Laurie O'Driscoll | 29th September 2022 | Blogging

I had just woken up from what had been the worst dream.  I reached for my smartphone to see what time it was and was not surprised to see my phone screen read, three a.m. on the dot.  Not two fifty seven, not three oh eight, but exactly three a.m.  Nightmares and three in the morning 'wake up calls' were not uncommon for me.  It was simply a part of life and to some extent I just assumed these things happened to everyone.   When I'd decided to become Catholic and began purging all of my witchy objects and books, there had been a pause in these occurrences.  This is something I wasn't really thinking about in those early weeks and only began to think about again when they started back up a little.   I didn't yet correlate these things with the evil one but did begin to recall the many times I'd had these experiences.  Especially when they could be at their worst and that was when I was a psychic reader.   Back then, my days would look a little like the following:   I sat in my living room, watching television and waiting for one of two types of notification sounds to ring out from my computer. These alerts would let me know that someone was requesting a live chat reading from one of two psychic reading websites I worked on.   Generally, a person would go to these sites, look through hundreds of profiles for different types of psychic readers until they found someone they liked. They would click a little button to begin a chat with the psychic in question. Somewhere in another part of the world another person who offered any one of a variety of psychic readings or specialized in one specific type of divination only, would be alerted by a notification sound as to the request of this other human somewhere else on the planet.   I was this other human. As much as I considered psychic work and energy healing a vocation and a very sacred duty at that, there were times when I really rather dreaded being summoned to do a reading.   Sometimes, I would do a reading and it would be just using my intuition and knowledge of the different card meanings to discern the guidance sought out by the querant. Other times, however, things would go very differently. Tonight was to be one of those nights.   A ringing sound came from my computer at last. I went over to my desk, sat down and clicked on a button to open the chat screen. I greeted the person, welcoming them to the chat and introduced myself. The querant would type their name and begin telling me their situation. While I waited for their response to pop into my screen, I began shuffling my cards, focusing on the person, psychically tuning into their energy. At a certain point, I would sense I had shuffled them enough and cut them into three stacks from left to right and put the bottom and middle portion of cards on what had been the top portion.   At that moment I would look up at my screen to see what question the poor soul at the other end of my computer had sent me. Tonight it was to be what so many before her had come to me about: romance. She was involved with another woman's husband and wanted to know when he would actually leave his family and marry her, like he'd promised a million times before.   Knowing she was distraught and heart broken by her situation, I typed back words of comfort. I sincerely wanted to help her. My heart truly ached at the suffering she must have been experiencing.  Not to mention the suffering of the others involved too.  I asked her to give me a moment to lay out the cards and see what information I could divine for her.   As I started to place the cards out in front of me, I examined them closely and started to interpret them by what card was laid out, in what position it was in and in relation to the other cards around it. Details in the form of images and feelings began to come to me. Accompanying that, I started to hear a high pitched sound and my body began to tremble. At this point whatever the traditional meani...

