Thoughts on writing, living, and believing…
Dear Readers and reading deer,
(thanks Jonah G.)
In keeping with the season, today I have a special treat for you!
I managed to score one of the hardest “gets” in the holiday blab-circuit pantheon. Someone who is notoriously shy and reticent, someone who almost never consents to interviews, yes, you guessed it, please welcome Santa’s starting left-rear reindeer, Donner!
Continue reading “Exclusive Christmas Interview”
Then you won’t mind a short break from it. This will help. I promise.
Listen to Fr. John Oliver’s encouraging (and humbling) message:
Courtesy: Ancient Faith Radio – Hearts & Minds Podcast
Continue reading “Havin’ a Bad Day?”
Every morning, I take a long walk. While I walk, I smoke a cigar. I do my best thinking while walking and puffing. Since thought does not come easily to me, I have to smoke large cigars, but never mind.
Halfway through this morning’s cigar, just like clockwork, I had a thought…
[Uh oh.]
I was thinking about God [No wait! Come back!] and it occurred to me that cases are important. You know, lower-case and upper-case.
Yeah, even I think that sounds ridiculous. But wait a minute.
It makes no difference if you’re particularly religious or not, whenever we think about God—if we think of Him at all—we all do the same thing: we color our picture of Him in the light of our own experiences and outlook. This is natural. Where we run afoul of the truth and create problems for ourselves and others, is when we imagine God to be like the person in the mirror.
Continue reading “The god in the Mirror”
My little furry friend is sick. I’ve done my best to take care of her but unfortunately, some of the treatments are scary and painful for her. Now she hides from me. She runs when I try to pet her. It breaks my heart.
Amidst the tears welling in my eyes this morning, I heard God’s gentle voice saying, “Now you know how I feel.”
When we are hurt, because of sin, sickness, personal calamity, how do we react? I know what I do. I hide. I’m too ashamed, too guilt-ridden, too despondent to run to God for healing and comfort.
If I feel sick to my stomach with worry. I feel pain over the pain in my little friend’s eyes. How must God feel when He sees his children broken and sad, or dying inside because of their sin and afflictions.
All I want to do is put her on my lap and stroke her fur but she won’t let me.
…how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Luke 13:34
He waits patiently, arms open wide, eyes full of tears. Don’t run from the One who wants to heal you and lavish you with His love.
The other day while I was cleaning my sock drawer, I found this dusty old blog. Thought I’d take it out and see if it still worked.
Well, first it needed a new battery—ya know, one of those little, round watch batteries that look like spare change? So I go to the store, and they have fifty different kinds all with teensy little letters that I can’t read, even with my glasses. So after squinting at a few, I bought one that seemed right. It’s working now but who knows for how long.
Anyhoo, how ya doin’?
Say, didya see Bruce—I ain’t gonna call him Caitlyn—Jenner’s cover-photo for Vanity Fair?
Was a magazine ever more appropriately titled?
!!Trigger Warning!! The following contains explicit anti-transgender views. A special room with soft couch and soothing, waterfall sounds has been provided for your safety.
See, it’s girls, boys. Sorry, there’s no such thing as “cis,” except in the imagination of radical LGBT activists.
[Moderator’s Note: Please indicate agreement with Jazz Hands, disagreement with Down-twinkles so as not to cause anxiety on the part of the blogger or other audience members.]
Call me a hater if you like (you’d be wrong), but it seems very few people are willing to speak about things like this for fear of being branded a homophobe. While there are many people who have same-sex attraction for many and complicated reasons, this is something else altogether.
It’s a narcissistic effort to invert nature for the purpose of saying, “Pay attention to me! Please!”
I’m sorry for the evident turbulence afflicting MISTER Jenner’s soul, but this is what happens when we toss off as irrelevant the natural law built into our species by God, preferring our own ideas about how things “should be.” And let’s be honest, do you know anyone, yourself included, that you’d trust running the universe?
Made in the image and likeness of God, whether we like it or not, there are some things that we just can’t change no matter how far or how fast we run from them. The great struggle of life is coming to know oneself and how we relate to our Creator.
We, as lumps of clay, cannot say to the potter, “Why have you made me thus?” It is a question springing from fear and distrust. A question that assumes God has no great interest in us, or what we will become; that when it comes right down to it, He doesn’t give a happy rat’s ass about us anyway.
But thank that same God who, despite our calumnies against Him, never rejects us. Even when we go off the deep end.
Seems like a good place to sign off. The b ttery is alm st dea
In honor of his passing, here is Father Tom’s talk, “The Mystery of the Cross.”
Bon voyage Fr. Tom, and thank you!
Pray for us.
Here’s an interesting article which posits that dogs, and indeed most non-human animals, lack “episodic memory:”
In defining episodic memory, Endel Tulving argued that it is unique to humans. Experience influences all animals. Most mammals and birds can build complex sets of knowledge or semantic memory. You and I also remember the experience of learning these complex sets of information. Dogs don’t.
In other words, if a dog has a bad day, they’ll forget all about it tomorrow. They have for their patron saint the insouciant Alfred E. Newman: they don’t worry about it.
During Lent, it’s easy to get down on oneself. Rummaging through the dark recesses of my conscience I find plenty of ammunition to hurl at myself which, if I’m not careful, can lead to despair. In this respect at least, I must learn from dogs.
Spiritual progress can only be made when we embrace the lessons of yesterday, but leave yesterday behind. It’s impossible to walk forward when you’re looking back over your shoulder all the time.
Woof.
I dunno, it probably snowed. Why? Did you hear something?
I’m sorry, but if I titled this post “A Lenten Reflection,” you wouldn’t have opened it, amirite? Stay with me though. I promise it’ll be worth your time.
So after shoveling the global-warming off the driveway this morning, I closed the garage door and turned to watch if there was any daylight showing through under the gasket. If it did, that would mean I hadn’t gotten all the ice off the apron. So what? Well, since the garage faces north, snow blows through the gap into the garage, you see.
Hey, wait! Come back! I’ve got a point, I promise!
Continue reading “Did You Hear What Happened??”
