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pamphletstoinspire · 3 years

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The Lord is Just (and Merciful)

It’s no secret that society is in a downward moral spiral. Family, self-control, self-sacrifice, defense of the defenseless—none of these are a given anymore. It isn’t the first time that this has been the case in human history, but it makes it no less concerning.

Moved with a desire to console the heart of Jesus, I’ve seen a lot of fellow Catholics speaking out on social media about their plans to take on additional penances, as reparation for the lack of love that so many show God. I trust their discernment to the spiritual fathers in their lives, and I am glad that there are people in the Church that are focused on taking on additional penance for the sake of the love of Christ.

Many of us may find ourselves unable to take on the penances that we would like to this Lent. We love God, but our life and vocational circumstances make it imprudent to do so. A mother of a newborn isn’t necessarily called to begin going to early morning daily Mass. Someone with special needs (like autism or an anxiety disorder or ADHD) might not be able to manage a full holy hour. Someone deep in the throes of a new grief probably won’t be able to lead a Lenten Bible Study. Even when our spirit is very willing, our flesh is often weak.

Actually, let’s look more closely at the story in Scripture where that phrase comes from.

Mercy in the Garden of Gethsemane

When Jesus went to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, he brought along his apostles. I always find it interesting that he didn’t bring his mother or any female disciples with him. I am sure that those women would have been wide awake, ready to offer him comfort as he wept.

Of course, Jesus knew that. But still, he brought his apostles. Bless their hearts, but the apostles just struggled to get it right in the Gospels, didn’t they? They had one task that night—stay awake and pray. They knew Jesus was acting strangely that night, and that something was seriously wrong. But what did they do? They fell asleep.

I didn’t grow up with brothers, but as I’ve gotten to know other men over the years—friends, spiritual fathers and spiritual sons, my husband—I can attest to how predictable this behavior was from a group of men. Men have a deep, deep desire to “fix” things when someone they love is suffering. When they can’t fix it, you can see the incredible weariness on their faces. Their exhaustion comes not from apathy, but from a sort of system overload.

Now, if I had been Jesus, I would have climbed down that hill, seen all my best friends sound asleep and felt a wave of deep sadness, loneliness, and maybe some frustration and anger. I would wonder if their slumber meant a lack of love, if it meant that they didn’t care.

But Jesus arrived at a very different conclusion. His heart was moved with a loving sort of pity for them. He knew that they had fallen asleep from the exhaustion of grief.

Perhaps it would have been just of him to chastise them for not keeping vigil. But the justice of God doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It is also tempered by mercy.

How does this relate to our own Lenten practice?

Penance Received by Mercy

I have three living children, aged 10, 7, and 3. My expectations for them are wildly different. I know what each child struggles with, and I can tell when they are trying as hard as they can (and when they’re trying to get away with mischief). Right now, my three-year-old is in a stage of classic three-year-old behavior—yelling, meltdowns, disobedience, etc. She spent the whole day recently, getting into one scrape after another and refusing to obey my requests. I tried time outs. I tried raising my voice and speaking firmly. But, in the end, I remembered—she’s three years old. She’s grumpy because that’s developmentally appropriate. Disciplining her is important (and she is working towards breaking the family record for time-outs, apparently) but so is loving her in more lenient ways. On the day in question, I knew that she had woken up too early, hadn’t been napping, and was tired. So, in the end, I finally stopped trying to put her in time out alone, and I laid next to her and gave her a snuggle. It worked. She needed mercy.

God is a far better parent than I am, and so he knows this even more. His children are different, and they each have unique weaknesses and struggles. He knows the perfect balance of discipline and affection for each child, and he knows when a child of his is giving him their best. He doesn’t point fingers and say, “Child of mine…why can’t you be more holy like that person??” He knows that for some of us, this Lent will begin with our attempt to break the world record for time-outs…errr, I mean, penances…and will likely end with him wrapping our grumpy selves in his loving arms.

He knows us. He loves us. He sees our efforts. And, like my grumpy three-year-old—he wants us to know that we are safe to struggle with improving our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. He is consoled by our weak (but sincere) efforts.

