The True Tale of Rene and Clara

Rene and Clara are complex individuals. Like any humans, they have aspects and stages of their personalities and growth that make them whole; showing themselves at some times and not at others; waxing and waning. Rene and Clara are always whole and always healing from hurt and growing in their own lives. They aren't quick to notice, but they are both perfect and fallible. 

Rene and Clara  are similar and unique. They are both peace-makers and peacekeepers, historically; rocks. They both want to give more than they know how to receive, and they both give more easily to others-- the love that they seek and need to feel themselves. 

They are good at loving. Both of them are, but not as good at loving themselves.

Despite the love between them, shared and given and received, the love between themselves in their own hearts is the love they need the most-- and the sort that they don't know how to reconcile with.  They can give gentle, filling love, but can they receive it? They need to learn how. Not just for love-- but also to truly know and honor themselves. 

The love they gave each other is the love that they themselves need to give their own hearts, minds, bodies. For this reason, the love that Rene and Clara shared when they were together was a big love. It filled them up inside and it poured over. This love alone was so pure and in such short supply within themselves, that it alone felt like enough-- like everything. Infinity. 

And when together, they found a rhythm. "I will love you the way that I need love, and you will love me the way that you need love and in the end, because of our similarity in love-language, we will both be filled." And it worked. It seemed to. For a while.

The ways they need and give love were so compatible; that it felt right. It seemed perfect. It was the best match. And it worked for a long time. And it blossomed their hearts into something bigger than they had known before. 

But unknowingly in their joy, they still couldn't take care of themselves in the emotional ways that they needed-- out of fear, stubbornness, and surely something else. But they could take care of each other and it made them happy. So they did.

Until they couldn't anymore. 

Rene's love for Clara made him feel young and light. An image of him breathing and smiling outside as cherry blossoms fall around him-light. He lifts his head to the sky and laughs, cries. His arms outstretched. 

But even this was a stretch for Rene. He had been ignoring a hard truth. He wasn't attracted to Clara. Somehow, even after all this time, and all the intimacy he wanted to share with her, he just loved her and didn't want to share her body. He loved her so immensely. Not quite like a mother or a daughter, a sibling or a best friend. But more. He wanted to take care of her forever, and to meet all of her needs. He tried. And when he couldn't, time and time again, it left him feeling hollow, wrong, and tormented.

A knot formed in his chest, and it lived there with him. 

For many months, he continued to love Clara. He played the part. He wanted to lift her up. She deserved everything from him. And anything less felt like a betrayal to himself, a blot against his heart. So, he was afraid. Every month or so-- every few weeks, Clara would come to him with her love and affection and ask him; why? when? She wanted to love him and be with him in all ways-- physically, and fully. Rene wanted that for her. Nothing more than to give her that. And the knot returned. And with it, Rene became frozen like a block of ice. Arms, and gut tightened and his throat imobile. 

Rene fought with himself. A war. To force himself to feel or not feel, to be or not be, and in the process to dishonor himself and his truth. He wept. And he wept. He was spent. 

This continued for a long time. Each time Clara returned to him, the knot grew tighter and his limbs grew heavier. He saw her grieve the lack of his touch. He felt sick to his stomach. Furious with himself. In pain. Trapped, lost. 

Then one day, Clara came to him and something had changed. Behind her had eyes sat only concern and compassion. 

"Tell me what weights so heavily on your heart, Rene. " She said. 

Rene did not know why, but in that moment, he summoned the courage, and finally, pulling the knot out of his stomach, he spoke. 

Rene wept. 

Clara wept. 

And Clara wrapped her arms strong around him. 

"It's going to be okay."

And with them, a peace emanated from her onto him. 

So together, they climbed down the mountain they had built. Clara steadied him and held him and comforted him as he walked, and in turn, Rene was there to embrace Clara and soothe her as she wept. 

The truth wasn't any less painful to digest. 

But soon-after, Clara and Rene realized that the only way to love each other fully was to part ways, and to make space in their own lives for the love that they needed to find. 

Eventually, they realized that they were still in need of love from themselves. 

They grieved; strongly and alone, for along time. 

That grief never wiped out the love or fondness they had for each other. No time could blot out their shared joy, optimism, enthusiasm and fond memories.

They hoped and believed that in some way, their love would always remain. So, they began to start again; leaving behind them the past that taught them and grew them. 

Clara hoped that someday her joy would resurface past her fear; and that the love she had would be an inspiration and motivation. But for now, she was still grieving; confused and frustrated at all the understandings and truths she believed she had found; only to discard them now to start anew.

