Wondering at Woman: Thoughts and Book review of “Captivating” by John and Stasi Eldredge

Reviewing this enthralling book by John and Stasi Eldrgedge, I find it almost impossible to capture the essence of their message to both men and women as simply and surprisingly articulated in Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman’s Soul. As usual, I approached the book tentatively, o gee, another book telling me how to be a cheesy Christian woman and how to set my priorities in order, etc… but I found the content to resonate with my unexpected hopes for the book more than my dread of over-used emotional focus. Prioritizing the embodiment of woman, both body and soul, as God’s gift to creation of His own beauty, the Eldredges manage to collaborate in expressing to both men and women something of the vocation which is imparted to we who have been created woman. As my academic and personal interest is relationality, I found the situatedness of the Eldgredges’ discussion of woman’s soul in relation with man refreshing. The ensuing conversation of this little piece is going to involve things I know many are skeptical of—natures, essences, etc. While I do believe these things are impossible to define, I think the Eldgredges are taking an inductive approach to nature… looking at what often happens, and recognizing nature in tendency. Give it a shot. I just had a class today discussing Levinas’ Totality and Infinity, and with the critiques still fresh in my mind, I want to add a disclaimer that what I am going to observe from Captivating is not meant to produce a totality or universality, but to feed into subjectivity.

Starting off by wondering at womanhood itself, Stasi  muses through her own thoughts and tose of other women transitioning from girlhood to womanhood, realizing that a young woman is very blessed if she has a mentor for those years of her development. Stereotypes invade our thinking, media infects our self-image, and we struggle to be “confident, scandelous and beautiful, yet not portray (our)self as a feminist Nazi or an insecure I-need-attention emotional whore. How can I become a strong woman without becoming harsh? How can I be vulnerable without drowning myself in sorrow?” (Captivating 5). There seems to be something so delicate about femininity… a fine balance, like the stereotype of our emotional stability. To be a strong woman, we’re told that our vulnerability in unveiling of the embodied beauty of spirit/self we hold, because being strong is not contingent on our actions other than keeping our heart and aiding in the keeping of our brothers’ hearts. But how can we do that as women unless we are ourselves.

The Eldredges identify our hearts (as it is with men’s hearts) as key to bearing God’s image in a way that blesses others: “Above all else, guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life.” Proverbs 4.23. This phrase was interesting… “Your feminine heart was created with the greatest of all possible dignities—as a reflection of God’s own heart.” (pg. 8). With fragile hearts that hardly are willing to believe they’re really created as reflections of the beautiful love God. Its kind of amazing to think that woman, created as that last creation of God…  the crown jewel as the Eldredges describe her… “completed” the creation of humanity in the myth of the Creation narrative. Why then, is it such a risk for those of us who hesitate in revealing that beauty that has been created in us? We’re afraid we won’t be found beautiful the way we long to be. Or I am. I said I wasn’t going to present a totality or universal understanding of woman, so I will speak for myself and ask other women to resonate where their hearts are touched. I don’t think the desire I have had, without even understanding the desire, since I was young to be beautiful… comes from any sort of vanity. Beauty does me no good… I love to see people light up and brighten with that light of Jesus… whether they are infused with it by inspiring conversation, excited over something they just heard on the radio or read, or are struck by wonder at something beautiful… art or music, I love to see it.  If in any way I can have a hand in the relational threads of life’s web that I come in contact with to bring some more brightness into life, I sparkle inside at the thought of it. Its not about me, nothing to do with whether or not it is truly me bringing that brightness and energy… its about seeing someone become alive. To be with someone and witness the dawning of something good and glorious in their hearts fills me with a thrill of wonder… it is relationally beautiful and amazing.

That brings me to what I have been told again and again by my Dominican brothers is the genius of woman… and what the Eldredge couple deems as the glory of woman’s reflection of God.. relationship. I exist in a very predominantly male world at the moment, so while my perspective is a bit skewed, it is fascinating for me to watch how my interactions as a woman seeking to be a woman, seeking to love my brothers/fathers as a sister/daughter… to learn appropriate openness and find a sharedness in each relationship… how greatly it differs from male interaction. A newcomer to the scene of Religious life in the Catholic Church, I am mesmerized by the relationships I see between the Dominican Brothers and their cloistered sisters. It seems so true that woman fills a place in the heart or inspiration of man… not necessarily in any romantic capacity (though the Genesis interpretation widely circulating through Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body suggests that the nuptial/marital union of man and woman is the most natural means of the mutual inspiration, comfort and relation between the genders), but behind every great man, there really is a strong woman.

What do I understand as a strong woman. Well, that has been very confusing to me throughout my life… at some times, I have thought a strong woman was one who could always be put together, always have a wise word… and then I learned life doesn’t roll like this. Now, I tend to consider strength an ability to submit to peace, something I struggle to do. To recognize with a discerning heart situations that are beyond my control, and submit the care/worry/concern of them to my God and embrace His peace while doing my best in the situation (o how rarely I do this). My housemate can attest to you that I resist sleep, don’t get enough of it, and am always active, always on the run if not entirely knackered or sick. I resist Jesus’ peace because I hide my heart, I am unwilling to be vulnerable… He has revealed this to me through introspection and some stressing situations in which I bore more of the care than I was capable. So… in the process of learning peace. And to learn peace, I have had to first learn something about the kind of strenght I should be cultivating according to my own nature (which has a fiery past, but which most describe not as “passive”)… a quiet presence of mind, a firmness and an ability to draw boundaries where I am uncomfortable without being unkind (another challenge)… and unashamedness to quietly unveil the thoughts and wonderings and care. Hiding care is the most natural thing for introverts live me who are uncertain how much care is too much and how to translate the care in a relatable and comprehensible when hearts don’t have words.

Is that what it means for me to learn how to be beautiful? Not the kind of beauty that one sits back and admires, but one that invites to action. Maybe the beauty itself is not active… have you ever known of someone trying so hard to be beautiful and so utterly failing? This statement caught my attention: “nature is not primarily function. It is primarily beautiful.” (pg. 34) This reiterates the “be vs. do” theme I have heard again and again over this summer. John Eldredge mused on the idea of woman and our desire to hear that others find us beautiful. He replied to his own question, “ The reason a woman wants a beauty to unveil, the reason she asks, Do you delight in me? Is simply that God does as well.” (Pg. 35) Well, that would assume a woman has the courage to ask and acknowledges the desire to hear she is beautiful. I know the feeling I have warming my cheeks when someone tells me something kind, but is this not vanity, a weakness, I wonder? I think this desire in our hearts that can be so simple and so alluring in its purity can also be our greatest weakness and allow us to be easily seduced by flattery. Most of us women can recognize flattery and we’d probabloy admit we’ve listened a little too long in vanity at times. But to hear a praise of beauty spoken, and know it to be true, we can give one of those Roses Corrie ten Boom talked about giving God up to our beloved Jesus in heaven.

