Monday 15 June 2020
Covid19 Virus or Plague
Much has been written, spoken, reported about this new intruder into the life of this society. Its called Covid19 and declared a pandemic.
As daily reports keep coming via the airwaves though emails, news reports, internet, notices on shops, businesses, lifts, buses, door posts and all other places, we in 21st century are faced with an enemy not experienced before.
Trying to come to terms with our normal liberties suddenly taken away and having to do what is determined for us as best measure, I have realised that the modern human has not in recent memory of at least one hundred years had to account to anyone or even be forced to do as told.
The needs of the modern person, work, life activities, study, travel and even worship have been removed from our convenience and freedom and forbidden to participate.
An interloper has snuck into human life and created a deep fear. dug deeply and entered our space. An interloper which coiled through global society with such speed that it could almost be suggested that it was planned to erupt simultaneously and has remained like an overstaying guest.
Fear, a primitive emotion embedded into our psyche as a means of alert, an alarm system, which warns of danger has embedded itself into society. Fear of something fearful and dangerous.
Fear as an alarm system is good. It alerts to danger and assists in escape. However, fear can also be destructive because it paralyses, and worse, urges decision making during a time of instability.
The daily reports of the dangers of C19, the percentages of those affected and those who have succumbed. The 24/7 reporting of the disastrous state of society. The losses which this virus has created. The disruption of life as we know it. The constant negative narrative all create an atmosphere of fear and danger..
World leaders and their response to the virus have been interesting to observe. A virus which has developed a language of its own. "social distancing" "lockdown" "self isolation" "strict hand hygiene" is the language spoken by all countries.
This pandemic, as WHO called it, has paralysed employment and thus crushing of nations' employment and economy to such a degree that it may mean that some of the nations may never recover.
And with the engendered fear, the lockdown, the isolation, the social distancing, the demands that all succumb happily to the new rules of life and do as our leaders (at times power relishing) demand of us or police activity and fines imposed. What society are we reminded of? The thought means more fear.
What type of virus is this that has such power to even shut down worship? what type of virus is this that can bring society to its knees?
And why such drastic responses when the "virus" has been loitering in the background for months? why such speed for global control of all humanity?
Or perhaps it's not a virus after all. A virus which we usually are rid of in a matter of days, but could it be instead a "plague"? Such an ugly word and fearsome word and fear creating word. Is this the problem? a "plague" like the ones we have heard and read about which happened in the past? but because of global media availability the word "plague" could cause panic whereas "virus" is a regular visitor in all households and recognised and manageable.
Unusual days, unusual times but the visitor an old intruder who has returned with a modern name and visiting much larger vulnerable humans.
Sunday 13 October 2019
A Ritual Dis honoured
Dear friends in my last issue of newsletter (issue 132) I spoke
about a service that some abortion facilities offer the aborting women, that is,
the services of a Doula. A doula is
meant to be a pregnancy and delivery support, one could say, companion for this
last part of the journey.
Abortion facilities
have taken this noble task and now use it to stand by the woman as she has her
abortion.then her job is to calm her down and allay her fears. Etc. It seems that abortion facilities (never use the word clinics because clinic implies medical care, healing not killing) are able to take some beautiful life element and turn it into something grotesque.
A new “service” came to my attention in early September. Service whereby a late term abortionist in USA (Dr? Leroy Carhart) offers to the aborting woman/parents the opportunity of viewing, holding, cuddling, taking photos, having a footprint of the baby, funeral services. This after the baby has been killed by abortion and delivered dead.
I must admit to sitting down and shedding many tears of anger and frustration. After twenty three years I keep thinking that I cannot hear anything more that will distress me but yes this story broke my heart.
I’ve held a dead baby (not abortion) in my arms over thirty years ago and then followed with the mum behind the tiny white coffin and to this day I cannot forget the look of the dead infant or the unnatural stillness of her mother. Her mother was in shock and distant. Away. During the burial she did not look at the tiny coffin, or little doll like infant. Holding her hand it was like holding the hand of a person dying. Cold. No tears, just not there.
I’ve seen my week old baby sister in her little white coffin and remember the look on her face. Her gently closed eyes and beautiful lashes. I can still see them. This over 45 years ago. I remember the coffin sitting on our laps in Dad’s car and his stoic face as we drove to the cemetery (mum still ill in hospital) to bury her. I still have her certificate and her plot number. I remember the awful grey, different, unusual weird colour on her face and her gently closed eyes.
