Apr 14th, 2012 by deaconmike
“To be in the world that God is. Here is what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgement of the way they carry it.- Fr. Greg Boyle , Tattoos on the Heart
Originally posted here -
The Wisdom of – Fr. Greg Boyle- To be in the world that God is
I am attempting to tame the savage beast with a steeped tea (large, 2m 1s) from Canada’s favourite hockey playing coffee drinker. It’s either that or hit the mental rewind button one more time to watch my slow decline into a solitary temper tantrum. A grown woman having a tantrum is a pitiful thing, but nowhere near as sad as having a complete and total emotional meltdown when there is no one around to see it happen. How indulgent.
Do you ever hit the rewind button in your mind so you can watch yourself again? My moment this morning was prompted by being asked to do something at work.I reacted like Patricia searching for her tic tacs while stuck in the elevator in You’ve got mail. I actually heard myself make that “huagh” (or huuunh – real annoyed-like and dragged out) which means “Everyone but me is totally unreasonable; life is so unfair; nobody knows my woes.” I keep playing the scene over and over in my mind. I’m fascinated and can’t help but slow down to see every detail, like my fit is an accident on the side of the highway.
Understand: it isn’t being asked to do something I mind. I like being helpful and useful – don’t we all? It’s being asked to do something I don’t happen to think important, or relevant, or necessary. I thought it was dumb. I even said so in the midst of The Episode. A grown woman using a word like dumb as justification for her conniption is sad.
For the last four hours, I’ve been puzzling over what prompted my bad attitude. Clearly I need to grow in virtue. I need more patience. I need to see interruptions as opportunities rather than impositions. But I think at the heart of the matter is my foolish, thick-headed pride.
I know I’m not a bad person, and we’re all doing the best we can; that we’re meant to keep on growing in this life, and that Jesus came to save the broken not the perfect. But I also know that my pride is a fierce and stubborn creature. I came face to face with my unredeemed self this morning, and I am humbled by the depth of my need for the Cross and Resurrection.
Even now, I’m baffled by my reaction this morning. Yes, I’m tired and a little stressed – there are any number of reasons for why I was less than stellar but frankly, they are merely excuses. I keep thinking of that story about Therese the Little Flower, in which she was being splashed by dirty dishwater, and she rejoiced in it. That is so not me, and with my cheeks still warm with the memory of my petulance, I have a hard time imagining I will ever be close to having her level of calm acceptance.
In an earlier post I mentioned that I hadn’t prepared well for Easter, but one thing I did manage to do was hie my hiney to confession. Father’s counsel to me was to lean on God’s help, to turn to Him for everything. I long to be so perfectly conformed to His will that I don’t need to remind myself hours after the fact to ‘offer it up’. I want to be so closely united to God that His strength is my strength all the time – not just in the moments I remember to tap into it.
Dear Lord,
Help!
Sincerely,
Tess.
And so I took myself off to the hockey player’s coffee shop at lunch time, to drown my sorrows – or, more accurately, my chagrin – in a bucket of tea. On my way back into the building, I passed under several towering cedar trees, warmed by the sun. One of my favourite things in the whole world is the scent of sun-baked cedars. That moment was like my own personal rainbow, God’s message to me that while I did wrong, He loves me still, and will not forsake me. It was a reassuring and comforting pat on the head from my Father, and I can now leave the shame of this morning behind me, and try again.
Christ is Risen!
Taken from -
So we are in the full swing of house showing now, hence the late posting of yesterday’s painting and the rushed posting of one here. Two more are booked for tomorrow and we’ve got an agents open house on Tuesday, somewhere in the midst of it all I think we’re supposed to try to maintain a life. The mind boggles!
Waiting For Inspiration, acrylic on canvas board, 9″ x 12″
Source:
This blog is simply an exercise in self-expression which has been yearning for an outlet for some time. It’s called TiPSI Mom because I’m joining my husband (the TiPSI Dad) in blogging about being a family of Two Parents on a Single Income raising seven kids.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
HARRISBURG, PA (6 April 2012)
Five hundred priests and deacons of the national association, the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy, pledge their complete loyalty and obedience to the Pope and Magisterium and, by means of fraternal correction, exhort their dissident Austrian brothers of the ‘Pfarrer Initiative’ to repent and recant. Disobedience among deacons, priests and bishops is not only scandalous to the faithful but injurious to the Mystical Body of Christ (the Church). We are not just resigned to the discipline of celibacy and merely tolerant of the doctrine of a male priesthood, we totally accept and embrace them. The marks of the Church (one, holy, catholic and apostolic) are personified in the Petrine ministry. Hence, to obey the Pope is to obey the Church, the Bride of Christ. Like Judas who betrayed Christ, dissident clergy betray the same Lord by their prideful refusal of submission to lawful authority.
