe in you.

I have agonized over

my idolatry,

and how I too

betrayed my Lord.

I will always go against myself

in everything I say and do

because if I don't,

I will stay the victim

of people like you,

who make "all for self"

your golden calf.

I unite this betrayal with Jesus' betrayal by Judas.

And I offer it up for His holy purposes,

for I am His, now and forever-

not yours.

Elijah,

God gave me a natural heart

just like you said,

so

please pray for me to use that heart

to love my betrayers,

leave God to judge them,

and wish for His mercy,

for me and for them.

Amen

Paul and Barnabas- Why Not Be "As Gods?"

Today, I was the lector for daily Mass and I read something that really made me think and reflect. Today's scripture was about when Paul and Barnabas fled Iconium because they were almost stoned; they healed a man in Lystra; were lauded as gods and then they turned down the honor. (Acts 14: 5-18)

What stopped them from accepting the crowd's willingness to treat them as gods? Did they just stop and remember that they weren't supposed to, because of the ten commandments? Did they berate themselves for pride and find that turning down the honor was a difficult temptation?

No. They "tore their garments." I believe Paul and Barnabas loved Jesus very much. I believe they loved Him so much that to even consider accepting any credit for His glorious actions pained them deeply. 

I thought about so many modern "teachers" or "gurus" who teach people to love themselves above all else, some of which may not encourage but do allow people to worship them as "enlightened ones," like gods. What if Paul and Barnabas had reduced themselves to that level?

They could have. Why didn't they? Paul and Barnabas lived devoted to our Creator, the "living God." It was the love for Him that fueled their passion. To accept any credit was unthinkable. Their joy was to spread the message of God's ever-living, ever-loving power, everlasting power- A love so great that our Creator took on flesh and then sacrificed that flesh for us. 

What if Jesus had not risen? Would He even have been remembered as a teacher and prophet? Or would he have been remembered as a failure, a weakling and a fraud? 

A great truth emerges from the Resurrection- The strong and firm foundation on the living God is the only true enlightenment, the only firm rock we can trust, the only freedom and power worth giving our lives for. 

To consider any credit for anything our Creator gives us is pure blasphemy. I have nothing and am nothing unless my Creator allows me to have it. 

By spending time with God- in prayer, in service, in the sacraments, or in any act of worship, we come to love Jesus more and more. We come to love Him so much that receiving credit for anything becomes absolutely unthinkable.

Daily Readings:
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/050415.cfm

Falling for God

We are born to die and dying is the most important thing we can do, to prepare for leaving this world. I want to do that well. Can I feel pain and suffer and still love and forgive? Can I look for every opportunity I can to show God how much I love Him? Can I make my life a gift to God that culminates in the final sacrifice of my life?

Blessed Titus contemplated these things from prison as he waited to be killed. He had been tortured ("experimented on") in Dachau, day after day for many weeks. The entire time, he prayed for his torturers and cried out, "Thy will not mine be done!" 

While in prison, he wrote, "(Christ), in your weakness, you conquered the world. Let me be weak with you and bow deep under the weight of life. Be insignificant and small in the eye of the world and stand up again with you for new suffering until my death will be the crowning of my offer. Amen." 

Blessed Titus lived and died this prayer. 

The world we live in does not teach us these things. The world we live in teaches us that "Heaven on Earth" means an abundance of wealth and pleasure, and that we can be empowered, full of great self-esteem. Some take it to the extreme and see themselves as gods and goddesses. 

Yet, it is pride that separated us from God in the beginning- The pride that we knew better than God whether or not to eat the fruit of the Garden. And it is only through humility that we may return to Eden. 

Jesus fell for me. 

May I also fall for Him, and when I fall, let it be all for His glory.

Let me fall to the ground and never get up, but let only Jesus rise in me.

Blessed Titus Brandsma, pray for us.

Amen.

Edit: As of 02/25/15, this blog has been significantly edited. There were a couple of theological errors in it that are now corrected. So, some sections have been omitted in order to make a clearer point. Thanks for your patience!

An Invitation to Eternal Friendship

My former formation director asked why I haven't blogged in a while, and she suggested that my writing about the humanity of Christ may be a good idea. I had shared with her something my spiritual director taught me last week and she said it had revolutionized her thinking and deepened her experience of the Eucharist. So, she wanted me to let more people know.

I will be happy to share it, although it is not my idea, but my understanding of his lesson. Jesus Christ is more human than we are. He is not less human, but more human. Humanity doesn't equal sinfulness because humanity was never intended to be sinful. As humans, we were created perfect and our fall from grace actually made us less human, a warped distortion of what it means to be human instead.

