Adventures in RCIA - Purgatory, Hell, and the Afterlife

I walked into RCIA tonight not believing in purgatory.
I thought that purgatory was a place where SAVED people burned like hellfire until all their sins got burned away.
THAT is a blasphemous idea.
What I was taught tonight about it does not resemble what Protestants taught me that it was - big surprise huh? I guess not really...

I went in thinking that it was only based on a passage from Maccabees. It's not. They have a different interpretation of 1 Corinthians 3:15.

I need to ask Fr. John about it, as several interpretations of what purgatory was were offered. One of them is that is takes only a split second. That when you die, you see the truth and God and all the things in your self and your choices that were not right, and it it painful but it tears that old fleshly part away in a split second, and that split second is purgatory. The nun who teaches theology I think, is the one who put that forth.
The general idea I was taught tonight was that it is a cleansing of anything in your life or person that you did not fully give to God, that you kept back and did not allow God into. There are variations and debated questions about how exactly it works. Is it really some kind of fire, or is that a metaphor?
Does it hurt, like Protestants teach that Hell hurts?

Speaking of which, they discussed Hell tonight too, and it is not that they do not believe in it, but their beliefs are a bit different. They believe that Jesus was saying that it is definitely NOT something you want, and it pertains to being destroyed, and it is something terrible and shameful and rotten and undesirable. They are not sure that it is an endless burning, like burning to death but never passing out or dying for all eternity like I was taught. One guy said he read something about hell being in the same place as heaven,but you do not see where you are or know it or perceive it, you are separated and cut off from it in sensing something completely different. I can see how one could be horrified by that and call it hell, but I don't think I buy into that. He had no support form it other than somebody just dreaming it up and thinking it sucked really bad.
I asked my friend who was raised Catholic for part of his life and is currently becoming Orthodox what the Orthodox church says about Purgatory. They do not have that.
He said it was determined that purgatory was a papal invention to get money out of the grieving.
I told him it does not cost anything.
He said when he was a teenager, his grandma died. She was extremely saintly lady and loved God with all she was, but the priest came over to his dad's house and asked how much money they thought they could raise to get her soul out of purgatory.
I told him what I learned tonight, and he said "If that's what the doctrine is now, they've come along way. That must be a Vatican II amendment." He was pleased.

I hereby apologize to anybody who was extorted from in the manner of the old way of doing things that I heard about from my friend, and is offended about it.
I pray that God will continue to purify the Church of every evil practice and everything that is not pleasing to Him.

NEVER! GIVE! UP! - The Need to Take Rest

Well, I had to quit that writing job, the woman had too many things going on and communication was so bad, and the time was late enough, I had to quit.
I am running on two hours of sleep, plus a few split second cat naps I got in the last several minutes while I waited for things to load in the computer, because I was up all day and all night trying to write that, and I can't write well when I am that fatigued.
I am going to get all the stuff out of the recycle bin in the computer and make a few slight changes, then finish the thing at my own pace the way I would like it and try to get it published.

I did not accomplish anything I had planned to advance my own goals and aims while I worked on that stuff for her, anymore than I took decent care of myself (I didn't) it was a much bigger job than I thought. I did not expect it to be such a disaster, or to take so long, or to be as hard to get info for sometimes...
I am not going to work with her anymore either.

I never want to write like that again,where I am absolutely miserable and feel like I am in a prison trying to work my way out. I let her know I did not want any more offers.

I enjoy writing, and I plan to keep it that way.

I got a call today from a place that helps people with certain conditions - such as, in my case, anxiety and depression - find work. I am hoping for something part time and close to home. Then I can devote myself more fully to my own kind of writing, like this blog, and to that investment class I got.

Miss Fitz, amongst all the books I got out to study, doing what'd like to be doing right now

I was going to shoot the video for the posts about homosexuality I have been working on, 

Alas, I have not yet shot it. I will shoot it tomorrow, hopefully. Hopefully I can also get caught up on that MOOC fiction class I was going to work on today and yesterday too.
When I finish the story for the class, I will post it on the blog where I put such things and share the link here.
:) Godspeed, everybody. I am going to catch me some ZZZZzzzzz....

~Mother Star

Adventures in RCIA - Healing and the Sacrement of Prayer for the Sick

We had an anointing of the sick at Saint Patrick's a while ago. I almost gave up on Catholicism that day, I was so mad.
Do I believe in anointing the sick? Absolutely. However, I do not believe that officially joining a your church first or being part of your denomination should be requirement first.

