Three Rosaries

I bought three rosaries online today. The last time I purchased a rosary online, it was a beautiful blue rosary with a relic from Gemma's coffin in it. It is the rosary that will be wrapped around my hands as I lay in my coffin stone cold dead. I wonder who will go to my wake and funeral. I only have Church friends. I lost my secular friends after I went crazy and I don't think Mellonie wants to talk to me anymore, but some of the people from Church will come and pray for me. And my parents and my brother and my cousins. But today I bought three everyday rosaries. They are all wooden with cords and no links, as I have found these to be the best ones for me. I can pray with them without links to break. The cord is stronger than the chain. If a rosary has five hundred links, only one of them has to break for the rosary to become worthless, and in my experience, one of them always breaks. When my first rosary broke I saw it as a sign of my own reprobation as the breaking of a rosary must certainly be a sign of damnation. But no, they always break. They are meant to be pretty, but since nobody ever actually prays the rosary, they make them weak so they break if regularly used. I am sure there are quality chain rosaries that do not break, but I have never owned one. My favorite was very expensive and made of green malachite stones and real silver links and it fell to pieces, both the stones and the links. And every other chain rosary I bought since has also fallen to pieces. So now I like the wooden beads on cords. This is the website I like to buy them from. I wish more people would buy from them, so if you want a rosary, order it from them. They have the kind I like and I am grateful to them because once I bought a rosary from them, prayed with it, and pulled it a bit, and the string broke on the first day I used it. So I complained and they sent me a new one right away at no cost and it has lasted for years, so ever since they were so nice to me I like to talk them up and recommend their website.

I wonder if we will be watching the Super Bowl this year. Mass is at 5, so it will end at 6. And the game starts around 6:30, usually. I know our priest is a football fan and his team is the Chiefs and they are playing, so we may all go out as a group to a pub or something to watch the game. There is nothing more worldly than the Super Bowl and the inner Jansenist in me suggests boycotting it on principle. I remember I watched the Katy Perry halftime show a few years ago and it was a mockery of the Whore of Babylon from the Book of the Apocalypse. So I have no desire to take part in the satanism or blasphemy on public display. But I have nothing against having two pints and eating some wings and the football itself is merely stupid and not sinful. The gladiators are not killing each other, and there are no Christians being eaten by tigers or anything. Though some suggested boycotting the game over some advertisements promoting sodomy, for what it's worth. And the pro-lifers complained that the network turned down a pro-life advertisement. Still, I would not want to give an anti-christ television network a couple of million dollars for an ad even if the ad itself did promote a good cause.

So I am more excited for the rosaries than about the big game. I still have a weakness for baseball. I like when the Yankees win. I want them to win the world series. Last year I watched a few games. I will probably watch a few this year. But it is still stupid and a weakness of mine. An imperfection perhaps, and not a sin.

I want to live in my little room and be peaceful and pray and hope as I have been. I have been good since I got out of the hospital. It has been six months. I am at peace, even in my infirmities. More hope, and no despair. Nobody bothers me, and I don't feel lonely even though I know I am pretty much alone. I am happy more than any other emotion. I live in my little room and look at pictures. I go to Church to say my prayers. I pray for people in my life who I love, and people from my past who I used to love and still have a fondness for. Lately there is one person who I am thinking of and praying for all the time. I have thought about praying the Office of the Dead for her and did tonight, even though she is still alive. I wonder if my prayers make a difference? Even if God does not exist, the meditation and disciplining of the mind and the will makes me happy and gives me peace, even if there is no power of divinity in it. And of course I think there is great power in it. In prayer, if even not in my own prayer because I am feeble and a sinful man like Saul.

