Forces kept physically separating me from the rest of my group. While I can't tell you exactly what was going on in my dream, I know that the idea was to create a sense of despair.
Loneliness. Segregation. Detachment.
They've been attempting to do that lately. While I'm slowly figuring out what's going on, I've also been fighting back in the only way I know how: pray unceasingly.
And the other day, a revelation of the Church came to me while I was driving to work.
I met some friends of mine for a crawfish boil (Texas for the win, y'all.) a few weeks ago. One of them I haven't seen in a while had recently turned her life around to serve the Lord. Not Catholic, but part of the Mystical Body of Christ.
We briefly talked about churches which turned into an invitation to join the next Awakening retreat, a Catholic based retreat that's open to everyone. While originally a way to increase campus ministry, it's integrated into our Archdiocese to serve the diversity and the Greater City area. My friend's response to the invitation?
No thanks. I'll feel like I'm cheating on my church.
Of which my response was,
Cheating on your church? I'm Catholic, there's no such thing as cheating if it's all of God.
I'll go to yours, if you go to mine.
I'll go to yours, if you go to mine.
And it stuck with me for a while. This whole concept of isolation exists in our society, religious or not. A way to separate and distinguish our individuality.
But I feel it's become a way to create this barrier. It's us versus them. And it shouldn't be that way.
God revealed to us at Pentecost a way to evangelize and follow Him. He separated us in the only way He knew to spread His word more effectively: through our language, our speech, our testimonies.Written word serves as an aid to our humanity, but could be translated and interpreted wrongly. Speech, or conversation as Socrates put it, helps convey the truth more so than any other form.
And the Lord has divided us for a reason. Having loved us so much and knowing us so thoroughly, was able to distinguish that He needed to break down the concepts of His love into little bits and pieces, denominations if you will, for us to better understand Him. And even better, requiring us to search for Him through more than one path before finding Him in the one that suits us best.
So for someone who is ignorant enough to state, to me, that they are "cheating" on their denomination, does not quite understand the Lord in His glory. And while I am not holy enough to make such defined presumptions based on the words of other people, I completely understand my need to look for God in other places outside of Catholicism.
Obviously, not through the occult. But by finding Him in other aspects of my life that aren't centered around religion, but guided because of my faith in Him.
And it's completely okay.