I went down at the alter call and sat in the pews reserved those wanting to receive anointing off the sick. Fr. John skipped me and refused to anoint of pray for me. He said, "We'll talk later."

I left early that day.

Later, Fr. John explained that the Sacrament of Prayer for the Sick is only for confirmed catholics. Why? Same reason as communion, nobody else believes in it. He came from a Pentecostal background, and seemed to feel that prayer for the sick was trivialized or something, when anybody could do it.
Scripture and the lives of Jesus and his Apostles sing a different tune to Catholic doctrine on this issue.

In the John 5:1-16 Jesus healed a guy who did not seem to know or care who He was.
When He was being arrested, Jesus healed one of the Temple guards who came to get Him. (Luke 22:50-52).

In John 2:23, 4:31, 7:31, we see that many people believed in Jesus because of the miracles.

In Acts 3:1-10, Peter and John were going to the temple,and healed a guy who was asking for money, not to be healed. There is no evidence that he was a disciple before this.

The Great Commission says that signs of laying hands on the sick and they recover will follow those who believe, not just leaders or elders or priests.

In the small,not well known churches and non-famous minsters I knew growing up, people got healed. My grandmother even got healed. I got healed, seriously.
None of us experienced this as a "Sacrament". I know of no one getting healed when they had that prayer and anointing event that I was refused due to not being confirmed yet.

I believe the Church is guilty of quenching the Spirit in this situation,and pray that through Pope Francis' and others' reforms, by the power of the Holy Spirit, this situation will be rectified.

In conclusion, I would like to share the powerful testimony of some protestant missionaries i have been privileged to know. Please enjoy this video prayerfully, and remember that not every culture or Christian community is as ritualed or subdued as ours, but they love God just as much, He uses them powerfully, and He would like to use all of us powerfully too.

NEVER! GIVE! UP! - The Need to Be Yourself

Well,today I worked at Wal-Mart, for a third party doing demonstrations and giving out samples. A temp service sent me there for just one day.

The need to be oneself can get buried in concerns about survival when competing for freelance or temporary or even permanent jobs. It's like, "Ok, what do they want me to be? All right then, how do I become that?" That's terrible. It's destructive. It's no way to live.
There are so many things I am interested in and would be pleased to do with my life. None of them pertain to handing out samples of grossly unhealthy food to strangers in a store run by a rather unethical corporation, dressed in what I consider to be "old lady clothes." That's what I did today, though.
I feel like I am perpetually in transition, like I take step after step and almost never got to anywhere I am going, or even any stops along the way. I have a lot of things in the works for increasing my income from self-employment to the point I do not have to do things like that anymore. The thing is they all take time, both in the sense of not becoming a full-time income overnight and in that they require HUGE amounts of time and effort to do anything at all. I am doing a little bit with a lot of things and need to be doing a lot with just a few things, and preferably just one thing. Choices,choices choices. Sometimes they can be hard to make.

Last night I realized I am afraid to pick something, lest it not be the right thing and lose the time I could have put into the right thing. That kind of decision making could keep me broke and temping indefinitely, if I let it. So I am narrowing it down, or taking steps to decide what is worth my time right now and what is not.

Writing is definitely going to be part of the things left standing, though I have no idea how much I dare narrow that down. I have pretty much stopped looking for gigs on Elance for now. Too much slave-labor on there to be worth the time and effort that could be invested better. I have a client who hired me on there months ago and has since contacted me for work on several other occasions.  I am writing something about health for her now, she basically sub-contracted the research part out to me. It is due tomorrow and I am trying to finish it tonight.

Never give up,that's all I can say. The devil fears those who won't give up. God is pleased with those who continue in faith, trusting Him to show them the way and to make the path straight.

NEVER! GIVE! UP! - Stop and Smell the . . . Onions!?

Well, tough times do not last, just tough people.
My car is not working and I think it's probably done-for. Kelly Blue Book quoted it as worth $400 in good condition, it's in bad condition, so... Oh, well. I try to look on the bright side. If I no longer have a car, I no longer have to pay for gas and insurance.
That means I can save that much and use it to begin utilizing what I am learning in this investing course I just got. I am around 30 pages into the 119 page book. It's very informative and down-to-earth, and easy to understand. I already have found a few things I actually could do, even in this situation. I want to finish reading the book the first time before I contact the mentor, though.
I have another one-day assignment from Exact Staff tomorrow. Next week I am supposed to meet Cathy for coffee and tell her about some of the factories here in town. Akorn keeps needing people. They are very hard to get get on, supposedly. I tried and got nowhere, but my application expired last week so I can probably try again. They are hard to get on but always need people and have a high turnover rate. I think I will wait and let Cathy try to get a contract with them, it sounds like they could use the help in figuring out their HR needs.
I also have been offered a writing job this weekend and am working on that.
It's all about getting through the winter, Decatur economy gets better and bills go down in Spring and especially in Summer.
In my indoor garden, my lettuce is dying. My plant freak friend tells me it needs more light. Two grow-lights are not enough then, for lettuce. Aspiring indoor gardeners take note.

