Sunday 7 December 2014

Hidden Pain ..An Insight into childhood sexual abuse






Dear Friends my new book is hot off the press ... Yeah!!! its completed and printed!

A review of the book can be found in AD 2000  November Issue and reviewed by Mr Peter Westmore.

It can be purchased from Freedom Publishing (link below) 
or alternatively for now

From Victims of Abortion of Abortion office
PO Box 6094
Vermont South 3133
Victoria  Australia

Within Australia cost is $A30.00 includes p & h.
and outside of Australia $A38 includes p & h.

Contact with me maybe made on anne@victimsofabortion.com.au


HIDDEN PAIN: An Insight into Childhood Sexual Abuse, by Anne R. Lastman - Peter Westmore (reviewer)
Books: Order books from www.freedompublishing.com.au.


Its been a hard labour but a labour of love.

Anne

Hail Holy Queen

                    



               
The prayer Hail Holy Queen which we pray after the Rosary is a most ancient prayer and beautiful. We declare that Mary the Mother of Jesus is "Holy" is "Queen" "Mother of all "Mercy" (Jesus).

She is a "hope."  We cry to Mary because before Mary's "Fiat" and the beginning of the work of our Redemption we were indeed "poor banished children of "Eve" (hawah-mother of all living) and in some ways we still are because we can no longer meet our creator face to face as "Eve" did in the garden. Today we meet our God and creator only with the eyes of faith. The Sin of Origins (of our first parents) deprived for us the experience of visual and "face to face" intimacy” (He walked with Adam in the cool of the garden) with Him. As we live on this earth (Garden of Eden?) and it is His joy and ours that we do so, we are deprived of the same intimacy of our "Father" as you and I have the visible and tangible intimacy with our own fathers. As you and I have an intimacy with your/my children.

We sigh and are sad because of this barrier that prohibits us from embracing our Heavenly Father as we embrace our own living children.
"This Valley of Tears" is the earth and our life as we live them.

My own life is strewn with tears and all human beings in one way or another experience much sorrow and loss and the tears shed often feel like we could fill a whole valley with our tears (poetically). So collectively the tears of the human beings in our daily lives fill a whole valley and form a river and fill and top up the ocean.
"Turn then most gracious advocate thine eyes of Mercy towards us" A new title for Our Blessed Mother. Remember Jesus on the Cross gave her to us as "our Mother" so we can turn to "our Mother" as we turn to our human mother for advocacy, for comfort, support, for intimate needs, so we turn to our heavenly mother for comfort for our soul’s needs, to help us to carry that heavy cross like my own deeply regretted two decisions which changed the trajectory of my life.

"And after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb....Jesus"
And in this exile/banishment from the embrace and vision of my own true Father, we ask, "Mum, when we come to the end of this journey, would you take me by the hand and introduce me to your Son who gave you to me and who bought for me this new and intimate relationship with Our Father/my Father?”

I believe wholly completely and totally that I receive the body, blood, soul and divinity of my Lord Jesus when I receive the Eucharist and as I said in the past if I close my eyes I can see the beauty of the light of my Lord Jesus of the Transfiguration. But it is only through the imagination and not the visual.
We are meant to be perfect as Our heavenly father is perfect, but the reality is that we are not and whilst we remain on this earth we can and do fail the ideal. None of us is sinless. We all sin and fall far short of the glory of God. However, for this and for the reason of His great love for us, He has left for us the remedy for this  our inclination towards failing the ideal.

 Yes Jesus has conquered the Sin of World, but this knowledge has to be taken on board, acquired and made one's own and again the reality is that we are human beings who are frail and like St Paul says, I want to do good things but I fail.

The prayer "Hail Holy Queen" has written within it a most marvellous catechesis and if it could be "delivered" it would open the eyes of the soul. Within this catechesis, is the story of God, creation, sin, redemption and return to Our Father.
To the best of our knowledge  we seek Christ in His integrity, unbroken just as His mother and Father gave Him to us. This is what the journey is all about. Finding the  whole and complete Christ in His divine essence.

That we should love our enemy is a given. That we get hurt with our enemy's arrows, is also a given and in our labour to forgive is when we grow deeper in the dimension of the Cross and in  this the finding Christ in His integrity.

