Friday Five (Vol. 28) – Dreams edition

— 1 —

As Debbie Harry famously crooned: Dreaming is free. And I thought I’d do a little today, mostly because I woke up with the first song I link to below echoing in my head, but also just to do a little light writing. I’d considered the subject of dreams before as examples of them are scattered throughout Scripture and the lives of the saints. But that involved heavier lifting than I’m up for today.

First up, a song from my daughter’s favorite movie, Tangled. No matter who we are or our situation, we all need a dream. Make it a big one, and be flexible and receptive to change. Like a million other little boys I wanted to grow up to pitch at Fenway Park. Ok, so that didn’t work out…but I found a new dream or two instead.

I’ve Got A Dream – Tangled
Though my face leaves people screaming
There’s a child behind it, dreaming
Like everybody else, I’ve got a dream

— 2 —

“God has created me to do him some definite service; he has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission – I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next… I have a part in a great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons…” ~ Cardinal John Henry Newman

— 3 —

Part of getting a new dream is realizing that our dreams are not meant to be kept to ourselves. A great dream is a selfless one…a mission…and it is often in serving others that we awake to find we’ve suddenly achieved a dream of our own even if it wasn’t the one we set out to accomplish. The lyrics I quote below are meaningful to me today as half of my life is behind me and I am the sum of my experiences, both good and bad. When you dream, do not be afraid to fail or make a fool of yourself. You have to put yourself out there.

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following Your Will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing…” ~ Thomas Merton

Dream On – Aerosmith
Half my life is in books written pages
Live and learn from fools and from sages

— 4 —

“I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.” ~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

— 5 —

Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” ~ G.K. Chesterton

Photo source: photos.cleveland.com

And now that I have reached the halfway point (or more) I find that my dreams transition to those of my children. To do what I can to help them not just achieve their own, but to learn how to dream themselves. I find I do this through books, stories, movies and musicals and plays and sonnets and songs. And through fairy tales. Especially through fairy tales. These tales, while seeming to be overly simplistic or idealistic to some, demonstrate over and over again the real life virtues of Fides, Spes and Caritas (Faith, Hope and Love). Of Prudence and Temperance, and of Fortitude and Justice. Without dreams and fairy tales the seven opposites of these virtues flourish (pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust) can flourish. If we, or our children or others we influence in this life, do not learn, practice and share the light of these virtues the gathering darkness will indeed grow more suffocating.

“Fairy tale does not deny the existence of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance. It denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat…giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy; Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I Have A Dream – ABBA
If you see the wonder of a fairy tale
You can take the future even if you fail
I believe in angels
Something good in everything I see

 

Beauty and miracles in the desert

“Boredom of course is another matter. It has little to do with what actually exists in the world outside any of us. The world is just fine; it is full of beauty and miracles abound even in the midst of the most desolate of deserts.” – Kevin Codd. To The Field of Stars: A Pilgrim’s Journey to Santiago de Compostella. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (2008).

*****

I read these lines just before turning in last night. The words struck hard at the heart of what has become such an epidemic in today’s modern world. Everyone, it seems, is bored. Or they are scared of being bored and race and work and stretch themselves in a million directions at once in order to avoid the fear of being bored. We stuff our lives and our homes with mountains of stuff, hoping that the next thing will once and for all fill that hole in our soul. When it doesn’t we work longer hours and push ourselves harder to make enough money to buy the next thing. Yet the hole remains, as we remain on the mad gerbil’s wheel. Instead of considering the miracles that surround us with each step we take, we bemoan the fact that our lives are drab, unexciting…boring.

It’s a paradox perhaps that the hub of what modern man sees as the necessary excitement and activity is the modern city. But it is within these city walls that we block out the very miracles to which I refer. The sun setting (or rising) on the distant horizon is difficult to see when surrounded by city buildings or suburban rooftops. Nature, grass, animals (outside of the squirrel, possum or rat variety) are non-existent unless one goes to the zoo. And my personal favorite, millions of stars and the constellations that fill the night sky, are almost impossible to see in the illuminated city at night. God’s wonder in nature hasn’t left us…we left it.