I imagine Cora's prayers are powerful. She is living with the relatives of a friend who are members of some sort of cult in another state and is praying for them, unable to make it to a Church, or at least a Church she is willing to go to. She is more pious than me, as I am willing to step foot in a Novus Ordo Church to pray. She prays more than anyone I know and I think she is very holy if anyone I know is holy. Angry Tom thinks she is crazy. She is a seventy eight year old Filipino woman, forty years older than I am, but when I used to see her at Church I sometimes thought about how beautiful she was for an older woman and how if she was forty years younger she would be the kind of woman I would like to marry (if I were not broken). And then there is Karen. She is feebleminded like I am, and is an old maid. I bet her prayers are powerful. She told me she prays for three and a half hours every day. She likes the Pieta Prayer Book. And she comes to Mass. She is like Cora in her sensibilities and she gets visits from Jesus and Mary and they tell her what to do and what Churches to go to. She has not told me of any prophecies. She told me about how one time one of her friends tried to get her to marry the devil as a young woman but she refused and another girl she knew accepted and wedded the devil and now she is rich and living with a multimillionaire husband not caring for a thing but trying not to think about eternity. And Julian's prayers must be powerful. He is all alone in the nursing home with no friends and nobody to take him to Church. Our good priest visits him to hear his confessions and bring him Holy Communion every once in a while and they argue about salvation. In my mind whatever your position on EENS is I can't imagine a lot of people are going to heaven these days. I wonder about the Christians in Africa. They are dirt poor, but they have families and they seem to believe and they fight with Muslims and are more conservative than Americans and Europeans. There liturgy is strange and Africanized but I hope a lot of them have the faith and are good people. So Julian in his nursing home alone, with nurses who are not kind to him, praying for all of us, blind, with bad kidneys, unable to walk much. He is a victim for sure and it is always nice to talk to him. I am looking forward to March because he says he will be leaving the nursing home in March and moving in with his sisters, six blocks from my house. So we can be friends. I can bring him to the diner and we can eat together, perhaps once a week. And perhaps once in a while I can get my Father to drive us to our Mission in the City for Mass. He will not go to the local Churches where I go for Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction because he does not believe the Novus Ordo has true Sacraments so to him it would be idolatry, so he only goes to the Latin Mass (and not all Latin Masses) and the Eastern Rite Divine Liturgy. I think Jesus is there and that God would not abandon 99.9 percent of the world's Catholics to idolatry, even if the Novus Ordo is a deficient Mass, but he is more pious than me and is even a sedevacantist if you know what that means. So I do not tell him about how I like to go to Novus Ordo Church to look at Jesus because that would lead to an argument. I can tell angry Tom that, but not Julian or Cora or Karen, because I like to keep the peace, and I don't think their differing opinions would lead them to have less hope for salvation.

So I am happy to wait on my three rosaries. They should come next week and I will have them blessed by Father after Mass next Sunday. I am thinking of buying a fourth rosary, this one a fifteen decade one, also with wooden beads and a cord. It is more expensive though. I have no use for a twenty decade one because I do not pray the Luminous Mysteries (because I am a traditional Catholic and we do not like new prayers for the most part, though I have thought about learning how to say them and also learning how to say the Divine Mercy Chaplet, as an act of charity. I doubt, even if I do not think they are as good as the real rosary, that it would be a sin to pray those prayers, even if they are weaker).

Yesterday there were so many grackles. I noticed there were two kinds of grackles. One with brown breasts and one who were all black. The black ones are bigger. There were like fifty of them in front of a house near St. Benny's flying to and fro, cackling. Often I do wonder if animals really are a sign. The black birds represent the state of the souls of the people who live near by, like the squirrels. If people were holy all the squirrels would be white and all the pigeons would be as ivory doves. I looked at the grackles for five minutes or so. Some were eating. Really, they were just hanging out, talking to each other. Like people do outside of their apartments when you walk by and smell marijuana smoke. I wonder if animals get bored. I never get bored anymore. I waste time on the computer, but when I have quiet and silence it does not bother me. My thoughts are straight and I always have a prayer in my mind or on my lips. For some reason I never get tired of the same prayer, at least for the last six months. In the hospital in my despair in limbo I prayed Ave Maris Stella. Now in my freedom I pray a simpler prayer in English, "O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto thine heart." I say it over and over. Sometimes in front of Jesus I look at him, and I did this today at Eucharistic Adoration and repeat it over and over, hundreds of times. Or in front of the tabernacle. Today I held my rosary beads and counted them out, in my mind, not vocally. Over and over. They say the Orthodox do that with the Jesus Prayer "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have mercy on me a sinner". But you can do that with any prayer. A monk might retreat on to his mountain with a few lines of a psalm and contemplate them for seventy years and still not fully understand it. I will walk around the mountain a thousand times. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will not fear because the Lord is with me. His rod and his staff, they comfort me. But my mind is by no means free of trouble. Sometimes I have bad thoughts but when I do usually I speak them out loud, they do not remain in my mind, and sometimes I say bad things. But usually I have peace. And when I go to confession I confess that sometimes I say bad things to myself but I do not remember how often or what exactly I said. It is my most common sin, but Father P. told me to not worry because it probably was not a sin because it was like a tic of the mind with no intent in the will.

I just thought about the mayor of Kew Gardens, Aaron, and how I told him that when he died I would go to his grave in the Maple Grove Cemetery and put a toasted bialy with butter and a cup of coffee on his headstone. I wonder if he is still alive. It has been twelve years and he was an old man back then. He must be dead by now, no? I have not seen him like some of the old reprobates from my last job when I am around Kew Gardens to go shopping, or to the bank, or to the post office with my mother. Poor old Aaron and Stanley. Yes, they must be dead by now. So much time has passed. Perhaps I should pray for them?

There is one thing lately that I am grateful for. I am grateful that I am a happy crazy and not an angry crazy or a depressed crazy. If one has to break, I broke in a better way. I am not suicidal, and I do not suffer. Now. If things get bad I may go there in the future and when I was newly broken, I was in a bad place, but I survived. But now, I am glad to be happy broken.

Father R.

