Swept up by the Spirit, Journey of Transformation by Gary Garner

By Nancy Ward

Art: The Ideal by Louis Janmot

“I have lived two vastly different lives—one spent exalting materialism and filled with spiritual darkness, the other spent exalting Jesus the Lord and filled with light and hope.” Because Gary’s conversion was so “life and death,” he sees it that way for everyone.

He recounts how the Spirit plainly revealed some of the traps he and his family narrowly avoided. He credits angels, signposts and appointed helpers, “pinpoints of light in the darkness, placed there for us to discover and to show us the way—without them we couldn’t possibly have made it to where we are now. There is hardly an hour that I don’t feel an urgency toward others of the impending dangers and perils that await them, much like someone who barely avoided a collapsing bridge.”

His journey of transformation eventually brought him from his agnostic-pro-Catholic religious view into the Catholic Church by way of the charismatic renewal. His conversion began with a voice telling him to buckle his seatbelt, saving his life. Then Fr. Walt, a young, motorcycle-riding priest invited him and his wife Nancy to a parish prayer meeting. The people shared their Spirit-led encounters with unbelievable praise reports. They spoke as if the Holy Spirit was telling them what to do and enabling them to do it.

In Swept Up by the Spirit, Gary tells story after story of how he opened everything in this life to the Holy Spirit who indeed did tell him what to do and enabled him to do it. Much of his leadings from “the Voice” involved ministries with groups of Protestant and Catholic men praying and evangelizing together in street ministry in rough neighborhoods or at abortion clinics. Often this involved marches with a handful or hundreds of people singing and carrying large crosses, or praying behind bars or gambling houses. He prayed with strangers for physical healings, deliverance and conversion.“It was only after I stopped worrying about what other people thought of me out there that I could begin to be effective at all,” he says of his sidewalk ministry at Planned Parenthood.

Read more about Gary's journey of transformation on JOYAlive.net  

An adventure called conversion

By Shannon McCarthy
 

Pilgrims in Rome by Delaroche (Wikimedia Commons).

Most of you probably accidentally stumbled upon this today, but I am so excited to welcome you to the adventure that is constant conversion.

So- let’s talk about conversion!

I always thought that conversion was this big St. Paul Moment- get knocked off your horse, and a booming voice descends from the heavens saying “Saul, what are you doing?!” (a loose translation really). Sometimes, I wait for that moment. I wonder why I can’t hear God calling me and kicking my butt into gear.

Then I realize that while there are definitely people who get to have that big moment, our lives are meant to be a constant journey, a moving forward and a moving towards our Heavenly Father.

There will be bumps in the road. You will have major hurdles to overcome, and you will have to re-choose each and every day to take the next step on the adventure.

 As we journey week by week together, I look forward to sharing my triumphs and tribulations with you, and hope that you will be able to share yours with me also!

Check back soon for more coffee fueled rants, and if you ever have any questions at all- get in contact with me!

Verso L’alto!


Shannon is part of the blogging team at Love is Calling.

Will you accept His invitation today?

By Heidi 
 

Invitation to  the Great Banquet by Luyken (Wikipedia).

  

The parable of the Great Banquet in the Gospel of Luke brings back memories of my Presbyterian Sunday School and Wednesday release time instruction.  How many Bible stories I remember because we sang them! 

He replied to him, “A man gave a great dinner to which he invited many. When the time for the dinner came,he dispatched his servant to say to those invited,‘Come, everything is now ready.’ But one by one, they all began to excuse themselves. The first said to him,‘I have purchased a field and must go to examine it; ask you, consider me excused. ’And another said, ‘I have purchased five yoke of oxen and am on my way to evaluate them;I ask you, consider me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have just married a woman,and therefore I cannot come.’

The servant went and reported this to his master. Then the master of the house in a rage commanded his servant,‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in here the poor and the crippled,the blind and the lame.’The servant reported, ‘Sir, your orders have been carried out and still there is room.’The master then ordered the servant,‘Go out to the highways and hedgerows and make people come in that my home may be filled. For, I tell you, none of those men who were invited will taste my dinner.’”

What puzzles me most about this parable is that is seems that the neighbors invited initially said yes!  But, in absence of a true and intimate friendship, they really meant yes, unless....

It is so important to take time everyday to pray and to develop the capacity to know and respond to His voice.  To order my actions, my hopes, my dreams and my ambitions to Christ.  And, oh boy, did I need this reminder, because life has been craaaaazzzzzy lately (on top of everything else:  potty training …need I say more?).  Being that I am not an overly organized person this has caused major disruptions, and there is a pressure to jettison any activity that is not necessary or “productive”.  My high hopes for the day are for dry pants (that would be for Max)  and dinner on the table before bedtime, how on earth can I think of more than that!!


Continue reading at Journey to Wisdom.

