Freedom is about choice, and there are two kinds of freedom. There is a freedom to choose to do whatever you want, and another kind of freedom to choose to live for others. One freedom leads in, the other out. One freedom is living with responsibility, the other with disregard except for self. One freedom […]
God always answers prayers. He answers them in His way, not ours.
Seek justice; give mercy.
I saw a bumper sticker on a minivan last night that read, “Parents of twins get twice the love.” I smiled. They really get more than twice.
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 struggle to be creative is the friction of the Spirit trying to pass through you to others. It is much like electricity passing through wire. You are the wire, and the friction causes heat to make the wire malleable. And in the end, the wire itself becomes a majestic work of art formed by […]
The best love songs always apply to God too.
Nasty is only one letter away from tasty.
Nothing in nature sucks. It is a vacuum, a difference in pressures. So instead of saying, “This sucks!”, say, “This is vacuous!”
The traffic that speeds by the lone vehicle pulled over onto the side of the highway by the trooper with his police car lights flashing is not much different than a herd of wildebeest standing off at a safe distance watching the lion feed on one of their own.
Someone who worries about you trusts you, but not others. Someone trying to control you doesn’t trust you.
It is far more frustrating to have a million words to write and no time than to have the time but the words do not flow.
The risen Christ stands at the border between doubt and belief. (Fr. B)
God is to creation as silence is to sound.
Fairness: Every person gets what he or she needs, not necessarily the same thing or same amount, “free from favoritism, self-interest, or preference in judgment.”
Your life is God’s gift to you. You did not earn it. It has been given to you out of pure love. Are you going to enjoy the gift you have been given, and thus honor the Giver? Or are you going to abuse and disrespect your gift, and it’s Giver?
How refreshing to know You don’t need me How amazing to find that You want me — Casting Crowns, part of refrain of “In Me” Ah! The freedom between the use of the two words, need and want.
It’s all a matter of perspective—an apple with a worm, or an apple with half a worm.
Any dose of humiliation is a reminder to look toward God, to recognize that we are ultimately powerless and are to live in the first Beatitude of poverty of spirit. Humiliation hurts the little me, the part manufactured by my ego, the me I want to be, the me I thought I was. It does […]
Doubt provides the friction needed to shape faith. Hope provides the energy. So as Fr. Boeckman always says, “Keep hope alive.”
I’m going to try a little experiment with this journal. They are called fragments. To borrow Christine Castro’s word with a slightly different definition: Fragments are “skinny slivers of life sliced and stored”: moments of captured thoughts and words that surprised me because they came out of my mouth, or at least into my head. […]