cara Nova’s blog

AllThat HeavenAllows

December 1955 - Rock Hudson, Jane Wyman

Another one of my favorite love stories where the power of love causes people to cross boundaries.  The story of a young gardener who falls in love with a wealthy older woman.  As you can imagine, all is against them, but love triumphs despite the nay-sayers.

..."Then talk not of inconstancy,
False hearts, and broken vows:
If I by miracle can be
This live-long minute true to thee,
'Tis all that heaven allows."

excerpt from "Love and Life" by John Wilmot

I've been back home for 3 weeks now.  It took the first two weeks just to get things turned back on, and YEA!  I have internet again.  Now all the hubbub and service calls, (and waiting around all day for service calls), is over.  So what's wrong with me now?  I can't seem to leave the house.  This past week, I haven't been to check mail, I've missed setting my dumpster out to the curb, I don't have any groceries in my house.  Today, I realized I'm not wanting to leave my house, I'm not wanting to interact with people.  What's that all about?

Anyway, I woke up one day this past week, and wondered what all the grand sacrifice is for?  And have I wasted my life, given up my whole life, for nothing apparently?  And I have awoken to the idea that the 3 people I thought I knew best in this world are not the people I thought they were.  But that can't be unique, since this happens to people every day, the sudden dawning that someone isn't who you thought they were.  And the saying goes... "You can't ever really know anybody."  So WHY am I so surprised? 

It's time to admit that I don't belong anywhere... not in my family, not in church, not really anywhere.  That I am apparently incapable of establishing and keeping relationships is the cause of it all.  I guess I have to embrace the lone wolf that is somehow me, despite all my efforts to belong; disastrous efforts, I might add.  It's time to stop banging my head against the wall, and let the shadow that has been following me all my life envelope me.  They should hang a sign on me: NOT MEANT FOR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION.  ha haaaaaa  Come to me wolf, you are all I have left to keep me warm at night.  I'll stop fighting you, I'll submit to you taking over.  What else is left?  You win by default.  And maybe I shouldn't depreciate you by saying you're all I have left, as though that weren't much... maybe you will be enough, all that I need.  Time will tell.  

It was time to decide what to read next, and I spent a day perusing possible candidates, and settled on The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt.  It's a non-fiction work about the city of Venice, and begins with the fire that destroyed the opera house.  But before the story begins, there is a little page about a sign posted outside a chuch in Venice, due to the crumbling and falling decorations on the building:  BEWARE OF FALLING ANGELS.  The author goes on to say that this sign was posted before the 70's, when restoration of it's marble ornaments was accomplished.  Something about this made me laugh, and I thought that it was a crazy metaphor for my own life.  So with that, this book won the contest, and I am now delving wholeheartedly into the reconstruction of part of Venice.  I'm home in Texas, and glad to be home... but for some reason need to escape to Venice via the pages of a book.  Go figure!  Come Wolfie, we are off to Venice... va bene!

Well, my whole religious quest has gone down the tubes.  I've dropped out of RCIA, and I even thought about going back to the LDS church, or even to the church I was raised up in... but somehow, NONE of it interests me.  I still have some place inside me that is spiritual, but I guess it is just not "religious".  I'm not anti-religious, just not a joiner, I guess.  (More power to anyone whose life is enriched by whatever they so choose.)  So anyway, I won't be posting anything more about the RCIA process, or probably anything else religious either.  I'm tired of "the process" that goes along with wanting to belong to something.  These days... I just want to BE.  Not be Catholic, nor be religious, not be a seeker of anything... I just want to BE. 

Show us a picture of your favorite fruit.

Strawberry

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Samhain

 Celtic Mini-Retreat:
"Samhain: Death, Dying, and Resurrection"

Saturday, November 1, 2008
3:00-4:30 p.m. at All Saints Parish

On the Celtic feast of Samhain, the holiest day of the year and the new year on the Celtic calendar, the Celts felt a special closeness to the dead. How can the ancient Celtic wisdom help us to understand our mortality and the hope of transformation? Through word and song, we will reflect on these great mysteries.

Led by Dylan Dalton, organizational consultant and Celtic practitioner.

No fee, but free will donations are accepted.
A reception with the leader will be held from 6:00-7:00 p.m. ,
following the Celtic Holy Eucharist from 5:00-6:00 p.m.

