CowPi Journal

A prayer to begin Advent: O God, Grant me your grace as I take up my Advent shovel to fill in the valleys of neglect in my prayer and daily life. May I be zealous in my labors of straightening out the crooked ways and leveling the mountains and hills of sin and false contentment […]

A philosopher’s axiom: “Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver.” This is best illustrated by a little story (via). A fat, overweight Buddha was sitting under a tree one day. An arrogant, young soldier walked by, saw him, and said, “You look like a pig!” The Buddha looked up at […]

My daily prayer for Advent this year: Gracious God,    inspire us this Advent    to make straight our ways    so you can come to us and to our world. Challenge us to fill in our valleys    by increasing our deeds of charity,    by expanding our times in prayer,    and enlarging […]

A man’s daughter had asked the local minister to come and pray with her father. When the minister arrived, he found the man lying in bed with his head propped up on two pillows. An empty chair sat beside his bed. The minister assumed that the old fellow had been informed of his visit. “I […]

Death is the boulder we push against our whole lives. Although we never move it, we ourselves are moved, transformed, shaped by the process. (see Parable of the Man and the Rock)

The everlasting God has in His wisdom foreseen from eternity the cross that He now presents to you as a gift from His inmost heart. This cross He now sends you He has considered with His all-knowing eyes, understood with His divine mind, tested with His wise justice, warmed with loving arms and weighed with […]

In Three Philosophies of Life, Peter Kreeft writes about three books in the Old Testament that essentially outline three ways to live and view life: Ecclesiates, life as vanity; Job, life as suffering; and Song of Songs, life as love. These are analogous to hell, purgatory, and heaven. In regards to Job, he writes about […]

From part of today’s second reading (Philippians 1:9-11), Saint Paul’s prayer: And this is my prayer: that your love may increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception, to discern what is of value, so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of […]

This song by Natalie Grant is really a prayer. It says much about where I am at lately. I can’t do this. I need Your help. I trust in You. I’ve been silent instead of speaking up Gave my advice instead of giving love I have been unfair, faithless and unkind I have shut my […]

I have been struggling with purpose lately, my purpose. What specifically is my purpose in life? What is my part in the big picture of God’s plan? I know and trust that God has a purpose for all things, including me (see Psalm 139). Either life has meaning or it does not; either everything has […]

I was listening to “All Things Considered” on NPR the other evening, and this story about atheists came on. One segment of the story described how atheists are deeply offended, especially when used by the media, by the old axiom, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Apparently atheists find it degrading to expect them to […]

As an iHermit, I minimize my time on the internet, but I still visit a couple sites like PostSecret. This postcard was posted last week: The emailed comment posted underneath this postcard says: I believe that a new religion could be based on this single postcard. It is a crying shame that we have distorted […]

Just heard a beautiful but somewhat sad Christmas song by Gloria Estefan . The refrain is the best line of the song. I want this for next Christmas. I wanna see Christmas through Your eyes.

Life is like a pearl: it needs a grain of sand at its center—death—as the irritant, the enemy, to stimulate the production of the mother-of-pearl of life around it. But death remains at its center. At the heart of life there is death. Death is our being. Man is mortal. — Peter Kreeft, Love is […]

I love this image with its allusions to a wintery night. The image is from the cover of guitarist Peter Janson’s CD Somewhere from Here. (By the way, a CD that I most highly recommend.) It is most likely painted by his wife Bernadette Levasseur.

Of all the pitfalls in our paths and the tremendous delays and wanderings off the track I want to say that they are not what they seem to be. I want to say that all that seems like fantastic mistakes are not mistakes, all that seems like error is not error; and it all has […]

In Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, James Finley poses a most illuminating metaphor for explaining our search for a path along a spiritual journey. Although he is specifically describing the search for the true self, it aptly applies for the spiritual journey in general. Imagine yourself standing in front of a large, freshly snow-covered field where […]

Father, I just want to be with you. I’m tired of words. I want the clutter of thoughts in my mind to stop for awhile so that I can just pray, just exist with you. No asking for anything. No talking about things. No conversation. Just being. I love you Father. I just want to […]