And when nothing seems to work and we begin to wear down from all the fruitless pursuit of activity we can succumb to boredom, acedia, and finally melancholia. “What’s the point of all this?” we ask ourselves. “Is this all there is to life? How long will I wander in this paved, urban desert?”

The answer, I believe, is provided in many places. I happened upon one of them a few weeks ago when I read the following poem by Alfred Noyes (1880-1958):

To A Pessimist
Life like a cruel mistress woos
The passionate heart of a man, you say,
Only in mockery to refuse
His love, at last, and turn away.

To me she seems a queen that knows
How great is love—but ah, how rare!—
And, pointing heavenward ere she goes,
Gives him the rose from out her hair.

You see, I believe the hole that lies in the hearts of humanity is, to use a well-known cliché, God-shaped. It is a huge hole, one capable of only being filled by God. And what is God? Love, of course.

I’m sure I sound like a Hallmark card to you by now and I’d have to agree, but I also know from my own personal experiences in this life that this is true. I’ve ridden the depression rollercoaster. I’ve also watched as it took hold of friends and loved ones and attempted to pull them down below the ocean waves of this life. You feel as if you’re drowning; gasping; struggling to stay above water to breathe while clinging to any life raft, driftwood or flotsam you can find each time you can get your head above water. Only too many times we are grabbing an anchor, weighed down by yet another purchase or another activity that we gravitate towards instead of the one thing that we need. Such is the stubborness of man.

In his second stanza Noyes perhaps is pointing the way. I’m not a learned interpreter of poetry by any stretch of the imagination, but to me the “queen” he refers to is Mary, the Mother of Jesus, who knows the depths of love that God’s heart is capable of storing, as well as the depths of depravity possible in a human heart. She points heavenward, and gives the pessimist a “rose from out her hair.”

A rose is a widely recognized as the queen of flowers and a symbol of love. Catholics who pray the Rosary also know the significance of Mary and roses. Indeed, the word Rosary means “Crown of Roses”. One piece of Catholic imagery says that each time they say a Hail Mary they are giving Mary a beautiful rose, and that each complete Rosary makes her a crown of roses.

From The New Baltimore Catechism of 1941, Part 1, Lesson 1: The Purpose of Man’s Existence, we read

1. Who made us?
God made us.

2. Who is God?
God is the Supreme Being, infinitely perfect, who made all things and keeps them in existence.

3. Why did God make us?
God made us to show forth His goodness and to share with us His everlasting happiness in heaven.

4. What must we do to gain the happiness of heaven?
To gain the happiness of heaven we must know, love, and serve God in this world.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church today begins thusly:

God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life. (CCC 1)

Both the old and the new Catechisms in their following paragraphs point towards Jesus as the key to knowing love and finding the chief truths taught by Him. The Rosary is a biblical meditation upon the life of Jesus and one of the best ways I’ve found to come to know Him.

Or, if you prefer, perhaps the queen is an allegory for what the Greeks called sophia; that is, Wisdom. The concept of wisdom goes all the way back to Plato and his Protagoras dialogue. It is also a common tenet in Christianity where it is not only found throughout the Old Testament in Proverbs, Psalms, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, the Book of Wisdom, etc., but also in the New Testament where Christ referred to wisdom, as in “the wisdom of God.” Indeed, wisdom is mentioned over 220 times in the Bible.

So what do I do when I feel I’m about to go under? The first thing I try to do is to get out of the city for awhile. Go camping. Or hiking. Visit family or friends who live in the country. And when I can’t get out of the city? I seek wisdom in the very spot I’ve been planted.

No matter which method or activity you choose, whether accepting the conclusions of Socrates in the Protagoras:

Socrates claimed that “all virtue is knowledge and therefore one. He argues that the reason people act harmfully, to others or themselves, is because they only see the short term gains while ignoring the long term losses which might outweigh them, just like one makes errors in judging the size of objects that are far away. He says that if men were taught the art of calculating these things correctly, have a more exact knowledge that is, they would not act harmfully.

or by seeking, sharing and serving God in this world:

So that this call should resound throughout the world, Christ sent forth the apostles he had chosen, commissioning them to proclaim the gospel: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” Strengthened by this mission, the apostles “went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that attended it.” Those who with God’s help have welcomed Christ’s call and freely responded to it are urged on by love of Christ to proclaim the Good News everywhere in the world. This treasure, received from the apostles, has been faithfully guarded by their successors. All Christ’s faithful are called to hand it on from generation to generation, by professing the faith, by living it in fraternal sharing, and by celebrating it in liturgy and prayer. (CCC 2-3)

or both (because they are not necessarily mutually exclusive) pick one. Remember Psalm 19:1: The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. 