This Lent, as we stumble along with our penitential practices, let us remember he receives them with not just justice, but with the most tender Fatherly mercy we can imagine.

BY: MICHELE CHRONISTER

#the lord is just

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dontatmethanks · 5 years

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Part of your world

A Levihan fic (mermaid AU)

AN: Ahhhh! I’m so glad you guys liked this fic 😭💕 So I’m gonna give y’all what you asked for, here’s chapter 2!!!

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Chapter 2:

It’s been three days they received Levi into their care, and Hange has maintained a vigilance that can only be compared to that of a mother bear. She made sure he was comfortable and fed, checking his injuries twice a day much to his annoyance. It was like pulling teeth when it came to giving him the pain meds and antibiotics, he absolutely refused to injest them.

“Levi, I swear they don’t taste like anything! All you have to do is swallow.” Hange urged him, thrusting the hand that was filled with the medication in his face. He moved away from her and growled low in his throat.

“ I’m not putting those in my mouth.” He seethes at her while glaring at the pills and baring his teeth.

Hange sighs and drops her arm, settling her bottom back on the rock she was sitting on.

“Mm, well I guess I can just give them to you through an injection then.” She says in a cheery tone as she pulls out a syringe from her kit next to her. When Levi sees the sharp glint of the need he immediately wrenched himself away from her, scooting backwards and hissing. His injured tail scrapes against the rocks which causes him to howl in pain. Hange drops the string back into the kit and throws her hands up.

“Okay, no needles got it.” And when he didn’t move or look at her hange shuffled a little closer , “hey it’s okay, I promised I wouldn’t hurt you right? I just want make sure you’re comfortable.” She says in a reassuring tone.

Levi looks at her this time and at her empty hands, then uncurls himself and moves closer to her before saying, “just give me those.” And pointing to the pill bottles sitting next to her kit. Hange smiled and nodded before retrieving the correct dosage. She reaches out to him with her empty hand and gestures towards his hand.

He blinks slowly and stares at her hand before hesitantly placing his hand in hers. She rugs him forward and he freezes as she drops the pills in his hand. She notices that his nails are pretty sharp but odd thing about the was that they were clean.

Levi snatches his hand back and shoved the pills in his mouth before she can stop him. He chews them violently and Hange just gapes at him when he swallows.

“There that wasn’t so bad huh?” Hange grins at him and he just wrinkles his nose at her.

“Tasted like shit.”

Hange laughs before saying, “you were supposed to swallow them instead.” And zips her kit closed, watching him slide into the water slowly wincing slightly. Leaning against the rocks he flexes his tail a bit before dipping his entire body beaneath the surface.

She decides to leave him alone for a while, Erwin needs her to get some paperwork done anyways. She collects her things before making her way out of the enclosure and up the observation deck and into the research building. The facility was built like a campus of sorts, and split into three large buildings that they called wings. The research building was on the left side of the main building and the building to the right was where the medical wing was and all the team training took place. Behind the buildings were extensions that lead to multiple enclosures that were modeled after zoos and sanctuaries.

She made her way to her office, which was conveniently in the research building, but before she would stop by Erwin’s office to brief him on her patient’s recovery.

“Dr.Hange.” He greeted her as she walked in and sat on the the couch near the door, sighing contentedly.

“How is the mer doing?” He asked, not looking up from the paperwork he was filling out.

“Oh Levi? He’s healing okay, enough for him to go in the water. His tail is what I’m more worried about, it’s gonna affect his ability to swim.” She explains to him in a serious tone. Erwin looks up at her and folds his arm on the desk in front of him.

“Ive seen the x-rays, he won’t be able to survive on his own like that.”

Hange nods. “So this won’t be a catch and release thing?”

Erwin only nods. Hange frowns as she gets up from her seat and dismisses herself to her office. She felt bad for Levi, they would treat him well here but the fact that he won’t be able to survive on his own is quite sad. They had a few patients like him who will be spending the rest of their lives here, retired from the wildlife. Hange hums to herself quietly looking through his file that was filled with notes she wrote during observation. She scribbled down every detail she knew about from his behavior to his injuries, his preferred food, hair color etc.