The first call

By Nancy Shuman

Painting by Boris Kustodiev, public domain.

I fell in love for the first time when I was six years old.  Coming from an "unchurched but Catholic-on-the-books" family, I did not learn of Jesus until I entered first grade.  I'm forever grateful to my parents for sending me to Catholic school, for there I learned of this wonderful Person Who truly loved me.  I could not help but love Him in return, and in fact I was so taken with Him that as soon as I could more or less spell, I scribbled His Name all over my schoolbooks (I had a teenaged sister who wrote names of boyfriends on her books, so I knew how that was done).

Jesus lived in a golden box way up in the front of Church.  I didn't understand how they fit Him in there, but that didn't really matter to me.  Sister said that's where He was and - even better than that!  In spring, when school was almost out for the year, I'd be receiving my First Communion and somehow Jesus would come to my heart in a special way.  Oh my.  I didn't know how such a thing could be, but at times I was breathless thinking about it.

Sometimes I would sneak into the empty Church during recess.   I'd slip away from the other kids and run along the alley between my school and Church, and I'd tug open the gigantic wooden door and tiptoe into quiet.  It was perfect.  Just me, all by myself; and way up front, there He was.  Sometimes a lady or two might be in there, kneeling in a pew with a prayerbook, a felt or straw hat covering her head.  I would hide lest I be discovered.  If there weren't any grownups, I sometimes got brave enough to go as far as to a back pew.  I don't remember praying, exactly.  I just looked at the gold box in the distance, and breathed in whiffs of beeswax candles and lingering incense, and listened to muted sounds of traffic from the streets around.





Finish reading at Nancy's blog The Cloistered Heart.

Mary is in my heart? Help!

By Melanie Jean Juneau

Window in the Cathedral of Cordoba, Spain (photo credit: Wikimedia)

What would be the absolute worst thing that could happen to a nice Protestant girl?

Why Mary, the Blessed Virgin, would do a little interior house cleaning, then make a home for herself in the poor girl's heart, that's what! If that was not bad enough, this perplexed young woman's belief system would stay staunchly anti-Catholic for oh, about another 10 years, even though she had converted to Catholicism. I mean what choice did she have? Nobody but the Catholic Church even wants someone who craves the Eucharist and has a relationship with the Mother of Christ.

Obviously this young woman was and is me. God has a peculiar sense of humor and now I can look back and laugh at my dilemma. At the time, though I was shook up. As Pope Francis said at the Easter Vigil, God delights in shaking us up, or as I like to say, ripping the rug from underneath us. Nope, God will not stay in a nice, neat little box of our own making. Just when we think we have Him all figured out, He pulls another fast one on us. Thank goodness; life is never boring when you give God permission to work in your life.

I was reluctant to turn to Mary, I couldn't help but feel like a heretic somehow turning from Jesus as my only Savior. Yet over and over, God only offered healing and peace when I turned to His Mother. Finally a wonderful priest from Madonna House, the Director General of Priests. Fr. Bob Pelton, smiled at me compassionately and said something like this:

"Melanie, why don't you relax for a few months and stop tormenting yourself with guilt? Simply relax into the bosom of the Church and Her teachings and allow your relationship to Mary grow naturally, without fighting everything with your intellect? Trust in your own heart as well."

Even now, some 30 years later, tears are welling up and I could weep with relief all over again as I write these words. Somehow I was given the grace to lay down my logic, reasoning and Protestant theology and simply throw my self into the arms of my Spiritual Mother.

Actually, we really do not have a clue what we are saying “yes” to in the beginning of our Christian walk. At our wedding, 34 years ago, I sensed these words within my heart:

"I will change the way the two of you work and play, the way you walk and talk, the way you laugh and cry, everything about you, so that you will reflect the glory of my Father in Heaven."

Foolishly we thought that this was a nice word from God! Little did we know that 34 years later we would still be being turned inside out. I agree whole heartedly with Pope Francis, God does seem to delight in shaking us out from our narrow little lives. I could not live any other way.

Thank-you God for not listening to my opinions or plans for my life.

Thank-you for the grace to give You permission to take over and make me yours.

Melanie originally posted this at her blog Joy of Nine.

Life as a Catholic has not been easy

by Rebecca Duncan

 
 

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel by Leloir (photo in Public Domain)

 

I read the other day about Jesus saying that one who looks back after he set his hand to the plow is not worthy of Him.  I understand what He was saying.  We can't look back longingly to the fleshpots of Egypt.  We can't cultivate good memories of what life used to be like before we were Christians.  Still, there are certain ways in which we can look back.

My spiritual friend once told me that I should write about what I was like in high school before I became Catholic so that I can really see how much God has done for me.  It was good advice but I don't think I can even go back that far.  Those days seem like a black hole to me now.  I once described it to her as an overwhelming feeling of being alone, cold, and dark in every sense and aspect of my life. 