Tuesday 11 November 2014

What is Religion?


The dictionary tells us that religion is "a particular system of faith and worship" (eg Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu) It means re-ligare" to bind, or tie oneself to.”
It is also human recognition of a non human power and especially of a personal God or gods who are believed to be entitled to obedience and worship. Religion and religious enquiry incorporates thought, belief, conduct, behaviour, experience, ritual and underpinning this umbrella called religion are some identifiable traits and systems which bring together and effect certain responses.
 
To be termed a religion and thus to be considered to be effective, a religion must have a set of doctrines, e.g. death and resurrection of Jesus in reparation for the sins of the world (Christianity). The Four Noble Truths, the Eighth fold Path (Buddhism). Religion must have a dimension of story (its history) and experiences. These stories must be known, believed and told and retold in order that they become assimilated into that particular life story and belief. Religion must have its rituals, to accompany the stories and history. Rituals make an attempt to make visible the invisible.  Rituals speak a language of the unspoken.

For the Catholic believer, the Mass and Sacraments constitute the most important rituals and elements of the faith. To accompany the rituals an ethical dimension must be formulated because it is this dimension which determines the mores. It is this dimension which enshrines the basic non changeable beliefs and tenets of that religion.


Religion must have its sacred texts (Torah for the Jewish people. Gospels, Epistles, Old Testament for Christianity, Rig Vedas, for Hindus, Koran for Muslim faith,  etc) which are the words spoken by the Deity through the  founder of that religion and which are to be studied and learned and kept and interpreted in perpetuity by the followers. These words are used to govern one's life.
Within the framework of religion is also found the experiential. This is because religion has the potential to fulfil the yearnings, spiritual, and psychological needs of the human person. These needs are written on the core of the human heart and demand a response.


Religion helps to give the human person an idea and image of his/her place in the universe and assists in the answers to the deep questions of life and death and the meaning of these.
And probably it can be said that religion assists in the seeking for an answer to that nameless core yearning that rises from within a human person. Religion is an attempt to vocalize and bring into reality 'the Sacred" "The Numinous" (Rudolph Otto, 1917, The Idea of the Holy.") It is an infinite and lifelong journey of the human person to return to their homeland for which there is an echo or deep yearning and longing for the return and for Father (God).
Ultimately the human person is restless (as St Augustine would say) and ontologically lonely because the human being recognises that its homeland is not as permanent resident here on earth, but where he/she comes from. A return to God and our place in Him and with Him.


Tuesday 30 September 2014

God is Love Ps 103




Recently Iasked a friend do you love him?  (husband)  and her response surprised me especially as I had gone to their wedding, had been present when their daughter was born, have seen their ups and downs like every other young couple's ups and downs and yet still her reponse surprised me.  "I dont know what love means Anne" And this then set the cogs working.  I have had much time to think as I sat by the bedside of one who was dying.  These moments of watching, at times praying, thinking of what should've, could've, might've been and other extraneous thoughts.  Into this mix, moments of silence so that other thoughts filtered through.

Love what is this strange thing called "love" what we humans call "love" and can we humans experience unadulterated, pure, love, the kind of love which we attribute to God or is God "love"
As I pondered further, I thought back to beginnings and thought of creation and God enfleshing of the human being.  If God is "Love" then surely when He breathed into the human then all He could breathe would be love, so that every, every, every human being born is enfleshed with love.  Irrespective of the advanced or primitive nature of the person, love is their breath.
Love makes the world go round and some such silly, shallow song words but its probably true because love maintains creation in being or existence.  At the end of this existence then love withdraws.

To understand love perhaps a little helps us to maybe see God. And the Apostle to the gentile's words "There is faith, hope and love and the greatest of these is love."

So what is love? what is the mystery called love? poetry, songs, dramas, movies, love stories have been written, sung, acted out, in honour of this emotion called love. All depicting love in its many forms.  It has been described as a feeling, way,journey, even affection. 

It has been called a challenge.  It is sought after and desired and longed for and even mourned for.
Love in its many shades, forms and ways cannot ever pass by and leave those it touches unchanged. True love by its nature change those it encounters or it cannot be "love."
True love gives birth to more love. True love is universal because every culture,, race, creed, colour, know love and have love embedded into their being.
Every culture has its own "love story" to tell. Every culture has love embedded into its consciousness because every culture has this mystery of divine enfleshment as their genesis.