So much more time should be spent of discussing what beauty is… its not the Barbie figure (though yes, I have that ingrained in my mind, even from limited media exposure, as I assume more women do…)… it’s a caring heart.  I think our real beauty is a genuine, givine care. Unveiling that beauty is a revealing to another that care, and allowing it be revealed to the other for them to experience even when its without expression. It’s a risk of a deep fear that I have, as  maybe many women, abandonment by those we love. I think about it sometimes and realize I am so silly: who do I have to abandon me? I am not in some sort of committed relationship with anyone other than Jesus… but maybe its just anyone I care about. I have the kind of heart that finds care easy to give and is afraid to reveal the care because of uncertainty about the “what now” questions… if only Jesus-likeness were so very simple. If beauty is life-giving, if it really does inspire, then it is powerful. Not power like a polemical control or manipulation… but has great sway. And in us, whatever that care which wants to nuture life, give life is, it is delicate enough to need nurturing too. I find it easy to care about others, but not maintain myself enough to have strength to give the care. That is where I need Jesus, to keep being beautiful, so I can keep loving him and learning the truth I heard in Levinas today… that transcence is the new immanence… that there is a closeness in the truth, a presence in the world which I think I’ve been ignoring and looking outside of what is for what is beyond. I don’t think it works that way. Jesus, teach my heart to love through what you’ve put here. I love you, make me love like you.

 

Women’s heart in God’s Image: Longing

“Most women define themselves in terms of their relationships and the quality they deem those relationships to have…This is not a weakness in women—it is a glory. A glory that reflects the heart of God. The cast desire and capacity a woman has for intimate relationships tells us of God’s vast desire and capacity for intimate relationships. In fact, this may be the most important thing we ever learn about God—that he yearns for relationship with us.”

So we women bear the image of our God in complement to what is often called in the Catholic Church “persona Christi…” I think this is what we women are questing after in the Christian faith, through all our feminist pursuits and quests… our hearts are crying out to know why we are, what we are, our place in the world and in the Church. The women’s ordination conversation I have been engaged in, because I am a woman in the Christian Church, in some way obsessed with Jesus, wondering what it means for me to be holy… to me, it is not a question of power, because in the Church, nothing is about power or control; we should be alloting that all to God. To me, it is a question of how can a woman walk in the fullness of who she is, be what she is  made to be for the glory of God, the benefit of her community, and the satisfaction of the deepest longings God has created in her heart: that is the relationship she cultivates with her Lord and spreads through the rest of the world.

O my Jesus, how Your ache must resonate with my own, You giving my will and desire to keep aching and longing! What a fresh breath; to touch the most tender and intimate corner of my God’s heart, His own deep, unfathomable yearning that I too would desire to cleave to Him. He is in love with me. My Jesus, this all-powerful God  has fallen deeper and harder than any meteorite into the earth, than any mountain making waves collapsing in the sea… He has fallen in love with me. If nothing more than all His empathy embodied in the Prophets convinces me of this.

Jesus, then I must be a romantic, for how can I but acknowledge the true beauty of this love affair: before I had desire stirred in me, Your longing reached out and took hold of me. Too long have I evaded Your embrace which is the truest desire of my life! My desire is Yours too. My Jesus, You are in love with me!?! O my Jesus, what a tremendous burden of light, to be an embodiment of Your own incessant and insatiable desire for more!  Your yearning, longing, and craving to devour us as fruit of love. You made me in the very way of desiring, that You have for me. You gave me a heart that aches like Your own.

O my Jesus, how great this is to realize, how unworthy am I to be full of Your own sort of heart, the care/empathy… but more so Your ache and longing desire. Men have the courageous sort of imagining of Your love, we women have the insatiable ache for intimacy. O my Jesus, therein lies Your hidden image in the unexpected corner… how You will empty, empty, empty me and burn me dry with longing, then fill, fill, fill me with the same longing. Only You can end my desire—but You are desire itself. We women are the original fulfillment and perspetuation of ache. What a wonder to be created a woman. The mystery of desire, which we experience too, bound up in the fiber of our own creation.

 

Musing with Jesus over Perception and Intuition

As You sit with me, hand and hand, side by side resting at the end of where our thoughts have rarely entangled; and we share our hearts and the ways in which we have seen the world,
I take hold of that perception You have revealed to me and tug at it, playfully, like a child who
Would capture the pretty thing she likes and take it into herslf, but is unable because another character inhabits the place in my own soul, intuition. While Your heart is always outward reaching, mine within me musing on the things inside which inform this little perspective.
Your are too great for me, I watch in awe and wonder as You umake me, the little way I have folded myself up and hidden within… crumpling the little web of soul in a tighter and tighter wound ball, fainting in its weak attempts to exert and force itself out of this casket that closes tightly each time I try and open it…. And there You are, stretching out Yourself, giving away,
releasing without doubt. You are always stepping outside of Yourself. You look out into the world and see all there is, and feel from the depth of the knowing You have inside Yourself.

