Success happens when preparation meets opportunity. — Author unknown
Success happens when preparation meets opportunity. — Author unknown
I have been trying to write this journal entry for over a week now. I have started and stopped several times, and eventually erased all of them because I never liked where they were heading. The topic is about prayer, and none of the words I can find seem to describe what I am going […]
Kevin, one my students, asked me a single interview-type question for his religion class. He asked, “Why is your relationship with Jesus life-giving for you?” My reply: Jesus is love, peace, and energy. Love—I know that I’m am loved by Him (and by others); thus, I am able to love others. Through Him, I can […]
Kallistos Ware, Desert Fathers, parable, story, sin, silence
The Pickle Jar Theory of Prayer is not really a theory but more of a method of prayer. It is based on a theory of time management involving a pickle jar. The analogy is to think of the many tasks that you must complete in a single day as rocks and pebbles. All of these […]
Fr. Ken told this parable during last week’s homily on the Exaltation of the Holy Cross: There was a man standing beside a river and saw a scorpion floating on top of the water, helpless in the river current. The man reached out to save the scorpion and was stung. He instinctively reacted by jerking […]
Acocdrnig to an Elgnsih unviesitry sutdy, the oredr of letetrs in a wrod dosen’t mttaer. The olny thnig thta is iopmrantt is that the frsit and lsat ltteer of eevry word is in the crcreot ptoision. The rset can be jmbueld and one is stlil able to raed the txet wiohtut dclftfuiiy. (Of cuorse, cotnext […]
Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not prepared to receive them: for such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity and love. — Thomas Merton
Sometime in the middle of August, I ran into Becca, one of my former students. She was about to start her freshman year in college as a pre-med major. As we caught up on our recent histories, she told me that her boss Charlie was in the hospital in a coma. He was in there […]
In my previous entry, I mentioned something about knowing that my faith had nothing to do with my feelings. Thomas Merton, in New Seeds of Contemplation, wrote the following about faith: First of all, faith is not an emotion, not a feeling. It is not a blind subconscious urge toward something vaguely supernatural. It is […]
My 16 year-old daughter I were leaving the church parking lot this morning when we spotted one of her childhood friends light up a cigarette in the back of her mom’s car. My daughter turned to me and asked with a hint of moral superiority if I just saw that. I replied, “The vices of […]
In an earlier entry, I mentioned something about having doubts. Doubts are funny things. You are never sure about them. (Sorry, pun intended.) But seriously, it is the fact that you are unsure that makes things challenging. I don’t know about you, but my mind craves certainty. I have reached a point in my life […]