Saturday 14 June 2014

Grief/Abortion/society


 

The connection between abortion and its after effects on men, women, and society has long been established, yet still the call is for more abortion, more sexual immorality and more death. 
The family is under severe attack from many fronts; however, the most insidious is the now legal and lethal assault on pre born children demanded by their own parents.   These are now the most vulnerable members of society, because in the womb they are unseen, unprotected, and those designed to protect and nurture them have become their judges and executioners. 
Past history tells us those societies where children were offered as sacrifice to the gods of their day have perished.  Perhaps our society with its technological advances has become the most primitive of all because our advanced knowledge has not been used to protect life but rather how to easily dispose of it.  The ensuing collective guilt has instilled a projected self-hate, provoking individuals and groups to inflict more death on many levels.   The crippling sense of guilt has led to flight via the medium of first denial and then ego satisfaction.

Ultimately what can be said about abortion and the family and society is that abortion deeply wounds the structure called family.  Just as the family of God is held together through the overflow of His  love  so the human family is meant to bind together man and woman by an overflow of their love shown clearly in the image of their child. Abortion is the antithesis of love and plunges the family and humanity into a new state of dehumanisation and de-civilisation.
To heal the family of disenfranchised grief and unacknowledged pain and free them for life must be a goal of all therapy and therapies.  Abortion kills love but an acknowledged and good therapeutic programme can restore love and equilibrium and wholeness and family. This needs to be the goal of the society of our times.
"In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act" (G Orwell)

Monday 2 June 2014

For the Children's Sake

Having just returned from Hobart in Tasmania where I attended Emily's Voice Conference I want to say how much heartened I am with those who work for life.
I attended as speaker but there were three other speakers (Paul O'Rourke, CEO of Emily's Voice, Bernadette Black CEO Brave Foundation and Gaye ounsellor)  whose passion for women, and preborn babies is as deep and enduring as mine.  I think as we continue to work together to form a cohort for the Lord  we will be able to see that a difference can be made.
Post abortion grief and trauma exists.  Today this really cannot be denied. Abuse of children exists. This also cannot be denied and a  huge drug culture which seems to have overcome our children also cannot be denied.
I am amazed that it seems that  those children who escaped abortion in the last twenty years are now being lost to the drug "ice." Satan indeed hates our children.
Paul O'Rourke has written a fabulous book called "Why Satan Hates our Children"   which can be purchased from www.emilysvoice.com  and is really worth buying because it's important to know and to be informed. It's pointless saying "we didnt know" because we do know and we need to battle for the children and our culture.  Not doing so means an outcome of a whole generation lost to a "war" on children and against children.
Thank you Paul for the invitation to speak at the conference. Thank you to those who gave hospitality and I plead with my readers please please get involved for the children's sake. 

Saturday 17 May 2014

God is Love and Forgiveness at work.