Today we had Father R. as our priest. He used to be our pastor seven or eight years ago and we hadn't seen him since. He remembered me and knew my name. He said my name without asking. I told him I had seen the picture of him saying Mass on top of the cliff at the grand canyon. He gave a sermon on which he talked about EENS and salvation. He spoke of how God gives graces to all men so they have a chance to be saved (whenever this is spoken of I think of all the unbaptized babies). And he spoke about how if a man tries to be good but does not know about Jesus, Our Lord will enlighten him and send a missionary or an angel or an internal inspiration so that he can learn about Jesus and receive the faith and join the Church. This is different from what another priest talked about a few weeks ago where he denied the need to have the faith and join the Church. So Father R. believes the faith is necessary while the other priest expressed the modern view that "being nice" is enough.

He spoke about how it was years since he had last been here and how there were few of us who he recognized and I told him how some people died. The skinny old lady? D.? Yes she died. And M.? Yes, I know she died. She was very generous. But a friend who I was hoping to see was not there. I was sad. I had hoped to see him because he told me he would be at Church one Sunday in January and this was the last and he was not there. I could have spoken to him.

After Church for coffee there were four of us. We spoke for a little while. I expressed the thought that I would probably never marry and was offered encouragement. T. is the same age as me and also single and he was speaking about his troubles with women. He says he attracts the wrong kinds of women. And he also expresses disinterest in Church girls. They are stuck up or something. I don't know as I have never tried to date a Church girl. I just ignorantly hope that they are angels and that they are better than me. I am afraid of even speaking with them honestly. Less people come now that Mass is at 5 and not 2:30. But at night I get to go early and see Vespers as well as Mass and visit a few Churches. So you win and lose.

I just wanted to remember Father R. was here and he said he should be back some time in the next few months when Father S. is away. At Mass today I was praying for someone's conversion, and for me and my family. I was talking to God about them.

I read most of the life of Antony today. I will finish it tomorrow. When he speaks about faith he tells the Greek philosophers that faith comes directly from God and does not come from arguments. So that for a man with faith arguments are useless and even bad. For a man to have faith, he just knows interiorly. Faith comes from hearing, but it does not come from proofs. So his faith is different from the faith of the philosophers. I trust the faith of Antony.

Looking forward to the doctor and therapy tomorrow.

Fasting Again

I am fasting again. So far it is going well. I will be fasting until Easter. The plan is to eat one meal a day at night, usually rice and lentils with an egg except for Friday and Sunday. Preferably no meat, but some dairy. I have been at it for a week and five days and I have lost five pounds. In my experience I should lose two pounds a week until I stop. The last time I did this I got so skinny everyone told me I was too skinny, so now I plan on not going too far. I was a glutton since I got free last time so now I want to tighten my belt. I have no wife to please. It is for myself and I guess for God. To have a strong will and not be a glutton. Eating is not ugly like sex, but too much is too much. I think that any eating above and beyond the level of sustenance and hospitality must be a form of gluttony, however mild. When people are starving in Africa so they say, how dare you feast on fried fish and chips or mutton. I bought another bag of lentils today.

I have been drinking coffee. More than I should because I am not eating. The plan is to cut it down to just a little. And I have been drinking diet soda which I also want to cut down if not eliminate. I will be having beer on Fat Tuesday but otherwise I will not be drinking any wine or beer. My father got a bottle of rum from work and I am the only drinker in the house, but that is too much. I will not be mixing rum with my diet sodas while I am fasting.

So far I have been having a little bit of food outside of my one meal. Today I had a small piece of cake, and on other days I have had some bread. But the hunger pains are going away. For some reason the more I eat, the more hungry I get. And now less than two weeks into fasting the hunger has gone away. The demons of my belly must be afraid of me or something.

The demons of the belly. The devils haven't bothered me much lately except that soon after I got out of the hospital I had strange temptations for a while which I discovered were from the devils and they have left me since they were discovered. The devils work in funny ways. Demons of alcohol are strong, but they do not last very long for me. Demons of tobacco were stronger but they only lasted for a week or so. Demons of sexuality are the strongest and they fought really really hard against me. But now I only face common demons of food and drink and normal living. My fasting is to fight these common demons. I still have the demons of coffee and diet soda. I plan on getting rid of the diet soda demons. And the coffee demons need to be put in their place. But can one conquer the demons completely and live a life of no sensuality at all when none of one's actions are influenced by the demons. They say that when people willingly sin the demons do not bother them but when one tries to stop sinning then the demons come out in force and fight really really hard to maintain control.

I am a common person who is feeble-minded. But I want to be good. I have been so bad. But now I want to be good. I do not want to be a plaything of the demons any longer. Their favorite corn-cob pipe.