All Saints Parish
1773 Beacon Street
Brookline
Massachusetts 02445-4214
(617) 738-1810
fax: (617) 738-7501

office@allsaintsbrookline.org

http://allsaintsbrookline.org/celtic.html#celtic

Feast of Samhain

Celtic

It's taken me a few days to get around to writing about my Fifth RCIA class, which was Tuesday night.  I got there a few minutes late, so I missed the introduction of the speaker.  Don't know who she was, but she had a lot to share with us.  It was a double lesson; we had two leaflets to study, one on Mary, and one on the Saints.

There were a few questions, like "Why do Catholics pray to Mary?"  We were told that there is a difference in praying TO someone, and in asking them to INTERCEDE for you.  She said it's a lot like asking your Mom to get your Dad to say yes on something.  And by the same token, in asking the Saints to pray/intercede on your behalf.  I could relate to this, because I ask a few close friends and family to be my prayer circle when I'm going through something.  So it's all been explained on a very real level, and I guess I'm having my Protestant thinking "demystified". 

There was this dear old man on the front row who talked about how hard it was on his Baptist family when he turned Catholic, but he said at one point he just realized he "had been Catholic all his life."  I had to smile at that, because that's how I feel so often in there, like things I feel deep down are being validated.  Maybe I've been Catholic all my life too.

We were recommended a book about Mary:

Hail, Holy Queen

Scott Hahn

What's your favorite scent?

Vanilla

Obsession

I love the scent of vanilla most.  I like clean and simple smells.  It's the only fragrance I use for plug ins in my house, and for my car too.

Calvin Klein introduced Obsession for women in 1985.  (And I've been using it ever since.) Its an oriental aroma blending notes of oak moss, orange blossom, vanilla and amber. 

Wish I could post a scratch-and-sniff sticker on here, so everyone could smell it.

Wholeness:

Aristotle says: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts."  I don't think he meant that mathematically, because 2 + 2 = 4, and that sum is equal to it's parts.  I was thinking of it in terms of a love relationship, where the two become one.  Not in the way it was thought of in the 1950's, for example, where Lucy says of Desi in their movie "Forever Darling", "Two become one, and the husband is the one."  But that feeling you get when you are with your loved one, that somehow you are "more" than you ever were by yourself.  

If you think of a couple as "halves" - then is their "whole" MORE than the sum of each of them?  I've never thought of a person as a "half", like in the idiom, "my better half".  I think a person is a whole entity, unto him/her self.  The scary part of joining with another person, is that each whole person, in coming together, has to empty some out of themselves, to make room for the other person.  A small example, let's say you are used to running the thermostat on 70, but your partner is cold-natured and wants it set on 75.  So you compromise, and set it on 73.  You've just emptied out a small place in yourself, for the comfort of the partner, as they did for you.  The thing is you are still a whole person.  So maybe it's not a matter of emptying yourself out, so much as it is, that you are adding something different/new into the empty place.  And maybe that's how the WHOLE ends up being larger/more than the original parts.  Those pieces you add, due to your connection to the other person, is that the MORE?  And is that MORE, the reward for making the effort of joining?

I think that's why it hurts so much, when it's over.  Because that more or extra that you were or had while with them, becomes a hole in you.  And thus the new journey begins... what to fill those spaces with.

Some people take this to an extreme.  They are like chameleons, changing their colors for whoever their interest of the moment is.  I always wonder how those people know who they are?  Because I once did that, completely lost myself in someone, and when it ended, I didn't know who I was or even what I wanted.  I blamed them for leaving me... but I really left myself, long before the breakup.  Sometimes the hardest thing is just finding yourself.  Who am I, what do I want, and once I figure that out, will my loved ones accept ME?  

Does it make breaking up easier, if you know who you are?  I think so.  Since I've done it both ways.  I think it makes it easier to feel kindly toward the person, the acceptance you feel that it wasn't a good fit, and you can still wish them well, and hope that they and you can find something "right".  So, in a funny paradoxical way, the answer in both directions is "to be WHOLE", to enter a relationship as a whole person, and to leave it that way also.

In speaking of chameleons, I love these words in Whitney Houston's song "I Have Nothing."

"Share my life,
Take me for what I am.
'Cause I'll never change
All my colors for you."