On Dealing with a Demon Possessed House

Meanwhile, in my earthly home, this new relationship with the Crystal Hope, (as I now call the Crystal Specter) has led to a constant march of spiritual riff raff in and out of my material home. I'm not supposed to see them...not them nor their tireless holy counterparts sent to protect and preserve. But, sometimes I'll catch a sidelong awareness, more often all the time in fact, which makes me think my house is becoming something of a spiritual Grand Central Station. I anticipated this, counted the cost before I ever agreed to opening the door. What's more, I knew it was my responsibility to put the umbrella of prayer over the whole thing. I weighted with trepidation, being full-well familiar with Christ's warning:

43 "When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. 44 Then he says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. 45 Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation."

So I am diligent, but we're all in new territory here. For instance, the other day, I sensed a need to plaster a gap in the wall--a gap that allowed ones in who did not belong. They sat in my living room watching violent television programming that randomly played as my husband slept on the couch. I could turn off the television, removing their entertainment. I could get rid of the television (there's an excessive response.) But what felt right was to simply plaster the gap in the spiritual bubble that mounds over our home.

When the little devils watching the television turned an eye my direction, one of them said, "Are you sure you want to close our exit?" I knew he was referencing the verse I already had in mind.

Trowel in hand, I looked him back dead in the eye and said, "You know how I keep this place and who I actually invite inside it. Are you sure you want to be trapped in here?"

They considered, and then left...leaving it to the holy ones to take up an altogether different sort of party.

Where Are You 'Under the Sun'?

I'm posting a little puzzle here. I want you to read the following, and then I'll share some of the details that prompted my quoting it. Hopefully, it will be as much of a jaw-dropper to you as it was to me.

Prayer is attractive enough when it is considered in a context of...sunny, joyous country churches. And as a matter of fact, the Church means all this. It is a class religion, the cult of a special society and group, not even of a whole nation, but of the ruling minority in a nation. That is the principal basis for its rather strong coherence up to now. There is certainly not much doctrinal unity, much less a mystical bond between people many of whom have even ceased to believe in the Sacraments. The thing that holds them together is the powerful attraction of their social traditions, and the stubborn tenacity with which they cling to certain social standards and customs, more or less for their own sake. The Church depends, for its existence, almost entirely on the solidarity and conservatism of the ruling class. Its strength is not in anything supernatural, but in the strong social and racial instincts which bind the members of this caste together; and these cling to their Church the way they cling to...a big, vague, sweet complex of subjective dispositions regarding the countryside, baseball, apple-pie, 4th of July parades and fireworks...and all those other things the mere thought of which produces a kind of a warm and inexplicable ache in the national heart.
I got mixed up in all this...and it was strong enough in me to blur and naturalize all that might have been supernatural in my attraction to pray and to love God. And consequently the grace that was given me was stifled, not at once, but gradually. As long as I lived in this peaceful hothouse atmosphere...I was pious, perhaps sincerely. But as soon as the frail walls of this illusion broke down again--...and I saw that underneath their sentimentality, these were just as brutal as the others--I made no further effort to keep up what seemed to me to be a more or less manifest pretense...
...It is a terrible thing to think of the grace that is wasted in this world...

First, I should admit to modifying the foregoing quote in one part--the imagery series that spoke of apple pies and holiday parades. The original would have given away the fact that it was not written about our time or our people, even though I say it IS written for our time and for our people. No, the original spoke of castles and games of cricket and pipe-smoking. The Church mentioned was the Church of England and the text referred to the state of affairs as the author saw it in the 1920's--reaching back nearly 100 years ago. These are the reflections of Thomas Merton, a protestant turned Trappist monk, in his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. I don't know about you, but I find it rather ironic that the very church from which our forefathers sought religious freedom, braving much hardship for that cause--this is the very church we today take for a model in so many ways, if Merton's observations be at all accurate.

Before we can even begin to hope to make beneficial choices about our faith-walk we must first throw off the lie that we are facing pertinent issues...the issues are not the issue. The issues change like a suit of clothing, but the body that gives them shape while being worn, that body must be recognized as ever the same old body. And the health of that body can not be changed by donning an ever more trendy and glamorous costume. Health is best assessed by standing naked before a mirror under a strong light and making careful examination of what we see.