I believe there will not be anything I can eat from this garden this winter, but there will be stuff I can plant next year, especially onions. The beans are doing ok, no flowers yet, but it may be too early.  The onions are doing reasonably well, the tallest stem is getting ready to blossom. Loads of little buds have unfolded from the one large bud. I thought those were the petals at first and though, "My, what a hideous flower!" Nope, its other buds that will be flowers later and will give me seeds to plant. I will be planting seeds I grew myself and then harvesting onions I grew myself from the seeds that I grew. That's pretty cool. Gotta get through winter to get to Spring and that's exactly what I'm doing.

Lessons from Catching Fire: The Morphlings

There is indeed a lot to consider in these films, and lately I feel like doing character write-ups.

Deep down, we tend to value strength, defined as the capability and willingness to use force. By these standards, the Morphlings are considered cowards. Since our value system is not so much different from Panem's, most of us probably think they're cowards too. That was my initial conclusion even. They hid, and did not engage anyone in battle to win.

Other tributes are not the only dangers on the Hunger Games. Game-masters create adversities, such as extreme cold, computer generated creatures that have actual substance, the poisonous or otherwise dangerous fog, rain, insects, birds, and etc. The Morphlings are bit parts, but so are the all the tributes in the alliance called The Careers, and people seem (perhaps unhealthily?) interested in them.
Both of the Morphlings in Catching Fire won their first times in the Hunger Games by hiding until all the other tributes died.
Remember, these were children that were yanked from their families and friends and sent to battle for no reason. The Morphlings managed to protect themselves and stay hidden, always dodging the game-master's hellish creations, while the others killed each other. Eventually, they must have evaded the last actually-fighting tribute(s) until an element created by the game-masters eliminated them. After surviving the Hunger Games, they both became drug addicts. I wonder if winning by means not really respected by the society they lived in fed in to that? Winning the Hunger Games supposedly  brought "pride to your district." How proud would their district have been of these two, really? The culture of The Hunger Games' Panem ran on violence and subjugation, it was part of life for about everybody.

In this situation, doesn't choosing not to fight equal defiance? How is that not rebellion? In a society that values force, and runs on force, doesn't winning non-violently say something? When you have been thrown into a sort of cage and ordered by the powers that be to fight and kill until only one is left standing, how is not fighting anything other than counter-culture? Katniss did not want to fight anyone either, she only killed in self-defense when she was being attacked, or out of mercy when Cato was dying very painfully.

Are they really cowards? Well, let's see. The female Morphling was hiding in the trees, camouflaged, when the computer-generated killer monkeys cornered Peeta. She jumped out of her hiding place which happened to be behind where Peeta was, and got right in the way of the vicious beasts. She had no weapons, no way to fight back. She was instantly attacked and savagely had her throat torn into by the game-masters' creatures. It is not fully clear from the film alone whether she acted out of supportt for the rebellion or not, but she may have. In a very touching scene that reveals Peeta's gentleness, she is carried out to the safety of the waters to see the sunset, and passes away in comparative peace, mesmerized by the artificial but realistic sunset. Peeta said, "She sacrificed herself for me and I didn't even know her name."

Was this Morphling a coward? I think not.



The Lesson: Again, we think too much like Panem. Too much emphasis on brutality and combat-worthiness-type of stuff. Too much judgment of people.
The Morphlings may have been hiding from their feelings in substances, which was indeed cowardly. However, that doesn't mean that "coward" is all they were, or were capable of. Strength is not only measured in combat ability and such like. It is not even measured in getting your way or "winning" whatever that means. It is measured in the positive impact one makes, and how much one is willing to risk or pay to give all that they have, or to give their very best to the world.

Godspeed.

~ Mother Star.

Lessons from Catching Fire: Mama Mags (spoiler alert)

Mags is the epitome of both the strengths and the weaknesses of the revered Mother archetype.
She does not speak, but gestures and communicates with facial expressions and affection. She is elderly, matronly, and not interested in fighting. She is courageous and heroic nevertheless.