Like they would open any minute and she would smile. Like a little baby doll in a beautiful white lacy dress and such tiny hands. I remember Carmelina and the image of her and the image of my friend’s baby and I remember the image of our family friends whose 7 month old little boy died of SIDS and the parents so still. Not crying. Just still.
These images of death of infants never go away because the death of a baby is so unnatural. It’s not meant to happen that way. Babies are born and they grow and become older and so forth. And when they die through miscarriage or stillbirth (unintentional death) are never forgotten. The day, time, moment remembered.
So how can this abortionist invite parents who have ASKED that their baby be killed by him in some gruesome method then offer them what he considers consolation?
How can he suggest a viewing, just like any “normal” death?
How can he suggest that once the process of healing begins they might want a memory of their child?
If the abortion and death requires a “process of healing” then surely the murder of their child must mean something to them because there is a “process of healing” which will happen.
How can he convince himself and others that he and his practice offer the parents “kindness, courtesy, justice, love and respect for over 45 years?”
Who’s the courtesy, kindness etc. for? The Parents? what about the baby? Big enough to be viable, what does he offer the child? A Potassium injection to the heart, Partial birth abortion or some other more gruesome death?
Has he killed so many babies that he has lost all sense of right and wrong? All sense of humanity? All sense of being himself human being. Of simply feeling. This surely must be it.
What kind of wickedness has overcome this society that these things can happen?
Are these deaths sacrifices to atone for the sins of parents, women eating of the fruit again, and men being absent, society, and humanity?
He has much information on his website which one can read with horror and shudders.
He does not shy away from the term “baby” he knows what he is doing. Indeed his response in an interview when asked if he has a problem with killing a baby, he said “I have no problem if it’s in the mother’s uterus”
Is this where the theory about a child not being human being until it is outside of the mother’s body? So what is it immediately after the birth if not the same baby before birth or is this law cop out?
Conjugal Honour (Casti Connubii Pius XI).
“It was because you were unteachable” he said “that Moses allowed you o divorce your wives, but it was not so from the beginning” (Mt 19:8).
It’s because in the past two generations we
have been found to be unteachable and a pseudo type of relationship became
confused with conjugal intimacy and conjugal honour. A forced and artificial application of the
conjugal state has been forced upon society. A societal invention. A pseudo conjugal state which cannot even
contemplate but only simulate the intimate community where conjugal honour resides
and its where “life” can abide.
Beginning with “living together” which can be said to be a trial run or even a
probation marriage where if difficulties appear the intimate community of the
couple can be disbanded or even when
desires wane and something new is sought then that community which can envelope
and protect life is abandoned.
The couple entering pseudo marriage cannot
establish the intimate community which lasts the term of life, the same life
that they hide from view because of the agreed temporariness of their pledge
based only on physical responses.
Otherwise the union would be sought to be made whole and total. The Conjugal union would be so honoured that
it would seem to be right that that union be protected from intrusion into that
intimate community so that life residing there would know that honour.
Probation intimacy, divorce, make to fade
that intimate community (where love abides) because both are a rejection or
refusal of that knowledge about conjugal honour. Conjugal honour has slowly
been withdrawn from the intimacy of the couple.
Rejection of conjugal honour cannot see that in
every woman is written the code word
“mother.” In that conjugal community “mother” has a special meaning. And
male has the code word “father” with its own special meaning. These two words
are the result of honour given to both who’ve entered that special intimate
community which constitutes married state or marriage. Conjugal honour is
deeply written into the sexual act and may not to be violated because “it was
not so in the beginning” (Mt 19:8.)
Loss of conjugal reverence has led to
abortion to exponential growth. Loss of
knowledge about conjugal reverence has meant that there are several generations
who have not known or been taught about holiness of the body and how the body
has been designed to be honoured because it has been created to be a part of an
intimate community in the image of divine, because like the divine it was
designed to perpetuate life. Not a
group or community of people gathering with the same beliefs and ideals but an
intimate community so holy and where
only two may enter and be held together there to continue the work of
furthering creation. The template
community designed by God “in our own image” (Gn1:27). This new intimate community
is to imitate that love and life.
We have abortion to horrendous degrees. We
have purposely sterile relationships. We
have death demanding calls, because first there was a loss of honour. Loss of
conjugal honour. Loss of conjugal awe. Loss of conjugal reverence and unholy intrusion
into that space of intimacy where only honour, respect, reverence, and awe
should have abided because this sacred place is the office of the nature of
love. The understanding what intimate
love is and be manifested.
