I viewed a video message last week and thought about it.
Then I came back here this morning and thought.
"Why not post a few thoughts why I am still Catholic-
despite the popularity of eastern religions and born-again based
faiths of small congregations...etc..”
The sacraments, the rituals, the saints, the universality...the music, the vestments, the Eucharist in particular...are all a part of it.
My community of Benedictines lends me support and so does my community of
Centering Prayer inspired by Thomas Keating and Carl Arico.
But...all these presences and presents from the divine are touch stones and anchors and catalysts for doing good and being present to God's life within us and among us.
I am Catholic because The Divine is universal and the word catholic means universal and there is only One Truth and the Truth set me free to be who I am and explore the facets of the One with an unencumbered facility through the arts, color, sound, healing, imagination, silence, acceptance, intuition, instruction, education, loss and gratitude.
"Bloom where you are planted" was a catch phrase in the sixties and through the eighties in the Charismatic Renewal. So despite the urges and prompts of others to leave Catholicism behind...I began to explore its roots deeper and deeper as well as my own individual depths and found there was positively no need to move anywhere because God was with me everywhere and God spoke to me in my own language and I didn't need
anyone else to reinterpret it for me. God's Holy Spirit opened my heart and mind, as I was ready and able.
He revealed more deeply the Divine plan and I began to see more clearly that only fear and clinging could spiritually blind me or deafen me.
So here I am.
Why?
Because this is where God wants me.
Amen.
Love,
Karen
