What the Lord Hath Made Crooked (Part 5 of 10)

The following is a series of attached photos sent from Liza to the group. As usual, we publish typed excerpts of these illuminated texts along with the original photo. The best way is to read the text, of course, is to to experience it in its illuminated form.

16. We liberate these demons through prayer. Andre (and Hasidism) knows whaddup. Prayer can rightfully mean all sorts of things to all sorts of people, of course, but to me prayer is a way of decisive living punctuated by constant inquiry. Am I acting lovingly and gratefully to everything I encounter today? Am I accepting, supportive, and patient in all of my interactions? Am I listening to all that's being communicated with me? Am I trying my best? Am I nurturing the uprooted and nourishing the firmly planted? Am I living the truth? In asking ourselves these questions and, ultimately, in being on the side of light and life, we are actively fighting our demons and offering a hand to our brothers and sisters in fighting their own. For what these demons desire and require from us in order to thrive is first and foremost oblivion. In resisting detection, it's unlikely to be challenged. If detected, the demon's aim is to lure us into a spiritual state so despondent that we stop seeing ourselves as the mystical body of Christ and instead see ourselves as in the image and likeness of the devil.

20. (Excuse my wonky numbering) However! to look upon this horror and utilize our repulsion to propel us closer to God is the most brutal form of attack against this demonic presence. And because I can't possibly stress it enough, the way in which we utilize this repulsion is through daily positive intent, humility, determination, patience, love, and personified prayer. Each failure to extend these virtues into our daily interactions is, of course, a victory for the devil, but each of these victories is squandered when reconfigured as a breadcrumb like blessing that guides us back to our path. I say (wrote) "All our lives it will be like this" because there is no earthly end; in place of an ending there are only endless opportunities for new beginnings. Cast off your disdain and you'll see that it's not the end, but only a disguise for a welcoming celebration (Rumi). We must, again, remember that life is a procession, that "to be" is "to grow," and the only way to grow (toward heaven) is to remain on our path or be in the process of making it back to the path. We are of one phase and of all phases. Evil propels us and reform of evil desire propels us.
21. God does not expect, nor does He desire, for us to come to Him with the answers. He merely asks for us to make ourselves worthy of receiving them someday by living our lives as learners, not as knowers. It's here that we again get a glimpse into the understanding that every struggle and failure is indeed a blessing. Our weaknesses, our sufferings, our impatience, our wandering—these are each, in their own little ways, our teachers, our guides from beyond. It's my belief that we make ourselves worthy not in a solemn and steady procession toward death, but rather in a joyful and hopeful procession through death. It's only in dying in this life that we can ever hope to find eternal life in the next one.
22. I've a letter's length to expound on "bringing religion to schools."

That, and more, up next! Liza

My barn having burned down, I can now see the moon." - Mizuta Masahide

What the Lord Hath Made Crooked (Part 3 of 10)

The following is a series of attached photos sent from Liza to the group. As usual, we publish typed excerpts of these illuminated texts along with the original photo. The best way is to read the text, of course, is to to experience it in its illuminated form.

10. (Continued) You yearn for brotherly, for sisterly love. You yearn to love others and you yearn to fulfill your earthly potential, seeing it for what it truly is: a gift from the heavens. To yearn for these things, no matter at the moment, signifies, to me, that your path remains illuminated through your unrelenting faith. Having seen the path so clearly at all, you suffer from anguish each time you realize your actions, thoughts, as well as the corrective actions and thoughts of humanity, have again lead you and all of us away from it. (note: revisit Ubuntuism in next letter--"I am because you are.") I think the foundation and frequency of your self-judgments reveal how deeply your faith has seeped into your essence. To exist as a Catholic is to follow the rules through your actions because that's what you're told to do. Generally, these existences are founded and dictated on guilt, fear, and obligation; their existence as Catholics preceded their essence as Catholics. To be Catholic in essence (correction: your faith hasn't "seeped into your essence," it is your essence) is to organize your very being not around these "rules," but through them through you. It is to feel your faith, not just act out your faith. It is to suffer with mind, body, soul, to feel the failure so deeply that it becomes a part of you. This is a tremendous blessing, you see, but it is and can only remain a fruitful blessing when balanced with the following understanding: habitual failing does not define us as permanent failures. We must love both ourselves and one another in our successes and most importantly we must love both ourselves and one another through our failures. We must be kind; we must be patient. Though it's of great importance that we're always aligned with our path or in the process of making our way back toward it, it's perhaps of even greater importance that we acknowledge the impracticality of never stumbling at from it all. This sounds like a lazy and self-interested approach to personifying our faith, yes, but once again I will ask you to exercise your patience with me as I sift through this rubble I've created in search of a treasure worth sharing.
11. We must strive for perfection with all of our body and all of our soul, but we must do this with the understanding that we will never reach perfection on this earth. What is life if not a journey toward perfection? Take the Sanskrit root for "to be" for instance. bhū́ → भू. Did you know it's the same as the root of "to grow" and "to dwell on Earth (not in Heaven)"? Did you know that's the meaning of this life? I can't stress enough how much this being human is a process, and a trying one at that. Each of us is no more than a work in progress, or as my boy Rumi says, a guest house. And, like that, I've found my next point or rather it's found me. Why I say your faith is "unrelenting." Why I say you've seen the face of God and now you must live in separation from it.
12. So these "failures" to be patient, loving, and kind are agents of personal (and collective) growth. They're in our lives to illuminate our routes back to our paths. To revisit Rumi once more, EACH OF THESE FAILURES HAS BEEN SENT AS A GUIDE FROM BEYOND! Entertain them all. I was by NO means referring to you as a conservative, Art. Nor was I referring to myself as a radical. I found the essays meaningful, and thought they related nicely to something or other at the time. Sorry for the miscommunication though it seems as though you ultimately benefited from it by replacing the presumed periods with open-ended question marks. In Neil Postman's Teaching as a Subversive Activity (Have you read/re-read it yet, Will?), he writes of how we all enter school as question marks and leave school as periods. I both love and despise this observation and it's through this love and through this hate that I welcome any moment that stirs us from the tranquil comfort of the period of thinking we have tried the answers. There's a danger in comfort→danja, danja, high voltage!