She was hoping for him to tell her about his life in the wild, if he had some sort of pod or wa he alone, but she couldn’t pry anything from him. He only spoke to her when he needed something, or when he was curious enough to ask about human objects. Smiling to herself she closed the file.

He would be taken care of, she’d make sure of it.

By the time she finishes her paperwork it’s already seven pm and her being a workaholic decides she’d stay overnight. She wanted to observe Levi tonight just in case.

Grabbing a couple of her books from the bookshelf in her office she made her into the observation deck. She wondered if the mer could read or even write, he seemed fluent in his English so she decided to test it out. Making her way into his enclosure she notices that he’s not anywhere near the resting area. She looked up at the setting sun and then at the water, he was probably exploring underneath the water.

Hange plops herself on one of the rocks near the edge of the water and rolls up the sleeves of the pants she changed into. She dips her feet into to the water sighing contentedly and moves them around a bit. There’s some movement to her right but she pretends to ignore it. A slightly webbed hand grabs her right foot and tosses it out of the water making her fall back a little, she cackles and wiggles her toes.

She moves back towards the edge and is met with Levi’s pissed face, thin eyebrows furrowed in annoyance.

“What are you doing you shitty human?” He grinds out.

Hange giggles and crosses her legs, “just making sure the water temperature is right.”

“It’s fine.” He glares at her, “keep your disgusting human feet out of the water I swim in”

“Okay, okay I’m sorry.” Hange giggles at his sour expression. “ How is your tail?”

Levi shrugs and looks away, crossing his arms over the rocky edge and placing his chin on top of them. “Hurts when I move it too much, makes me swim all weird.” He tells he in a bored tone.

“That’s because your missing a fin...you won’t be able to survive on your own like that.” She cringes when she explains it to him. She can see his face fall a little, he almost looks sad.

Hange clears her throat awkwardly and grabs one of the books she brought.

“I have something for you.” She tells him and he looks at her curiously.

“What is it?” He asks her.

“It’s a book.” She tells him moving closer and showing it to him. Her looks at it then gives her a blank stare.

“What the hell is a book?”

Hange snorts and the flips through the pages . “A book can be something to learn from or it can be a form of entertainment, this one for example is called an ‘encyclopedia of marine life’. ”

She stops at a random page and places it on the space between them. She point later at the picture of a sunfish before saying, “it tells you information about practically every creature in the sea.” Levi scoots closet to examine the page. “Except you guys, encyclopedias are outdated haha.”

Levi was just staring at the picture, he looked at her and then back to the picture.

“What does it say?”

Ah, she figured.

“Don’t worry we’ll work on teaching you how to read.” Levi looks up at her confusion plastered all over his features. She just smiles and picks up the book.

“For now I’ll just read it to you.” She says, “get comfy.” She places the book on her lap and flips back to the beginning and begins to read in a soft tone. He listens, head resting against the palm of his hand, leaning to inspect every picture she shows him. He forgets about the pain coming from his injuries, he forgets about the fact that he won’t be able to swim on his own anymore. He just hangs on to every picture and every word that comes out of her mouth. He take a good look at the woman who focuses on the page infront of her. He observes her facial features, dark brown eyes, hooked nose , soft brown locks of wavy hair pulled back into a shitty looking ponytail. He normally detests humans, but this human, he thinks....this one is okay.

By the time she gets to the twentieth page she stops and looks at him. He’s asleep on the rock next to her, curled Into himself, gills fluttering softly. He looks peaceful when he lets his guard down. Hange smiles and closes the book which causes him to jolt awake, rubbing at his bleary eyes.

“I think the hammock would be more comfortable,” she says to him gesturing at the hanging object behind her. “ for your tail.”

He blinks and nods.

“Need some help getting up there?”

He hesitates for a minute before nodding slowly .

He lets her help him onto the hammock, she is careful of his injuries. After he is situated she grabs the books and bids him a goodnight.

“Wait.” He stops her, clawed hand grabbing at her sweater. She stops and raises an eyebrow at him.

“Can you...can you uh leave it, the book?” He asks her in a small voice gesturing towards the encyclopedia, it surprises her how shy he sounds. She gives him a tender smile.