Jesus came to restore humanity to our original perfection and goodness, as a “second Adam,” and to offer humanity a second chance. Jesus is 100% human, which is 100% good, and He is also 100% God.

So, what does this mean to us? I imagine it means something different to each one of us personally.

For me, it means the opposite of what I was taught in my "new age" spiritual path before. I believed that we lost Eden because of our desire for knowledge of good and evil, which had to do with judgments. If we could stop judging, we could return to Eden, where we could reign as gods.

Well, good luck with that, since even if we did not judge we would still live as a human who is less perfect than were designed to be. We would just convince ourselves we were perfect anyway, and lose the opportunity to know the real return to our natural and perfect human state.

That solution does not re-unite us to God our Creator. It only blinds our vision from the truth of our alienation from that God. Judgment is not the enemy. Alienation from our loving Creator is the enemy and judgment did not create that. Pride did. We wanted the knowledge of good and evil so we could “be as gods,” after all.

And this explains why I am creating the app I am developing. I want to bring us closer to our loving Creator through Christ, the new and perfect man. I want people to relate to Him as a human man, as well as to God, because this is the reason He was born and died for us.

In Father's homily this morning, he talked about what Christianity has that secular “spirituality” lacks. We have a real relationship with the Trinity, the Trinity that original sin wrenched us away from. My new app has over 500 quotes by Jesus Christ himself, from Sacred Scripture. It also includes over a thousand quotes by four Carmelite saints and four blesseds.

What's the point of using quotes from our saints and blesseds, and not just the words of Jesus Himself? Their life was dedicated to helping bring people into a deeper relationship with Christ. So, I want to do that for us, too. I want their words to help us form friendships with these masterful guides, so we can come to know our true Love and Master, Jesus Christ.

I want everyone to know the profound and permanent intimacy, healing, love and joy this friendship offers.

So, in my usual peculiar style, I have been developing a “communication gadget,” a “telephone” of sorts, to help us form a deeper connection with Him.

“If anyone comes to me, I want to lead them to Him.” -St. Teresa Benedicta (Edith Stein)

Advent: Preparation for His Power

Christmas teaches us about the strength and might in gentleness, mercy and innocence.

In preparation, Advent can teach us to cleanse ourselves of attraction to false power, so that we might become receptive to the true power of Christ in our lives.

Jesus Christ has brought the world an unexpected (and before unheard of) type of power. Before his arrival, many of the Jewish people were expecting a ruler of military strength, such as David. Much of our world believes power lies in physical strength, the ability to influence, or even to bully and hurt others, physically and emotionally. 

The attraction to power goes far beyond the obvious example above. Humans forget what's most important. We can become consumed with trying to prove our worth to others and to the world, so we may seem "powerful" in their eyes through our "specialness" or "greatness." 

When we are over-focused on creating the "perfect" Christmas celebration for our families, or on producing the perfect work of art or project at work, we are often led away from our primary goal of living here on earth, which is to love and serve God. We are not called to impress Him or anyone else.

Love and service don't have to be fancy or special, just real, honest, sincere and from our heart.

Just through the "mere" act of being born, Jesus demonstrated for us how to live all eight beatitudes. When the Creator of the universe came to us as a tiny baby, He taught us all we need to know about how to love.

When we look at a painting or icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary holding Jesus, the baby, who is really the focus? Mary is larger and Jesus is smaller, but does that mean Mary is more important? 

No, for Jesus taught us that we are to come to Him as a little child. Jesus never asks us to do anything He did not do first. Jesus comes to us in a tiny, vulnerable human form, held lovingly by his mother, who serves Him with her care. 

It is in the image of Madonna and Child that we see true majesty and might of Christ. Within that tiny baby is contained all the strength and power in the universe. He doesn't want to force us to love Him, but beckons us through the sheer power of His love to open our hearts and souls to Him. 

Jesus came to us in a dirty stable, a place we where we would probably be ashamed for anyone to visit us. Jesus still wants to meet us there, in those dirty, shameful, hidden places of our souls. And he meets us there with the purest, humblest and most precious love there is. 

During advent, as we prepare for Christmas, let us prepare our hearts and souls to receive the strength of the peace of Christ. Let that purification time center around letting go of false ideas of what makes us and others strong. Let us give ourselves to Him with greater humility, purity and simplicity, as He first gave himself to us. 

"O Blessed Jesus,

Give me stillness of soul in you.

Let your mighty calmness reign in me.

Rule me, O King of Gentleness,

King of Peace."