Dissent from Magisterial teaching and disobedience to Papal authority are incompatible with Catholic Christianity. Jesus founded the Church and instituted the Sacraments. Holy Orders is one of the sacraments and it is the essence of the hierarchy (which means an orderly chain of command). The soul of Holy Orders is obedience. Clergy must lead by example, as did Our Lord, who submitted to the will of His Father. When Deacons, Priests and Bishops disobey the Church and her chief shepherd, the Pope, they do a grave disservice to the people they have been sent to serve.
The CCC professes allegiance to the Holy Father, especially in all matters of faith and morals. We see obedience to the authority of the Church as obedience to Christ. As the Bishop of Rome, the Pope is head of the Church. Vatican II and the Catechism (1992) define his authority as, “supreme, full, immediate, and universal,” by divine institution.
Rev. Fr. John Trigilio, Jr., President of the Confraternity said: “As all priests renew their promise of obedience each year, we urge our fellow clergy all over the world to imitate Jesus in His humility. Pride prevents one from obeying. Jesus who was Priest, Prophet and King, founded the Church so she could continue His work of teaching, sanctifying and shepherding. He simultaneously created ordained ministry in order to implement that three-fold mission. Hence the deacons, priests and bishops of the Church exist to serve and service is substantially obedience. The cleric submits his will as did the Son to the Father.”
Link:
Catholic Clergy in America say NO to Colleagues in Austria: say YES to Pope in Rome
O God, who by the abundance of your grace give increase to the peoples who believe in you, look with favor on those you have chosen and clothe with blessed immortality those reborn through the Sacrament of Baptism. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
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Dieu qui donnes sans cesse ta grâce pour augmenter le nombre de tes enfants, veille sur ceux que tu viens d’agréger à ton peuple ; ils ont pris naissance dans le baptême : qu’ils soient revêtus de l’immortalité du Christ, pour se présenter à la table de ses noces. Lui qui règne.
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HOLY THURSDAY AT THE CATHEDRAL
JEUDI SAINT A NOTRE-DAME
Photos: Jean-Claude Grant
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Samedi de Paques – Easter Saturday – Holy Thursday Photos – Images du Jeudi saint
Typical feminist inflationary rhetoric.
If anyone is sexualizing children, it’s her, by comparing a school play to child pornography.
Catholic parents wouldn’t think it was pornographic, but she would.
And what the hell does the Vatican have to do with a school play? Oh, I know: NOTHING.
Bonus: some boys who stage the crucifixion grow up to be Russell Williams.
Jump to original:
Loony Feminist Calls Kids Staging Passion Play "Child Pornography"
I know it isn’t Thursday. No need to be legalistic about it. In the order of salvation, it isn’t going to matter much.
I have no advice today.
But I have an offer. I have a list of pregnant moms that I pray for, and I though perhaps I should includes my dear readers in that list…I know some of you are expecting and would like a few extra prayers…I would love to do that.
I am finding that now that I am finally crawling out of the delightful and fulfilling and totally awesome pit of exhaustion from having babies for twenty years that I have opportunity to look about me and see areas of need beyond my own and that of my offspring.
Please feel free to email me if you would like to be added my list.
Original source:
Now let me first say that
I am not a specialist on Marxism (actually I am not a specialist on much) but
that has never stopped me having a strongly held opinion.
But I want to place the second
Vatican Council in not only its theological context but also its political and
societal context.
We have to remember that
the men who were Bishops at the time of the second Vatican Council were imbued
with a strong belief and a horrible reality. The belief was that the love of
God would triumph all things and that we, His creation, were flawed but able to
rise out of the mess that we had created. The horrible reality was the Second
World War. They had seen untold horrors. Whole generations destroyed, weapons
which could wipe out whole cities in one blow. They had seen the degradation
that man could impose upon another with seeming little human conscience.
And when they put these
two things together they fell for the post-war seductive lie that these things
would never be allowed to happen again and that we could do something about it.
The binding together of nations in a common good, striving to make amends, to
learn from mistakes.