Laurie O'Driscoll | 23rd February 2022 | Blogging

“For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved.” -John 3:17   As the weeks went on, I eagerly attended every RCIA class and looked forward to every Mass I attended.  I was totally and utterly intoxicated with the Church.  The Mass held my attention in a way that nothing ever has.  I had butterflies in my stomach when I would walk into the Church.  I just loved all of it!  Everything! From the first, "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," to the Priests and Deacons genuflecting in unison at the end of the Mass, I was hooked.    The High Altar was of particular fascination to me.  It had gotten to the point where when the Mass was over, I would wander around just taking everything in.  I would find myself transfixed on the image of Christ on the cross.  After a lifetime of thinking of this as just another myth, I was finally in full belief of the reality and in awe of the enormity of what I was viewing: Love.    Thoughts that I couldn't understand were constantly in my head now.  Why did God love us so much to sacrifice his son?  Why did Jesus let this happen to him?  I would reflect on the horrors of the human race and wonder how in the world we could be worth loving and more to the point, worth the trouble of saving.  Even more critical were my thoughts toward myself and all the awful things I had put out into the world in my forty-four years.   The only bible verse I knew by heart was the King James Version of John 3:16 and it kept playing in my head:  "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." When this verse came to mind the automatic response from deep within my soul was simply, "Even me?"    We were already into February and the days and weeks were being weird to me.  Sometimes it felt like I had never been anything else but Catholic.  Those pesky forty-four years where I lived immersed in the occult seemed as if they either happened long ago...or not at all.  The reality of my new Catholic beliefs were planted so firmly in my heart that I couldn't understand how I had ever believed any other way.   Yet I had only 'come to my senses' about six weeks ago.  Furthermore, no matter how at home I felt in the Catholic Faith, I was still not a Catholic. Not yet anyway.   Fortunately, the Rite of Election was coming up!  On this day different parishes in the Diocese would send their catechumens (unbaptized) and candidates (baptized) to the Mother Church of the Diocese to affirm their intention to join the church and lead a life of discipleship.  These other parishes would have recently undergone their 'Rite of Sending.' This is where the Godparents or sponsors affirm that the catechumen or candidate is of good character and ready to move toward receiving the Sacraments of Initiation.  We had a Rite of Sending too...in a way.  As our parish WAS the Mother Church, one of our Priests joked, “This is where we send you to stay.”     Our Rite of Sending was a couple of hours before the Rite of Election where many other Parishes would also be in attendance.  During the Rite of Sending, we each get to sign the 'Book of the Elect.'  This Book is given to the Bishop at the Rite of Election and shows that those who signed have been deemed ready by their respective Parishes to partake of the Sacraments at the Easter Vigil.    As you may have guessed, my awkwardness had decided to attend this with me, and it was not being kind.  Prior to coming into the Church, we had an RCIA class where we were learning how the Rites would go.  One lady asked what we were supposed to call the Bishop.  Bishops are formally addressed as, 'Your Excellency.'  We were told that our Bishop, however, just wanted to be called Bishop.  That's easy enough I thought to myself.  I probably won't mess that up!�...

Laurie O'Driscoll | 15th September 2021 | Blogging

For the next couple of weeks, I continued to devour anything I could about Catholicism. I was studying on my own as well as attending the RCIA classes at my new spiritual home.  Honestly, learning as many aspects as possible about this Faith, getting closer to God, was all I wanted to do.  I would find myself falling asleep while reading or listening to podcasts or watching YouTube videos.  The RCIA classes had a rotation of speakers who were Clergy.  Each class had most of the same people in attendance as the first day I started going to them.     One of the classes was about the Eucharist.  As a child, some of the Churches my maternal Grandmother took me to had something kind of like it. I don't recall what denomination any of these churches were. One of the ones we went to, passed around a platter with bread and tiny cups of red liquid.  Whether it was actually wine or grape juice or whatever, I have no idea.  The people in the Church took turns passing this around as each took a piece of the bread, and the 'wine' and consumed them.  Adults did this and some children did too. It is because of seeing what they were doing that when the tray had been passed to my grandmother, I sought to imitate what I thought was the correct thing to do:  I reached up to take the bread and red liquid for myself.  My Grandmother pushed my hand away.  She wasn't being mean or anything, but she had made it clear that for whatever reason, I was one of few here who could not participate in this ritual.    Many years later, I would find myself sitting at a coffeehouse in Monterey, California.  It is highly possible that I happened to be there because I was skipping school that day, but we'll save that for another discussion.  In any case I sat at a table with a deck of Tarot Cards and was trying to teach myself how to use them.  As a teen, the Cartomancy my mother's family practiced, with its plain red or black cards of four suits was getting boring to me.  Tarot seemed so much more colorful and interesting and mysterious with its varied styles and imagery.  As I sat there, a lady in her early twenties sat down next to me and started asking questions about what I was doing.  I explained it to her a little, still not knowing much about it myself.  Somehow, she had managed to turn the conversation into an opportunity to proselytize to me.  For whatever reason we wound up talking about that day in my grandmothers Church where I had been denied the bread and wine the others were having.     "Are you baptized?" she asked.   I was puzzled, wondering how this had anything to do with what we were talking about.   "No." I replied and sat there staring blankly at her as I waited for her to continue speaking.   She began quoting bible verses to me and explained that I had not been allowed to participate because only those who were baptized could do so.  Why hadn't anyone ever told me this before?     So very many more years later, I sat in a classroom at the very top of a Catholic School and began to learn about the Eucharist.  We learned that when Jesus instructed his disciples to partake of bread and wine in memoriam of him, that it was not simply a symbolic gesture.  The bread and wine are literally the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ.  At any time in history since the Last Supper, when a Catholic has received Holy Communion, they are participating in that same event in the here and now.  What a gift for Christ to leave with us!  I suppose this should have seemed like a neat little story that was something 'charming' to listen to but not to be taken seriously, right?  I don't know that I will ever be able to explain it but whatever had happened at Midnight Mass was still alive and well in me.  Somehow or another I readily accepted the Catholic teaching of the Eucharist.  It is neither strange nor farfetched to me, it just simply IS.  I longed even more for my baptism and to be brought fully...