-St. John of the Cross

Why I Cope with Life Better Today

I do not know how I would cope with my life if I were not Catholic. I can easily tell you that I would not cope well. Years of living beforehand would bear that out. 

Here are some differences in how I get through tough times today vs. during my "heretical" years. 

(1) My emotions do not control my decisions as much.

Free will has to do with making decisions without being driven by emotions. I am making more solid, logical and clear choices now than I ever have before. During my "heretical years," I believed that free will had to do with extricating myself from the oppression of moral obligations in order to be free to follow my feelings. How did that work out for me? Hmm.. I'm writing this... so...

(2) I take care to have selfless motives. 

When I pursue being of the greatest service to God above the motives for comfort, public opinion or material things, each decision I make has meaning. When I work to make my life a gift to God rather than a gift to myself, I do not have time to immerse myself in self-pity or resentment.

Good feelings and material things will all pass away. Peace in my heart, mind and soul will never be possible if I waste any time trying to chase any other goal than to serve God. 

(3) Suffering can help me.

A central focus of our faith is how suffering in life can help us. No moment of suffering need ever be wasted. We would all agree that an athlete preparing for competition puts herself through a lot of pain and personal sacrifice towards achieving her goal. A person preparing himself for holiness, in order to prepare for the life beyond, will need to make similar sacrifices and endure pain as a part of developing character. 

When I suffer, I can lift that suffering up to God as a sacrifice for the good of another. I can also use that suffering as an opportunity to surrender my human will to God's will, as Jesus did. I can experience a bond between me and Jesus as I willingly embrace suffering. 

The Catholic practice of penance is also a way to use suffering as an advantage. The evil one believes he can control us with the fear of suffering and death. When we willingly choose suffering, we baffle him. That is why the Passion and Cross of our Lord is the most powerful antidote to evil. 

(4) Comfort? Why?

Many people turn to religion as a comfort when life is painful and challenging, but if I use prayer primarily to make myself feel better, I am using God and not serving God. God's purpose is not to help us feel good, but to BE good- the salt and light of the earth. Although often prayer can be comforting, I do not have to be a slave to comfort when I choose to follow God. Peace is far better than comfort. 

Help Me Serve You, Lord

Help me serve you Lord, for I am too accustomed to serving mainly myself.

Help me serve you, Lord, with  all my heart and all my mind, for I am too used to the distraction of my selfish interests.

Help me serve you, Lord, for my salvation lies only in your service. To desire and to pursue becoming a master of others, a hero or a show-off is to choose the path taken by the evil one. 

Help me serve you, Lord, for only you can save us, have saved us, and will always save us. I know the path of self-glorification best and I don't have much experience with following your path. 

Help me serve you, Lord, for all you've ever done is serve us, while I complain and am ungrateful, as if you owe me something.

Help me serve you Lord, for you created a beautiful world. We were selfish and ungrateful, so you took on flesh and sacrificed that flesh to show us how there is no greater love than to seek to do your will through service. I am caught up in myself and I actually ignore how you gave me your all.

Help me serve you, Lord, for you are always there to save me, but in my selfish blindness, I demand that others rescue me and do your job as Savior.

Help me serve you, Lord, because all I seem to want to do is prove my worth and importance to you and to others through the "good" and "helpful" things I do.

Help me serve you, Lord, for only you can and have made a worthy sacrifice. Don't accept my gifts when they are tainted by my pride. Please, Lord, don't let me insult you that way.

Help me serve you, Lord. I am no good at this.

Lord, have mercy.

Amen.

Laura Marie Paxton
09/05/14

The 7 Most Mindblowingly Liberating Things I've Learned As A Catholic

I finally figured out what matters.

This is it.

(1) I do not need a happy ending in life. 

The Meaning: Life isn't meant to be a fairy tale. Whether or not we become rich, famous or even comfortable is completely inconsequential. We are Christians. We follow the example of Christ, who died a brutal death. The majority of saints (and people in general) also died in unpleasant ways.

The Freedom: No matter how my life ends, I can die a "happy death," knowing that I am at peace with God. I will know my life has been worth living and my soul belongs to Jesus Christ forever, despite all of my human failings and any regrets.

(2) How I feel about my life doesn't matter. 

The Meaning: Whether I think my life is going well or not is completely inconsequential. How does God view it? And how can I improve my efforts to be of service to God? 

Is God heartless? Does he just not care what I am going through? No. He is compassionate. But when my feelings become more important than following His will, I don't need to pay attention to them and no one who really cares about me should pay attention to them either.

