Waffling

I love waffles. Anytime that I am on tour, I make myself a waffle for breakfast. Any rookie that approaches the waffle iron (you can tell they are a rookie by how cautiously they fill the batter cup and how they are searching for directions to use the waffle iron), I am there to assist in how to make the perfect waffle. Waffle Woman to the rescue!!!

I am also a great waffler. Decisions that require thought and discernment will cause me to waffle. I have discovered that I am not alone.

This January, I started reading the court documents and testimony of Joan of Arc. During the actual court proceeding Joan was adamant that she had led the French against the English and made it possible for Charles to be crowned King of France, because she was following God's instructions. It was God's will not hers. Then from this same girl, who was so spirited in her retorts to her captors comes this on May 24 after having been publicly preached to in the Cemetery of St. Ouen and pressed to recant her story and her testimony. The Bishop begins to read her sentence and a written form of abjuration is presented to her.

I am content to do what you will have me.

I would rather sign it than burn.

Now, you churchmen, take me to your prison, and let me be no longer in the hands of the English.

When I read those words my heart fell. Here was my hero denying everything that God had given her and blessed her to witness. Here she was buckling to her captors after months of standing up to them during a relentless trial. Here at the place of her sentencing, she gives into their demands.

I felt like I did the first time I saw The Return of the King (the cartoon version) and then later when I read the book. You travel with Frodo through numerous challenges and trials. He is ready to complete his quest by throwing the Ring into Mt. Doom...and he can not destroy it. At the age of 5, I was yelling at Frodo to throw in the Ring and run. I felt absolutely betrayed that Frodo would even think of not destroying it after all this time. He waffles and tries to justify why he should not destroy the Ring. Thank goodness he experiences an intervention at the right moment.

Joan must have received an intervention too for the next day on May 28^th from her prison cell she says...

What I said, I said for fear of the fire.

My voices have told me since that I did a very wicked thing in confessing that what I had done was not well done.

They told me that God, by Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, gave me to know the great pity of the treason that I consented to by making that abjuration and revocation to save my life, and that I was damning myself to save my life.

If I should say that God had not sent me, I should damn myself. It is true that God has sent me.

Joan was burned at the stake on May 30^th. The Church recognizes her feast day on this day and I chose to make this the day to be the day I start my very public and very personal blog. In a way, this is a death to myself because I am throwing my thoughts, my reflections and my geekiness into the unforgiving, flames of the internet. I do not have to do this but I believe that after much prayer, discernment and waffling about this decision that I should follow through. It seems like the right thing to do. So here I go...off the waffle iron and into the fire.

St. Joan of Arc, pray for me and all those who waffle.