Laurie O'Driscoll | 30th June 2021 | Blogging

As I walked into the classroom where the RCIA class was held, I reminded myself to breathe.  Considering the state, I had worked myself into, just coming up the stairs, I was preparing for another onslaught from my awkwardness. Oddly, for me anyway, as I walked into this room, I was at ease.  I felt at peace.  I felt safe.  There was a Priest sitting at the front of the classroom and a lady sitting behind a desk.  The priest put his mask on and walked over to greet me.  I walked up and noticed that this was the same Priest who led the Midnight Mass.  The lady at the desk, was one of the people I recognized from that Mass too.   We all exchanged greetings.  The Priest told me not to be afraid to ask questions if they said something I needed clarification on or used a specific term that I wasn't familiar with.  I nodded and thanked him.   The lady gave me a Bible, a Catechism and a notebook to write in.  A bit of my awkwardness popped in as I wondered if I was supposed to pay for these or not.  I nervously accepted the books and asked, "For free?"  She nodded and said, "Yes."  I thanked her and happily took the books to a nearby table.  She also directed me to a sign in sheet and told me where the bathrooms were and that there was coffee or juice, I could help myself to if I wanted.     I was looking at the bible I had just been given, the first Catholic Bible I'd ever owned in fact.  I told them both that I had found out a few days earlier that there are more books in the Catholic Bible than the protestant one.  The Priest acknowledged this and explained how that all came about. Apparently in the sixteenth century, after translating the Bible into German, Martin Luther removed Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, I & II Maccabees and Esther from the Old Testament.  He thought these seven books were not equal to the others. I had stumbled upon that information just a couple days earlier. I never knew that before and that fact seemed amazing to me when I learned of it.  I went to my husband and told him, "I never knew Catholic bibles had more books in them than protestant bibles!"  He looked at me blankly and said, "Do they?"  I playfully rolled my eyes at him saying, "You're supposed to be my 'in-house' catholic. You're useless!" I quipped.  He shot back with, "Just because I'm Catholic doesn't mean I know EVERYTHING about Catholicism."  We laughed and continued to talk about the things I was learning about Catholicism and things he remembered about it.     I was one of the first to arrive and it was nice to have that little bit of time to get acclimated to my surroundings.  As more and more people showed up, every properly socially distanced seat (per pandemic mandate) in the room was filled.  I was happy to see so many people were also on a similar journey as me.  In the new age world, you can easily get the idea that nobody is even interested in Christianity anymore, let alone Catholicism.  Supposedly, open minded intellectual types were too 'woke' to buy into that 'nonsense.' Yet, sitting around me, were all kinds of different people.  Some were seeking to convert, like me and some were already Catholic and wanting to deepen their understanding of their Faith. In this one room, was proof that another lie from my old life had been quashed.       Class began at 8:30 am.  The subject was Baptism.  I suppose it is an opportune time to say that when I was following the pagan paths, I had followed for over three decades, I had mixed feelings about Baptism.  Long ago, I used to think that it was the Christian stance to believe that innocent babies went straight to Hell if they were not Baptized.  If you believe that, you also tend to believe that there is a strong vein of hatred in Christianity.    Slightly related but worth noting is that Pagans, Wiccans and New Agers don't believe in Hell.  In those practices, it is widely believed that Hell is a thing of fiction.�...