I sometimes have desires to take up smoking again. My preference would be out of a corn-cob pipe because as a youth when I was a new smoker it gave me more pleasure than smoking in any other way. I would take the smoke into my mouth taste it with my tongue like good whiskey, and then blow it out of my mouth. My mouth would absorb the smoke and the nicotine and it would make me feel very very happy. It was a happy drug. Other methods of tobacco usage were addictive but they did not give me the same pleasure. So if I took up the vice again it would be in that way. But if I ever did that my parents would get angry and it would be introducing the old demons into my life, the tobacco demons. I used to roll really good cigarettes. After the corn-cob pipe, I preferred hand-rolled cigarettes without filters, that I would roll and smoke like candy. I may get lung cancer even after quitting. And if I bought a pack it would be Kamel Reds or some other variety of Camels. Cohiba cigarettes were better but I only smoked them once because at the time I smoked they were illegal in America. But that is another form of gluttony. It must be a vice.

So pray for me that I kick the demons of diet soda and coffee to the dust and live demon free. I am doing well for a schizophrenic out of the hospital. There is no demon fire in me like there once was so long ago. I have peace even though my life is meaningless in the eyes of the world and I am alone without a wife. Girls are so very beautiful to me even though I am no longer as much of a slave to the demons of lust as I used to be. There are some saints who never looked at a woman's face in their entire lives, even their mother's for the sake of modesty. I am not like that. I look at women's faces and adore their beauty. There are paintings of beautiful women in Churches. Are they not meant to be looked at?

For what it's worth I have been writing about demons. Fasting to fight them. I wish I were pure of heart.

Hopeless

On the idea that some people are already damned, but still go on living. They are waiting for death with nothing ahead of them but waiting for eternal hell. Are there some people who have pushed God too far and are already damned but are still yet living? Something I think about. What if I am among them. What exactly is the unforgivable sin that Jesus talks about? Have I committed this sin? It is not quiet clear. Is saying something unkind about the third person of the Blessed Trinity an unforgivable offense? Looking back on my life, have I done that? I cannot remember. Perhaps once when I was drunk or on drugs? But others say that this blasphemy that is unforgivable is merely final impenitence and that there is no sin that can not be forgiven if one is penitent. But then there is that dreaded sermon of the Cure of Ars where he says that some sinners have pushed God too far and even if they come back to God they are forsaken by Him and God does not listen to their cries. He gives Voltaire as an example. He called for a priest and even went to confession and as he was dying the last few hours of his life were spent begging God for forgiveness, but St John Vianney tells us that his sorrow was in vain. He had pushed God too far and was damned. Could I be among those so doomed? Are my prayers and piety in vain?

I think sometimes on that matter when I interact with other people. I know one man who does not have hope and lives in despair and I wonder if he is right to do so and if I am only fooling myself with hope which will only lead to greater disappointment. It does not hurt as it makes me happy, but what if it were more fitting to hate God for forsaking me?

Has God forsaken you? I am a happy person lately. But I am also so very alone. Julian is alone. My best friend. He is in a home and can not see. But I am alone. I am older now and I have no wife and no means to support one and I have no friends so I get lonely. When I was younger I knew what it was like to be with a woman and it is normal to be married. But I have to face the fact that I am alone, will remain alone, and then I will die and nobody will go to my funeral. Maybe I could meet some crazy girl on disability and we could get married and live together. I know that will never happen. But if you know anyone you think would be good for me let me know. But I did know a couple like that so if it could happen like that maybe it could happen for me. No, I am alone. I am happy. My life is not difficult now. And on Monday I get to go to therapy to talk. Loneliness. Go to Church, therapy. I do not slave away, but my mind does not work. Life is good for me now because I have my family. I love my family, except that they watch television. I hate television.

Be good and be happy. It was nice going to Church today. Like every Thursday there were the grackles. Cackling. It is almost time for my holy hour, my favorite prayer. In peace until then.

Betrothal

I witnessed something new today, something I did not know about. A young man and woman, both of whom sing in the mixed choir that we have had often for the past few months, and neither of whose names I remember, are going to get married. And after Mass today they were betrothed. The priest went through a little ceremony and blessed them. Nothing was announced about this beforehand, though the priest did announce the Blessed Sacrament would be on the altar after Mass because he was making a sick call, it just happened after Mass. The man, the woman, the Lovely Helena and her sister Olivia had little cards with the prayers on them and Father blessed them.

A betrothal is a promise to get married, more solemn than an engagement. I do not know what the consequences of breaking the betrothal are, perhaps it is considered a sin without grave reason, while a normal engagement can be broken off with less reason.

The beautiful Cecilia is so very beautiful. I am afraid of her. Today she was wearing a dark red velvet dress, feminine and modest enough, but gorgeous. It is hard not looking at her. She has chestnut brown hair which she wears down long and curled at the ends. After Mass today I was distracted and wanted to just look at her beauty. I did not, I only glanced at her a few times. Father made a sick call so the Blessed Sacrament was on the altar for a while after Mass, a long while, as we all kneeled, I sat, and prayed.

