The Hermit Folds the Nets

After much net-casting, or at least a flurry of waiting for a couple of nets to be hauled in, the hermit has decided to stop fishing. It was getting too messy scraping out the remnants of the dead, bloated and rotted fish from the netting.

An adult daughter says she prays for me each night to find acceptance, and I think she means that I find acceptance as to my state in life and place here at Agnus Dei, for there is not going to be acceptance from others. I know this now. Perhaps the prayer was for me also to accept that I would not find acceptance. Regardless, I was touched deeply that she prayed for me nightly, for this request, as it is what I so very much need.

The pressure and temptation is rather great to give up all, not just fishing, but to give up the Faith! Such darkness today is a kind of shock, and all about me it is as if the Lord is pulling others away, others in the Church.

I did a bad thing today, in that I was unkind in a way, but I also hauled in a net that was remaining out there in Lake Diocese. It was a net that I decided I didn't want anything to do with, and that was developing basic programs for mini-courses for the common folk. The woman, in an e-mail back, clarified what she meant by common folk. She meant the uneducated such as her mother had been, but had simple faith. I won't touch any of it, but she also felt I had criticized her when I said I didn't want to view others as "common folk" but as souls capable of climbing the holy mountain to the summits. Anyway, I got myself in yet another swirl of controversy, which always, and I mean always, comes back at me like a fish hook in the eye. I was going to send the Bishop a letter trying to explain how I feel, but in light of helping one person be able to wear the martry's crown, I had best just lay low.

So I've hauled in the nets, and I'm accepting the status, and I'm grateful for the reality check and the constructive criticism from my adult children, and I wholeheartedly agree. I also know that since I prayed to God so fervently, and others have been praying for me so fervently, that God is willing me to be more a recluse than what I willed. The only little job for me may be that of gift-wrapper at a nearby department store. Gift-wrapping is a positive task, and I can pray while wrapping and bless the gift as it goes out, and pray for the recipients.

In fact, it was my outstanding financial advisor who is a devout, life-long Catholic, who suggested I do something totally outside the diocese. This fits the bill. He also told me to start looking forward to going to Vienna next spring, as a dear young priest from India has invited me where he is stationed as a missionary of St. Francis de Sales. This is hopeful. It is not a net cast by me, but a fish put in a net offered by him.

The hermit must count the blessings, and in humility accept the faults and failings of the past, even of this very day, for I should not have sent the zinger regarding "the common folk." But I'm thankful that it meant only the uneducated. I wonder how many are uneducated in the Diocese? But I don't think I'll ask.

My cousin called, and we had not talked for many days. We each have some therapeutic needs, and we each decided to take the "cool it" approach and to change our attitudes into the happy, positive, upbeat, inside-out-joyful women that we are!