The Freedom: Less time wasted with pointlessly evaluating my life in terms of chemical and hormonal reactions to my environment. So, when I am able to accomplish detaching from my feelings, I have more time to actually live. And when I am able to accomplish actually living, all that time spent living is spent more at peace.

(3) How other people feel about my life doesn't matter either. 

 The Meaning: Whether people agree with what I believe and do is irrelevant because what God wants is important and not what they want. 

 The Freedom: I know what God wants is what's best for me. Unless someone is there to guide me towards discovering God's will, I do not need their opinion. So, if people want to insist that I accept moral relativism or reincarnation or abortion, they are not able to influence me at all. I am secure  in my convictions because I have strong roots in my desire to please Him. 

(4) Even if I became a god or goddess, it wouldn't matter. 

The Meaning: Having "personal power," or realizing the greatness in my soul in order to "manifest" whatever "abundance" I believe I deserve is not going to contribute one iota to my happiness or well being. I once believed that detaching myself from judgment, to achieve my desires, was freedom. Now, I see that the desires were the prison, not the judgment.

The Freedom: Who cares who I am? I belong to the infinite Creator of the universe, to all the power there is. To want what He wants is to want the perfect good. As much as I often think I am special or that I need to be special, the truth is that I don't have to be anybody, not anybody at all. Just His!

"Lord, when we ask you for honors, income, money or worldly things, do not hear us."

-St. Teresa of Avila

(5) If I never have sex again, it will not matter.

The Meaning: Sex is not necessary for psychological health.  Saints (those who were Religious or single) lived in deep fulfillment and peace without sex. A confidential survey of priests who have chosen celibacy showed that 90% are "very happy" with their decision. Having sex may be good for relieving stress, reducing blood pressure and it may have other health benefits, but not not having sex is not a proven physical or psychological health deterrent.

The Freedom: One less thing to focus on, feel driven by or worry about. One less empty thing to turn to as a potential "fix" for a lack of fulfillment in life. Less drama. Freedom from the hormones and intense drives and attachments of sex-based relationships. More complex and interesting aspects of myself and others to focus on. Far greater peace of mind. Me= Four years chaste. Loving it.

(6) One thing DOES matter:
Absolute truth is the only truth there is. 

The Meaning: If everything is equally true, then nothing is true. Truth has no meaning then.

The Freedom: I don't need to seek anymore. I have the True Faith. Yes, other religions contain some truth, but I have the full truth. I don't need to justify it, explain it, or convince anyone else. Remember, after all, I don't care how anyone else feels about it. I only need to live it, with deep gratitude.

(7) Never stop asking- "How Could I Do Better?" 

 The Meaning: It doesn't matter what horrible challenges life throws at me- Those are not excuses to wallow in self-pity or to justify selfishness. Nothing but doing my best is relevant.

The Freedom: This is the annoying part, the part that often does not feel freeing. Fortunately for me, (whenever I am able to remember it), I know that it does not matter how I feel. Yet, if I do not push forward, I am doomed to slide backward.  And truthfully, learning to live a Christian life is hard work. Yet, each time I free myself more from an over-attachment to a person, place or thing, it is worth it. Each moment I am not robotically controlled by my emotions and desires, I am freer.

Before my conversion, near the beginning of the RCIA program, our class discussed the goal of the Catholic Church. We were told that the goal is to help each Christian develop a more mature relationship with Jesus Christ. 

So, I said, "Wow. What would that look like?" The answer, from our teacher, Marybeth, was "saints." I was a little jarred, since I'd imagined that people who just believed and did what they were told could not be very mature.. but it's not WHAT you learn as much as HOW you learn that changes you, forms and matures you. Like everything else in the Church, it is paradox. 

Now that I understand what matters, I will spend the rest of my life working toward actually doing what counts. 

Every day, it seems I see how much worse I am at doing that. But, that's just how I feel, and that... 

doesn't matter.

ISIS is Herodias

I just returned from Liturgy for the Memorial of the beheading of St. John the Baptist. I could not help thinking the whole time about James Foley and of all the poor children who have been beheaded for Isis for the "crime" of their being baptized. This parallel will probably crop up everywhere in blogs today, because it is probably so obvious, but Herodias didn't like St. John the Baptist's righteous opinion (true judgment). It threatened her pride, the root of ALL evil. This is exactly the same issue with ISIS. Christians believe we have the true faith, although we don't want to take away anyone's freedom to choose any faith they want. Our "opinion" (i.e. truth) is not a threat to Muslims or Pagans. But, I think deep down, they know we are right. They know we hold the Truth. And their pride cannot handle that. Isis is Herodias. Destroying a righteous person does not destroy goodness, love or justice- not at all. And that is Christ's victory from the cross. The battle is won, no matter how much ISIS wants to terrify us that they are somehow stronger. Every martyr for our faith strengthens our faith. Every tear. Every drop of blood. #WeAreN

Don't Hate Me Because I Don't Care If You or I Am a Goddess.