The fact that our culture devalues Mags' strongest traits is evident in how few youtube videos there are of her scenes, even though many of her scenes were very impactful. She ultimately gave her life for her country, but at first it appears she only does it to save Peeta. Her part was small, yes, but Kashmere and Gloss were too, and there were also bad. Those were the ones from districts 1 and 2 that trained from childhood to fight in the games, and saw them as chances to prove the superiority of their districts). Yet, there are numerous fan videos made in those character's honor. Mags was not a smaller part than theirs, if anything it might have been bigger role. Yet Mags is almost entirely ignored.

Some of the most character-revealing moments, like when Mags first meets Katniss, no one has cared to post or share. She and Katniss both volunteered to go in place of younger children who were randomly selected to fight in the Hunger Games. The two veterans mutually insist with sincerity, Katniss by words and Mags though delicate gestures, that the other was the bravest. They downplay their own acts of heroism. Mags brings out the gifts in Katniss that Katniss does not see that she has, the traits that could make her a good teacher, a good mother, a good friend. These same traits made Katniss a friend to Rue, and helped wake up a large portion of their country. These traits are not respected in our dominant (in more ways that one!) culture.

Mags agrees to teach Katniss to weave beautiful fishing lures, since she comes from a fishing district, in exchange for Katniss teaching her to hunt. Since I cannot share these marvelous clips, I will share an interview with Lynn Cohen, who played Mags, where she shows - albeit with words - the kind of personality Mags also had.





Mags only ever fought in the Hunger Games at all because she volunteered in the place of a child that had been randomly chosen. No explanation is given in the film of how she survived. Mags does not speak at all, presumably because of the trauma of her first time in the games or an injury sustained there. Mags basically raised Finnick O'Dare, a favorite of the Capitol, who was selected at 14 and was the youngest person ever to survive the Hunger Games. Mags is introduced, in Haymitch's informative video for the District 12 tributes, as Finnick O'Dare's only weakness. She is like a mother to him and he would do anything, even die, to protect her.

The Hunger Games fans have commemorated Mags only in her death scene, though her heroic nature and her gentleness are equally important. In fact, these attributes are different applications of the same traits. Mags' age and gentleness were at least as powerful of traits as any abilities Finninck or any of the other fighters had. Mags was successful in forging an amiable connection/alliance with Katniss, where Finnick had failed miserably. In addition to what this character contributed by gaining Katniss's respect and trust, she also raised Finnick. All the nutrition he had to get strong enough to win the Hunger games at such a tender age was prepared and chosen by her. Her skill in making fishing hooks suggests she may have had a part in providing it as well as preparing it. Whatever noble ideals Finnick had that made him support the Revolution despite being treated like a King in the Capitol would have been instilled by her. His strength, his skills in fishing, any decency he had, would have likely been there at least partly because of Mags. Everything she brought to the revolution was valuable, and she brought a lot.

In the special event designed to eliminate "The Mockingjay" Katniss Everdeen, in which only survivors of previous Hunger Games are chosen, Mags is clearly the least likely to succeed. During this event, when the small band of allies - Mags, Finnick, Peeta, and Katniss - have to cover distances, Finnick basically gives Mags a piggy-back ride.

Katniss did not know that half the tributes - including Finnick, and presumably Mags - were part of a plot to end the games and help overthrow the Capitol. Katniss, as the unwilling symbol of hope for the revolution, had to get out alive at all costs. Keeping her in the dark about the plan was equally important.



President Snow had threatened Katniss's family; she had to convince the districts that the dual-suicide bluff she and Peeta pulled to get out of the 74th Hunger Games without killing each other was an act of passion, not defiance (it was defiance). Katniss also had no intention of surviving twice. Whether she believed her family would be safer if she died keeping up the die-hard romance act, or cared more for Peeta than for herself, or just wanted out of the pain the post-traumatic stress was causing her is unclear (from the film at least).
Even if Katniss had wanted to leave Peeta behind when he fell in the poison fog, she would certainly not have done so; President Snow would have killed her family. Mags knew that Finnick had to carry Peeta, or both he and Katniss would die in the fog. Finnick would never, ever, leave Mags by choice, so she kissed her adopted son goodbye and hurried into the fog, where she very quickly died.

The Lesson: Strength is not measured in viciousness or in capability for violence. Neither is courage, or valor, or power or worth. As a society we need to think less like Panem, and get this reality through our heads. The epiphany is looong overdue.

Godspeed.

~M.S.