Don't get me wrong, I've experienced times of depression and even despair since I converted.  Still, no matter how dark those times in my life were, I would never exchange them for the time before I met Jesus.  In fact, probably the worst external and internal suffering I've ever experienced happened after I became Catholic.  Again, I would not trade my time before Jesus with my time after Jesus.

Even though I don't act like Jesus is the end-all and be-all of my entire life all the time, it is still a fact that He is.  I don't do that, He does.  Since I am such a very poor cooperator with His grace, it has been very slow, almost imperceptible, but it is definitely a reality.  I said I couldn't even go back as far as high school to see how I've changed because I can look back just two years and see the change.

I was a Catholic two years ago.  But I was a terrible one.  Two years ago I could not even have imagined that I would really feel that 'in God alone is my soul at rest'. Two years ago I would have laughed at the notion that I would long to sit in silence with Jesus in my parish.  Two years ago, I could not have imagined that I could truly understand that sin is never the answer. (I say I truly understand that and I do, but that doesn't mean I don't still sin.  Understanding is a major first step though, believe me.)


Read the rest at Rebecca's blog  Otaku Catholic.

My full (and weird) conversion story

by Rebecca Duncan

Conversion of St. Paul by Caravaggio (Photo: Wikimedia Commons).

In the hazy days of childhood I encountered three big ideas.

The first was infinity. I saw a cartoon that really illustrated the idea of infinity. It was a cat holding a can of cat food with apicture of the cat holding the can of cat food with the picture of a cat holding a can of cat food. The camera zoomed in and in and in until it was a dizzying blur of infinity. That was fascinating to me. I was probably four years old at the time.  It got me thinking about life.  What if it went on forever?  Who would want all of this to go on forever?  It really scared me.  I was pretty pessimistic even then.

The second idea was about taking things for granted.  I loved the movie Labyrinth.  I must have watched it 100 times with my sisters and my friends.  We sang all the songs and got scared when the fire demons tried to take Sara’s head off.  The oubliette wasn’t too cozy either.  But the idea of taking things for granted stuck with me above everything else.  Mostly it was because I didn’t really know what it meant and I wanted to find out.

The third idea came from Interview with the Vampire.  I was obsessed with the book and the movie from the time I saw the trailer on TV.  The book talked a lot about detachment.  I was almost an adolescent by this time and the idea of being able to detach from all the bad stuff at home and school seemed like an impossibly good dream.  

Of course I had other fascinations.  I loved Jim Morrison.  He was like my philosopher king.  I wanted to read all the things he read and absorb all the ideas that had formed him so they could form me too.  I read Kerouac and Neitzsche and Rimbaud.  I can’t say I really understood any of it and I got a lot of bad ideas.  Still, it got me into the world of ideas more heavily than ever before and that was a very good thing.  But my first three big ideas were still there.  What was life and infinity and eternity?  Were all my notions about life just things I took for granted?  And how could I detach myself from all the things that didn’t really matter and only hurt me?

Growing up without religion

I was raised a "None."  I never knew anyone who went to Church even though I grew up in rural West Virginia.  I hated Protestantism and I never wanted anything to do with it.  For me, Christianity meant ignorance and childishness.  My Mom was just indifferent to any religion.  My friends explored spirituality and played with Ouija boards.  The closest I got to being interested in any one religion was Hinduism.  I loved Christopher Pike as a kid and he injected a lot of that religion into his stories.  I explored it for a little while but in the end it was so ethereal that there was nothing to grab onto.  It had a lot of superficial beauty in it but it just seemed meaningless to me and impersonal.   I didn’t see how it could impact my life in any real way.  It was the same thing with Native American spirituality and paganism.  It was interesting but I wanted an encounter that would change me.  

I was searching all the time for truth.  It was the only thing that mattered to me.  I was serious about it.  If I couldn’t find the truth about the meaning of my existence, then what else could possibly matter?  When I mean serious I mean serious.  I went to college and I worked a bit but I put absolutely no effort or passion into any of it.  I was obsessed with finding the Truth to the exclusion of anything else in my life.  Even relationships went by the wayside.  For a while, I thought beauty could be the ultimate truth.  I got into the philosophy of aesthetics.  I gleaned a lot of that from reading Anne Rice.  That started to point me in the right direction.  I could feel intuitively that beauty and truth were connected.  And there was something else creeping through her books that started to get to me too.  She was an atheist when she wrote The Vampire Chronicles and The Witching Hour trilogy but she was raised a Catholic.  The atmosphere, the world of Catholicism, in those books was intensely beautiful.  It was not only beautiful; it was meaty and mystical all at the same time.  It permeated everything in the stories even though it was ultimately rejected in favor of aestheticism.  Still, I started to realize that maybe Christianity wasn’t just youth groups that met in ugly halls under the leadership of judgmental youth ministers. 