When Mass is over and they blow out the candles, the beautiful Cecilia helps take down the altar and put the things away and when she does I admit I like to wait and look at her moving from side to side as she does not notice me. Angry Tom once saw me looking at the beautiful Cecilia as she was walking away and he asked me why I don't go after her. I once told him that I was afraid if her and he asked why and I said because she was so very beautiful.

We have a new refugee coming to Mass. A pious older black woman who held a crucifix with a St. Benedict Medal on it and prayed throughout Mass. I said hello to her. She comes from Our Lady of La Salette. She had the article I read from the Queens Chronicle and after reading it she no longer wants to go there because of the scandal. I would expect more people to come as we are in the same city, and as far as theology is concerned we are the closest to them in the area. But so far she is the only one. I went there once for Ash Wednesday. I just hope what supposedly happened there is not common.

But the beautiful Cecilia is so very beautiful. I wonder what kind of person she is. If she is pious and chaste and not a hypocrite she would be so very beautiful as to be extraordinary. What is she doing here with us grievous sinners in the city of Sodom? She should be in the country married with children far away from the flood of sins that surrounds us here. But if I was not broken and had a decent job and I was young I would want to marry Cecilia, but I would be afraid to ever talk to her as I am now. I would think that she was too good for me, even if I were young and not mentally crippled, But now I can see her at Mass gracefully gliding back and forth or sitting or kneeling quietly. I do not even know the color of her eyes. I have seen them for a moment at a time, but I have never stared into them out of fear, so I forget the color. Were they olive green or brown or grey? They were not blue. Beauty and youth. I hope they are green like my own eyes are green.

I am liking my new routine of going in to the city early to pray on Sunday. Mass now is not until 5 PM. I saw most of vespers at Holy Innocents and then I went to Our Saviour and then to the upper room for Mass. I said all my prayers. I even got to be blessed at benediction. It was an ideal day and I hope to make it the model of every Sunday. Some may think it bad to go to other Churches that are not traditional, but I think it is fine now because I think they are valid and Jesus is really there. I do not go to the Novus Ordo for Mass, but I can look at Jesus and say prayers there without affirming the goodness of the Novus Ordo. Even angry Tom goes there and he is a sedevacantist, so it should be fine for me as well. I am content.

Even though I try to be chaste and not a pervert, I can not get over my love for women. The attraction is still there even though I am older. I admire beauty even though I do not want to sin over it anymore.

What Is Love?

What is love really? I don't know. A man is meant to love women. Mother first, then wife. I think it is easier for a man to love the Blessed Mother or a female saint than it is for him to love Jesus or a male saint. Perhaps it is just me.

My favorite saint is a woman who I think was very beautiful. I like looking at pictures of her and praying to her. She is my sweet love. I hope to one day be with her in the after life. As a saint she is in heaven and as I love her I know she loves me, only more as she is perfect and with God in love and glory. I imagine saints love the poor souls on earth who pray to them. And the more one prays to the saint, the more the saint loves the poor soul. I pray to her a lot and like thinking about her. I read books about her life and the things she did and how she was a good woman and suffered for Jesus. I love her and she loves me also and I hope to meet her when I die. It is a strange thing to love a woman who one has never met and who died so long before one was born.

I also love a woman who is alive. I do not talk to her but I know she is alive. She knows I am alive. I do not talk to her much. I do not think she cares for me much, as I care for her. The same as with my saint, I hope to be together with this woman in the afterlife as we will not be together in this valley of tears. It is not lust. I think I have learned the difference. But I am not a high-value man according to the world, not having money, or now, even youth. She is not like me, a crazy pious recluse, not that she is successful herself. We are both dysfunctional, me more so than her in some ways, she more than I in other ways. I pray for her as I do for my friend. If my prayers have any value before the throne of God.

Today I went to the Church south of Atlantic avenue and I saw and heard the grackles. I heard their call, even while I was in Church. They were hanging out with starlings. Some black chested, some brown chested. One was eating bread on the telephone wire. It held the bread in its beak and did not swallow it. Then I walked closer and all the birds flew away. I know their call. They are not crows as I thought they were at first, knowing nothing of birds at all.

So, pray for me, my sweet love, my greatest love. And pray for my other love, my living love, and perhaps we will all meet and be together in the end as I hope. My mood is peaceful. But not completely. I am still in this world of sorrow.

A Mummy

Years ago I came across a blog that was by a Mexican man who became a traditional Catholic and went to the seminary in La Reja for a while, was never ordained, and now he is no longer a traditional Catholic but he still seems to still have respect for them (I could say us). I used to read his blog and there was one post that I remembered as being a great post.