Then (and with humility) end each day with these words from G.K. Chesterton:

“Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world around me;
And with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?”

[Admin: It should come as no surprise to anyone that my daughter's name is Sophia Rose. It was chosen for many of the reasons I've just mentioned. Also, I chose not to go into depth regarding the Rosary as I plan on writing more about this prayer in the coming week or two. This single prayer, meditation, or exercise…whatever you choose to call it…has been responsible for deepening and widening my faith more than any other. It has opened the door for me to a rich world in which my head is able to stay above water. At least for the most part. I am human after all.]

Love is. Am I?

Almost everyone is familiar with St. Paul’s “Hymn to Love” from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7:

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

This was the subject of my meditation exercises from Fr. Timothy Gallagher’s book An Ignatian Introduction to Prayer: Scriptural Reflections According to the Spiritual Exercises. I met Fr. Gallagher when I attended a silent weekend retreat he led two years ago this March and have thoroughly enjoyed using what I learned from him and his books to deepen my prayer life and dive further into the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. What follows are some of the questions posed in the chapter I used this morning. I encourage you to make some time to quiet yourself and your surroundings, read slowly through 1 Cor 13:4-7 and then work through Fr. Gallagher’s questions.

“Love is”:

• “patient” And I?
• “kind” And I?
• “not jealous” Am I?
• “not . . . boastful” Am I?
• “not arrogant” What of me?
• “not . . . rude” Am I sensitive to others?
• “does not insist on its own way” Do I?
• “is not irritable” Am I?
• “is not . . . resentful” Am I?
• “does not rejoice at wrong but rejoices in the right” How do I respond to others’ weaknesses?
• “bears all things” Do I?
• “believes all things, hopes all things” Do I continue to hope for growth in others?
• “endures all things” Do I?

If you’re not in a place where you can slow down into a quiet time and place then I suggest you save this entry for a time when you can. It may open your eyes just a little and give you some insights on areas that need attention. It did for me.

Burning Ships and Slaying Dragons

All love takes commitment. As St. Paul famously wrote in 1st Corinthians 13 “Love bears all things . . . endures all things.” So why won’t we take it upon ourselves to endure for love? In his essay A Defense of Rash Vows, G.K. Chesterton provides us with a clue.

The revolt against vows has been carried in our day even to the extent of a revolt against the typical vow of marriage. It is most amusing to listen to the opponents of marriage on this subject. They appear to imagine that the ideal of constancy was a yoke mysteriously imposed on mankind by the devil, instead of being, as it is, a yoke consistently imposed by all lovers on themselves. They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words – ‘free-love’ – as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free. It is the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word. Modern sages offer to the lover, with an ill-favoured grin, the largest liberties and the fullest irresponsibility; but they do not respect him as the old Church respected him; they do not write his oath upon the heavens, as the record of his highest moment. They give him every liberty except the liberty to sell his liberty, which is the only one that he wants.

It is exactly this backdoor, this sense of having a retreat behind us, that is, to our minds, the sterilizing spirit in modern pleasure. Everywhere there is the persistent and insane attempt to obtain pleasure without paying for it. Thus, in politics the modern Jingoes practically say, ‘Let us have the pleasure of conquerors without the pains of soldiers: let us sit on sofas and be a hardy race.’ Thus, in religion and morals, the decadent mystics say: ‘Let us have the fragrance of sacred purity without the sorrows of self-restraint; let us sing hymns alternately to the Virgin and Priapus.’ Thus in love the free-lovers say: ‘Let us have the splendour of offering ourselves without the peril of committing ourselves; let us see whether one cannot commit suicide an unlimited number of times.’