“Of course.” She says, handing it to him. He grabs it and tucks it under his arm, as if it were some sort of precious treasure.

“Thank you.” He whispers, eyelids drooping a little.

Hange’s smile only gets wider.

“No problem grumpy, good night.”

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AN: So that’s the second chap for you guys ahhh! Thank you for all the nice comments,likes and reblogs you guys 🤧💕 I’m honestly winging this story but the inspiration is coming to me y’all the next chapter is gonna be so cute just wait 😤.

Anywayssssss, until next time 😘

part 3

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notimetoanalysee · 5 years

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Real li(e/fe)

This is sick. Truly, inexplicably sick. Shifting attention from one stimulus to another. From messaging your loved ones to replying customers. Checking Instagram, while deciding to book a flight and then in a moment of recall in mind that you wanted to see that deep movie.

Oh.

What a pity.

You don’t have enough time for everything.

I spilled my coffee on the table while typing this. My hands are slightly shaking — although I’ve taken 3 pills of tranquilizers today.

Wait, and we (me and a friend of mine) wanted to make a podcast.

This is too much.

All of these.

Too. Fucking. Much.

We should stop.

We should stop posting so many “content-in-order-to-create-even-more-content”. We should talk less. We should do our jobs without switching to small talks every ten minutes.

We ought to stay sane.

We need to stay focused in order to stay alive.

In the morning, I was looking out of my window and staring at the schoolyard nearby. And there was something that drew my attention. The gateman was withdrawing mobile phones from kids. I stared at this scene and a thought rushed in my head: “I wish I went to this school.”

Afterward, I did my usual morning routine — ten minutes of yoga, coffee and — opening my Mac in order to start checking emails and dive in the online world of my usual job tasks.

I woke up at 8 pm — no, I didn’t sleep during the day, but my mind went automatic — I was replying to my work emails, cooking, washing my clothes, I even talked to my loved ones — and yet I felt like I slept for the whole day. My brain was in a stupor. My hands were shaking.

I was confused.

Multitasking, they say.

Gosh.

I felt I needed even more tranquilizers.

I don’t like an exaggeration. I don’t want to lie — not every day is like today. Sometimes I manage to work until late at night and stay fully awake while having a lot of things on the go. I manage not to have enough sleep and yet perform well in my daily life.

And yet — today’s condition is rather normal, than rare.

And I ask myself — what should I do? I turned off almost all notifications.

Trust me, I’m not a newbie in psychology — I am quite familiar with a concept of deep work and I read “Flow” by Csikszentmihalyi (although, I had to google his surname again).

But still — how much discipline does it take to stay awake and be present?

How do you separate your work from your relationships, when both are 80% in your iPhone?

Should we delete messengers when we work?

I do a lot of stuff to clear my weekends — I don’t check Facebook, I turn off all notifications from Outlook, I try to read more (although, I still use my iPhone for this).

Regardless, I quite often find myself lost in thoughts and misfocused from a current task, whatever it is.

There is a place for great insight — “Eureka! I have found a solution!”

But I haven’t.

I try to implement enough discipline in my life — yoga, reading every day at least 20 minutes, long walks, almost no notifications from messengers (unless I push the button and check it deliberately), regular uninstalling of time-consuming apps (Instagram mostly), never installed Facebook app on my phone and I even found a widget for unfollowing everyone there (including groups and pages).

It’s better now.

But the battle is still going.

And what happens nowadays?

We use social media as platforms for selling. We use it for propaganda. We use it for sharing our views on eating, sport, exercise, a way of living, our political views and, moreover, we post too much. The first second you are bored — the next second you’re posting some memes/selfies/quotes on your Instagram page.

That’s still okay (!).

We can use social media for self-soothing. For raising awareness. We communicate through social media. We influence. We shape thoughts. We create ideas. We can post whatever we want.

But the more followers you have — the bigger is your power of influence. If you follow someone — you are ultimately vulnerable. You can read some post at the wrong time. You can perceive a wrong idea of someone’s life. When sad or lonely, you can beat yourself mentally even more by looking at polished and perfect pictures of your friends/bloggers/anyone you follow. When in a creative crisis, you can shut down your authentic voice just by contemplating too much information from other artists.