This was my formation until the time I was about 21 years old in 2003.  I really did have a good start but I didn’t feel like that at the time.  My life was suffering from my obsession and I thought maybe it was time to give it up.  I was in despair of ever finding any answer to my question.  Since I was deadly serious about finding the ultimate answer, despair was becoming an answer in itself. 

Near despair leads me to prayer

I was alone in my room, lying on my bed.  I was thinking about all my wasted effort and what it could mean.  Maybe there really was no answer and my life was meaningless.  That was not something I could accept without horrifying, concrete consequences.  In a last ditch effort, I prayed.  I’d never done that before.  All of my seeking until now had been by my own effort.  I asked God to show me who he was, what he was, if he was there, if he cared.  I cried and begged.  It wasn’t natural to me to pray and it felt weak and strange.  But I kept on and on until I was too tired to go on.  That’s when it happened.  God answered my prayer.  The way He answered it was a bit strange. 

I need to explain something else strange that had been happening to me right before my prayer was answered.  Sometimes at night, when I was thinking about all of these ideas and all of my seeking, a very strange thing would happen.  I would start to feel that there was a veil that was covering reality and I was getting glimpses behind it.  I didn’t know how to explain it then, but what I think now is that God was giving me an extraordinary grace.  The grace of contemplation.  For brief moments, God was taking over and working in my soul at a level I couldn’t comprehend.  It was probably these mystical experiences that gave me the courage and ability to pray that night.

Read the rest at  Otaku Catholic.

My second conversion, and going on a third

by Rebecca Duncan

The Missal by Waterhouse (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons).

I was watching "The Journey Home" the other day.  Marcus Grodi was interviewing Mother Angelica. They talked about when she had her second conversion. It was more in the context of a person who was brought up Catholic and deciding for themselves to live as a Catholic and not just because they were raised that way.  Even though I was not raised as a Catholic or a Christian I had a second conversion too. 

When I became Catholic it was because I purposefully set out to find Truth and I had an encounter with God as Love. I think He revealed Himself to me in that way for a pretty specific reason. It was because I run from personal relationships. I run from love. Prayer is excruciating for me most of the time. I don't want to deal with that kind of intimacy. Sometimes I can't. God showed me that He loves me right off the bat but I still tried to get to know Him on a head level. The heart level was just not there. I kicked and screamed and threw tantrums about how much I wanted to have an experience of His love again. I spent so many years gaining head knowledge and avoiding prayer while at the same time complaining that I didn't seem to be getting anywhere in my relationship with God. It was pretty ridiculous.

The only thing that changed it was that I went through a period of intense suffering. The suffering was in pretty much every area of my life and it was all happening at the same time. The physical part was that I got a kidney stone.  The pain was so intense I couldn't stop throwing up and it lasted for about a week. The first day the pain started God let me know in a way that I can't even describe that I should accept the pain. I did. When I accepted it, I felt peaceful and I felt close to God in a way that I never had before. I can't really explain that either.
 

Continue reading at Rebecca's blog  Otaku Catholic

Wandering desire: a reflection on John 14

by Heidi

 

 

Ascension of Jesus by Garofalo (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

"Jesus said to his disciples: 'Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me.

"I have told you this while I am with you. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.  Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.  Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid. You heard me tell you, ‘I am going away, and I will come back to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father; for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe"  (John 14:23-29).

*****

When I was a little girl my family moved to Minnesota and we joined the local Presbyterian church. It was in this church that the love of Jesus was cultivated in my heart. And though the church of my childhood lacked most of the sacraments [their baptism is recognized by the Catholic Church, ed.], they did direct us toward a relationship with Christ. I especially remember Miss Peggy reading us stories about Jesus, helping us to memorize the books of the Bible and to understand the parables through delightful songs. It was made clear to me that I could be bold like Zacchaeus or Bartimaeus and call out to Jesus. I could expect Jesus to come to me in prayer, to heal me and to save me. I prayed to Him frequently and I did hear His voice.

 As I journeyed on in life, I wandered off the narrow path, I crowded out the voice of the Lord with what seemed like more fulfilling and realistic pursuits. I remember a particular moment I had wandered so far away from Him that I stood on the brink of renouncing a belief in the historicity of the life, death and resurrection of Christ as I had learned from the Bible. I was ready to dismiss it as all spiritual concepts and nothing more. In those moments I found I had only the strength to proclaim an abstract spirituality and vague ethical guidelines. Yet that love that had once been nurtured but was now lying dormant in my soul stirred up painfully in the moment of my temptation. It was a nostalgic-like yearning for something that I could not quite put my finger on. At the same time I felt contempt for this feeling, I tried to dismiss it as foolish and unintellectual, but the feeling was persistent.

Read the rest of Heidi's story at her group blog, Journey to Wisdom.