MD ping.
MD . . . I don’t know how wholesale you fit that characterization . . . but enough to have certainly grabbed my attention and heart above average. That’s one reason the discord was so horrible, to me.
Thanks for hanging in there with me.
LUB,
Others . . . may have degrees piled as high as the horse biscuits around them . . . and usually their convictions about their own flawlessness . . . their convictions about their own grandeur are . . . as high and mighty as their images of themselves . . .
Hey, listen: I used to be humble, then I thought, "What's the point? Everybody can see how great I am, no use pretending otherwise ..."
(In my case it's sheep biscuits.)
(Thank you for the kind and affirming words. Those who throw themselves abjectly on the mercy of the Lord occasionally lift their haeds from the dust and look right or left and recognize brothers and sisters)
I think A8 has done a simply wonderful job, awesome in his patience, of stating not only what I believe (which he obviously gets way better than I do) but of sticking with the argument.
FK is an equally awesomely persistent, level-headed, and charitable proponent of his abominable heresies carefully and -- what's more to the purpose -- piously examined views. (Only kidding about the abominable part.)
Random Thoughts:
- I think a certain amount of what is going to look like "blind faith" is going to happen. I am currently thinking a lot about theological language; about how God is the ground and ledger mark and we are the indeterminate - and yet we must use what we scarcely know about ourselves to make statements, all of them doomed to perilous inadequacy, about God. -- And how Jesus, the Word, is again and always the great Mediator. In this problem, the union of divine and human natures in one person means also that He is fixed AND indeterminate - more enduring than those evanescent mountains we humorously call "everlasting", and yet He floats untethered, appearing here as an infant, there as a boy, over there as a man, then corpse, then a risen Lord. So somehow in Him only are there adequate words about the Word, and about Him who spoke it and Him who hears it in our hearts.
Now, since that is where my mind is going, while another part of me is working on how law enforcement officers respond to stress and how Christians can minister to them, and another part is, well, trying to pay the bills, -- and then there's the depresssion and healing the outrages to my feeties and, well, I'm just going to have to leave SOME stuff to others.
And here I find myself in a group which claims enough miracles, some quite recent, to keep you happy, and which, seems to me eagerly happy to believe and rejoice in the most amazing promises of Scripture.
We are described as hag-ridden, perpetually gloomy, harrowed by guilt and penances. But the reality just doesn't match the description.
And acquiescence to the Magisterium isn't as knee-jerk as you might think. An active inquisitive obedience (and I take seriously the root of that word as meaning "intense listening") is not at all numbly docile. Dancers turn to Zion to find all the best steps (Psalm 87, I think) and no one calls them docile or blind.