Modern sexual couplings (experimental/life choices/refusal of conjugal intimacy) cannot declare conjugal honour because of the pseudo nature of that intimacy fails part of its mandate, donation from him to her and her to him and their individual donation gives a gift of wholly and completely of themselves to the other. No other can ever replicate the original donation.
Within every marriage there abide three persons, the husband, wife and Holy Spirit (lord and giver of life) who enters the union and remains. The spirit does not know how to be party to fourth or fifth, sixth, intrusion. The holiness of that union is so because the Spirit has accepted the vow of fidelity and the spirit does not know how to be unfaithful. Understanding of the language of the body not in prudishness but with
respect, reverence and awe because it’s the way God deemed the mystery of life
A return to the understanding of how God desired life must needs be the new overtures spoken to humankind which must speak again to man and woman and speak to them of their precious spousal nature which is not to be used and abused, discarded, because reverence for their bodies has been rejected and the community of intimacy invaded and the gift designed in that community, the infant discarded, but they are to hear their true story which is that they have been created for life and great honour.
The new language must the speak truth within these times, the truth which has been lost or even forgotten or a distant memory, as the echo of something which happened long ago. It must speak of the conjugal mystery an honour due to it which tabernacles life. It must do this because due to the loss of such knowledge the language spoken in this day serves death. The new language for recovery of treasures of the Garden (conjugal intimacy) must speak of Holiness and speak the word life.
Dear
friends I hope you like the above I began thinking about this and its meaning
when I came across the words “conjugal honour”. I have pondered much about this
as I scan our society and its trajectory.
************************
Modern sexual couplings (experimental/life choices/refusal of conjugal intimacy) cannot declare conjugal honour because of the pseudo nature of that intimacy fails part of its mandate, donation from him to her and her to him and their individual donation gives a gift of wholly and completely of themselves to the other. No other can ever replicate the original donation.
Within every marriage there abide three persons, the husband, wife and Holy Spirit (lord and giver of life) who enters the union and remains. The spirit does not know how to be party to fourth or fifth, sixth, intrusion. The holiness of that union is so because the Spirit has accepted the vow of fidelity and the spirit does not know how to be unfaithful.
A return to the understanding of how God desired life must needs be the new overtures spoken to humankind which must speak again to man and woman and speak to them of their precious spousal nature which is not to be used and abused, discarded, because reverence for their bodies has been rejected and the community of intimacy invaded and the gift designed in that community, the infant discarded, but they are to hear their true story which is that they have been created for life and great honour.
The new language must the speak truth within these times, the truth which has been lost or even forgotten or a distant memory, as the echo of something which happened long ago. It must speak of the conjugal mystery an honour due to it which tabernacles life. It must do this because due to the loss of such knowledge the language spoken in this day serves death. The new language for recovery of treasures of the Garden (conjugal intimacy) must speak of Holiness and speak the word life.
************************
Sunday 13 May 2018
So this is not Life?
His
Holiness Pope Francis.
We often hear it said that, with respect to relativism and the
flaws of our present world, the situation of migrants, for example, is a lesser
issue. Some Catholics consider it a secondary issue compared to the “grave”
bioethical questions. That a politician looking for votes might say such a thing
is understandable, but not a Christian, for whom the only proper attitude is to
stand in the shoes of those brothers and sisters of ours who risk their lives
to offer a future to their children”
We work hard to save a child from abortion (rightly so) but then stand by whilst human trafficking of enormous proportions is carried out in our day and age. Trafficking of young little children for the purpose of sexual gratification by wicked/evil individuals and groups? As someone said to me recently “because of their innocence and “virginity” What have we become that we have businesses which would do this to children.
Yes we’ve worked and will continue to work hard to save babies in the womb because we believe that they have a right to their life as a gift given to the parents even if they don’t know it and we have saved the child in the womb only to let that child be exploited, used, abused, starved, beaten? Is being pro-life only about life in the womb but nothing else? Are we pro-lifers sabotaging our language just as surely as the pro aborts and pro choicers who sabotage the word “choice” and “rights” are we going to do the same? With the word “pro-life? Meaning only life in the womb? Are we only interested in life in womb or life of a child in its continuum? Life is life. A child is a child even when they are being raped and then passed on to someone else etc. etc. to do the same.
We all remember an image of a little 3 year old Syrian boy found washed up on sea shore about 2-3 years ago. It broke all our hearts seeing that little one floating face down in the water. Dead. Have we
so quickly forgotten? Was the life of
that child whose parents let him live (not aborted him) but then he was lost
due to place of his birth and right/wrong political landscape?