Love and forgiveness attributes of God were created before all of creation itself.  Forgiveness is the Lord’s name, attribute and character and these attributes were created by the Father before eternity, time  and humanity.  The Father God knowing that  His creation of the human in His image and of His own desires and “choice” would at times fail to rise above the wrong “choice” and hence make a wrong choice and further repay evil with good, and so forgiveness would be required. If this was and is not so, then this would mean that there was and is a limitation on God and He would not have known that Adam and Eve would make wrong choice and so forgiveness like Wisdom were created before time.
Love also an attribute and characteristic of God and in the image of Yeshua connects every part of humanity’s being to every other. It is the superglue.  The soul, that spark of God, which makes the creature so like God, has a deep need and hunger for “love” its source, God.  It is attracted and yearns for  its very source its being and origin and yearns to return to the One from whom he is given life.
In pasturing of another   or in a spiritual setting the word “love” “unity” “forgiveness” and “acceptance” are essential if there is to be a recovery from wounds and a return to authentic “love. And it is  especially in forgiveness that love is seen most pronounced and obvious and which leads to the emergence of a renewed one because of the “choice” made not to repay pain with pain. Wound with wound.
A pastoral carer’s role is to enter into the struggles of another as it strives to feel, free,  see, recognize, love and work through the disrepair in its life and assist the other in the struggle for renewal or even for state of  repair, or as the Hebrew  person might say tikkun.
Acceptance with all its meanings and effects ensures true union of love, forgiveness and a reconnection.  Grace, another attribute and characteristic and gift of the divine and offered by Christ i then becomes the true acceptance.
In both the First Testament and second Testament scriptures is revealed a God of acceptance. A God who goes to great lengths to reach the broken and hurting creature. He enters into the pain and accepts it. He is a God who accepts what is offered to Him because God sees that the human is a part of Himself, willingly and lovingly created by him to be His representative amongst the created order.
Knowing how special, how greatly honoured we are held in His esteem and gaze, should permit and help us to know that He created us and loves us and is ready to forgive us and our earthling siblings. He so loves that He shows us that He is always on our side.  He never abandons. As long as we are alive then He will always be ready to pick us up. 
In God we see the greatest offer of friendship in the situation of brokenness and see a God wishing to come near the brokenness and not be ashamed or repulsed by it. Just to repair Tikkun,   because in the repairing then his creation will complete  the mission which He has given to it and in the carrying out of the mission  not only to grow, but to grow in  stature, wisdom, and truth, and  learn to grow in perfection, that is, to learn to choose to do good, to make “good choices” when an evil choice is much easier to make.
This is the work and honour of the human being only, because beasts and angels do not have this very important option but only the human has been entrusted with this and has this capacity.
To this end we succeed when we have failed and made wrong choices and have seen the consequences of the wrong choices and then turned this around and worked towards making right choices.

Ecclesiastes 7:20 says, “ there is no righteous man in the whole world who continually does good and does not transgress” And yet even when “not good” is done there is the gift  and attribute of forgiveness a gift in the mind of God even before  Adam was created.
Our nature and humaneness belong to the order of goodness in the mind of God and were so before creation, because creation was declared “very good” and even after sin the creation was not destroyed but a promise of forgiveness was made for the future to come in the person of the Messiah and a new humanity. 
Different from the first one human (Adam created from the Adamah and Jesus both from the Adamah and divine) this new humanity, led by Yeshua enfleshes Love, Forgiveness and Grace, the characteristics of the Creator whose breath was infused into the creation because the Creator desired us to be just like Him. In His own image and likeness.
It was His “choice” and not His need for us to be and in the breathing into each human being His breath He also breathes into each individual an option for “choice” and permits us to “choose” to grow or journey into goodness. To develop divine manners and ways so that at the appointed time we do not find ourselves homeless in a strange land far from the creator Father because we have not made choices like Him.

He created us to be like Him and to make a “choice” for Life and on this journey as we make more and more “right” choices we become more and more like Him.  In His own image of one who  chose “life” even though He knew that “Life” would “choose” against Him. To this end He became “forgiveness” so that it was possible to offer this option when the need arose.

 

Monday 5 May 2014

Jesus is Manacled before Pilate

The imagery this brings to mind is filled with pathos. The creator of the universe tied.  This image of God and Man having his hands tied and unable to do anything or defend himself without causing a violence to order.
A reflection of this is that Jesus accepts the situation. He stands there both as me and Him with both of us having our hands tied.
Why cant he do anything? because we have bitten of the tree of knowledge.  We have demanded "choice" and now in this freedom which He gives as part of our contract for being human He cannot intervene.
At times the human creature cries "why Lord?" why didnt you stop him/he" and to this question he shows His hands tied and He is rendered helpless.  We have chosen choice.

