O Come Let Us Adore Him

I'm warning you, things are going on that I do not yet understand. Began the Office, as my computer booted up, already journaling in my hand-written journal...and knew I had to come here. "Christ is born for us, let us adore him" and my screen saver comes up with a photo taken of a graveyard in Austin, a photo I snapped when I was stuck in traffic on the I-35 overpass. It fades and a photo of my granddaughter lights up, smiling, surrounded with heart lights, holding a little piece of paper on which is written "you are loved."
No doubt, it will be an interesting St. Stephen's Day. 
I began to write, to pray, about my family troubles. I just have to keep handing over my daughter, and my son, to God. They are just beginning to understand grief in new ways. They have to learn the things you can teach, you just have to live...those things without words, but packed with feelings...and the only way to escape the hell of them, is to feel them, and then to let them go, when you are ready to move past the pain of being human. And you move in to that other realm of being alive, the spiritual life, the soulful life, that stops expecting others to behave the way you think they ought to behave.
It's always a surprise, well at least to me, when I realize that even in my best mode, I still make assumptions about others...that are wrong. I mean, I am constantly in a learning mode, watching the signs and wonders, thinking I know "how" to do things in the best way I can.  Then something surprises me completely...and only then do I realize that I've been assuming I understand something that I do not understand. Bottom line: I've been playing God again: I think I know.
I hated those passages in Frances de Sales' writings and in Thomas A Kempis' Imitation of Christ, when it spoke of not trusting our feelings...which I had somehow connected to the idea of "not trusting my gut" which is really a completely different thing. Our feelings change...constantly because they are based on the illusions of things we think we know. Our gut really knows the different between right and wrong, fact and opinion, good and evil. Our gut, an ugly-sounding word in the English language, knows the truth, but our feelings are always trying to influence or contradict it. Is it the soul? Maybe, but I think the soul is still a bit malleable. The soul can choose. Truth cannot choose, it is the only real thing there is. The soul can be influenced, but is kind of a permanent record of our choices. I don't think the soul is good or bad, but it can be made into something good or bad...or worse: indifferent. Hell lives in indifference. Or indifference lives in Hell.
The most evil words ever uttered by any human being: I don't care. (in the real form, not as some manipulative ploy to get others to play your game)
Think about it. To hate, one has to love. To love, one is able to hate. To not care is not a redeemable quality. It is a hard place to get to, but once there...I don't think there is an escape...and maybe no one is really there, in that place where you do not care.

All those feelings I was trying to write out in my hand journal, how to face the next thing, that I am completing four years now in my promise to God...and I still do not see how I can live an ordinary life...and part of me is sad about it and another part is so excited to live this life (those damn feelings confusing me again)...and all I could think about was my granddaughters...and our conversations of this week:

I sat with my two oldest granddaughters and we watched my epic film: Star Wars IV: A New Hope.  They loved it (although they loved "Princess Bride" more) and I thought about, when I married Bob, a thing I thought I would never do...and we were married and it was like, "well, what do we do now?" and so we took 26 people to the movie theater to see Star Wars. I remember sitting between my husband (a physicist/astronomer) and father-in-law (a true F-4 fighter pilot, shot down, POW Hanoi Hilton survivor, at that time base commander in Miami) and marveling at "the greatest movie ever made."  Now I sat with my granddaughters, sharing with them one of my happiest moments...

Again, it seemed "The Princess Bride" was more to their liking.  I sent them off to bed with a couple of Star Wars books to read, actually telling them to be careful with the books...because they mattered...
I went off to bed to read/pray my breviary...and I heard a scream from the room next to mine..."What?!  What?!  No! No!" and my oldest granddaughter comes in to my room, outraged.  Looks me in the eye and says,
"Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father? Are you kidding me?!"

And I am actually stunned. Surprised. I feel like I've entered a "That 70s Show" episode. And I am impressed. She's connected enough in a single watching of the movie to be outraged by this plot twist. The younger one comes in the room and we discuss it. The younger one wants better answers. She wants to understand. And there we are, in a God moment...and my wheels begin to spin. 

Darth Vader wasn't always evil. He was once a good person. Evil doesn't really happen quickly. It comes slowly, I tell her. We make small moves. How we deal with pain and suffering, with disappointment. We know what is right, but we make bad choices, little choices, that don't seem to matter too much...but they do matter...and one day we wake up and realize we are in a truly bad place...and we think we have to stay there. 

I'm sure I said something more profound, because I remember their eyes...and I was thinking, how God is so perfect: these little girls are on their way to growing into women, and I can't stop that from happening, but they need to know, and someday remember, the choices they make need to be based on what their gut tells them, not what their feelings tell them. Did they hear that part? I don't know. I just have to pray that they did.

And Luke has to deal with the choices his father made. Face the curse/blessing of having great power and learning what to do and how to do it...not just for the good of one, but the good of many. The girls will continue to learn about how others learn, through the story and use the story to form their own lives.

You don't have to choose God. You don't have to buy into a story about a little baby, born in a cave, resting in a manger, born of a woman...that will change the world. The whole world. Not just a town...the whole world. A child who put the pieces together for us, so we might choose life over death and joy over sadness and recognize that our lives do not end when we die. We matter. What we do matters. Bending down before a child.

The new Pope carried the baby and placed him in a manger. He behaved like Mary. Is anyone getting the fact that he gets it? He will lead this church less by his words, which can be twisted by people wanting to use him for their own gain...he will lead by example. He is leading by example...and that's going to annoy the powerful ones...who suddenly realize that they have very little power...because the only real power it love. And you can't buy that, or bottle it, or lock it in a trunk. You can't kill it, wash it off, forget that it exists. I know. I've tried.
Love never ends.
That's the real story about the baby. Birth to death and beyond death.
Love never ends.

O Come Let Us Adore Him...if you dare...
You will not leave Him in the same way that you entered.
That's a fact. Not a feeling. Not an opinion.
Fact.
Just ask Stephen.

Love, Cindy