Hoping, praying; someday she would pick up the pieces and realize that something precious and immortal had been born between them, and that would never go away. 

Thank You

Glory to Jesus Christ our Redeemer and Salvation

Send me forgiveness and redemption, Oh my God! 
You are more wonderful than all your works-- and in betrayal, I gave myself over to death. 
I am given the Earth and the heavens, even as I betray you--Oh Holy Christ. 
You do not keep your blessings from me. You do not withhold your grace. 
I am worthy of death, but death you do not give me. 
Oh Holy Christ. When I fall and curse, you raise me up. 
When I die in sin, you die in purity to save my soul. 
Glory to You Oh Lord Glory to You! How wonderful are your works! 
Forgive me Oh Lord; in my unbelief, I have killed you. 
In my fallen state, you have been crucified. 
But how you never leave my side by your pure love. 

January 4th, 2022

Life Update

As you probably know, I am not good at not sharing. A lot of really paramount things have happened to me in my spiritual life, and it has been hard for me as I have kept it to myself to digest and not mis-speak. I fear being misunderstood. I pray these words can be accepted even if not comprehended. I have learned that we humans are not designed to comprehend everything nor capable of living at the same time as knowing or understanding everything, at least not in our current state. In my Pride and Ego and desire for mental control to soothe my insecurities, I have fallen a long way, for a long time, unknowlingly. My soul was lost and tasted death. 

A number of very specific things happened in my life resulting in the realization that my soul had been walking into hell. It started in a place of omnist, pegan-inspired and hindu and buddhist inspired spiritual exploration. This is my story. Jesus Christ reached down to hades and pulled me out of hell. Only when I cried to Him. Only when I saw my truth. But every time I did so. I am a sinner. I am a lost sheep. I do not want consolation!!! Jesus Christ is my consolation and to take away sight of sin from someone is evil. 

In my heart along my journey, I have been very afraid of rejection. So many people that I love and care about have been hurt by Christians. I let this feed my distain for Christians and avoided Christian communities. But the truth is that only Jesus Christ can save us. When we don’t fall, we don’t need it enough. When we don’t fall, we don’t want it enough. When we need it and we want it, we will find it. Don’t be afraid to fall. Faith is a gift, but our hearts must be open to receive it. 

My job isn’t to fix you. My job isn’t to convert you. I can't heal you. I am a sinner. My only task is to take up my cross in battle against Satan through the intercessions of the Saints and calling upon Jesus Christ to my aid. Love is the answer. Patience and compassion and humility are the answer. And respect and free-will are essential components of love.

I don’t know everything. I am not meant to know everything. In my attempt to know more than I ought, I found death. To be a Christian is to pester God to save you and guide you and keep you from the evil one. It is to be uncomfortable and to rejoice in it. It is to face persecution willingly with open arms. It is not easy. But it is the cup that overflows. And we are called to it. 

I don’t know what is going to happen in my social life when people hear this from me. I may lose loved ones. I may start fights. But whatever happens, Let God’s will be done. These are hard times. There is no use pretending to fit in. That is not who I am. That is not who I want to be nor who I am meant to be.

Here is what I see now that I did not:

-satan is absolutely real. My fear/deciding to not believe doesn’t change the facts or make it go away.

-Christians who do evil are under attack by satan.

-all people who do evil are under attack by satan. 

[Evil is anything from complaining to murder. There is a wide spectrum of what constitutes evil but I think we can all agree that the things that hurt us in the end probably weren’t good for us to begin with like we thought they would be. There are a million beautiful (holy) secular lenses with which to see the truth and to understand this concept. Harness the tools that you have and don’t let others bully you away from them.]

-God works in all things. God gets His hands dirty. He does not shy away from using all tools and all means to get our attention or lead us to salvation. He is *always* laboring to lead us to salvation and get our attention. All we have to do is let ourselves soften and be curious as a child and as loyal to our God as an animal companion to its human.

-The bible is packed full of wisdom and healing. As someone who considered myself Christian for 23 years, I still have not read the whole bible and avoiding it has been an unrealized action of me habitually giving way to temptation of the devil. 

-Regardless of the evil done publicly and openly by Christians! The bible ! Is healing ! Jesus Christ ! Is good ! And saving ! And all-loving !

I can’t stress this enough. Self-proclaimed Christians have committed some of the worst atrocities throughout human history, but it does not discredit Jesus Christ himself or the bible itself.. In the same way that a husband and wife do not deserve the same punishment when one falls and the other does not. We are our own beings. 
People talk shit about the bible, but so few people have actually read it in my experience.

