Hi jerry lynch

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Jonathan Brink
Provoketive Magazine

You posted the following comment:
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Oops. Ray, I did not get a notice to your response until after my further rants. Once again my apologies; did not mean to talk over you like that. And you will never know how much I appreciate your follow-up comments. If I may be so bold (obnoxious) to comment further.

From the time I was seven, right after I drowned, I loved only Jesus, literally. My religion became everything to me. But I had been twisted by worldiness in the form of a dysfunctional family system: shame was my primary emotion. 

That aside for now. At fourteen, I went into the local everything-a-kid-would-want stores in Da Bronx to get the three Cs of life: a coke, candy bar, and a comicbook. I happened to notice a headline in one of the tabloids: "God told me to eat my baby." For some reason, this shook me to my core; a HS moment. Up until that moment, I thoroughly believed everything the Roman Catholic Church put forth was "the one, true faith." I left that store unsure, and have been in that place for fifty years.

How can I possibly be certain? Against what or with what can I finally decide? How do I know I am not deluded? How do I prove I am right? And all my readings since then helped to convince me it was impossible. Then what am I left with to live my life?

My conclusions: I cannot know or hold truth; I can only be Its expression. Love is the platform of all things Christian. If I come, through grace, to actually love my neighbor, what is for my ultimate well-being is made manifest. There is endless joy in this place, everytime. It is trust, a full emotional commitment, and not knowledge, a cautious commitment, that turns the tide. Fall into the abyss.

Knowing something about you from your confession, I feel for your ache to know. I finally had to come to that place of letting go figuring it out for the (brutal) place of trust. Everything in me fought agains it.