Nudum Christum Nudus Sequere

Follow naked the naked Christ.  Am stripping and being stripped.  Being taken through the mystic portal is realized in nakedness.  Am not there yet but en route. 

The only verbal portion of Mass I recall today is a temporal intrusion in the priest's comments about a boy he spoke with  who told him excitedly about basketball players--their stats in detail.  The priest said he remained quiet and listened.  But this morning he told about the boy and the conversation, and had plenty to critique.  He said instead of talking about the details of basketball players' lives and playing successes, did the boy care or know all about Christ, our Creator?  

We all get the point.  But here is an example for my spiritual director who wants to know what it is about me that brings situations of rejection by others.  I know one huge facet, and that is: Coals have been put to my lips.  I speak.  I write.  I observe, learn and act on what comes from within to without.  

I would not have just listened to the boy, later talk about it to a chapel full of people.  I would have listened to the boy, then thanked him for giving me an idea for my life, and that is to eagerly learn all the stats I can about Jesus and to be even more excited about God than about ball players or whatever is my earthly interest.  I might have later shared gained insights from the boy's excitement and knowledge of ball players, or maybe not.  As it stood, the boy did not benefit at all from what the priest could have shared with him.  A seed that could have been fruitfully planted was not.  

Sunday morning I listened to a man talk anxiously about Green Ash beetles  destroying his trees and another beetle that might destroy his other trees; and a woman spoke excitedly of a forum she is attending [that in some countries has been classified a cult and psychologically dangerous]. I then shared what was on my mind: The dream about being given Baby Jesus to tend and rear, and now praying about how to do that in daily life.

The woman attending the mind-control forum said  I should not have shared my dream or vision, whatever.  She also told me that when saints were mistreated (I had been injured during Mass by a man wrenching my shoulder for the third time in three weeks), they said such as, "I deserve that!"  

I told her directly that: 1. I do not want to be a Catholic saint; 2. We have more than enough saints already of all walks of life, centuries, cultures, countries and continents; and 3. Canonization is far too costly now, time consuming, and unnecessary since we have plenty of saints to emulate.  

In the process of being stripped, I am challenged to get to the naked truth of my naked self and soul.  It is not all that lovely.  But I have discovered that in trying to fit in to some mold of holiness or a holy personage, that there are so many molds--one cannot pick, choose, imitate and become this one or that.  

Be thyself.  This self feels coals on the lips, speaks searing words and writes raw realities.  My spiritual director wants to discover how I can be utilized by the Church.  He repeats I have so many beautiful gifts and talents. Yes, it is frustrating, but frustration helps me see reality: The Church does not need "my" gifts and talents, and the view is stuck at how the gifts (and me with them) should be plugged into a temporal Catholic world utilization.

A block of chilled jello could more easily be sucked through a drinking straw than to fit someone like me into a temporal Catholic venue, wonderful as they are.  Ah, more raw truth in myself; pray to accept it.  I have been tempted with desire to be a part of that world, to have a temporally useful place in the Church or worthy project.  But even clearance to bake muffins for a coffee-donut event met with obstacles. 

I am supposed to pray and ask God what it is about me that creates the scenarios of rejection, or whatever one may call it.  The answer lies within the spirit, the soul, the assignment of the soul in this life here on earth.  And consider the assignment of the soul for eternity, of which the soul is being trained while on this earth.

This soul is more a garden tag describing for anyone willing to take time to browse and ponder in the gardens, what one may discover in the immense variety of trees and plant life found plotted and potted in an otherwise smallish subdivision lot.  

I can tell you there are few to none who have come browsing.  But there might be some day, or maybe not.  I have ceased inviting, although some curious might want to come; curious in comes motive out.

Someone dear to me says I should have pursued canonical approval as a hermit.  I say it is more naked this way, with no one adding yet more scrutiny and expectation based upon temporal Catholic world perceptions of what a hermit is or is not.  The current climate is more external of the past in hopes of reconstructing saints and symbols of yore.  The outer does not the inner make.

I must follow naked the naked Christ.  Look around.  See the totally impractical gardens.  I told my cousin (waiting for a new leg) that I recall five years ago a grumpy gazebo builder who would not agree to place the gazebo where I wanted it, so I was not going to go through with the project.  As I wrote a farewell check for building permits filed, he sneeringly said what I had in mind for landscaping was going to be "A LOT OF WORK." 

I smiled and said:  I LIKE WORK.  Now I wonder. But I must  live liking work; life is very much work.  All of it.  The gardens: No one in his or her right mind would develop gardens such as these in an ordinary subdivision and even less would buy this place that provides yet more pain for someone with a constantly painful body.  

The harp:  The pain of sitting makes practice all the more foolish, but is one of the main goals for entertaining Baby Jesus.  So why now be tempted to finish  a temporal counseling degree when I have finished degrees unused from the temporal world of degrees? 

Years ago the Lord spoke in a way that Dr. H. tape-recorded.  We were told I should stop viewing from above but rather perceive and understand from beneath.  And also that much will be shown me and more, for the espousal of others.  I later looked up that word: espousal.  Archaic meaning is to wed.  And that has significance.  But it more fully defined means: to make a cause one's own, to take it up, to take up the cause.

At another time, I was told that I must drink deeply of the chalice.  And that I would write; yes I would write much, and I would teach.  Teach?  Yes. I would teach men and women how to stabilize their emotions through spirituality.

I am not one to blindly follow nor do I like to be followed.  But Christ, yes, I follow, and now I am learning to tend the Baby Jesus.  Not all that well do I tend Him but am trying; it is a full time job.  And as I commented to my spiritual director when he asked me to pray about what it is I need to change and what is God's will and how to be utilized, I said I want to write something so that no one else will endure what I've fumbled painfully as a Catholic.  I want others to live the mystic life courageously, successfully.

Following naked the naked Christ means a transparency that stuns and makes others uncomfortable. It can be rather shocking for oneself, at first, and can also seem to break the expectation of how a holy person ought to appear, do, think.  To follow naked Christ's nakedness, one must learn to exist in love and truth being in the buff.