-Everybody worships something.
Most of us worship our significant others. This is the most common theme. We fall down at their feet with all our vulnerability. We ask them to fix us and heal us. We sing about them “completing us”, and we give them all our problems. And it ruins us. It ruins us and them because no human can handle that weight. Only God can handle that weight. He is the only one who will ever be able to. Some people worship their solitude, themselves. Some people worship their homes and their possessions. Some their friends. Who knows. It is not our job to figure it out for anyone else but only our job to look at and take responsibility for ourselves.

-Following rules sets us free and ignoring them enslaves us.
As a tree is free by growing like a tree and doing what trees do best, and a cat is free by living like a cat and doing what cats do, and a bird is free by living like birds do… and when fair rules are followed, it creates societies, it creates machines, it creates computers and these all are greater than their individual parts. All of nature is built on the rules of science. Rules are freedom. Even Jesus Christ does not ask unfair rules. We are children and we are naïve and it is not easy trusting someone else to decide things for us. In the world we are let down by all, but in Christ we will never be let down. If you don’t believe me read the book of Job.

-You can not have the church without the saints. The church is a family and God is the father of the family. It is a large and diverse family. And we are all invited to be members of it. We are all called to be saints. Do not worship anyone besides Jesus Christ God. These are people meant to be your mentors and friends, your fellow warriors for Christ where prayer to God is our weapon. We kiss them and pray to them out of honor, asking for their prayers for us. They are the masters of prayer, and if you take time to be curious and get to know them you will find that they are all extremely unique and diverse, living God’s will through their own truths in their own being that God gave them to be. Let them reach out to you and reach out to them in return. Develop these relationships and let them inspire you. God gave his Holy Spirit and humbled himself, relinquishing control so that He could be with us. And those who follow Him he brings to the rank of His friends. He is our Shepherd and we are His sheep but it is much more than that, beyond human words, explanation or comprehension. Do not isolate yourself from the church which is your eternal family. No matter how you disagree with others. Our neighbor is our salvation. Discourse is healthy and we should learn it in love and respect. We must let others humble us and gain insight from them. As flawed humans we each only know a part of the picture and we are in need of each other to be shown our blind spots. 

-Tarot cards are against God’s will for humans to use. I don’t know anything else except that they absolutely do work and it leads people who realize this into hell via addiction, ego-filling, and turning to the cards more than Christ. Aka Idolatry, and the easiest path to be led to hell for me. If we are capable of knowing and experiencing without it killing us, God gives it to us. But we are blinded by satan. It is not our fault, but it is a fact that we can not see what is actually happening to us when we are filled with positive feelings and rushes as a result of our actions because we live a life of coping mechanisms to trauma. Trauma that no one else can ever fathom or heal but God alone.

As Christians, we must give God the reins of our live. We must question our minds and try to train ourselves to separate our intuition from our ego and from our bias. We must learn to tell our needs for rest from the sin of sloth. And our needs for food from the sin of gluttony. There is only one good way to do this. Test your actual human limits. Then you will know. I personally think activities such as backpacking and mountain climbing are important to salvation for this reason. There is no better analogy for the Christian journey than to be a mountain climber. 

I could go on. I can tell you the red flags I saw in the alternative spirituality. Everything from the way you hold your hands to the rules of preserving vibrational states they say. In the end it is worshipping of the ego because there is no higher power to aid in those teachings, but only the self and through these belief systems, giving credit to ourselves for what a higher power did for us. Everything about our life is happening to us whether we want it to or choose it to or not. Things are running like a well-oiled machine and sometimes we drop our gum inside and clog it up, but we are still learning how it works so attributing it all working to ourselves is evil, a lie, and a sin. The worst part here is the devil casts spells on us to trick us into believing we are capable of controlling our power. But we are not capable of controlling the power God gives us without God. Instead, we are broken down and made vulnerable for more attack from satan. 

E.g. Many of the teachings do work. They do give you access to communicate with spirits but that means they make you especially vulnerable to manipulation from the devil if you are without Christ. This is what happened to me.

What is extremely frightening to me to this day is that if I did not know the Jesus prayer or the power of it, I may not be okay. And that is very frightening. Trust your guts. Know what you know. Listen, let others humble you, turn to God and ask for guidance. The first thing the devil tried to do was get me to second-guess myself and what I truly know in my gut. This is different from ego or bias and is usually a "knowing" that is beyond articulation. And that is okay.