Open me to Your gift of love, You who enter into all the world with perception of what is,
With Your conception in the womb of Your mind of all we who are Yours have pledged to be,
Make in me the same likeness of the part of Yourself out of which Your formed me,
To be a piece in the rest of Your Body, a part that sees so little be is shown so much
By the spirit which dwells only in the darkest possible hearts, for there must be plenty
Of dark to see any of Your light. What light have You planted in me, that for my own
Darkness I cannot see… something shining in this woman-form that seeking You seems
To polish and perfect. Yet all the more dull see my eyes, the closer You are , the warmer
I imagine You shine… my dim eyes can only think to see so that nearer to You my hope
May be. Come quicker each day, as that hope slips away and fades into the cracking grey of
Soul dusk, yet that is Your blessing to me, the darkness in which I wander, to find the glory of
Your face… the knowing within me, Jesus, teaches a harder way then the wandering, searching
I am prone to; Within the reach of grace, I still stand, learning the quiet of Your stillness…
How to embrace Your feet with no other care than to be in Your presence and worship You
There, but all the striving and searching has left me penniless in my weeping soul.
When I fall from my feet and land squarely on my knees in wonderment and poverty of heart,
All given out from the miniscule strength I had and sworn to poverty for taking the love-wounds
Of my Jesus… Your love is always leaking out of me, when I let You draw me out and
Overcome the very defensiveness I have bound up myself in to limit the giving, to reduce the
Wearing out and beating down of the daily trodding of the soul. Yet it is in the mud I know You
Best, the beaten pavement where I find Your filthy feet, and dusty hands, healing and working
Among the other sick and weak like me. In the contact of Your touch, I find a reviving stamina
Though no lasting strength is imparted to me, I must remain with You in my little means.
You have made more miracle than water into wine from the filth of my life… You took the clay
From the pit of my flesh… the cavern where should have been a heart, but when You, Word,
Cut open my carcess, You found a stone… I took it out and was just there, empty, waiting and Looking for some other filling… in the darkness of world, the souls all round are hiding,
Guarding, waiting to be found as themselves and drawn out into love as they are.

This all You tell me, again and again… You tell me so that I may know, but my heart, besides
Cold holds weak memory of Your patient grace, so draw me forth again, teach me gently
To see Your face and be whole before You, to show as You are shown… to wholly unveiled
And covered in Your ways that become my own as You teach me to desire and choose
What is right beyond appearance, what is true beyond view.

 

Memoirs of a virgin mother: I am Your Psyche.. You are my Invisible Cupid, Love Incarnate

This evening at work I had a thought come into my mind as I was working with my six daughters at this little place near Cedar Park that I come “home” to and “mother” every weekday evening. So much life revolves without, but in my invisible little fore-drop to the world… the part filled with dragons, and angels, and nights and ghosts… the little bit of world that usually gets stuck between dimensions… that is only visible at sun-up and midnight…. Or at the very split second when the sun goes green over the ocean. I pictured in my mind, as I looked around the room at my ‘daughters’ that very second from C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces when Psyche’s older sister, Orual, the narrator of the story, invades the space of Psyche’s life… having poisioned her by  planting doubt in her mind that she is not married to a god, but a demon, convinces Psyche to kill the husband who has hidden himself from her; when Psyche visualized the face of her secret Lover by the forbidden lamp, the life she alone has seen… the wine, the palace, the fine foods she has fed off insivibly…all crumble before her; Orual catches the last glimpse of the palace which has not existed before her eyes until it breaks… Psyche is distraught. That moment of the collapsing kingdom that blazes out in front of Orual’s eyes before vanishing flashed through my mind when I thought about conversations I have been having about Jesus recently.

How can I say that I love You? You so invisible and insubstantial to my existential composition… and yet, here I am… You’ve captured and hidden my heart so deeply within Yourself that I have lost all touch. Who are You, Who draws me in and promises never to release me… and yet my mind is this imprisoning confine through which I ask You to draw me. The world around is so open, but just a shadow… somewhere long ago with You, I tasted more. And that lingering flavor ignites this fire, the senseless lost sense wandering as if let loose from a dream with mind still racing faster than heart. The questions roll in faster than can be answered. The inernal knwoing grows, with slower substantiating reason… the sort of thing that must be learned, not understood. God is not a concept to grasp with the mind. He is a Lover who runs to and fro in the heart… beyond the heart… all about, taking us greater distances than could be imagined. He is where the home is, the rest is, the lying place for the heart. The refuge and restoration… the comfort and joy that may be impercievable even to ourselves often times. That’s why I think faith requires imagination. So here we go, imagining:

Here with my six ‘daughters’ is my home… the quite place and stability of a place always kept and returned to, and not just the vacancies of having to care for oneself. The real comfort of knowing one is caring for others and contributing to a pervading sense of peace that is woven tightly in the environment. Here is where I most want to and best fall into sleep… that or in another place where You hold me tangibly, O Invisible Lover. So regarding where I find You, I will come to You, and in the imagination of faith, I become Your Psyche. Thus are my ravings and ridiculous longings justified… You are unknowable anyways, but that You make Yourself known. If we would try and uncover Your Radiance, we would disintegate into ashes and dust at the wonder of Your beauty.

Most Glorious and Intangible of Lovers, Your exiled Psyche seeks You with an openly bleeding heart… my hope bundled in my arms, like a child I am holding… gathering flowers on open fields… vibrant, wild, flowers. The world You gift into my arms is more than I can hold or behold… like the wonder of an almost born infant Hope You have kindled in my soul—whose older sister Faith travels closely in my arms. I am Your Psyche, filled with Your Faith, but in the darkness wait the pregnant heart, confused and bewildered with wonder and awe at the mystery of Love Incarnate descended… only Your whisper have I to draw on for the confidence of Who You are. Wandering barren hills and foreign wastelands searching for the Beloved.

The Invisible whom I have only seen with my heart… until breaking the spell with lamplight, I discarded the image You engraved in my heart with Your presence and gazed upon that which was too bright for my young eyes… Your Face. Tearing us apart with my boldness, I lost sight… sight of You, when full of Your child of Faith…after You had consumed all my heart in that darkness; convinced as I had been that I must know You in the weakness of my flesh, I realized my folly too late and cast myself into exile… decieved by the others I love, I betrayed Him-Whom-my-heart-craves: I broke Your trust… alighting to your side in far- a dagger clenched in my hand to free my hear from a dark, seducing monster… to try and cut You out of my heart, abort this seed of Faith… and claim by a knife of destruction the life You had promised to weave before me; My Darling “demon” of the dark, I knew not who You were. Lord over night, You flew to Your Mother and entrusted me to her care for rebuilding our trust when I was too broken to end the life of our Faith… You left me with Hope. I am Your Psyche, seeking You… an imaginary princess in Your Kingdom of my heart.