It was about a popular-devotion among Catholics in South America. Apparently there was a young boy who died and his corpse became mummified somehow. His skin was dry and discolered and he looked like some sort of monkey. For some reason he was never buried, or if he was buried he was exhumed. The laywomen took his body and venerated him as if he were a saint. They put his body in Churches, put beautiful clothes on him like the Infant Jesus of Prague and prayed to him for his intercession. There must have been miracles, for otherwise why would the pious women pray and the devotion grow? This devotion to the mummified young boy became popular among the people, they would march the mummified body with his ornate dress into Churches and have services there.

One day as this devotion was going on in a Catholic Church, the Bishop walked by and was surprised to see a large crowd gathered together in one of his Churches because nobody ever goes to Church anymore in his diocese. He went in and saw the large group of women venerating what looked like an old shriveled up monkey on the altar and he was scandalized. He made it his mission to ban the devotion from his Churches and try to stamp it out. He failed. The lay devotion was more popular than the Bishop and the devotion went on, now underground and persecuted. Soon after, the Bishop died in a car crash and the women saw it a sign of the intercession of the monkey boy as retaliation for trying to have the devotion banned and it served as a warning for the new Bishop to not oppose the cult of the mummified boy. And it went on. I hope it continues to this day. I would love to see this devotion; it is in South America, I do not remember which country. I would rather go to such a Church for such a devotion than go to the Novus Ordo Mass.

So I rediscovered this blog after so many years and started reading it. For a while it was made private and as I was not invited I could no longer read it and forgot about it. It is called Reditus and the blogger says his name is Arturo Vasquez.

Routines

My current life has its routines now. Sunday is the best day, when I get to go to Church in the city for the Latin Mass and talk with Church friends over coffee. I have been going early and making a day of it as Mass is now in the evening. On Thursdays I get to go to Eucharistic Adoration for a little while and Benediction at St. Benny's. And on Fridays they have Jesus on the altar all day at the little chapel at Holy Child. I can go and look at Jesus for as long as I want if I am not busy on Friday. Some people look at television. I like looking at Jesus. I have not watched television or movies regularly in many years so I am used to the quiet and the silence. I use the computer, but that is different from television and is mostly reading and typing. So I like the quiet, to sit silently in a room or a chapel and pray. I say prayers. Lately I have been praying the Little Office and the Way of the Cross and on Thursday nights I have my holy hour. On week days I try to walk to Church three times so I can pray. I like to go and talk to God. He lives in the tabernacle even on the days when they do not have Him exposed in the monstrance.

I do not understand why, but it seems more monumental to look at and speak to Jesus when He is in the monstrance than when He is merely in the tabernacle. Behind a door. Behind a veil. I know He is there but I can not see Him. I can only see His house. But on Thursdays and Fridays I can look into His heart. I go to Him and just look at Him. And I pray, but I like looking at Him. I thank Him and I do not blame Him. I say thank you for letting me be happy but I do not curse Him for the times when I am sad.

And I look at the clouds. That has been a great source of happiness, looking at the clouds. They are very beautiful and every time I walk outside of the house I can look up at the sky, at the sun, or the clouds or the moon, even if there are no birds, and it is beautiful, and seeing beauty gives me great happiness. I do not know why I am noticing the beauty of the creation now more than I used to. But ever since I got out of the hospital I have been ever sensitive to the beauty of nature. Inside Churches or looking at paintings there is beauty, but somehow it does not compare to the natural beauty of the earth and the sky, even in the city where man-made buildings are dominant and nature is in the background. There is always a sliver of sky and I can look at the heavens and cry out "that is where God lives." It is as if the earth really is in the center of the universe and the firmament is above us and all the stars and the sun and the moon circle around us and are there in the firmament above us which appears to be infinite but is really just a vision and above there are the waters and then the infinite heaven where God lives with His mother and all the angels and the saints.

I have not been going on my walks during the winter time, instead I have been simply going to Church to pray rather than spend all that time walking. So I have my routines. I hope to start a fasting routine soon, for Lent or maybe sooner. I am trying to eat less food, but my will is weak. I am often eating just a little bit more bread. Hopefully I will master my appetite and cease being a glutton. I have done it before so I know I can do it again.

So tonight I went to Benediction. A relative of one of my old schoolmates Jose was there and she took out her phone and showed me a picture of him with his children. He is lucky to have a big family.

So I do have my routines. I don't know how interesting they are to you, but they are to me. Go to Benediction if you can. It is wonderful to just sit there and look at Jesus for a while and then kneel for the blessing. I would that it were every day. When I go into the City for Church and I get there early, I have been walking to Holy Innocents. In the afternoon the have Vespers but they do something weird. After Vespers is over they take Jesus out of the tabernacle and put Him in the monstrance for a few moments and then have Benediction and then immediately put Him away. It would be better if they took him out in the beginning before Vespers and left him there for the whole service so that we could look into the heart of Jesus for the whole time instead of just for a moment.

I have no troubles and no doubts lately. I live in a little world that is wonderful in happiness. The future, who knows, but for now I an happy. Even though my mind is broken I do not suffer much. I hope if my life becomes sad that I will have hope and still love Jesus if I end up in a bad place.