What about pro-life and euthanasia
where elderly are now fearful of going to hospitals just in case they never
leave hospitals alive. Or even the disabled whose life is deemed valueless. Is
this not Pro Life?
We all of us write about our horror
and euthanasia, indeed at this moment we have the story of a distinguished
elderly professor who has gone to Switzerland to have himself done in.
Or even the tragic story of young
Alfie Evans whose life was deemed so useless that even with all the world’s
attention and offers of help from others professionals, hospitals etc. the
courts and hospital and not his parents chose and carried out their decision
that the child must die.
The Holy Father is recognizing these
matters as pro-life matters and we must fight to reclaim the entire meaning of
value of life beginning at conception, its hospitality in the womb and then
deep respect for the humanity from birth to end of life. Life is a continuum it always begins with the
union of a sperm and ova and concludes in a human whose life was intended for
good and joy and mirror the image of its creator and co-workers (parents).
This
little two year old Alfie Evans, just like the little boy washed on sea shore
tugged at heartstrings of all throughout the world, i.e. all who followed the
story. After being removed from life
support he died in the early hours of Saturday morning after having breathed on
his own for 24 hrs. In a hollow voice
the little one’s father said: “My gladiator lay down his shield and gained his
wings at 02:30…absolutely heartbroken. I love you my guy.”
his mother also spoke of his little wings and flying. This is not pro-life work? What is it then?
And this only a matter of short time after
the other child Charlie Gard, at the same hospital and same illness, was also
doomed to die. This should never have
happened. The hospital or the courts or
no one but the parents are the guardians of their child. Or has big brother
started flexing his muscles with the youngest in the womb, disabled, and elderly?
Already?
Is this what we can expect in the
future? Is this not pro-life matters?
This
child Alfie Evans had been granted Italian citizenship to be able to be taken
the Vatican-owned
Bambino Gesù children’s hospital which
had offered to take the child for further diagnosis and treatment, but enter
the British courts which repeatedly refused to allow the transfer, ruling that
it is not in the child’s best interest. So the courts and the hospital and
maybe even the janitor at the hospital deemed that it was in the child’s best
interests but not the parents? Stopping these matters, is this not
pro-life? Where were the parent’s rights
to determine which way to go with their
child? Their child. Or does this mean
that already when someone goes into hospital for treatment they lose their
rights? This is not life matters? We
pro-lifers don’t fight this? Is it too hard?
The Holy Father Pope Francis, supported and prayed for the child and family and offered to encourage public prayer for them who met with Alfie’s father last week, has offered public prayers for Alfie and his family several times, including at a general audience and in several twitter posts
“Moved by the prayers and immense solidarity
If I were a British mother I would not take my child near that place because immediately you enter the doors you lose rights over the outcome and treatment of your child.
This is not pro-life? What are we doing when we can say that these matters are not pro-life?
What are we doing playing with words or semantics.
We must not forget that life is always life and death, no matter how it occurs, is always death.
How interesting in the same week a prince was
born. The media and world rejoiced (and
rightly so) but another young prince (to his parents) was intentionally
left/made/forced to die. There is a
tragic irony in that isn’t there?
The Holy Father Pope Francis, supported and prayed for the child and family and offered to encourage public prayer for them who met with Alfie’s father last week, has offered public prayers for Alfie and his family several times, including at a general audience and in several twitter posts
“Moved by the prayers and immense solidarity
shown little Alfie Evans, I renew my appeal
that the suffering of his parents may be heard and that their desire to seek
new forms of treatment may be granted,” he said Monday on Twitter.
But the final and tragic decision was to keep
the child at that Hospital and die. One
must ask the questions what that hospital had to hide to fight so hard to keep
that child there.
All of this saga not pro-life?
He was spared from death in the womb to be
insisted that he die by same people who would no doubt have carried out many
abortions.
If I were a British mother I would not take my child near that place because immediately you enter the doors you lose rights over the outcome and treatment of your child.
When the Holy Father speaks about poverty
this is considered much much less of a pro-life matter.
Have we forgotten the images of little ones
with bloated bellies and hollow eyes? Or even desperate mothers offering an
empty breast for comfort to her dying little child?This is not pro-life? What are we doing when we can say that these matters are not pro-life?
What are we doing playing with words or semantics.
We must not forget that life is always life and death, no matter how it occurs, is always death.
