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Proper Placement

6/26/2016

1 Comment

 
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I reported to one of my favorite mentors that I am getting a sense of how Jesus has put me in a “place” where either I rely on Him every moment of the day or I can’t deal with life at all!  This is good.
Also I sensed You, saying, Jesus, that I should let others plan something that I can be part of vs. scheming myself so much.
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Notes from my sessions with my spiritual director, Fr. Mike Phillippino:
Mary seems to be telling you to surrender! 
Someone wrote about the Big Silence:  where people for 5 days get away from cell phones and computers
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I might need to let God turn me around and change my way of doing things not conquest and moving forward which has lots of pride and ego in it but, instead -
Humility: not trying to control everyone. Become smaller…retreat into the Lord who is God ALONE.  Let the Lord build the house, like God telling David that David would not build the house of God but God would…as in 2 Samuel 7 verses 8-17. 
​He shakes us up….

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Sit and praise the Lord and give thanks.  Mary says the mighty will be cast down from their thrones. My throne of Prof. Chervin?  To sit at His feet like Mary Magdalene – just present to the Lord, a student, not a professor all the time vs. always worried like Martha. This could seem like laziness but actually would be more productive because then God can use me better.
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​John 14:  If I go, I will prepare a place for you…on His throne – we can be like kids climbing up on His lap.  
I can prepare for the future in the interior, not exterior and God will protect me! 
​St. Alphonsus and St. Faustina taught that the more we trust in the Lord, the more He does for us.
How can He reach us if we are all stuffed with plans and schemes?  
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On Tuesday I took a plane to Corpus Christi,
home of the Ridley’s, of goodbooksmedia and this blog!
It was a horrible trip but with little moments of grace:

2 AM text message from United Airlines telling me my connecting flight was delayed in such a way I wouldn’t make it to the 2nd connecting flight.
​I couldn’t fall back to sleep so just prayed quietly and worked.
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6:30 AM leave for Hartford airport.  The wheel chair man takes me through security.
​He grabs the lap-top I point at and sticks it in my little suitcase. He leaves me at Dunkin Donuts for my ritual cappuchino. 
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Announcement:  “Ronda, come back to security…you took the wrong lap-top.” 
On the way back to security I meet a frantic young couple yelling “Are you Ronda?  You have our lap-top!”
There’s was black and mine is dark blue but I never noticed that my 3 year old lap top was dark blue since I am Mrs. Magoo!
I felt like an idiot.
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What if I had gotten onto the plane with the wrong lap-top?
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​The flight from Hartford to Chicago is uneventful.
12:30 in plane from Chicago to Houston:  plane is turned around on the runway due to some mechanical problem. “Stick around near the gate to see what is happening, but you have ½ hour to grab a bite.”
I’m am getting upset but then I see a Mexican teen with a fat rosary around his neck. I pull out mine and chat with him. He smiles.
I meet later sitting around waiting a non-Catholic Christian home-schooler who is working on self-sustaining living. We talk for ½ hour with profit. A Pope Francis moment, I think. (That is, moving out of my comfort zone to talk to non-Catholics).
3:30 another plane goes on the run-way, but doesn’t leave until 4:30 because it takes a whole hour to load the baggage from the defunct plane to this one.
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I’m am getting upset, but then I see a Mexican teen with a fat rosary around his neck. I pull out mine and chat with him. He smiles.
I meet later sitting around waiting a non-Catholic Christian home-schooler who is working on self-sustaining living. We talk for ½ hour with profit. A Pope Francis moment, I think. (That is, moving out of my comfort zone to talk to non-Catholics).
3:30 another plane goes on the run-way, but doesn’t leave until 4:30 because it takes a whole hour to load the baggage from the defunct plane to this one.
I realize I will miss my flight from Houston to Corpus Christi. 
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A good conversation with a young adult who is studying to be a United attendant. I tell him I am never flying United again.  He calms me down by helping me in many ways. He leave his seat next to me and persuades the attendant serving boxed superior snacks not to charge me even though he took my debit card.
Due to Sister Act  I actually enjoy  watching players throwing basketballs into a hoop on the TV that automatically turned on to this.  I got a sense that all this kind of thing is good and loved by God that humans do, as long as we don’t make them into idols – I mean sports.
The attendant assures me that my troubles are over because when I get to Houston I will have the wheel-chair I requested and they will take me to customer service where they will arrange a motel for the night and a voucher for dinner.

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Now, I walk fine and can even run. I need the wheel chair because I can’t stand for long periods of time. With the wheel-chair I don’t have to stand at the long security lines or the long line for customer service.
Now is when “all hell breaks loose” sigh!  I get off the plane and there is no wheel chair. I wait 15 minutes and one comes but an old gent who looks like 90 to my mere 79 is put in the chair instead of me even though he came out of the plane later. I accept that because he is so old looking. The airport person at that gate tells me a cart can take me. 

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Now I have totally lost it.  There is old hag Ronda in her pseudo-nun blue jumper with the large crucifix, sitting myself down on the floor in front of the counter calling out
“It is whole hour you haven’t sent a wheel chair.”
​Since most of the people on the line are Mexicans, they just look embarrassed for me.
Just as I am about the call out: “I am suing United Airlines,” I notice a managerial looking type man at the counter.
​I walk up through the line and start my spiel. 
He walked out the back door and around out to me and gestures me far away from the line. 
The upshot of my expostulations is that he somehow gets me onto the 9 PM flight that was presumably totally booked with standby’s waiting.
“But, I don’t want to take some other person’s place who was on stand-by for hours, Sir?”
“Look lady, you are now confirmed.”
He sends for a cart which takes me to the foot of the escalator to the mono-rail to the next part of the airport. 
I run up the escalator to the mono-rail. Just as the door is about to close the cart drive runs in. I had left my suitcase on the cart!
I feel as if senility has totally won and my life is over.
I get to the gate for the flight from Houston to Corpus Christi.
“Where is your boarding pass?”
I pull out the one for the 5 PM flight.
I see the other stand-by’s are going through the gate.
5 minutes before they close, they shove me through!
I spend my time wondering if it qualifies as confessional matter that I made this scene with my large cross so visible so that people could think that Catholics are hysterics?
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1 Comment
mybkexperience link
2/15/2021 12:03:33 pm



I found this on internet and it is really very nice.
An excellent blog.
Great work!

Reply



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    Author

    Ronda Chervin received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Fordham University and an MA in Religious Studies from Notre Dame Apostolic Institute. She is a dedicated widow, mother, and grandmother.
    Ronda converted to the Catholic Faith from a Jewish, though atheistic, background and has been a Professor of Philosophy and Theology at Loyola Marymount University, the Seminary of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and Franciscan University of Steubenville. She is an international speaker and author of some fifty books about Catholic thought, practice and spirituality. One of her latest is LAST CALL, published by Goodbooks Media.
    Dr. Ronda is currently retired and living in Corpus Christi, Texas after her years of teaching philosophy at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut.
    You can contact her via e-mail by clicking here or by emailing [email protected] directly.

    Visit her websites:
    here and here.

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