How is this Marxist? Well
because there is a march of history and it gets better. Yes there are mega-
supra-national influences, but there are also micro influences. We can make a
difference, we can make the world a better place. We need to roll up our sleeves
and get stuck in.
And this was the error.
With this mind set the Church had to be radically involved in this re-building,
re-shaping the brave new world. If not then it would be Godless. It makes sense.
You can see that the most important thing that the Church can be involved in is
social action, the re-creation of the nations of the world.
But it is not right.
History does not get ‘better’,
it just gets ‘different’. We didn’t make a better society, in fact we didn’t
make a ‘better’ anything. How could we? Man did not become more heroic. It was
a false start, a false basis of action. The Church wedded herself to the
idealism of the age (an idealism that soon grew up and became cynicism) and
became a widow over night.
The only people who
believe this clap trap any more are aged lefty hippies and ‘Christians’ (and I
willingly include Catholics in it, though it is not limited to us). And if you
want to identify a ‘Spirit of Vatican II’ then I would say that you wouldn’t be
far off with this.
They were men of their
times imbued with an adolescent idealism brought about by a glittering new dawn
after the horrors of the war before, and they fell for it. I might have done so
too. But they were the helmsmen of the Barque of Peter and so the consequences
had real repercussions.
And into all of this was
the Satanic influence of Original Sin…
This article:
This week has seen a huge rush on registrations for the
Sacred Music Colloquium in Salt Lake City.
It might be because Easter has arrived and people’s liturgical commitments have lightened up a bit. That means time to catch up on other things. Or it could be because a paid registration this week (before midnight tomorrow night, i.e, Sunday night) means you will be receiving a free gift in the mail: Dr. Mahrt’s
The Musical Shape of the Liturgy.
Whatever the reason, today and tomorrow are a great time to register. The deadline is May 22, 2012.
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To add injury to insult, I thwacked my little toe on the edge of a door yesterday evening, just to put the lid on my “Friday the Thirteenth” woes, and it has really swelled up.
However, the sun was shining this morning, and we had our regular Missa Cantata – a week late because there wasn’t any Mass last Saturday morning – and just before it began, I got a phone call to say that my car had been fixed, and would be waiting for me to collect when I was ready.
Apparently it wasn’t the thermostat which was the problem. Some pipe or other was leaking, so the water wasn’t getting hot enough to get the thermostat to open the valve so the water could circulate and cool the engine down… I’m not really too clear on the details… whatever the problem was, it’s fixed now, and I have my car back, for which I am profoundly grateful.
Original article -
It’s snowing to beat the band out there as I type. I’m disappointed to miss my home group meeting this morning because of the resulting wretched roads. The change in plans most likely means a quiet day with bits of housecleaning and cooking and the simple things that fill me with the most contentment. I am pretty grateful these days for those things. People keep telling me that getting older is the pits and I keep replying that getting older is a gift, a privilege that not everyone gets to experience.
Continue at source:
The Fairy Ring or Elsie and Frances Fool the World (a true story)
by Mary Losure.
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Pages:
168 +notes, index, etc.
Ages: 10+
Finished: Mar. 29, 2012
First Published: Mar. 27,
2012
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Genre: children, non-fiction, history, hoax
Rating:
4/5
First sentence: “For as long as she could remember, Frances’s parents had told her stories about England.”
Publisher’s
Summary: “Frances was nine when she first saw the fairies. They were tiny men, dressed all in green. Nobody but Frances saw them, so her cousin Elsie painted paper fairies and took photographs of them “dancing” around Frances to make the grown-ups stop teasing. The girls promised each other they would never, ever tell that the photos weren’t real. But how were Frances and Elsie supposed to know that their photographs would fall into the hands of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? And who would have dreamed that the man who created the famous detective Sherlock Holmes believed ardently in fairies – and wanted very much to see one?
Mary Losure presents this enthralling true story as a fanciful narrative featuring the original Cottingley fairy photos and previously unpublished drawings and images from the family’s archives. A delight for everyone with a fondness for fairies, and for anyone who has ever started something that spun out of control.
The enchanting true story of a girl who saw fairies, and another with a gift for art, who concocted a story to stay out of trouble and ended up fooling the world.”
Acquired: Received a review
copy from Candlewick Press.
