Dear God,

I am feeling a good deal better today. Letting go of things I need to let go of, one piece at a time.

Anyway, so romance novels. My main problem with romance novels is that I’ve yet to write one that didn’t either feel like peering inside someone else’s private relationship or else like sharing too much about my own.

I often feel like no matter what I do, it’s going to be wrong. All I can really do is live with the struggle, try to share that struggle in a way that feels like I’m not offloading my pain. I’m trying to share in the pain and the joy of others.

Lots of people want to share the joy part. Very few want to share the sorrow. I want to share the sorrow – but I feel like right now, what people need is the joy. I know – and I hear the call – to rise up into divine joy. I don’t have to leave earth to do that. Let’s face it, I never really left your presence. And that’s what our people need right now, the unrelenting, loving, searing light of undiluted day, the fire that burns without being consumed.

That’s where I exist forever, until such time as you call me home. But aren’t I home right now? Even if I left my body, I suspect that I would, like Little Therese, want to spend my heaven doing good on earth.

Even if I died, my state of being wouldn’t necessarily be all that different from what it is now. In fact, we’ve talked about this, but there is profound benefit to me being here, to honestly not knowing – to this very moment – for sure whether all of my work will be in vain. Maybe what I can do is to bring that joy here, the joy of your love for me, for your Only Son, for all of creation.

In heaven, I guess I’d have fewer bills to pay and more time, like an aeveternity of time. But it’s not like I’ve ever been exactly broke, and it’s not like I don’t have access to aeveternity now. I have access to eternity right now, because I am already seated on high. But what does this mean? How does this help?

Here’s another great thing about being Catholic. It reminds me of the part in Genesis where Adam starts naming the animals. I always believed in these things, but it feels … comforting somehow to have words for them. Naming things, knowing basic principles really does help. It’s like getting to know calculus. Even though you understood the principles before, once I know the notations and what they refer to, my brain can start forging ahead to higher-level math.

It’s one of those things I’ve noticed about my ability to understand. My intuition always only knows one or two steps beyond my ability to put it into words. It’s one of those maybe different things about me. I remember that one English professor who said we only really understand what we can put into words – and I didn’t know what he meant. I have always assumed that it’s like this for everyone.

And then I start to think of how my understanding is always a couple steps ahead, like the knowledge were always out there waiting for me, just waiting for me to have the language to know what I know in words.

Sometimes I wish I could be like the Holy Spirit with access to all languages everywhere. But that would be excessive. I would then no longer be me, the learning person who loves to learn new things. If I knew everything, then I’d never get to learn, to meet new people, to enjoy life in the way I do. It goes even deeper than that. Simply having access to the words would not be the same as knowing them, as having Latin verb tenses etched into me by learning them, learning about the subtle differences of time and how we perceive time.

If I didn’t know about that, maybe I’d be able to say something like Come see me at noon, but I wouldn’t be able to conceive things like pocket universes and atemporal worlds. For that, I need to really understand, to work through how time can be remarkably non-linear, how even causality can afford to get a little loopy at times.

I no longer feel so alone today. I’m thinking that for now, maybe this whole spiritual letter thing, maybe that is the best thing I can do for now, to help. If not, well, it certainly can’t harm anyone can it? I don’t think. I’d be thinking these things, either way. Along with a lot of other things I’m not talking about.

I feel okay again. I remember that someone doesn’t have to know my Entire Interior Life to be a friend, that it’s my choice to keep some things secret. I am not alone. No one ever is, however much we might think so.

Tomorrow, I think that I will talk about time and causality, about why one thing happens after another, about prophecy and about foreknowledge. I’m trying to wrap my mind around everything that is happening now, to figure out some things. And man this sounds so pretentious, but that’s because I feel like I’m standing tiptoe near the top of a very high ladder and I forget how to talk like a normal person.

Let’s talk about the Eucharist. Causality, time, and the Last Supper. Sure why not? I’m not sure about you dad, but talk about best and worst and scariest moment ever. I will never stop plunging into that mystery, personally. Tell Yeshua I said hi – and that I hope to see him soon, face to face I mean. I’m talking about the general resurrection.

Nobody ever said this was going to be easy. But I still believe that one day it will BE. Please, Father, help our people out.

With love and hope,
Anne