Monday 21 April 2014

A Real Tragedy

In a real life horror story brought to our screen and news services on Easter Sunday, we were told of the murder of two innocent children (all that is known is that they were below the age of 10) by a male within the household and known to them.   What horror on a day that  should be one of glory.
And Yet...More and more we are hearing of innocence brutalised.  Innocence being the scapegoat of societal sins.  Yes sins... We have become afraid to use that word because it's not "cool" to use the word sin. But sin it is.  Lets call it what it is. It's violence against God and human life.
When I heard and listened stunned and in horror at that breaking news, I was reminded of the very recent murder of young Luke Batty in front of his mother and friends (by his father) of a little girl called Darcy Freeman (4 yrs old) tossed over a bridge (father) to her death, of the 3 Farquaharson children 10,7 and 2 yrs old (father) and other names written in our inglorious history.  Why? Why? Why so much violence against the most innocent and trusting and loving? Why? 
Have we become so desensitised that it has become possible not to feel?  That the first answer to a difficulty is murder of innocence?
And I have to say ...yes.
We have created a society where innocence is murdered legally...abortion.
We are heading towards a society where innocence (sick, elderly, incapacitated can be murdered legally ..euthanasia..Belgium legalised euthanasia of children Feb 14th, 2014).  We have slowly created a society that speaks of murder using sanitised language and then we wonder why atrocities happen.
Abortion up to full term is violence and murder and death  against a child and legal.
Euthanasia is violence against another child or adult and is making inroads and in places legal.
Why are we scandalised and horrified when a sense of rage is played visibly in our society as was the murder of the above mentioned children.  Only because these events have been brought to our screens and in our vision by the media and so we can see the horrors. Abortion and its brutalisation of the child serenely growing in its supposed safe place is hidden by the media.  This same media which will make much about these child murders will not bring to vision a dismembered child.  This apparently will disturb viewers and bring into question the "rightness" and "efficacy" and "right" which is abortion.  Will bring into question the lie told that what is growing in the womb is not a child but some unrecognizable bunch or clump of genetic product.
We have a violent society.  We have assisted this society to become violent because we have okayed violence beginning with the youngest to the eldest and those (like Hitler) not quite right.  We have said that only those of a certain size can be recognized and so the media brings to us to view on screen horrors which they deem newsworthy and not others which are deemed as "rights."
Indeed we have a violent society, one which we have created with our demands, laws, visuals, games and above all loss of God, inner peace, and knowledge of right and wrong.  We are reaping what we have sown.

Sunday 20 April 2014

He is Risen Hallelujah

Dear friends and readers I wish for you and your loved ones a Happy and Holy Easter.

Love and hugs

Anne

Wednesday 26 February 2014

R.I.P. Charlotte Dawson


Abortion Pain.

 
With great sadness in this past week we have heard of the death by suicide of the very beautiful Charlotte Dawson, a vivacious, stunningly beautiful former model and TV presenter. A very hurting young woman, whose very public acknowledgement of her fight with depression she was happy to share. 
However, when I heard the news and read and heard many words spoken about her life it, I suppose, her end came as no surprise.  I think mostly she died of a broken heart.  Really and truly a broken heart.
From what we know of her story Charlotte had adored her husband (divorced after about a year) and she never recovered from the sacrifice of the abortion she had in order not to have any impediment to her husbands dreams of winning gold medal at Olympics.  It was and is known that he took her to the abortion facility and left her there alone to undergo this experience. In her own words following the abortion she was never the same. 

How tragic that those who have promoted abortion, the taking to be killed one's own child,  do not make themselves available to  mothers who then go on to regret and grieve for their loss and at times grieve so much that life is not worth continuing, as in the case of Charlotte.

How tragic that the demands for more abortions, more and more liberalisation of of laws which might have protected both mother and child have been drowned out by those who do not have a real care for women.   This seems to say to me that voices of pain and  those who have wept and continue to weep behind closed doors over their decision, as in the case of Charlotte, are not the voices of those who have a death agenda.   It appears to me that the  voices unheard are those who have suffered grief, regret, shame, and who cannot reconcile their decision with their inner most being and what society says is "good" have been muted. 

The greatest tragedy is the reality that pro abortion advocates  refuse to recognise studies which clearly indicate that abortion is not a procedure which leaves the woman unscathed  but very much wounded (see Coleman Study 2011 enormous increase d risks in all psychological  behaviours, and two  recent Chinese studies 2012 and many studies linking abortion and breast cancer , depression, substances abuses, relationship difficulties).  It seems that the pro abortion groups are not particularly interested in the pain of women who hurt, so long as the killing of the children is made available and passed off as guilt free procedure. It is not.  Please listen its not.  Charlotte's battle with depression was public but thousands and thousands of others suffer the same but alone and many end up the same because  there is a longing for the lost one. The fruit of "my body." 