Reason for
Reading: I’ve read Joe Cooper’s “The Case of the Cottingley Fairies” and have since been fascinated with this story and with Doyle’s involvement. This book for juveniles sounded like it would present the story from the girls’ point of view and I was eager to read it.
This is a wonderful little biography, complete with all the “fairy” photographs and others of Frances and Elsie at the time, which tells the story of how the cousins came to be together in England at Cottingly, Yorkshire. When they first saw fairies and how the pictures came to be and how ultimately their worldwide sensation came around. The story focuses mostly on the girls themselves and the story of how they came across the fairies and decided to take pictures to “prove” themselves, is incredibly interesting and takes up a good portion of the book. We get a real feel for the girls and their innocence, even though they created one of the biggest hoaxes of the early twentieth century that fooled such eminent figures as Sir Aurthur Conan Doyle.
One gets a sense for a lonely Frances, moved from bustling South Africa to dreary England to wait while her father volunteers to fight in the Great War. Did she really see fairies and gnomes or was it just the daydreams of a lonely little girl? One also senses Elsie’s otherwise mundane life as a young school-leaver, working in a factory, trying to protect her young cousin and coming up with what at first seems an innocent ploy to stop the grown-ups pestering them. Little did they know the world they lived in was chock full of spiritualism and the existence of fairies and other little people were on the minds of many such spiritualists of the day. Once their pictures are seen outside the family, a flood of interest descends upon them which they cannot stop. The two girls, turn into women and their frolic with fairies will forever haunt them.
I’d love to read Frances’ autobiography in which she does continue to affirm that she did see some fairies in the beck behind her cousin’s house but it is unfortunately not in print at this time. The story is very compelling to me though, that I’ve decided to go a step further and have purchased the Kindle edition of Doyle’s 1922 study entitled “The Coming of the Fairies“.
From:
96. The Fairy Ring or Elsie and Frances Fool the World by Mary Losure
The Quick Quarterback
by Michelle Lord. Illustrated by Steve Harpster (
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)
Pages: 32
Ages: 5+
Finished: Mar. 28, 2012
First Published:
Jan. 1, 2012
Publisher: Stone Arch Books
Genre: graphic novel, children, easy reader, sports
Rating:
4/5
First sentence: “Andre loved football.”
Publisher’s
Summary: “After his broken arm heals, Andre is nervous to play quarterback in the next football game. Will his arm be ready to throw?”
Acquired:
Received a review copy from Capstone Press.
Reason for Reading: I am fond of these beginning readers.
This series of readers is for beginning readers. This one is at a RL of 1.0. The first couple of pages show how to read a graphic novel showing the direction the panels are read and then showing the direction text and balloons should by read. A book that is graphically well-designed for optimum reading experience and a story which is both interesting and applicable to young children’s lives. Harpster’s illustrations are bold and realistic.
Continue at source:
But how is [God’s new day] to come about? How does all this affect us so that instead of remaining word it becomes a reality that draws us in? Through the sacrament of baptism and the profession of faith, the Lord has built a bridge across to us, through which the new day reaches us. The Lord says to the newly-baptized: Fiat lux – let there be light. God’s new day – the day of indestructible life, comes also to us. Christ takes you by the hand. From now on you are held by him and walk with him into the light, into real life. For this reason the early Church called baptism photismos – illumination.
Why was this? The darkness that poses a real threat to mankind, after all, is the fact that he can see and investigate tangible material things, but cannot see where the world is going or whence it comes, where our own life is going, what is good and what is evil. The darkness enshrouding God and obscuring values is the real threat to our existence and to the world in general. If God and moral values, the difference between good and evil, remain in darkness, then all other “lights”, that put such incredible technical feats within our reach, are not only progress but also dangers that put us and the world at risk. Today we can illuminate our cities so brightly that the stars of the sky are no longer visible. Is this not an image of the problems caused by our version of enlightenment? With regard to material things, our knowledge and our technical accomplishments are legion, but what reaches beyond, the things of God and the question of good, we can no longer identify. Faith, then, which reveals God’s light to us, is the true enlightenment, enabling God’s light to break into our world, opening our eyes to the true light.
Homily, Easter Vigil 2012
Reflection – In this masterly little passage (he is a really good preacher!), Pope Benedict links Genesis, baptism, and light pollution to highlight one of his favourite themes. Namely, that technological ‘light’, the insight as to how the world works and how to make the physical world work for us, does not yield the deeper light—who we are, where we are going, what is truly good and valuable in the world.