Sunday 10 December 2017
Male and Female He Created them
In the beginning God created male and female, human, one
being, one nature, but separate, different yet together. An image of the Divine Trinity. One Being, one nature yet entirely different.
(Gen 2:23). This very real difference yet sameness of nature (male and female)
is not reducible and cannot be denied or changed. The differences yet the sameness are
inscribed in the essence of both male and female.
The principle of this difference between male and female
is then tempered and strengthened and confirmed with free will to lead to a
communion of body and spirit without reservation and without need to return to
the womb for comfort. The womb of the
past is replaced by a new womb where male and female tie their bond to one
another. “This is why a man leaves his
mother and father and cleave to his wife and they shall be as one flesh” (Gen
2:24).
Human beings have a nature perfectly attuned to
complementarity without which there is disunity and dis-communion.
In a society like modern society which is fixated with
over sexualised images and over sexualised language and innuendo, the call for
deconstruction of marriage seems not unexpected because marriage means something
else. It has deeper meanings, an external manifestation of an internal and eternal
ecstasy. An overflow of love. So a society which does not see marriage in its
deepest meaning must surely decline into something we witness today.
Marriage in its original design was for male and female.
God formed the Y chromosome (him) and the X chromosome for her, and together they
formed the XY “male and female He created them.” However the XY is to be carried by the male
so that he in his giving donates the son or daughter to each other. She on her
behalf donates only what she has been given and that is her X chromosome but also
the gift of carrying the joined XX (daughter) or XY (son) on their behalf.
Imagine he carries the gender she carries and delivers
their fruit of that union.
As I ponder on the words “male and female He created
them” I am always sent into deep thought.
We are told that God created Adam from the soil and then breathed into
his nostrils His very breath, then God put Adam into a state of ecstasy or
“deep sleep” and from Adam “made” Eve as companion for the man. Which means
that Eve received her “God-ness” from “man?” In silence, where not even “Adam”
may see the moment of “creation.” How?
From the same soil? No. Woman is
to be more refined so she can clearly “hear” the voice of “life” and respond.
In the moment of “conjugal ecstasy,” is the moment when God formed Eve for man.
One like himself (human) but different who like him creates. So that on His own He has desired to have
leave open the way for His own “gift” to them, life to be received. Creator God says that from deep
within and alone Adam (man) is incomplete and on her own Eve (woman) is incomplete.
What intricate mastery there is in this idea of creation?
And also how did God “Take out” from Adam the X
chromosome to create Eve from it? Enter
the Holy Spirit. We know that the Holy
Spirit “Overshadowed Mary” who could only have within her X chromosome, so how
did she deliver an XY (son) and not a (daughter) but she did miraculously
conceive Jesus. Could the same Holy Spirit “overshadow” the X chromosome taken
from Adam and birth Eve? The Holy Spirit, the spirit of Life created the first
prototype and told them to continue his work by being fruitful and multiplying.
Is the sin of Adam and Eve against the Holy Spirit the
Lord and Giver of life and that is why Jesus says that sin against the holy
spirit cannot ever be forgiven because it is the Holy Spirit who “overshadows”
creation to make it come into being? And rejection of what the Holy Spirit has
brought into being is a rejection of the desire of the Father brought about by
the Holy Spirit.It is the Holy Spirit who says yes to the new idea and work of creation of God. It is the Holy Spirit who overshadows the x or y and enlivens these so that long before there is even a hint of conception a new creation has been knitted together by the overshadowing, which of course, means in secret and away from vision.
The theme of overshadowing or tabernacling is important because we encounter this right at the beginning of time, the beginning of all creation and throughout scriptures in cloud overshadowing Moses on Sinai, Cloud overshadowing the people of Israel as they travelled through desert, the Cloud overshadowing Jesus and Peter James and John on Tabor. And of course the overshadowing of Mary to conceive Jesus.
And this overshadowing and tabernacling in the form of a cloud or pillar of fire or quiet whisper, or hand which covers cavern on the mount in order to protect as the Lord passes by, the burning bush which bears the Lord without being consumed, is believed to be the Holy Spirit. The Shekinah. The Kabód, the Glory of Yahweh which created them male and female, at the spoken word. the mysterious genders which makes them same but very different. This makes them have a need for one another and fulfil the words of God “it is not good that the man should be alone, I will make for him a helper fit for him.” (Gen. 2:18). And to fulfil the command to be “fruitful, multiply, fill the earth” (Gen. `:28). Man without woman, and woman without man cannot fulfil this command. Each alone is barren.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)