So I am looking forward to Church as I always do and I am looking forward to therapy again this Monday. It has been too long. My therapist is finally back from her illness. It is supposed to be every two weeks, but I have only been there about three times since the end of July. The people there are like my friends. I will be happy to see them and talk to them. I hope my few readers, and I cannot tell how many I have, like reading my little blog posts. I write them for comfort and for a record of my life and my routines and I share them with you in case you care enough to read them. You can be my friends and these posts are a little chat in the evening to ask about your day.

A lot of people have blogs where they talk about the news in the world, or like the ones I read, in the Church, but I do not talk about such things. I know a little about such things, but they are not important to me. I just want to look into the heart of God and find love and peace, and I feel I have a little bit of happiness and am grateful for it.

People who do not believe would laugh at Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction; to think that a little piece of bread is God. He is. But everyone needs a God in their life and mine is Jesus who comes down to us from the hands of the priest in the form of bread and wine. He is my God and I love Him and I want to visit Him and look into His heart and thank Him for everything.

Peninsula

Home from visiting my best friend Julian. We talked about Church things and prayed the St. Michael Chaplet. He is a sedevacantist and a Feeneyite if you know what those things are. When we talk he often remarks how he was threatened and thrown out of various Churches for his peculiar beliefs. He was thrown out of the Church whose Bishop was in the post last month. The Bishop yelled at him for not accepting the papacy of Pope John Paul II (even though the bishop does not in any meaningful way submit to him) and cast him into the exterior darkness. And he had problems at the little upper room where I go to Church and where I met him. You see, Julian is vocal about his rather extreme beliefs. I understand them, even though I do not agree with them.

He seems to be a pious soul, and is sorry for his sins. He said in his youth he became wicked after falling into the heavy metal scene. But now he is sorry. He was not nearly as wicked as I was in my youth. And now he is blind while I can see. It is comfortable talking to him knowing that he can not see me. I sat on his bed and he was in his wheel chair next to me. I prayed the Chaplet slowly and we had to end it before the last Our Father near the end because the nurse interrupted us.

It is good to visit the sick. I told him that if they let him out of the nursing home and he moves to his sisters' house six blocks from the house, I will take him to the diner which is two blocks from the apartment. He told me he can walk up stairs and walk with a walker. He goes to physical therapy. I can guide him. Perhaps we could meet for lunch at the diner once a week. One week, I will pay, the next week, he will pay. That is how we can be friends. I will give him back his two bags of religious books (not that he can read them).

There were a lot of sea gulls and common starlings on the way to the nursing home and back. Seagulls are more beautiful that common starlings I think. The way they fly through the air softly like a ship at sea in the steady waves.

I wonder if I will be able to get angry Tom to visit and meet us at the diner near our house. Perhaps he would like to talk to Julian. I gave him his phone number. He said he would like to call him.

So nothing of note, just to remember that I visited a friend today, really my best friend.

A House Mouse

As I sit in the living room there is a mouse in our house. He scurries back and forth in the dining room and when I move, he runs away quick as a flash of lightning. When I am not moving he goes right and left under the table, toward the book case, and then flees under the record player.

Once he came into the living room where I was, went under the couch and then under the very chair where I was sitting, drinking coffee. Then when he was right under me I moved and he ran away. The mouse is my friend. I do not want him to eat the cheese in the traps my father sets for him and be killed by the trap. I wonder what vegans do about mice? Do they have little boxes that trap them unharmed and then bring them out of the house and release them outside?

I read an image that struck me. The image was of little flies. We people are like little flies hovering here and there and trying to reach the sun, which is Jesus, Our God. In our vain little attempts to fly we are like little house flies who are trying to fly towards the sun. Without assistance it would be impossible. But if the sun were to come down to earth and pick us up, then we could be saved. One brother noticed how sometimes when flies are trapped inside a house they spend all of their effort in trying to fly through the window when there is no escape until in the end they are exhausted and fall dead on the windowsill. And then the brother sweeps up the flies and puts their dead bodies in the garbage and throws them away.

Sometimes in my paranoia I am afraid of flies. I see them as images of the devil. If he is the "Lord of Flies" the houseflies must be his servants. And when there is a fly buzzing around one's house it is a sign that the devil is near, and that perhaps he is my master. But not so with the mouse. Mice are our friends. They have warm blood and they are beautiful, more than I can say of the little houseflies.

So I just wanted to record the house mouse and the thought about the houseflies. Something that interested me that I would surely forget if I did not record it here. My day is going well as all days have been going lately. I learned recently that my therapy will resume a week from today, Monday. I am happy. We can talk about my life. It is happy now. With my house mouse.

I don't know why. Maybe because I am thinking quietly and praying more. But every time I leave the house and go out into the world I am very happy. I look at the sky and it is so very beautiful. The clouds. And the birds as has been the case for a while. But the beauty of the world overwhelms me and I am happy. I don't know why but it is good.