 

Jesus, in the world-dark

I rejoice, a Bride, unwedded, but wearing the ring I consecrated to You, I am Yours already;
Jesus, lover of my soul, listen to the musings of a girl, given over in her soul to irrationally loving You; I knew it was ridiculous, the more I confess it, the more true… and the more incomprehensible seems my love for You; You no more tangible than the ghosts I keep dreaming
Up into the realms of heaven, the unseen, the imagined, but becoming more and more real.
What would You look like, stepping out on our earth… stepping into these fragile vessels,
Of dust and of earth, as we give You ourselves… or as we try to hand off clay jars..
Over to Potter; Father, do you see me, Your daughter, as I’m drifting away,
And sailing all through life in a rocking bed of dreams, Your lullaby of mystery—
Fasting through a day to capture like morning dew Your sweetness… entranced and enamoured
By the overwhelming presence—Your kiss on the mouth, the first I have tasted,
You touch in my hands, My heart only races and runs in the song of my inscreasingly hungry
Mind… to just stand and behold You, to worship, to find in You beauty the fullness of longing;
The words flood my mind, and my spirit begins falling, sinking away crushed and dashed
Onto You; I’ve broken, I’ve lost all, but it’s a hopeful romance, so different You are, my Lover,
While fading I grasp You, You cradle me while all others would attempt to receive and yet
Since I could not relinquish my hold on the gift I needed so badly to give, away from myself,
Too toxic to live with. You inebriate my soul with one wift of Your love… offering yourself
To drink, Your Holy blood offered in a chalice, from the wound in Your side…
Water of life ever-flowing to drench me with life, to fill me with brimming care.
The weight veil I keep covering with, the lacey flowers encircling my brow, like a crown
Woven to give You the glory of my head, the covering for which I bow my heart and relinquish
My might, the wavering strength I had overcome by the light in Your face that my heart sees
When to You all is given, light catches in my gaze and fills up the eyes of my soul.
As I am stilled before You, a day in Your company alone with others…
My soul becomes emptied with longing and desire, as I drink in Your wonder.
The pslams gladden my heart and overcome with miraculous hunger I place all of my time
In the moments of today, back into Your heart, and invested I long to stay hidden in the cleft
Of Your arms… I’m still seeking the face in the dark, the knowing of Your in a world
Where we cant feel You… but in each other, in imagination… teach us what it means
To create Your love in this world, here… this heaven on earth, love without strife.
Be with us, Jesus, come into our hearts, find a new home here, the kind we’ll never
Be content with and allow us to give all our hearts away, and into each others’ hands,
Entrusting to You the inmost of our being. Make me after You.

 

Give me O Lord, A Handmaiden’s Heart Like Mary

May my lips speak Your praise all the days of my life, for You continually create a new song in my heart, sigh after mourning, a gasp after a laugh;
May You be the first word on my lips, the constant meditation of my heart, eliciting from withing the core of my being all that wells up to worship You;
May You be the source of my delight, drawing me into a dance where all creation worships You, every child-like, upturned heart praising Your name.
Let me receiving within my being a new heart, restored and recreated to encompass all Your light—as the moon reflects back to the sun with a brilliance that illumines the darkness, I year to show out Your love;
Let me hold open a heart to You, Your handmaiden for Your service, losing myself in wonder and releasing the inhibitions that I erect to withhold my surrender,
Let me loose the feebly anchoring ropes which I have bound about my heart to prevent rupture and loss wrecked by love and joy.
Only let me be like Mary, awed at the multitudes of angels You subtly slip into my life… let me revel like Hannah, magnifying Your name from the depths of soul, rejoicing in You my savior.
Only let me finally let go, and be the earthen vessel You made me as, not patching with unfit material the cracks in my sides, stopping up that life blood of Your heart;
Only teach me to surrender my fears and be content to be as You made me, running some still path of transformation as You teach me my own limits.
Hear my simple prayer, from a heart too weighty to let go in You light—You made us to bear Your burdens which are only heavy in our strength;
Hear the voiceless ache of my heart to learn the secret joy of submission and gingerly lay myself before You without constantly reclaiming the very gift I sought so hard to give;
Hear my confusion, a void noise, deeper than black-hole mystery, sucking out my life like a spectre feeding on my own soul… stealing away the joy in my life.
Return to me memory of this world of the living, for in You I have chosen  to trust beyond reason, even as I seek to substantiate my own weakness;
Return the hope and joy I once had in You, in the midst of darkness, which enlivened my entire world… turning away from a more morbid fixation.
Return the words of deliverance You once taught me, for you set me free and I returned to captivity, though I seek again the gaze of Heaven.
You have placed me in this world, to learn and to love, to feel and to think , to give and to receive—may I always hold open my hands to receiving and not fear the giving.
You were the first love of my heart, and now reigning as my idol, I understand why You decreed no images, for Your face is more varied than on one to fix the heart;
You again are the one I’ve returned to, in dissipating whirlwind, to just stillness again… and in there I know to be rest and contentment.
Send me, Lord Jesus, Your handmaiden is waiting.

 

Hanging up the Wedding Dress and holding onto the Veil

Confirmationally, I turned 16 days old, and already the days have rushed by so fast it seems that a cataclysmic crash has brought a number of rolling worlds of fluidty to a startling, jolting halt. No longer parallel, I decided to join a Church which brought some of the many ambiguities in life to a stand still. I have freely confessed a duplicity of feeling over it all: on the one hand, my rational, semi-athiestic sense of the existential world notes that I have comitted to a systemic way of thinking, of approaching theology and religion… entering into a life of a church that is as closed as it is open. Chrism on my head, I could almost feel in my tremors the quakings of worlds which were going to fall apart. Veni Sanctus Spiritus… analyzing the undeniable sense along with the fact of what was happening, a peace paradoxically invaded at the peak of terror. What an awful truth, to realize that I had severed existentially when I continued to hold open in my heart, those loving hands of Jesus which I have tried to explore in my vocational service to the world. The second undeniable observation was one of focus, removal of distraction… in a sense, falling back into a romance.

Celibate or not, each life needs a romance with God. The rest may be mundanely ordered (in fact, in order to sustain my ‘wild’ intellectual endeavors, relational escapades and litrugcial hunger,  I have begun to prefer the more simplistic forms of eating, living, survival. Utility is only bad when it limits life, not when it allows for a deeper fullness). Romance with my God is probably the thing I have been most hesitant to explore… the themes of sacrifice, submission, joyous-spontaneous love, unpredicatability, and threatening openness all resurface in the pursuit of this love with God. While I may have had that private ‘marriage’ ceremony with Jesus all those months ago and used the language for longer, now the official fact is something I no longer can hide from. I belong to Him; a belonging that is deeper than a sense of objective ownership—I have not become a plaything to passively and puppiteeringly perform the will of my Lord. Indeed He has taken me, and given me Himself. Since this exchange was made so many years ago and renewed in a private fullness last Spring, this year, my Isaac has borne a different burden.

