Jr Maybe No Worse For Celiacs

[Guest BellyTimber]

Hoping all of you like the new look title, it's fairly retro, trying to preserve the flavour of celiac3270's but in a more contemporary spirit of balance.

I didn't notice the original thread till a month after it started otherwise I'd have joined in the light hearted repartee about women and chorse earlier.

1.Have had some thoughts I decided to share in case they are of use to some people. We are not used to receiving love from other human beings so it becomes difficult to know how to expect it from God.

Rather than try to guess how to present arguments in a relevant way it's best to talk from experience.

It was after general healing prayers over a congregation eaight years ago (in a different denomination) that I came across the information that led to my gradually discovering my gluten and wheat sensitivity and other weaknesses, though still, professionals and shops and employers are heavy going. But I know that there is an explanation for the way I am and my self respect has gone sky high from where it was (and it wobbles badly) and I know there is a person who gave me these things.

A man was a failure at 40, seemingly a practising alcoholic, and the remnant of an inheritance was the only reason he wasn't in a gutter and after 12 years he was in the Oval Office and most of us don't agree with him but God doesn't make people act perfect, all He does is He does something To people, He just makes A difference that they can talk about, a concrete specific thing which is a unique, personal and different thing for each of us.

I don't know whether this will impact anyone or not. In my case all I know is I went from unknowing weakness to knowing weakness.

We on this forum have that blessing of varying degrees of medical attention, usually distressingly inadequate. And we have this self-knowledge (the digestion is the self). And we have this unutterably wonderful fellowship in recipes, the welcome and the understanding, experiences and insights to swop, helping hands pointing to more information, practical helpful directions, etc etc.

2.The communion bread issue in the Roman Catholic Church looks to me amazingly similar to the contamination issue in family kitchens and restaurants, similar to the "cheating" issue that was brought up, similar to the over-cynical newcomers who don't think through each issue at a time but project their fright onto us as agression.

We have to use information our doctors gave us if they had any, information on this forum, in books, on packets and in letters, and do our calculations and barge on. We know we'll get hurt and we do get hurt. If we have to stand up to restaurant people and family in the kitchen, we do just that and we feel terrible about having to do that. I've just seen the doctor and feel the lowest about not having been able to stand up to him properly, but I was right and that is faith. If you're a Catholic and in the process of finding out how sensitive to wheat and gluten you are, slightly sensitive, fairly sensitive, extremely sensitive, you've gotta try out the options - the Church has got several official options and they are all good.

You avoid priests and bishops that say something can't be done when it can or can be done when it can't. Just like the family members and restaurateurs who say "a little bit won't hurt" and the doctors who say you haven't got celiac disease because their stupid book says you "must" have outgrown it and shops that say "there's no demand" as if you weren't there. It's rough from start to finish and we will feel bad about almost everything except our self esteem because some unseen power was determined we should know how our bodies work differently from others' and how we can live better from now on (somehow).

3.Faith is getting on with something when we just can't feel 100% right about it because the fact is we can't feel 100% right about anything else either. Scruples is opting out of living, because it's too much hassle. Don't beat yourselves up for hesitating, I've taken nearly 3 years to get round to this move.

4.Richard, you asked a straightforward question on 29th May at 0742 hours, the answer is, chemically, and to the senses and the digestion, the host remains as it was which is exactly what celiac3270 stated at 1.16 p.m on 27th May, he was 100% right. Ed and Connole don't say what type of host they use and it's their free individual choice should they use a different standard from their usual foods and the Church also gives us the right to freely choose the same standard in wheat for the host as for our usual foods (down to Spiritual Communion).

In line with the passover which was a happening and when there was wheat, hence if need be we abstain from wheat rather than substitute something else but abstaining from the element does not mean not participating.

In reality there is still a leap of faith if you choose the 0.01 % (100 ppm? is my maths good?) gluten host which you Richard said some super-sensitive people tolerate well and just as much a leap of faith if you do a Spiritual Communion ("how do I know it's good in God's eyes, there's all that prejudice").

Faith and spirituality are in the very concrete, material and practical. God will do something (usually something surprising). A friend landed a good job just before getting the acute stage of celiac disease, which turned out far better than getting ill on the dole. Providential - but still distressing.

I don't look down on my own motives if I have to take bad decisions because I am unable to take good ones any more because I didn't have the skill to organise my food supply well enough. I respect and value myself even if I can see myself making bad mistakes in advance.

Some saints are those who post here after they took that slice of ordinary cake or pizza at the party, no-one actually dares call them cheats to their "faces" I've noticed. God isn't going to call anyone a cheat for choosing any of the official communion options we've described.

I read the recipe section of the forum and your stories and your welcomes and so I know there is Good News and Justice for me somewhere, but not everywhere. That's my relationship with God, what happened to me - relationships are only made up of happenings. So we can actually choose one of the approved options (the standard host or the ultra-low-gluten Host or cultivate Spiritual Communion - a friend promised me some materials about how to turn this into a Happening) and see how life carries on happening.

We may not give our real names or locations but to expose ourselves on this forum to agressive enquirers, is faith. One can be overly nervous of testing God (depending on one's attitude). My hero is Doubting Thomas, Our Lord gave him what he wanted.

celiac3270, maybe you could try some of those issues on your local padre and on God! Those aren't my ideas, just a jumbled "recipe" I got from all over the place over the years. My points zigzag because they connect tangentially in my mind but I'm probably not presenting them well.

(In some countries the government breathes down people's necks who want to change churches.)