Chatting about: God’s Eternal Love

Ruth (Guest): Yes, I just today wrote a post on FB –– a response to a statement that we are just thought –– without mention of God (in the original) just of matter –– formed in the stars, making up the stuff we are made of, including our eyes, looking at the stars. It was a nice meditation, but the conclusion, indirectly, would deny bodily resurrection.

Ruth (Guest): It was on a site where most “participants” hold strongly to Catholic beliefs, but it seemed to me that the quoted excerpt was accepted (liked) without thinking critically about the conclusion.

Ruth (Guest): Exactly, Judy.

Ruth (Guest): It seems to me that we may have been little more than thought in the mind of God UNTIL we were conceived. After that we have a bodily existence in life –– and in a way, even after death.

Ruth (Guest): The body is laid in the grave, to be made brand new at the time of the bodily resurrection.

Ruth (Guest): “ganz neu” is the expression a priest used in an letter telling me about his heart rate having slowed down to 24 then to 12 in the hospital before he got his pacemaker. He cannot even go for a stroll without his scooter so he’s figuring that it will not be long before he is made brand new!

Ruth (Guest): I’m certain what you say, Judy, is true. The “little more than” was meant to mean, not yet bodily, and yet all the materials to make the body and the circumstances –– a fertile man and woman, the human parents –– were either existing or to be brought together to create the new human life.

Ruth (Guest): Hi Brian.

Ruth (Guest): Sr., that troubles me, too, at least a little, about what St. Francis writes here. And occasionally there are other things he writes that seem to me sort of overly class conscious –– or just to provide guidelines for the new order he is founding.

Ruth (Guest): It’s OK. I may have at the time. One for instance –– about not allowing a spot on your clothing. What if you are an auto mechanic, or a farmer. A time for spiffing up and a time for letting the mess be, I say.

Ruth (Guest): I think Brian meant regardless of circumstances, but it came out as regulars less circumstances, Judy.

Ruth (Guest): Opps, while I was writing this, he corrected it himself.

Ruth (Guest): I think so, too. You can’t fail if you don’t try; but not trying is a kind of failure worse than botching the effort.

Ruth (Guest): Dawn, it may be a reminder that the offender needs our prayers very much just at the moment that we remember. It is what we DO with the memory –– not the unwelcome “flashbacks” themselves that matters.

Ruth (Guest): Some “hurts” can be so deep and traumatic that they cannot be NOT remembered, especially when there are constant reminders every where we turn. If God allows this, then he is offering us something that somehow can be USED by us for our salvation and possibly for the salvation of others.

Ruth (Guest): A for instance: All the news about women coming forward with reports of sexual abuse, harassment, or even rape.

Ruth (Guest): Sister, I think childhood trauma can be a huge obstacle to growing into wholeness, but in a broken world, they need not PREVENT us from growing into wholeness and holiness. God wants everyone whole, everyone holy.

Ruth (Guest): That, the need for community in order to live the Christian life, is what draws me most to keep on considering a religious community –– even though there are few that would even consider a decrepit old woman like me.

Ruth (Guest): Good observation, Judy!

Ruth (Guest): And even the hermits tended to live in colonies. Or have visitors come to them.

Ruth (Guest): I never heard of Laura in Chester, NJ.

Ruth (Guest): Tell us about Laura.

Ruth (Guest): I’ve been reading about the saints or wanna be saints you mentioned in a previous chat.

Ruth (Guest): Thanks for the link. I just glanced at it.

Ruth (Guest): I had a friend Laura, who I assisted for two years as she prepared for her “home coming.

Ruth (Guest): Now we chat to music. Is it coming through to you, too.

Ruth (Guest): Just clicked it off now. Seems to have started automatically when –– actually a Iittle after I opened the website.

Ruth (Guest): Wow! An hour has gone by again –– already