The yearly pilgrimage through Genesis 22 promised to trace a path similar to Abraham of last year who placed himself on the altar in his son. Inevitably, the fascintion with Jesus and reflections on a beloved crucifixion may draw a new rendering of the sacrifice I am to learn with my God in this new place. It was still terrifying… the first week and mass after confirmation, progressively moving towards a place of ill ease with my own decision because of the confliction inside… but realizing that this commitment was a rebellion against what I had set my face against so firmly over two years ago: human submission, entrusting myself to You, Jesus in the form You hold on Earth.

What a mystery, that You should desire us, most Holy of Lovers.
That You should draw my hand into Yours and become mine,
Taking me for Your own- what can it mean, what can it be,
That would impel You to desire such a punishment as me?
The feet ever dirty, I’m a childish vagabond at play, yet in the field
You spied me, lost and weary constantly straying in the search
For something greater, something other, something more.
An insatiable desire You gave me to love for Your sake,
The craving, the longing- in the face of emptiness again I met
The Man after whom all my life had been bent
On seeking, on finding, to hold on tight and be still.
Yet You have not stopped moving, and it seems You never will.
You caught me in shame, disgusted with this own self,
Seeking to cast it aside, and caught hold of this wretch
Who despised You in spite of having lost herself in love,
Rejecting Your hand, I ran to darkness deeper than love—or so I thought.
Irredeemable? A haughty whore and wanton mistress,
Giving herself like and endless abyss, falling to darkness, falling deeper still
Through the black whole of an unsatisfied will that simply cannot be filled
By clinging to longing, and thus burning with shame,
Unwilling to release the putrified name which clings like a garment,
Tattered with age, muddied and bloodied—disfiguring the form
Of the soul which has worn to to bare bones through melancholic grief,
Knowing each sin cannot satiatiate the lonely thief,
Who steals her own soul and sells it again, to purchase an other
With the temptation of loss, the promise of business, a life without cross.
Claiming no ownership for more moments than a few, there is nothing to life for,
There is no responsibility to view with a care for one’s own, the other greater than self.
Selfishness has crept in a whisked away the self,
Embedding the will in a dualing narcissitic reflection.
The mirror is my prison, I see myself and rage, filled with horror and shame-
Clawing at the image, but unable to break the reflection, unable to save
This body of death I created for myself, the casket to unlike a sacrificial cross.
Alone I became, yet You were there ever with me, unseen.
It was Your love that reached out and touched the in-turned eyes, drawing out
The inverted lust, piercing with love bright-shining.
Drawing in cold arms, You asked if I was willing, to give up the hell
To come from death to life, to unfreeze my heart, to restore my sight.
A sacrifice You asked for, I had given more than enough, but to the wrong place,
I was still holding a cup, with which to catch my own blood for atonement—
But weakening and paling, moment by moment,
You stopped my pierced heart, pierced Your side for the cup, and blood is still flowing.
All the wounds I’d self-afflicted, You took into Your hands and feet,
Taking the thorns from my hair You fashioned Your crown.
And over my scars, You gave my a veil, covered me in white:
Pure virgin again. Despite all the lovers I’d once bought with my form,
You took all those wounds, and bore memories as ghosts,
To haunt whenever I took my eyes off of Yours.
Shining and holy for You, reflecting Your radiant sun, into the waltz
We locked in a dance, slowly, floatingly, mesmerized, entranced.
For a few nights and days it was heaven on earth, then
I stumbled and remembered I was dirt, and fell away from You
In contemplation of the world, swirling with spectres of my creation.
Yet this was our wedding, You were not going to let me go run,
Taking hold of my hands, the sacrifice had begun: would I submit to You,
Remain in Your loving arms, or go back to my sanctum, the inner psych ward of soul?
To be with You would remake me, slowly, building Your kingdom within me,
The home You had promised we would dwell in one day.
For now, You would be with me, invisible to sense and touch,
Teaching my eyes to see You, to trust,
When the ones You put in my hands and flesh and bone, Your Body on Earth,
You have not been compromised; I must submit to receive and give again
Or else lose my heart to confines of manufactured pain.

It’s a good life, it’s a beautiful life. The world around doesn’t fulfill the answers I sometimes look for day in and out. But it’s the nature of love that I have tried to explore again and again, which has come back and been placed in my hands. I cant quite describe it from the inside of the cacoon… the mystery of community around me seems to have some fulness I have not realized yet. This eucharist we receive, communicating each week with one another that we are one in Christ, to one another that Christ is becoming more and more real in us, committing to one another that we are learning to submit to Christ Jesus. It’s mesmerizing. I’m not still walking around in white, but there is this veil, a sign because of the angels, Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11… something about submission, protection and reception that I must hold onto to learn more about. What does it mean to submit to Christ as a member of a community? How does one submit to the community/world while seeking oneness with Christ? How do we not despise this world, but embrace it more deeply when grasping at spirit.

 

Jesus, Have I Lost my Soul?

Jesus, have I lost my soul? I have been thinking back to the times when my passion for You drove my to times I could never have imagined… and what am I now, still pouring forth much, but is it truly passionate? I wonder, have I lost some of that art of feeling You were teaching me by the wooing of Your love… have I become fearful in love with You again, Jesus? I confess to realize things have changed, been changing, and now I resist just as I used to when You first embraced me, I flinch at Your touch, You mean to mend, to heal, to love, yet I fear; what is there to fear in You my tender Jesus? Where are the recesses of my soul that so rawly and desperately exposed themselves to You? I think my Jesus, I have retreated into some shame again… honor and shame… the guilt my soul has forgotten but cannot deny. You have changed in me since that first bliss of love. I have mourned its flickering and my heart has waned with longing for You.

I began to experience so much, and then I grew complacent in the ecstasy of it all… here I am now Jesus, desperate with the missing of what I knew. Deeper still is where I wanted to be, plunging into the depths of Your love. Remind me, remind me, my heart and soul are weak and forgetful, I assume far too much of You. I am remembering, Jesus, as I read through the words we have exchanged over the months… I carry a book that is always filled with them… I have learned how to focus again… but Jesus, You haven’t been always the focus of my concentration. There, in the midst of seeking how You and I could be one, I lost the focus… my weakness of such stolid, dogged, determination, for my soul is in pursuit. It has been revealed to me through the comments of others, whom I have somehow remained sensitive to, in spite of the growing coldness over my own soul that I am constantly on the run.

