O Souls

St. John of the Cross writes in The Spiritual Canticle:

O souls, created for these grandeurs and called to them! What are you doing? How are you spending your time? Your aims are base and your possessions miseries! O wretched blindness of your eyes! You are blind to so brilliant a light and deaf to such loud voices because you fail to discern that insofar as you seek eminence and glory you remain miserable, base, ignorant, and unworthy of so many blessings!

What was read and absorbed today in St. John's writings coincide beautifully with today's Gospel reading at Holy Mass.

My experience here in Avila has taken a dive into the depths. It happened at a sidewalk cafe this morning. The soul is at peace and comprehends but cannot describe. Thankfully, the words are ceasing. The images are ceasing. The depths close over, and the shell drifts and settles on the ocean floor.

I am given Divine Permission to just adore Him.

To clarify any remaining clutter of previous posts, the stones used in construction in Avila are granite, not limestone as I have, for whatever mental slips, described them. There is quite a distinction between the two in strength and durability.

I have also been shown religious men and women and clerics in the wading pool, but these are not easily recognized from interior or exterior garb as these appear the same as the laity. I also have been shown myself in the deep end but not accomplished by any means, and rather as that shell which drifts soundlessly and unnoticed to the depths, and settles there in darkness and yet with luminous peace.

The human body is cleansed, the grey garments washed--in a space of 37 minutes--a grace period from God, surely, as the bathroom continues to be occupied much by the ex-Poor Clare.
I suppose Jesus found my stench too much and provided the brief earthly time. I offered the minutes for bathing and laundering (in the sink) for the great percentage of the earth's population who do not have bathrooms and for the souls of the faithful departed who wouldn't even know what a bathroom is--and attained to union with God without spending such lengths of precious time in a bathroom.

I also endured with patience and love (as much as I could muster in my own weakness and all by God's grace) a trying conversation this morning. I did penance by washing the dishes and utensils left behind by the person talking, in gratitude for God that He gave me endurance, patience, and love. These practice pieces will dwindle as I experience life as a shell, emptied.

Tonight the shell will be in the dining room, as it has drifted about ever since the sidewalk cafe experience, but the creature inside is elsewhere. It won't matter if other creatures try to draw it out of its shell. Why do they expend such useless effort? The shell creature departed! However, the shell is visible and pleasing to the sight before it eventually decomposes. The Lord gives; the Lord takes away. Only God is forever.

If I must return from whence I came on earth, it will be as a shell. Do not expect to draw the creature out, for the creature is just adoring Him and has His permission and directive to do so.