#renounce

Renounce

Gerrard offered no defense to Orim's condemnation; the mission was under his command, and he was responsible.

Coming out of Spiritual Patriarchy-

& the laws written by men for women takes fierceness not niceness

The denouncing

of the proscribed path for women takes forward facing sureness

Sureness in the high spiritual truth that as what I am-

As true being-there is no gender-& no ditterence at all

That the written laws, codes & rules

are the doctrine & dogma, for society-& not for being

And in this current society the rules benefit some & not others

They benefit men more by ownership of women-

The high truth is

that in being no one owns anything & everyone is born of the same living substance that is the dark primordial

Mother

“Every one of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”

That’s how Jesus winds up today’s Gospel. And it generates a lot of questions.

Does that mean that I can’t own anything? Do I have to give everything away? Are only monks and nuns and friars going to be saved?

St. John of the Cross (a Carmelite friar and today’s saint) would say no. For a couple of reasons.

First, there is no single, cookie-cutter approach to living the Faith. Compare John’s quiet contemplation to the boundless energy of Teresa of Avila to the all-consuming love of Therese of Lisieux. A quick glance at just those three Carmelite saints reveals radically different people answering God’s call to holiness.

Why is that? As St. John of the Cross tells us, “God leads every soul by a separate path.”

God is not calling you to be John of the Cross or Teresa of Avila or Therese of Lisieux. God is calling you to be who He created you to be. That is your path.

Second, renouncing your possessions isn’t about your wealth. It’s about your path.

That is, all of us need to renounce our possessions. You and I need to take them off the throne. Along anything else that wants to be on throne – whether it’s money or power or reputation or ego.

Or anything that’s desperate to scramble onto the throne so that it can get between us and God. That is what you and I need to renounce.

To do that, you and I may need to literally get rid of our possessions. If that’s what it takes to keep our possessions from getting between us and God, then that’s what we need to do.

Because that’s the point of renouncing possessions, or anything else. To take it off the throne in our hearts. So that we can make room for the One who that throne was made for.

Because it’s only when we keep that throne in our hearts for the One that it was made for. It’s only when we keep God at the center (and everything else off the throne) that we will ever know peace, that we will ever become who God made us to be.

The simple but hard recipe for doing that? St. John of the Cross tells us,

“Live in the world as if only God and your soul were in it; then your heart will never be made captive by any earthly thing.”