Even today, Jesus, I was asked if I always run, I do… the running has become a part of me, I am eternally restless… maybe I am chasing the wind. I want You so badly… but do I really when it comes down to it. What has excited me these last weeks Jesus, O Jesus forgive me… as I ask, I realize that I have not been excited all the time. I remember what it was like to not be exhausted… but energized by thoughts and dreams and interactions… now my sweet Jesus, I find no time like I used to. I set out to capture time and too tightly have I bound it to myself, for it has gnawed away at my being, and now time sails by, whisking my still-less soul along in its gusts. What have I lost, O beautiful Jesus? Last night I wrote introducing You, my husband… and how long have we been married? Not 3-4 months, I dare say, yet already in my restlessness I have made You stale. O Jesus, it is always like this… I run until I am empty and then I don’t realize that it was You I was running to all along.

Is that it? Am I running to You or away from You? Perhaps it is both and that is why we are married. Perhaps I have a harlot’s heart because I cannot be satisfied to be still for more than a moment, before something more fascinating catches me eye. One pursuit leads to another. Sometimes I run to You, my Lover, sometimes I run away. You love… is it like this river in which I find myself standing in the middle… tossed about by waves? Up and down we go… I want You and when I have You, I long for more, so I tear off and run away, I lose a part of my heart because I think I will discover more. Wow, Jesus, I am talking like some sort of addict… maybe I am about to take a deadly sip of absinthe or take that fatal dose of ecstasy: Jesus, wake up that love in my heart and rekindle it in my soul.

I realized when it began that it would be hard to maintain, but I never imagined so hard; I knew it would always need to be changing, but I tried to tell myself it wouldn’t be so very much as I am faced with giving up. This is Self talking again, Jesus, not the Hannah Your bride, the old Hannah who is dead and must remain in the grave though Your bride is still part of her and unable to pierce the heart because there is only one heart between the two; no silver stake can extinguish the life from this vampire-like wraith that seeks to drain the life-imparted blood of life from my veins. Self is the doppelganger that haunts my every step, Jesus… I lose myself to her, for she is my narcissus in the mirror I am forced to gaze into if I want You… Do You see me, Jesus, taking Your body, the bread, and tearing it apart? Do You see me throwing my hand into the mirror, half in desperation to be rid of the image, half in longing to touch Your hands? All my hands get is the feeling of pain, blood, emptiness.. how morbid, not the life You have bought, the vampire rises from her coffin.

And so I run again, but she in constant pursuit, to make me more selfish, I am dressed in white like a shroud, and my soul aches for the inner light of love. Jesus, Your love to me is better than the love of a thousand admirers… Your touch restores my inmost being, I am sure of it, for so often You resurrected my hope from the ashes of its desolation in the fiery ruins of Gehenna… the hell I sacrifice to by the running from You. It is my opposing lover, the dead narcissus with fresh blood on its lips… the children I have sacrificed to it, to my Self… what compels me… their bones cry out to me, and I am ashamed, my soul forgoes the love I once held in grief. Yet I do not know how the children are mine, nor how they were conceived and born… I am too virgin to love to understand such things. And now the children I might have had to love have been subconsciously sacrificed.

Jesus, are You sure You want me? A murderess I am, the knife is clutched within my hand, the blood covers my hands and face. Encased by my tattered shroud, this is what I have become for the love of You? For the fear of You? What did I make You in my mind to be so frozen as to require living blood for warmth? My God, my God, why have I forsaken You? I look full into Your glowing face, Your golden eyes, and my soul remembers the living waters. Am I lamenting Jesus? I have grown violent again, and my need is ever before me. A sorry bride You take me as… my flesh has grown as blue as ice, and my heart is encased in a broken body. My intellect has caused such a traumatization… but I dare not allow myself any victimization, for self-rape is an inexcusable sin for which there can be no sacrifice and all blame (which only hovers in my sphere of existentialism) rests on my head, no scape goat. You paid it Jesus, I know. Touch that part of me that needs to remember the sacrifice to forget my paganism… a temple harlot may be right, if I stop feeling You in one, I run to another. You are too constant for that. Conquer the demons in my own soul, that possess too strongly my being; let Your Sitra Achra shame them terribly… I would rather have the horrible glory of Your wrath than my own separation. If You must, drive the stake through the heart that beats, enjoining me to my devilish Siamese twin… the vapirish Self. For I remember I still love You… and for the sake of Your temple which I bare before You, defiled, scourge it clean.

 

I begin to introduce my Jesus

Over my two years of study and personal development, I have been trying to make a better acquaintance with a man I find irresistibly attractive… You may know Him, though differently than I, for His name is Jesus. I do not claim to know Him as fully as I long; it is for this reason that I think I am in an unending, restless pursuit of knowing… investing in the exercise of love which created room for the action of faith in order to obtain more from the ceaseless of fountain of His life. How can I describe Him to you, you who know Him so differently than I? He is wrapped up in mystery, only through a mystical union in the spirit of His body, held together by love, can I fully know Him or perceive your ability to know Him. Let me try and introduce You to my unfathomable treasure, my Jesus:

I cannot see Him, my eyes have never seen a full picture of His face—only now and again do imagine that the eyes of my Lover are perceptible to my gaze. Yet I know Him… as foolish as it sounds, so it truly is. I know Him because He loves me and the warmth of the inner light He kindles in my soul consumes me like a devouring flame in my bones… it drives me beyond in external pursuit while the furnace of my inner being is overwhelmingly satisfied by His Spirit. I pursue Him, yet I have Him, all at once. It is this veil of life I as a dutiful bride wear over my eyes, hiding myself from my own perception as His inner chisel conforms my being to His own liking… as I surrender the riches of my heart to His melding put where all is scorched and consumed and melded together. With Him I am nothing, for He floods my soul until I have willingly drowned beneath His flood; though at the same time I find that the floods are not killing me but reviving me to a life beneath and inside of His waters which I could never have drempt of. Thus are His mysterious inner workings in me, absorbing all that I am and routing my desires by the winsome glances of His eyes. He is a voracious Lover, though I am difficultly compelled to His will, for its truth is truly the desire of my heart.