Out In the Street

I am like a stupid little child. I know nothing. I just have a few ideas in my mind. I want to be good. I am lucky to have a home. I like going to Church. Especially since I got back from the hospital. Church has been my life and it is a happy life. I think about God all the time and only about him and the angels and the saints and the Blessed Mother. I think, I pray, and when I am on the computer I go to mostly religious sites. Before I was in the hospital for a while I thought about two things, God, and women, but now I am thinking of women less.

This is my favorite photograph of the Little Flower. I find she looks very beautiful. She looks peaceful. She is everyone's favorite saint by now. When I think of Marie Therese I think she has a beautiful name and wonder if she was named after the Little Flower as seems likely. I often have the idea that one can see grace (as well as sin), in the faces of people, and that this effect grows more and more over time. So that a just man looks just and a sinner looks wicked. Make-up can make such things confusing. But I get the sense that the Little Flower looks like a good girl in the photographs I have seen of her. She also looks very happy and serene.

This is her on her sick bed, as she lay dying. Holding a crucifix. I was struck by this picture also like with an arrow in the heart. Waiting for the unknown. I do not like having my own picture taken. There are different mirrors in our house. In the bathroom mirror, I always look good. But in the living room mirror I do not look as good. I do not know what I look like to other people. The last time I saw my brother, he told me I looked good as long as I don't gain weight. And he told me to do fifty push-ups a day, something I have yet to begin.

I have a very happy life. My mind is broken like a kaleidoscope, but the broken images I see are happy. As I was walking to the store to buy dinner I just looked at the clouds and could not help but think how beautiful everything was and how it made me happy. As the birds fly here and there in different directions, like every one of them was an angel. And when the pigeons fly in little companies always in circles and in curves. How do they know where to go and when to turn? I wonder if I will see the little brown pigeon with the crown again. The one who has a turquoise band on his leg and goes around with the pigeons and flies with him. I thought he must have been a pet, as he looked different from all the other pigeons and had a band, and that he left his house to hang out with the wild pigeons and then at the end of the day came back to his home.

On New Year's day we went to Church for the circumcision. I spoke to angry Tom and other people as well. Three of us spent all day in the coffee shop talking, mostly me and Tom. About Church and people we knew. It was nice to talk for a while. Neither of us had anything more important to do. But what is more important that going to Church and being with friends?

Tomorrow is Sunday, a big day. The plan is for us to go out after Church for dinner at a nice restaurant. So I got a lot of money out of the bank to cover the bill. We may drink wine.

I have my little pictures and my little books. I have everything I need. For now. The future I don't know. But I have hope.

I do not have many friends. Except for people from Church. I hope they are good people. We are all crazy though. All of us. Only crazy people could go to the conservative Latin Mass that we go to. But I have few friends. I lost a friend this year. My old girlfriend. I hope she contacts me again, but for now she is gone. She was my only connection to my school days oh so long ago and I have fond memories of her. I wonder if there are people from my past who often think of me. Does anyone love me or wish that they were with me? I guess it does not matter. I am happy. But perhaps they could contact me and then we would be happy together. I'm in heaven when you smile.

Abba Moses

Wouldn't it be nice to climb into a little hole and live there alone for the rest of one's life with no troubles from the world? I was looking for a story about one of the desert fathers. As a young man one of them (I thought it was Abba Moses but I could not find it in my lovely little book) was a criminal and he saw a pregnant woman and with a knife cut the baby out of her womb, killing the mother and the baby. And he repented and ran into the desert for many years. A while later he went to his brother hermit and he told him that after all this time God has forgiven him for killing the woman, but he has not yet done enough penance for the child. And a while later he went back to his brother and he told him, now you have been forgiven for killing the child, be at peace. And in another story one of his brother hermits saw Moses after his death in heaven eating honey cakes with the angels and the saints. Moses was a dark skinned black man and some did not trust him because of his appearance, and others did not trust him because of his violent past. But he became a priest and a great father or so they say.

I found out that on Thursdays for now they will have Eucharistic adoration at St. Benny's from the end of the 9:00 Mass until Benediction at 12:00. I went there yesterday for about an hour. It is in the big Church. The man at the office said that they may have it until later in the day but for now the new pastors do not. They do not have enough people to have someone with Jesus at all times and not be left alone. They used to have Jesus in a little room, barely larger than a closet, with a cube-shaped tabernacle. And when there were people there He would be exposed and when people left they would put Him away. Now they have no priest living there. The Church was taken over by my own home Church which has a bishop and a few priests. I liked praying in the little closet. I could visit a few times during the day. Now I can only go one time. Today they have Jesus in the little Chapel at Holy Child right by my house. I like to go throughout the day a few times and at night for the benediction. I would that I could go every day.

I have free time because I am disabled. I am broken. But I feel at peace. I have never done anything great. I am a little person. I don't want to be a big person. A great man.