You are whole. You are weak, but with God, you are strong. You are a precious child of God.

When you read these words do you feel the truth of them ringing in your bones?

If not or if so, why are your feelings the barometer of what is true or not true?

Or do you feel the weight of the desire for self-aggrandizement and self-absorption, the deep-marrow fear of not being good enough, and the exhaustion of seeking your value outside of yourself?

Good news. You are not good enough (on your own) and you never will be. You also do not have to seek value outside yourself. All your worth and value comes from God. With God, you are always good enough. Yes, we're dependent on Him for all things, but we are precious beyond measure.

If you don't love and honor God, our Creator and Savior with every fiber of your being, if you could use more joyful play and simple awareness of the presence of His Majesty in your life, if you struggle with understanding the tyranny of your passions and desire to be powerful instead of to serve Him, then it is time for an inner revolution. 

It is time to claim your honored position as a Spiritual Warrior for the sake of what is timeless and true, fighting against the empty promise that worship of yourself as a goddess will bring you anything more than a desolate, selfish spiritual death.

The new women's revolution is an evolution from being self-focused to God focused. When our conscience is NOT silenced and suffocated by our selfish desires, we are finally free to direct our energies towards our own creative, purposive and authentic life that will bring true freedom.

When we bring our attention back to discovering who God intended us to be – not who we wish we were or who we think we should be – we begin a sacred path of transformation towards our innate, authentic, embodied ability to love in the natural way God created us to love.

This is the path of the Spiritual Warrior.

This invitation is a window of opportunity to form the most intimate relationship possible with the infinite Creator and Savior of the universe. My commitment is to tell you the truth so that you don't waste your life with lies. 

This is a parody, but it is also by someone who really does care about the welfare of your soul. (And doesn't it sound like a bit more common sense?

I will not link to the original invitation to emptiness, egotistical inflation and spiritual death, because I do not think it is fair to target one individual teacher and one program, when there are so many doing such similar things..They promise things, like how you will actually be able to study personally with a very important person who knows all about how to be dazzling wonderful goddess. Aren't you lucky? And just $297.

[The picture above is of The Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Mother, who is not and has never been a goddess. And it doesn't matter that she's not and that we're not either.]

Why I Am Grateful for Having Anxiety Issues

Grateful for anxiety? This is lunacy. Of course, that is the sort of lunacy you should have come to expect from me by now.

Although it may seem odd to say I'm grateful for having anxiety issues, it is still true. I don't like anxiety, of course, I don't like the way it feels or the toll it causes on my physical health and energy level. I don't like the way it can negatively affect relationships with other people, either. Yet, without anxiety, I wouldn't be as aware of the need to grow closer to God.

The first flutters of heart racing, the first awareness of sweating and labored breathing remind me that I need Him. And even if I end up taking medication for it before I can compose myself enough to pray, I do pray. Later, I find novel and interesting prayers and devotions to try to use when the experience hits. I try all sorts of creative techniques to get a handle on it. I succeed sometimes and sometimes I don't. None of that matters. It's the awareness I have that I need God that matters. That's why I'm on this earth, after all.

I've come to refer to the anxiety onset the "God Alarm." As soon as I can get to a point where thinking is possible, I say, "Thank you God for the call to come closer to you."

Psychological situations can trigger anxiety but I get to have a "sense of control" with them more, since I know my thinking causes them and my thinking can sometimes help stop them sooner.

However, in my personal situation, anxiety will eventually go away on its own, whether I do anything to calm myself or not. And anxiety will come no matter how hard I work to avoid it. For me as an autistic person, loud or screeching noises cause it. Bright lights in my face cause it. Being in a crowd of people can cause it.

My biology reacts immediately. It's involuntary. I carry dark glasses and ear plugs and use them as needed. I try to minimize any situation of overstimulating distress. But, they happen. They happen because life happens. Ambulances screech down the street. Light can suddenly change after a rainstorm, shooting a ray of stabbing light into my eyes, unexpected.

Is my goal to be cured and anxiety free? No, not at all. My goal is to remember I am weak and He is strong. My goal is to remember that I need Him. And so God provides me with that awareness on a regular basis.

With my bad luck, I may end up getting cured of it. And then what will I do to remind myself that I need God? A buzzer on my cell phone just wouldn't be the same.


 "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world." -C.S. Lewis