He, my invisible beloved, has sought a body on this earth; He has honored my vitalized corpse of dust to be the indwelling of His Holy Temple. Every day I arise from the soul’s sleep to find He resurrects in me, through me by the nourishment of His word and His love. His love is alive in me, incomprehensible though He is, and I engage Him in that love through pursuing a deeper demonstration of Him: my soul alone wastes away under the exhaustion of seeking when I am alone too long. I am ravished by His Word and tender presence when He presents His hands before me… they are not my own hands, though His wounds burn within me when I feel His love. I seek the stigmata of His people, in whose hands my Thomas eyes may see the beauty of His likeness and in His people my Mary heart may lavish the riches of blessing He has bestowed in the box of my alabaster memory. I am His and He is mine… the flesh in which I walk carried responsibility beyond self to be enjoined to Him through His people… that scattered body of His, dismembered in individual, but unified in wholeness of love. It is love I must learn, but my loneness robs the feeling from my soul, my perception of Him dims when I cannot see the likeness of Him entwining me into the wine of His fruitful wine reflected in the life of another.

I have said He cannot be tangibly perceived; yet my hands ache for existential reality. At times I have stretched them out to heaven, feeling as if my soul would give anything to bear that agony of my Jesus in order to be so perfected, that my love might do no more harm. My soul exists in an arbor of His love, though my wandering sometimes drifts into the chill of loneness and I find I have abandoned Him, though He is still within me and His heart beats within me… I cannot escape His love. It wraps me like a tender covering, leading my childish soul through gradual steps of maturity as I learn that He is not scattered, but still whole amongst a broken people. I receive the Eucharist tradition of His broken body and emptied blood… and yet I know He is whole and perhaps it is for my solace that He breaks Himself in celebration, for no more of His blood is to be spilt, and no more of His flesh to be torn. His wounds are a constant reminder of His undesired love, which is too intense for my soul to bear. Intensity and tenderness combine into one to present me a picture of active loving, a concept I still fail to understand, for I feel Him only as much as I engage with Him.

He is with me in the midst of life, though my perception distances me from Him. Sometimes I think He is God and am awed by the splendor and beauty of my husband the King, yet He disrobes Himself of the glory so as not to overwhelm me; the brilliance of God is in His face no matter how much man I may see Him as. No matter how little I may feel Him, I have been made a part of Him, a picture of Him, to go out as His trusted confidante to represent His desires. I am as dearly coveted as His own child and jealously guarded as His treasured wife. He knows of my wandering; my youth and disbelief present many a time to learn of His gentle mercy in drawing me back from where my hand has already been stretched out to act. When I wound the sight of His eyes by violence to myself, He disarms me of my wounds, causing me to weep at the memory of their presence on Him; my wounds do not hard Him now, my Lover is too strong for that. My scars vanish into His glowing skin, and I am made whole before Him.

He covers the shame of my foolishness, wrapping me in His own robes so I am not uncovered and guarding with His arms; I am covered like the fortress of a strong tower from which I can gaze upon all of life… yet from the tower, He tells me it is armor I must learn to bear to go out amongst all the land… He is too loving to hide me away forever. In His arms I am gathered and I want for nothing… hunger and thirst flee from my being as I drink in the fragrance of new life from His robes and recover strength of spirit by His guiding hand. When I am weary, He is my strength, working His Godness to produce constant guard as long as I will remain with Him. Softly He teaches me submission, for my will is more foolish than I know it. A kiss from the words of His mouth teaches me the fullness of my life with Him, in Him, for I have become an unworthy embodiment of my Beloved, learning the love beyond the quiet confines of my books in the lives of others so that:

In the abundance of his glory may he, through his Spirit, enable you to grow firm in power with regard to your inner self,
so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love,
with all God’s holy people you will have the strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth;
so that, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond knowledge, you may be filled with the utter fullness of God.
(Ephesians 3.16-19)

This is just a part of my Jesus, won’t you seek in yourself a shard of the mirror of His image, with the lamp of the spirit of Yhwh to uncover the veil from our eyes and see as things truly are, for they will become as they were truly meant to be?

 

Fatal Attraction

I remember the days when I was blissfully ignorant of myself, of the effect I had on others, of my own desires, of my own nature and why I tend towards some things more than others. But unfortunately, and fortunately at the same time (which is more true at the moment, I cannot distinguish) I can never fully rid myself of self… self in the “bad” sense… those cursed sin tendencies that will plague me with temptation till the day I die because Adam and Eve plucked and ate that fruit off the tree. Living without realization of the effect this initial disobedience allowed me a blissful aloofness from self, an ability to attach and detach at will, whereas now, confronted with inwardly bent tendencies that I learned so well for so long, I can no longer theoretically divorce from self. I long to please my Jesus, to be like my Jesus, for He has chosen to make His covenant with me—He loved me when I was unable to understand love, a love that did not impose immediate expectation, but gradually wooed me into a compulsory, demanding love that requires all of me in sacrifice to obtain as much of Him as I can handle…really all of Him, because Jesus overwhelms me constantly with His love.

Before I began to allow myself to experience the tender love of Jesus, I was under the impressions that love was miserable: something with unrealistically high expectations that would always leave me, the beloved, owing my lover something… something so much that even if I committed the gravest sin out of that love, gave up everything I am and have, I would be unable to repay the love I thought existed. My perception of Jesus was that He defined love as a place I would reach with Him once He had scourged out of my imperfections… that I would be unable to enjoy Him until I was perfect. It has only been in this past year that I have begun to discover what the Bible really says about uprightness: David was considered a man after God’s own heart and loved/deemed upright in spite of himself because his heart remained sensitive to God even if he continued to fall to temptations. I have always had a chip on my shoulder on the Protestant teaching of salvation by faith alone… grace covering everything, because I have seen human nature take advantage of those teachings and excuse sin theologically (almost making it Jesus’ own fault by complaining “O Jesus, You just shouldn’t give me so much grace because then I couldn’t sin.”). Of course, I say that to Jesus and mean it entirely differently… I find myself always coming back to the cross and at times wishing it was me instead of Him.

