A few calls.

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No luck getting through.  I will try later.  Perhaps too close to lunch?

Between efforts, I have been listening to Father Ripperger.  Oh, he is difficult to attend.  Not for moral or social reasons.  Well, okay, moral, but... from my lack, not his.  It is that what he has to say, some of it, is new.  Even if I have listened to it before.  Still, so very dense, and new, and from a new perspective (compared to anything worldly, save perhaps physics to some degree) that it takes time to digest, chew even, hear fully, actually.

Currently I am listening to a particular one.  I will listen to it in bites I can handle, like eating a huge chocolate bar.  The goal is to understand more fundamentally, find areas I do not agree, and seek sources to check those.  To be honest, at least within the Catholic faith, I... haven't yet found much to debate.  I have found a few things which aren't canon to disagree regarding.  Priest or no, philosopher, sage, without question, but bound by certain things, even his profession, which can... blind.  We... all have our blind spots, for good or ill.  And none of us know what we... don't know.

Why do I keep coming back, rehashing, looking, exploring?  The same reason I would, without diabetes, go back to chocolate.  The same reason I recourse to the bible, Christ, God whole.  The same reason I pray.  While the earth is real, no matrix involved, it isn't everything, all, or right.  I think the physical world is perfect, even yet.  It is our presence which causes any perceived imperfections.  Even storms, should we be immortal, would not be a problem.  A tornado would kill no one.

So, I seek... better, more, the truth that seems hidden but really isn't.  Complex?  Beyond imagining, yet... not.  He can make it seem complex.  Yet, as you unravel the complexities of explanation, you begin to realize he isn't creating or altering, just exploring the rules of existence himself.  He is using the church, and it's guiding fathers, to examine what is... exists... and why... as closely as possible, meticulously expressing those things to within his understanding and ability.  Which, thankfully for me, is... very good.  He may not be a healer, or spiritually attuned to demons so as to sniff them out, or other, but his ability to understand and express is... unlikely.  His gift lies there.  If I suspect he doesn't see his other gifts.  It is good to be humble.

Listening to him is sort of like lifting weights, working out.  No... not like.  That is exactly what it is.  Mentally and spiritually.  If you can read a thousand words a minute, he will eat you alive even yet.  I despise most music and movies, too slow.  There has to be something poignant to me, something commanding or demanding, or so much going on that my mind doesn't bog down in tears of boredom.  There is the minute, and grand, and flavors, but...  Not all of that is good, some of it is a personal problem, but... that's the way of it.  With him, for now... I... struggle to keep up.

If you wish to debate Catholicism, this would be my champion.  He'd bury your arguments, unless you chose not to functionally debate.  Then he'd leave you to it.  Don't agree?  Prove him wrong, biblicly... probably within or without the context of Catholicism.  Remember, I argued against Catholicism for most of my life, if mostly by ducking certain questions.  AND... I didn't want to become a Catholic.  In the end, between calling and seeking, I... had no choice left... to live honestly with myself.  A shoe doesn't have to be preferred, but if it fits either wear it, go with the wrong size, or go without...  I chose to humbly wear the shoe that fit.

Anyway... Something to push my limits, expand my horizons, explore God and what His will is, get insights and outsights into my faith, and chew a lot of theological, episcopal?, logical, and other shoe leather... if of the finest quality.  Look, ma, no teeth!  Sometimes I wonder if I break or strengthen teeth... a bit of both, if the 'teeth' lost in such ops are baby teeth which should already have been lost?  Bleh.