Some of the teachings do not work. Some are only lies and perhaps spells the devil casts on us to gain our belief and submit to him. This is frightening. It is frightening how close I got to worshiping or being controlled by the devil. This is likely the definition of demonic possession. It requires our free will which is acquired through manipulation of our dark thoughts in our weakest states. 

The devil does have power over the material world. The devil can and will offer you and give you things in this life. Anything from fame to wealth to long life etc etc etc. he can and he will! If he thinks it will help keep you from God. This is something we forget, I think. And it makes it easy for us to fall!!

Satan grants wishes. Satan can give you sight of the future, and heal you and lengthen your life.

So you must be sure you know what you are dealing with or else flee and stop dealing. Immediately.

Lord Jesus Christ son of God Have Mercy on Me a Sinner. 

Lord Jesus Christ son of God Have Mercy on Me a Sinner. 

Lord Jesus Christ son of God Have Mercy on Me a Sinner. 

Amen

This is the Jesus prayer and it will protect you if you use it to call upon Christ. In any and all situations. It will always protect you and your soul. Using it saved me. (3 times a charm)

If you are curious about God or Satan, read the bible.  It provides to us a level of detail and understanding that will not lead us into hell through ego but instead will aid us in our spiritual journey (and war). 

If you have been given the knowledge or sensitivity or sight of something spiritual or mystical to be real, but have not read the bible, or have not followed through with your curiosity, I recommend reading the bible. I was one of those. I had been shown miracles that I believed for years but I still did not give credit where it was due. I only went through the motions and did not ponder Jesus Christ. Because He was a man, I assume I can not trust Him as I am a woman. The devil played off of this for me as well. Every weakness will be attacked. We don't know or see. 

I have a lot of work still to be done to save me. Repentance is a lifelong commitment!

Please pray for me!

True, Pure, Infinite Love

Soulmates can be best friends. Best friends can be a different sex from your own. I can live with my best friends for my whole life if I want to. I can raise my own family with my chosen family (friends) and live together if I want to. I can love in many different ways. Infinite different ways, and be giving and sharing and passionate with many different people. I can chose to keep loved ones close. I can chose to have a community in an "alternative" lifestyle. My lifestyle. This is the beauty of freedom.

Humans are made to love in more ways that we often give ourselves a template for. I have been given the gift of experiencing this. My birth-given religious traditions make no room for this. It is real. I do believe in Christ and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. I know it to be true. But I also know many other beautiful things to be true. Our God is not contained within the confines of tradition or social construct. The way white people have chosen to constrict God through their methods of Christianity is opposing to the divine truth, and the all-encompassing love that Christ gives to those who seek Him. If we truly want to find Christ, we need to read the gospels on love, get over our tradition and pride, and take a long ass hike through the world; through the fields of discomfort, through the crowds of strangers and dare to challenge ourselves in what is difficult, to learn to hold life in it's purest form.

True, Pure, Infinite Love is ours for the taking. All we must do is allow ourselves to be open to it.

--- Upon rereading this, I know it is cryptic. I am talking about the church being anti-gay and anti-premarital sex. I have lived a life which has proven to me that honoring our sexuality is an essential part of forming love with ourselves and with others. My first real, true loving relationship was with a gay man. This relationship had whole, filling intimacy, with waxes and wanes of giving and receiving care and love. This man was the first person in my life to see me as I fully am, and to embrace and love me enthusiastically for it. In breaking up with him, I have had to relearn how to feel love, knowing that he gave me love in a bigger way than I even know yet how to give myself. When we were together, our love for each other was overpouring. I had extra love and energy to spare. But somewhere along the road, his grief and pain of his past and the way he views himself hardened him, and I was no longer granted access to the depths of his heart and mind. This lack of intimacy was the largest loss, but the shift of our relationship to become one of friendship has not been easy or comfortable. It is painful, and I have resolved that it may be painful for a very long time. But that is okay. Grief is a beautiful thing, and I am capable of moving forward and loving others and myself regardless of how I feel for him. He will always be there, and we still continue to love each other in our passing moments.

I have been blessed. I have experienced a taste of true love. Its overpouring, infinite nature. Grief of any size can not fill that. Nor need it. There is no way to express how truly and deeply it was, is; and at the same time how beautiful, true, right, loving and good it was for us to part ways as significant-others. I do not regret any single moment of the last few years with him, or the moments since we decided to part. All involved positive growth and love. Love is listening. Love is embracing. Love is forgiving. Love is empathizing. Love is being selfless, not because you think you should but because you genuinely, deeply want nothing more than to be.