How tragic that the mental health of ALL women is not important including the mental health of those who suffer as a result of the procedure which promised them an easy way out of a difficult moment  only to discover the lifelong pain bought into  It appears to me, as a long term post abortion grief counsellor,  that there is little interest in hearing the voices of  women who suffer lifelong grief, depression,  regret, like me and  tens of thousands like me.  It seems that it is OUR voices which are not heard over the chaotic clamour made by the pro abortion lobby.
For Charlotte I believe she has never recovered from her loss and in the end it became easier not to be present to pain any more.
The media has tried very hard to pass off her death as a result of cyber bullying and perhaps this contributed further to her vulnerability, but in her own words, from the day of her abortion she knew what depression meant and years of depression weakens the being and the strength to keep going. 
Depresion is a crisis of meaning and for Charlotte the "meaning" for her ceased when she couldnt fulfil her mandate as a woman to be a Mum. 
Rest in peace dear lady.  I wish I could have helped you.

Monday 27 January 2014

Old Testament the Experience of the Sacred


 

The symbolic language which surrounds and permeates religious experience or the “sacred” has evolved with the need for humans to bring into an understanding a sense of need to know the unknowable.

The word “God” or “gods” is used when human beings wish to place a limit onto language.

Beyond “God” one cannot go! Beyond Him or experience or expression there is no or cannot ever be symphonies of anything.

Human beings with a propensity for curiosity cannot perceive of a time when “God” did not exist.  The universe exists, so God exists. He is after all the Alpha and Omega (Rev22:14) Indeed simply to speak about God must suggest that a prior knowledge of a “something” called “God” must be assumed. A prior knowledge of the word and it connotation must be understood; otherwise the word “God” would not make sense.

In our language, “God” transcends limits Transcends the normal and the sensory.  This of course is not an attempt to try and reduce “God” to the human level but an attempt to express within our capabilities as “someone” “something” or “some dimension” that cannot and should not be contained.

Sadly because of our desire to know what lies beyond the parameters of thought and and cognition, God permits Himself to be limited by us and in order to do so we need to implement the tools of language in order to express Him and explain Him and even so we are confounded.

We use the word “God” or “gods” when we want to express the inexpressible, fill the unfillable and contemplate the mysterious and beyond. Indeed when it comes to expression of the word “God” or ‘gods” all words, adjectives, coloratura fade away. To continue to try and describe or explain “God” leads to a feeling of awesome-ness as feeling of being awestruck.  Why one is also awestruck is also impossible explain because it is again an attempt at finiteness reaching into the infinite. Frustration must be the outcome because of the necessity we must use the language of the world, our world, and most often a minute section of our world, in order to express this notion as “God”   Our sensory organs, more often than not, cannot assist in the things of the unseen

The language of the sacred speaks to humans about the mysteries of life and death, happiness, sad ness, joy and sorrow and attempts in its limited capacity to make some sort of sense of the human condition.  Religious language is a language which is full of symbolism myths, stories, miracles, totems and fantasies.  It has created around itself an aura of mystery. It continues to speak of what is already being identified with the unidentifiable.  It continues to speak about what is already known about the “sacred” and trail blazes and continues to make further inroads into possible new areas and new expressions of the numinous (Otto, 1917, The Idea of the Holy).

The God of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. The God of the Jewish Christian religion is a God who is great. A God whose love and Mercy encompass the whole creation and universe. There is no God like Him.

The Jewish people who first proclaimed His greatness have enshrined their belief in  The Shemah Israel  (Dt 6:4-5) with this affirmation their belief in a monotheistic deity (One God) is proclaimed. There is one God and He is all Holy.

 

 

Wednesday 1 January 2014

Happy New Year 2014





Dear Friends,
I wish for you a Happy and Holy New Year. I wish for you joy, happiness, love, compassion, passion. I wish for you  a life filled with good things and those things not so good, that they may be manageable.  I wish for you peace and above all I wish for you a year filled with moments of ecstasy.
Please forgive my recent silence it's been because of busy ness but I haven't forgotten you.  I have just finished second book and this has taken some of my time together with the normal work of counselling and promoting of Redeeming Grief, Abortion and its Pain. So its been busy.
To all those who have supported and loved me this year..thank you.  Those who have not bless you.
Let's together hope for  a 2014 which is memorable for all the right and good reasons.
Anne