Tuesday, September 10, 2019
1980: The Great Principles from Lincoln County Watch
By Anna Von Reitz
I was visited --- unexpectedly and
unannounced --- last night, by one of the brothers who attended Thomas
Merton. I didn't recognize him at first and he played me along, until
he finally introduced himself. Then, of course, we had an interesting
conversation.
He told me that Merton is haunting
the little garden where his body is buried, and that many people who
visit the grave site have seen him and had interactions with him in the
years since he died. Those who tend the plot also regularly either
sense his presence or have interactions with him. This surprised me,
and made me wonder --- why would Merton, of all people, hang around his
own grave after he was set free of his body?
The answer came like a thunderbolt
-- to be the "second voice" lifted to Heaven to invoke the presence of
Jesus, when some poor and lonely soul comes to his grave to mourn and to
pray over their own miseries and the miseries of the world.
Of course, Thomas would do that.
He'd be there to be that Second Voice, so that nobody who came to his
grave to pray, would pray alone.
Did the brothers need to be concerned, my visitor asked?
What were the fruits of these encounters? I returned.
A sense of peace and miraculous answers to prayer, he answered.
Well, then, what is there to be
concerned about? Our brother is not resting when so many are in need
and the membership of the Church is in such torment and turmoil.
But, but, but.... we are not to communicate with the dead.
Are the dead prohibited from communicating with us?
Obviously, not.
Lazarus communicated with plenty of
people. Jesus communicated with his Disciples for weeks prior to his
departure. Innumerable interactions with long-dead saints and the
Virgin Mary have been recorded and many, many miracles have been
attributed to these encounters.
Why, then, brother, do you concern yourself about Thomas?
He looked at me strangely. I think
it hadn't occurred to him until that moment that Thomas, like Jesus, was
still walking about after his physical death, still tending to the
heart-sore and the way-worn, still offering prayers.
One of the Great Principles is the
Principle of Love. Love is the glue that binds everything together.
Everything. Including your body. Love is far more than an emotion with
many shades of color. Love is the binding and creative force of the
Universe.
Those who truly love us are never
far from us. Those who truly love Mankind often continue to minister to
us from beyond the grave. It's not so strange, once you realize that
love is literally what binds us together.
My visitor trundled off into the
night, leaving as he came, quietly and on foot, padding down my driveway
in the fading light, a gentle, slightly-built man, clean-shaven,
approaching old age. He was a young Trappist in 1962.
I continued to muse.
Yes, love is the great binding
force, but there is a corollary law, and that is just as important to
remember: what we don't love, we lose.
Throughout our lives we are
constantly being prodded to choose. There is always a question posed
and hovering over our heads, what do you choose or which do you choose?
Red or green? Skinny or fat? Right or wrong? Blond or brunette?
Stocks or bonds? Hearts or clubs?
Even when we are old and our choices
are solid, we are constantly pressed and prodded by the urgency of
choice. Will you choose the True God or Mammon? Will you choose love
or hate?
And everything we do not love enough, falls away.
It is assumed that we don't want it anymore, like leftover birthday cake.
So all the friends we lose track of,
fall away. The spouses we neglect, fall away. The great passions of
our lives that we don't answer, fall away. In the end, even life
itself, falls away. But love remains.
There is a great and looming
question posed by the theft of our amnion estate and the false claims to
own our DNA: do we love and respect ourselves enough? Do we love the
Source of our lives enough to treasure life, to treasure our earthly
estate and our divine origin?
Will we defend that? Claim it? Or
will we leave our DNA and the divine mystery of our own incarnation
discarded like garbage on the hospital floor?
Have we loved our neighbors enough?
Most of us don't even know our neighbors anymore.
Have we loved life? Probably not nearly enough.
Have we loved our country?
If not, no questions about why it is
in danger of becoming a global criminal empire ruled by men all cut
from the pattern of the Robber Barons.
It all comes down to what and who you love, and what we as the whole of Mankind care about.
If we don't give the Earth enough
love, it falls away from us, and becomes sickly and barren. Our pets.
Our families. Our friends. Our faith. All will fall away from us,
without love.
So those who would deprive us of
everything to satiate their greed, those who would literally steal the
breath from our nostrils, seek to keep us embroiled in fear and in hate,
to keep our attention centered away from every loving thought, word,
and deed.
They seek to keep us centered on
their abuses and nonsense, when -- if we would merely love more and fear
less -- all their apparatus would vanish.
Because what we love is bound to us, and what we do not love, falls away.
As you confront the Great Evil that
has been built up like a towering prison edifice around us, as you quail
before the might of the misdirected military, as you despair in the
face of injustice-- turn away.
Turn your attention to those you love, to all the people and all the things you love.
There are those in this country who
don't love America. They do not think of it as their country, their
soil, their rocks and trees. To them, it is a hateful idea, a label, a
political brand name, something they are ashamed of, and which they
despise.
They don't have sense enough to know what their country is, much less sense enough to love it.
And what we don't love, falls away. That's why the rest of us have to love it more than ever.
Here's my favorite quote from Thomas Merton:
"Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another."
I hope that on the balance, when you
stop long enough to consider what I have actually written and what I
have done, you will all realize that every word and every action, even
my outrage and occasional name-calling, comes from love --- love for
this country and its people, love for this planet and the glory of
creation, love for the True God, our Creator, love for the teachings of
the Jesus and the Prophets, love for all Mankind.
Being a Fiduciary is not a labor
that anyone would choose, and even my Lord did not command me to do it.
It simply needed to be done, and I was prepared. So here I am, as
strange as the whole circumstance may be--- in my view, or in anyone
else's. Love binds me to the work and binds me to the Earth and to the
service of Mankind, and no doubt someday my pleasant ghost will kneel
and add a Second Voice to other's lonely prayers.
----------------------------
See this article and over 1900 others on Anna's website here: www.annavonreitz.com
To support this work look for the PayPal buttons on this website.
How do we use your donations? Find out here.
No comments:
Post a Comment