My maternal grandfather died Saturday morning, about 4.30am. He was 91. 

God rest you, PawPaw.

I'm officially an "aspirant" now and am being so addressed by Society communications. Yay.

Perhaps...

My maternal grandfather has been given one day, maybe two. He's 91 and despite it all, he deserves a rest. 

My cousin Jeffrey has just lost his oldest daughter, Danielle, and her husband in an ugly traffic accident. They leave behind two very young children. This is a sore loss to Jeff and to his mother, my dear great-great Aunt Sarah, a woman like unto my grandmother. I love her and I cannot comfort her.

Mom has worked herself half-dead for this hospital and it turns out that they aren't giving her the permanent job they have been promising for three-bloody-years. Instead, she's being given a chance to, as they said, "fight for it". She's 62. She's given fortysome years to hospital work. She needs a hip replacement. She's tired and heartsick and worried for her old age. She's the hardest working, most experienced person in that department. And she's made to scrap like a dog for bones. The bastards.THE BASTARDS.

Rachel and Brittany both brought in to this world healthy babies. Praise God! My sister a boy, Nate, and Britt  a girl, Chelsea. My, what their futures may hold... Considering the present state of things (and the general trend of history) I'm not certain I look forward with much optimism.

In nine days I begin my trek toward perpetual vows and a life of religious devotion. I was so certain of it before, but now... the reality gives me pause. As with any monumental, life-changing decision, it has left me at a crossroads and I must pick my path and simply, go. 

I pray for light and for direction.

Today my sister was delivered of her first child, a son, as yet unnamed. She and Thomas are jubilant I'm sure. 

That's him. I never thought this day would come. I feared Mom would never be a grandmother. Praise God (the heat's off me.) 

:) 

There are so many things that I think, which I know I simply cannot commit to writing. Each statement would need copious explication, defense, further clarification, ad nauseam.  I remember my mistakes on Facebook. They led to bitter and acrimonious quarrels that did little more than cost me friends and never did elucidate my argument. Bald-face statements, despite any truth involved, seem to do little more than shock and cause lasting misapprehension. 

But I watch mostly television news and that leads to a great many such blunt declaratives loitering about in my head. Eric Garner. The riots in Missouri. Social trends. Robin Williams. Lauren Bacall. Rape, molestation, abandonment. Israel and Gaza. Endless political hogwash. Fires, floods, Ebola. Bears in New Jersey.

The innocent query, "What's on your mind?" could elicit a rather frank answer. 

However, I am trying to more readily remember the warning against 'idle words' in Matthew and the strong caution in James concerning the tongue and its power to lead us into sin, error, and fault. The first defense against sin must surely be prayer, but the second I should think would be to shut one's mouth. And in these days of dangerously convenient self-publication it would be just as wise at times to curb the itch of the fingers to type as proxy for the tongue. 

I think many things that I should neither say nor type. True or not, they in their embryonic and un-nuanced form, tend to fall short of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. I doubt that in this case, "one out of three ain't bad." In my experience, having just the one is rather like possessing "a little knowledge."

All of which may be somewhat ironic to say on a blog. 

Currently I am idle. This is my black dog. I'm not a self-starter. I'm a creature of habit and routine who responds well to being useful and needed, set to serve, but becomes grouchy and slothful when rendered vestigial by circumstance. I'm waiting. I've been doing a great deal of waiting; twelve years of it. And yet that time has not been completely wasted: there is reading and prayer and writing and reflection. These are certainly to the good and help to occupy the empty hours. But the irony of my nature is that I'm at my most voracious in reading, my most fervent in prayer, my most creative in writing, and my most honest in reflection when I am busy about other things. When I'm working. 

This has always been just a wee bit frustrating. 

Que sera sera, yes? 

I have some errands to run today. Lord knows that being out and about in the NYC metropolitan area will provide ample opportunity to curb my tongue and even more reasons to pray. It will also make the reading and writing that I return to much the sweeter. 

What is it about concupiscence that makes it so perdurable? Why am I attracted to something which repulses me? Are appetitive powers able to arrest the will so completely? Well, at any rate, Paul put it more succinctly than I am able to: "I am a thing of flesh and blood, sold into the slavery of sin. My own actions bewilder me; what I do is not what I wish to do, but something which I hate."

But where evil abounds grace is said to abound all the more. And anywise, I've been bought back from sin. Somebody should really let sin know that. Jeez...

I was thinking about bibles for a moment and decided that the perfect bible would have commentary by both Terry Pratchett and Fr. Rutler, and be illustrated by Edward Gorey.

I just read an e-mail sent to me by an acquaintance which excoriates "you Catholics" for seeking to suppress sex and "live like f-----g prayer-bots". 

Hmmm. 

I had no idea "[we] Catholics" did that. If so, I'm not doing a very good job. 

Of course, I'm not doing a stellar job at the actual thing which the Church teaches us to do that ultimately resolves itself into a relatively simple maxim: "imitate Christ". That is what this is all about after all, becoming more Christ-like. That I should decrease and He should increase. You can fairly excoriate me for failing in THAT, but not the other thing, a common and quaint misapprehension.

No, I cannot stop being a sexual creature. Nor can anyone else, though we may express our sexuality badly or well. It depends, really, on who we are and what we have experienced. I longed for intimacy for so long that it led me to, as St. John of Paycheque puts it, look for love in all the wrong places. I did not mistake lust for love or sex for intimacy; I'm not a fool. It was merely a case of next-best-thing. I certainly am not suppressing sexuality. I am just trying to find a way to live express it chastely, in a seemly manner. 

My poverty of spirit becomes more evident after a fall. My need to be obedient does as well. I seem to fall when I become comfortable - not just fall to sexual sin but to any major sin: pride, anger, despair, etc. It all seems to result from comfort or, more accurately, complacency. Acedia is spiritual sloth (my chestnut) and most folks find that prayer gushes forth in a torrent in times of darkness and trial, but dries up arid and wasteful when life is going smoothly. I had put my head down for a few weeks now and was trying to shut the world out. In doing so I buried myself in distractions and put God - and all the troubles that seem to go with Him - to the side. And just as I manage to get my head well and goodly buried, comfortably away from what stresses and scares me, I fall.

Then, of course, I am suddenly and painfully reminded how much I need God... and that I have somewhat, rather unaccountably, misplaced Him. 

Thankfully, He is never far from me. He is closer than I might want, in fact. I can fill a page with pretty words. I can do the same to air and ears, but God is not impressed. He knows my heart and all my secrets. I am a worm and no man. Br. Richard serves as a reminder of what awaits us all, like, as it runs, a thief in the night. Is my moment just about here? Am I to meet my maker stained with mortal sin? Are my last hours to be spent bemoaning my unchastity to an inaudient void? 

Perhaps. Only God knows, and He ain't telling.

I must attend to Compline. God bless.