Jesus and I have wrestled over my desire for Him, because I love Him so much, He truly is irresistible, and like the prophet Jeremiah who experience relationship with God in very intense and difficult situations, I think I would rather have God in whatever form He chooses to manifest Himself than no God at all. Yet I never find myself acting worthily enough to enter His presence. It’s like a death-wish, wanting to see the face of my God, my Jesus… “bright-shining as the sun” sounds like I would evaporate before wholly in His presence. It’s beyond the physical though, because since I have committed to loving my Jesus, I have also committed to living a holy life, that impossible standard set by Jesus to which I attain. Perfection doesn’t seem to spell out my name, though. Like David, every time I have been made upright, I make the same decision again, and have the humiliating task of confession that I once again failed my Jesus in the way I rashly had vowed I never would again. More responsibility for my sin, but grace as well. Grace in that there is always an opportunity to make a decision that is beyond me.

I used to think that the Christian life was something that made me victorious… like somehow when Jesus entered into me, He put all those fabulous perfections in me and made me better than I had been. I used to think Jesus was going to make me strong—now I think Jesus has become my strength, the light and joy of my salvation. How can I understand Jesus as coming to make the self in me strong, if that just tears away from His purpose? I am a human being, there is nothing in me that can approach the Father on my own, because I have these Achilles heals… fatal flaws, which draw me because they are alike me. I have been learning what it means for my strength to be my weaknesses and my weaknesses to be my strengths this semester. I find those parts of me that Jesus works in, that maybe He’s gifted me in, that I naturally excel in are most frequently the points of my downfall. For example, in learning what it means to love people, I am finding out about myself that I can love people very easily. In that, I want to see all people love each other… forget the differences that don’t matter, and as a united body extend the hands of Jesus to the world. In that, I trust too easily, too much and often overlook differences that may really matter for the sake of unity.

To use perhaps a rather disturbing metaphor, I find myself married to Jesus, but continuing an affair with an old lover from my sinful days, one whom I never married because then marriage wasn’t in my vocabulary, but we certainly lived together long enough for this ex-lover to know everything about me, what draws and attracts me, what I hate, how to keep me around and coming back… how to reach the very core of my heart. Jesus said that no man can love two masters…. But I find myself caught with both: I love how Jesus transforms me, life is so different when I am with Him… but oh what an unpleasant road He calls me too! Then self, my dead lover, is so natural, we fit so well together and it always offers the most appealing answers… just what I want to hear. But oh the guilt as I look at my watch and realize this lover has just consumed and warped what should have been given to my Jesus…I weep, but it is too late, my momentary indulgence has already conceived sin, and now I am plagued by guilt and shame… I feel I cannot go back to Jesus now. But self is only abusive, tries to cover the guilt, work the sin out of me, and as each moment passes, the sin is more and more full-grown in my selfishness. Once sin is born, I feel obligated to self, though sin is a hateful child… and my own desires have produced distance between Jesus and me. Yet Jesus comes to me and tells me that self does not have to be alive, the selfish desires which I find in myself do not have to bring forth a life of sin—He will take them and work in me, in spite of me, if I will only submit my will to Him.

Jesus promises to be strong in me, if I will let Him. But how often do I deny that, deny that what I am experiencing in my emotions, an almost overpowering desire that rivals the will to obey, is sin, and I try to justify it in Jesus? When I fail, I find I am unable to do right on my own, still, because I am still weak and powerless without Jesus. And then at times, then guilt makes me doubt whether or not I can ever make the right decision. I was reading Philippians from a different translation than I am used to, the New Living Translation, and was struck by 2.12b and 13: “Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases Him.” Jesus offers me a freedom from all the sin, if I will confess, repent, and relinquish the overburdening guilt. Will I as a woman be willing to abandon my attractive lover in order to just love Jesus? Why do I cling to those sin tendencies when I don’t have to and permit the guilt? Maybe allowing the guilt is sin tendency in and of itself, because I am voluntarily subjugating myself to something that gives me a task—and for me that makes the world so much easier—to be commissioned with something that makes me feel like I can be worthy of grace.

I have been reading a lot lately in a variety of fields about the female nature, so maybe this reluctance I have to accept grace only is that existential guilt factor we women wrestle with that men do not. The only reason I can identify that factor is because I have experienced it in my own life and witnessed it in the lives of other women… it seems a nearly universal stigma to female personhood. I was encouraged yesterday evening, having a hearty three-hour conversation with my friend and boss over this past year, that existential guilt of women is not a figment of my imagination.

So I look at this guilt which seems to accompany every sin I do in my relationship with Jesus, just because He really is so wonderful: I think of it as conscious guilt, something I know is wrong or guilt that weighs so heavily in my conscience that it begins to affect the rest of my life in tangible (or existential/perceivable) ways. I start behaving certain ways and performing certain actions to try and rid my conscience of the guilt. Here emerges my resistance to grace, because once I feel the guilt, and begin doing something to try and eliminate it, I resist the notion that guilt can be removed by something so simple as forgiveness. My faith wants a penance, maybe not to prove to God, but to prove to myself that I am really free. I have noticed from readings by different women as well as discussion that this guilt is very prevalent among women and because of it, we try and take on others’ guilt. All of this happens very naturally; perhaps we assume responsibility for the wrongs done to us, blaming ourselves as the cause of others’ actions, which can lead to over submission, equitable with enablement. I read an interesting book called Women Who Love too Much, discussing the desperate measures women would go to in voluntary subjugation in order to feel loved and relieve their own perceptions of guilt. If one adds Jesus to the mix, you start thinking that your sinful desires in selfishly wanting to change that person in order to interact with them on your terms is making you a crucifixion victim—suffering for Christ, leading to death by abuse (emotional if not physical). Existential guilt affects us even beyond our interactions with Jesus in terms of our sin tendencies or with other individuals… it affects the very core of at least the female nature. I find myself compelled and driven by emotions to natural acts which go directly contrary to godly conduct for me life.

I am caught then, between two fatal attractions: to the self, my soul will perish because it will never cease to be abused, will continually produce sin, and never be satisfied with guilt status. With Jesus, I am completely in love, yet so easily pulled away by very natural inclinations because the life I am called to with Jesus is not so natural: self-denial and crucifixion? Love in the face of hate? Love and give without return? But I would still desire to be near to Jesus, so I must learn this self-denial and just consider the ex-lover dead. May I not be a stumbling block to others’ faith either, one of those seductresses in proverbs who causes men to fall into sin, but may the Jesus in me truly be a blessing.