This has been a common theme throughout Joseph Ratzinger’s career, and has been often featured on this blog. But you know, since we’re talking here about baptism, which is such a personal intimate reality for all our lives, I think it is worth considering this question from a slightly different angle than usual.
Generally, the Pope discusses this and I discuss it along with him in terms of scientific and technological advances that imperil human life and dignity, or perhaps in more theoretical terms of logical positivism and the spurious atheism that results from it—what Ratzinger has called the arbitrary self-limitation of reason to exclude all non-technical or non-experimental questions.
But perhaps there is another form of ‘light pollution’ that is a bit more individual and insidious, but which no less blocks out the true light of faith and of God. I’m thinking of the times when we decide that life is, in fact, basically about getting what we want. Life is about building my city and lighting it up as brightly as I can. Life is about being in as much perfect control as I can be, in other words, of my circumstances and arrangements.
This is the scientific-technological attitude applied to the person and their life. And… we can no longer see the stars if we live this way. The illusion of control… and hey presto! God disappears from our ambit. God is irrelevant, if the whole idea of life is for me to get exactly what I want as I want it, or at least the nearest facsimile time and money can manage.
I think this is more common today than anything else. People are not wicked, and they’re not terribly stupid (well, not most of them). But people are (myself included) self-willed. We want what we want. And the more brightly we shine the light of self upon our world, the dimmer the stars become, the less we have any sense that there is any greater path or destiny or purpose to the world outside our own desires and designs.
This is why, while I wish no human being any ill or suffering ever, I think the coming difficult times we appear to be heading towards may be a blessing in disguise. We need to break out of this chokehold of banal self-will and self-limitation. We need a power failure, a blackout, so that the big world of God and his angels and saints may shine out at us, like stars to startled blacked-out city dwellers. We need to learn that our little lives and their little plans really aren’t where it’s at—God is opening for us a bigger reality.
We need to fail, so that God can succeed in us. We need darkness, so that He can be our light.
This article is from:
2007-08-16.jpg)
Is justice the foundation from
which mercy builds? Or, is mercy the fundamental disposition of God toward his creatures?
Credit -
We met–was’t by mistake?–my friend and I,
He grinning from a page of print, which I
Harried, burning the student’s midnight light,
Scanned swiftly as I might.
Now bright-lit on the stage myself I find,
My friend’s hand in my hand, his shade behind,
His voice in my mouth, and our thought one mesh,
Word made live in flesh.
What though one live in fancy, one in fact?
Do you live, now, friend, or do I act?
This stage is all the world; the world is bright;
We’re both alive tonight.
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April 13, 2012
Next Thursday, J.D. is leaving for ten days. I have a friend whose husband is regularly away for weeks at a time. I asked her for tips. She said, “Tip number one: Don’t do it.”
Then I asked for tips on a forum and the first answer was someone rolling their eyes because apparently ten days is nothin’ sista.
I have a feeling we’ll be okay for the first three days. Then I have a feeling that on day four, Grandma will be on her front step signing for two child shaped parcels.
Where is he going, you ask? No no, it’s not one of those tax-dollar funded five star ten day teacher conferences. Too bad. He’s only been to seven this year.
He’s a chaperon for a third world exposure program in the Dominican Republic.
A little info, if you will:
The Program is designed to give students an opportunity to
reflect on their own lives amidst the devastating problems of life in the
third world. The experience is about providing an option for our
students to begin viewing the world from a different perspective… that
of the poor. This program does not utilize visiting groups as
“volunteer work brigades”. Rather, it seeks to provide an opportunity
for our students to enter in relationship with the marginalized of our
world and thus come to the realization that (as Martin Luther King Jr.
explains) “our liberation is bound to theirs”.
Here’s more.
It should prove to be a mind and spirit altering experience. The participating students and teachers have spent the year fundraising (selling booster cards, bagging groceries, doing bottle drives, hosting a spaghetti dinner etc) The cost for each participant is over $2,500 and a portion of that fee goes to support local initiatives. Through fundraising, most of that cost has been reduced but J.D’s total is still a little over $900.
If you have an extra dollar or ten or nine hundred to spare, we would greatly appreciate any help to offset that personal cost. I would contribute some of my income but paypal doesn’t accept open-mouthed toddler kisses. Here is the paypal link if you feel inspired.
Similarly, if you have any motherly fortitude to spare, send it north!
Read article here -