The list is never-ending.

If we have accounts, if we follow — we should stay vigilant. We should be aware.

Information is the power — and it’s a time bomb too.

When you wake up in the morning and grab your phone — stop for a moment. Are you truly ready to perceive tons of opinions, thoughts, advice, states, ideas, comments, pictures, etc.?

Did you check how you feel? Did you complete your own morning routine before entering a world of information — which is determined to shift your attention from important things — just because it’s supposed to function that way?

Just because every application is made with a purpose to hold your attention longer.

To make you feel comfortable and stay for a while. Checking your friends’ photos. Then following this inspiring influencer. Then learning some skills through social media (languages or even psychology).

I recently understood — I learned very little from years of following micro-influencers or yoga-accounts.

Real studying happens in real life.

I do not in any way discredit online-studying. Trust me, I prefer a good informative webinar to courses where I have to wake up early and go the opposite end of the city in order to understand that, in fact, this lecture is a total waste of time.

We’re not talking about these cases.

This is about social media.

That is simply not designed in the way that your brain is able to focus. You see a huge long-read from someone wise and yet you have this “heart” and “add a photo” buttons on the bottom. And your brain simply can’t focus fully — so you’re wasting your energy by trying to focus so hard (oh, and someone-you-never-met just started a live video! what great news!)

You got the point.

If you want a long read — go on Medium, The New Yorker, buy a Bookmate subscription, check your favorite news websites.

But don’t expect anything truly profound from social media platforms. Use it as a tool or as a place to communicate with your friends. But don’t expect that following “Easy-English/Spanish/whatever” accounts will make you more proficient.

It won’t.

Social media are not designed for any kind of deep and concentrated work — and this is a relief.

We can post cat pics.

We can stare at nice outfits.

But let’s not replace learning anything from social media. Real skills require real efforts.

So, if your hands are shaking like mine today. If you feel lost and confused and yet find yourself in scrolling an Instagram feed in a search of answers or your daily-dose-of-philosophy.

Better read a book or some article. Watch a good movie. Go for a long walk in the park. Talk to your loved ones — or go meet them in real life.

If you want to learn a language — start with books, not with accounts on Instagram that will be lost in a news feed among photos of cute cats and your classmates that you haven’t met for years.

This is a very trivial truth, and yet it takes a lot of courage to stop pinning your hopes on the small orange icon on the screen of your smartphone.

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sharrissaerin · 7 years

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A brief commentary on my spiritual point of view.

The following comments will be repeated on my Facebook wall but here is one of my points of view when it comes to every living mortal human on the face of this earth.

One) I AM a strong believer that GOD IS REAL! Over the many years even when I was still spiritually asleep, God never abandoned me even when I stopped believing in Santa-clause, the Easter bunny, etc... I even stopped believing in God at one point & it took HIM many years to to nudge me back in his direction because at age sixteen, a snot nosed teen brat like me, only believed in whatever I could see, touch smell, hear or taste. The concept of the ethreal, was a very alien thought to me because of how hands on & self absorbed that I had become. yet, for all of his mysterious workings, he still got me back to where I belong. it took me a while yes but upon quiet meditating reflection now that I am much older & possibly wiser, I look back to se all the times when I needed something but even when I also didn’t realize that I needed something & though I never asked God for it & I may not now or ever because he has done enough for me to wake me up, all the times when I was so fortunate, that was HIM looking after me.

two) That brings me to the point that the Lord Almighty can & has often worked in mysterious ways. So much weird stuff happened to me, too many weird things to list here that don’t normally happen to a normal healthy kid as I was growing up. Adding to it all, I was diagnosed as learning disabled when the truth was that I was sleeping with my eyes wide open, being so much the dreamer to dream with my eyes open wide. My parents seemed unable or unwilling to be more engaging in finding solutions to keep my focus on learning or even bothering to figure out what would kindle the spark of learning within me. I recall now how I wasn’t the normal type of child that asked all the usual curious questions & my parents preferred their dependence upon the expert advice of the child specialists of that time frame INSTEAD of first trying to resolve the issue on their own. Mind you, I only woke up about two years ago in the spiritual; sense & my curious nature was already in full bloom when I was in my mid forties. So, yeah, i am a late bloomer alright but talk about predictive!

