that has been my greatest dilemma of late, fashioning a line of demarcation. establishing a wall. sealing the garden. i've been pummeled by grenades chucked over my defenses, or perhaps i unwittingly walked out into the battlefield and left the gate wide open. the ensuing chaos is all resultant of my own carelessness.
the phrase i keep hearing is belljar. like i am encased in glass with my own swarm of locusts. my own personal scourge.
so i picked up st. john last night, i hadn't read him for a great while. i've had others preempt my time with him because of return dates at the library. but last night, i read through his entire first book and found comfort there.
he writes:
A moth is not helped much by its eyes because, blinded in its desire for the beauty of light, it will fly directly into a bonfire. Those who feed on their appetites are like a fish dazzled by a light that so darkens it that the fisherman's snares cannot be seen. David describes this blindness well: Supercecidit ignis, et non viderunt solem (fire, that gives off heat and dazzles by its light, came upon them) [Ps. 58:8-9]. The appetites cause this in the soul: They enkindle concupiscence and overwhelm the intellect so that it cannot see its light. The reason is that a new light set directly in front of the visual faculty blinds this faculty so that it fails to see the light farther away. And since the appetite is so close to individuals as to be actually within them, they are impeded by this interior light, feed upon it, and are unable to see the clear light of the intellect; nor will they see it until the extinguish this blinding light of their appetite.
he's got my number. he knows my name. he read my mail. i am blinded. when i breezed through this book before, i was unaffected then because i did not see my blindness as i see it now. as i grope in utter darkness, i know i'm blind. i could read this work and be unfazed by his words because i was unsullied, or so i thought. but not so any longer.
what then is the remedy? the only one i can come up with is honesty. standing before God, my husband, my friends in utter and complete honesty and forcing myself to mortify my appetites. starve them and they die (my praphrase of the line in a beautiful mind).
bask in the presence of God and allow him to drive out the minions.
yes, that is the remedy.
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