...obliviscere populum tuum et domum patris tui....

audi filia et vide et inclina aurem tuam

(listen O Daughter, give ear to my words)

et obliviscere populum tuum et domum patris tui

(forget your own people, and your father's house)

et concupiscet rex decorem tuum quoniam ipse

(so has the king desired your beauty)

est dominus tuus et adorabunt eum

(he is your Lord, pay homage to Him)

(Psalm 44)

I think my, "I'm back" post doesn't say enough about what's been going on with my discernment for me to be able to continue with the blog, and to just skip back to when everything was rosy seems a little dishonest. Yesterday I spent hours traveling to London and back for a meeting at CASE (and Holy Mass and Benediction at the rather glorious Brompton Oratory) and thus had plenty of train journeying to pray and reflect.

Around the time I posted my Prayer Request, a close friendship had developed into something more, which everyone warned me about, and I didn't think could happen to me (hmmm). This has been a constant source of heartache for both of us since then, as it rather crept up on me, and by the time I realised what was happening it was too late. The gentleman concerned is a marvellous man, and a very devout Catholic so there was never any question of either of us going against God's will, and we quite quickly discerned that marriage wasn't really an option for us. Unfortunately that doesn't automatically put a stopper on emotions!

So, I've travelled to the desert, for the first significant time really since becoming a Catholic. I have a lovely job at Xt3 and a lovely new flat, and should be happy, but unfortunately am not really able to pray, which is kind of what life is about! All my enthusiasm for my vocation has gone... which obviously doesn't mean my vocation has gone, but it makes writing about it with such joy more difficult! I know it's the cross, and that's good(!) so I'm not unhappy about it really, and am continuing with plans to go to New York next year... but that can put this post into a little more context.

So! The train journey. I was reading, "And You Are Christ's" (which is really the most marvellous book, I'd quote the whole thing to you if I could!) and came to this sentence:

Hosea writes of this God wooing His wife in the wilderness that He may speak to her heart and win her back from her infidelity

and when I read it, I remembered a mass reading the day after I realised I had fallen in love which struck me like a punch in the stomach. From Monday of the 14th Week in Ordinary time:

I am going to lure her
and lead her out into the wildreness
and speak to her heart
There she will respond to me as she did when she was young
As she did when she came out of the land of Egypt
when that day comes -it is the Lord who speaks-
she will call me, "my husband"
no longer will she call me, "my Baal"
I will betroth you to myself forever
betroth you with integrity and justice
with tenderness and love;
I will betroth you to myself with faithfulness
And you will come to know the Lord

Hosea 2:16-18, 2-22

Reading further in "And You are Christ's", Fr Dubay tells us, "The young woman with the celibate charism posesses a love- a gift from God that so orients her person to Him that she 'cannot' give herself to another in a marital manner. This 'cannot' is a special cannot. The young woman could reject the charism and marry, but she cannot reject it without doing some violence to her being. God has captured her as only He can capture. If she rejects His divine desire to posess her in an exclusive manner (God forces Himself on no one), she hurts herself in that she turns her back on something that has been done to her, she refuses an interpersonal gift..."

I don't really have any of my own words at the moment, but wanted to give some kind of account of myself to my lovely friends who read these ramblings, I don't even quite know what I'm thinking at the moment, but the closest I can get to it is summed up in God's promise in the scripture I quoted, and the words of Fr Dubay.

by the way, I found this blog which seems nice, am going to have a look and see if I want to link to it permenantly. I wonder if she's Catholic, seems so much like a consecrated vocation!

God bless you all,

Support for Pope Benedict

Can't find my notebook with all my NY Diary in it, think I must have left it in Manchester, so will collect it next week (it was full, I have a new one now!) I don't really have much to say at the moment... so my return to blogging is a little disappointing. Tommorow was the day I was supposed to go to New York, and so feel a little flat at the moment, although peaceful that it's all God's will.

Wanted to post something to add to the tirade of Blogs stating support for the Holy Father at this time, but have nothing to say that hasn't been said better elsewhere. For this reason have decided to link to (apparently the most linked to blog on the net right now) Joee Blogs' Blog.

Think that's all for now.

Me again...

What a long break, sorry, it's a long story. I suggest that you skip to the ending, which is that I am expecting to go to New York... but not this year. Please God I can go next September. Delay is mostly money, although if I hadn't been so exhausted by the end of my degree I might have managed to sort that out. Not a good plan to go jetting across the world for 2 weeks in the middle of your final semester!

I'm currently job hunting, relocating, and resitting an essay that I handed in late because a) I'm disorganised and b) I had a substantial vocation crisis going on. Waiting to hear from the Uni as to if I'll lose the honours on my degree because of it... Oh, I got a 2:1 on the dreaded dissertation by the way... I should put it online shouldn't I? It's very dull.

I hope I will be able to blog soon with carefree abandon, it's funny to see that people are still coming across my blog with the same regularity as when I was posting often... I guess a good thing to do would be to restart my diary from NY, as I haven't turned around in my discernment... just moved on, so just because I can't type as quickly as God speaks to me doesn't mean I shouldn't have a go!

2 things, one slightly more exciting than the other (use your own judgement)

The Catholic Chaplaincy to Manchester University has a nice new website. Could do with some pictures of smiling people, but good otherwise.

The Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal have invested 7 absolutely beautiful new postulants. I can't begin to say how marvellous these girls are... and am absolutely awestruck that God seems to be calling me to join them... look at the photos! New nuns... yey!

Oh, and Mother Mary Francis PCC, who wrote "The Right To Be Merry" (where my blog's name comes from) apparently died on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes (Feb 11) and is now in my top ten favourite saints list... It's funny that I was happy to hear that... being Catholic is a strange thing! Ok, enough for today...

May He give you His peace!
M-x-