One summer...: it was the event of the year during my childhood when the Milford, CT Oyster festival would spill out into the Milford city streets & the police would block off the entire length of the Milford city green so people could walk about the green & cross the streets without being hit by cars. It may have been entitled as an oyster festival but there was plenty more than just oysters being served & so many crafts people having set up so many crafting kiosks on the central city green itself.

One person would be all about wood crafts & all the things that they worked on all year as part of their hobby cash cow. Another, being en elderly woman that had nothing better to do than to knit all year long in the midst of her senior spare time & she would have knitted items galore to sell! Ironically, while business with the wood-craftsman was fair, you would think that a super warm double knit sweater would not sell well in the intense heat of the day but one did as my practical mother insisted on making me try one on for size & it fit perfect in her opinion as she was already thinking far ahead to the very cold winter yet to come.

The point being that there were all sorts of crafting people that had worked hard all year to make a product & this was their moment to shine as they sold as much of their built up stock that represented an entire years worth of hard work that paid off so much in a single day. I have both brief & vague memories of my father making polite inquiries on that prophetic day about the profitability of hobby craft earnings though I don’t remember exactly whom he was talking to or what the man was good at making.

Honestly, I was old enough at least smart enough to read so my eye had been caught by a collective of items in a neighboring Kiosk that had so many hand crafted button pins on it with so many different expressions & simple but also humorous logic that I couldn't resist pointing to it while attempting to gain my mothers attention & she looked at them for a moment until her eyes settled on one that was just a simple white button with a hand drawing of a innocent appearing child whom had a flower in his hand that he was holding up to whomever he intended to offer it to & the simple hand printed caption read, “Please be patient, God isn’t finished with me yet.”

My mom saw that & her mind was made up in a split second because I had already been to so many experts that my parents were convinced that I was a lost cause for the time being & it was all up to God at that point since they truly believed that God wasn’t done with me, NOT BY A LONG SHOT! I would have that button pinned to my tee-shirt for a few years until the pin finally broke & it was attached to a cork pin up board in my room since my mother didn’t want to let go of it or the hope that I was just unable to cope beyond a certain point & someday soon, I would finally find a sort of normal while finally being awake enough to understand when the teachers were droning on about some intolerably boring subject!

I did wake up a little when my independent streak finally came about & i had the typical rebellious streak in my teens which is also when I lost my faith in God but it was a far cry from what I was meant to be as I now know that it wasn’t my time back then to wake up. I would have awoken far too soon because not one person was really as aware or spiritually awakened back then since the world didn’t need us to be awake in spite of all the turmoil from the second world war up until now.

Mind you, with the words on the button now hopefully etched into your mind, though it scares the hell out of me on so many levels for every time that I look back to reflect on the fateful day, that was a memory that I had almost completely forgotten.

So, the sobering thought for anyone,especially the heavily intoxicated people that just want to lose themselves as much as possible, God is never done with you even if you think for even a second that you are done now with God. IF he has a plan for you, just like story of Jonah & the whale, IF he gets a hold on you, EVEN if you lose your faith & you way, as long as he has plans for you, you aren’t going to get away from him or the destiny he has in store for you!

As I have already said, once he has you, you are stuck! So, GET HUMBLE. DROP THE EGO TRIP & PRAY TO GOD TO THANK HIM IF YOU HAVE LIVED A CHARMED LIFE AS MUCH AS I HAVE! God has done too much for me to ignore all the signs & the list of synchronous events has greatly increased for me ever since I started to really WAKE UP!! if you are wondering what it is like to live through one synchronous event after another, DON’T!!!

Its like having a whole host of revelations slapping you in the face almost every day for little while & then things settle down for a short time until I become slackish & complacent & then the synchronicity starts all over again! It can really ruin my day unless I truly have become vigilant to stay focused on my goals. Mind you, we spiritually awakened people believe a great many things & one of them is that everything happens for a reason even if you had it all planned out but the day never progressed as you had hoped.

Nuff said for now,

Peace & love to all my spirit siblings & God does care for you.

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