Emphatically it will not work. There are thrilling moments, doubtless, for the spectator, the amateur, and the aesthete; but there is one thrill that is known only to the soldier who fights for his own flag, to the aesthetic who starves himself for his own illumination, to the lover who makes finally his own choice. And it is this transfiguring self-discipline that makes the vow a truly sane thing. It must have satisfied even the giant hunger of the soul of a lover or a poet to know that in consequence of some one instant of decision that strange chain would hang for centuries in the Alps among the silences of stars and snows. All around us is the city of small sins, abounding in backways and retreats, but surely, sooner or later, the towering flame will rise from the harbour announcing that the reign of the cowards is over and a man is burning his ships.

To love and to be loved, as it is with all things worth having, takes work. It involves personal responsibility, character and being a person who is as good as his or her word. No wonder so many people today are failing in this regard. When the dragons come…and they will indeed come…too often the solution of modern man (or woman) is to flee. More accurately they yawn, scratch themselves while rolling over on the couch, and change the channel.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker wrote an article for Crisis magazine that further explores the concept of Love and of getting ourselves off the couch and daring to go on The Quest and to slay those dragons.

This most precious gift of love is the greatest treasure, and is worth the most dangerous quest. If earthly love connects us with eternal love, then it connects us with eternal life, and that most precious gift is something that is not only worth a long journey, it is also worth a fight. It is worth a fight because anything so precious must be surrounded by many thieves. Anything so good must be surrounded by much evil, for evil (be definition) wants to destroy what is good, and that is why the hero bears a sword – because love must be fought for, and to win the love of the fair maiden the dragon must first be slain.

A Memoir of Love and Loss: Wish You Were Here

My inspiration to begin writing a blog is a woman I first encountered a decade ago on the interwebs. When I first read Amy Welborn at In Between Naps two things struck me. First, she was prolific! My God that woman wrote. And wrote. And wrote. I don’t know how she found the time. But more than that she was wonderful. To write that much and keep it interesting, entertaining and thought-provoking? I didn’t think it was possible, but there it was right in front of me each day, or several times a day. Remember, this was over ten years ago. Blogs were still a relatively new thing for most of America and only beginning to come into their own. I enjoyed reading Amy and she became a friendly voice to sit with each morning over coffee when I’d read her during a morning break in my day. Because of her I discovered more voices such as Jeff Miller over at The Curt Jester, and Elizabeth Scalia aka The Anchoress. I still read both regularly and you can find them on my blog roll to the right. She was the inspiration for what a few of us who own Catholic blogs refer to as the Welborn Protocol when it comes to blog comments. I admit I’ve never had to enact it as I don’t garner too many comments. But by golly if I ever grow big enough I will.

About a year or so after I started reading Amy at IBN she started a new blog named Open Book. This is where I thought Amy really grew as did her audience. At IBN I witnessed the care and interaction that occurred between Amy and her readers in the comboxes. At Open Book it progressed even more. Amy was having a conversation with us instead of just talking at us. Her family was growing and she continued to author many Catholic books for her publisher Our Sunday Visitor Press.

In 2007 she made the decision to change again and began to blog at Charlotte Was Both. While her first two blogs were the reason I decided to begin my first blog over at Blogger, it was CWB that cemented my desire to begin anew at WordPress. Her husband, Michael Dubruiel was himself a prolific author and blogger. I found myself reading him as well. While I was writing a series of forty 1-2 page bulletin inserts on the Mass I used one of his books as a resource. Michael and I exchanged a few emails during this time as I had a few questions for him. He was more than courteous and helpful.

Three years ago today Michael died. His obituary is here. It was sudden, unexpected, and occurred while he was exercising at his gym. Within seconds on that fateful morning he was gone at the age of 50. Amy had recently left Charlotte Was Both to begin writing for a brief time at BeliefNet. Her pieces about Michael’s death are archived here. From her example I learned many things and cried many times along the way. I’d never met either of them, but I felt as if I knew them personally. Thus is the power of the internet and our ability to connect in a shared humanity.

Next week Amy’s latest, and perhaps most personal book will be released. It is a book I’ve had on my wish list for months when I first learned about it late last summer. Wish You Were Here: Travels Through Loss and Hope is a story about Amy’s trip to Sicily with three of her children, taken five months after Michael’s death.

Her journey through city and countryside, small town and ancient ruins, opens unexpected doors of memory and reflection, a pilgrimage of the heart and an exploration of the soul. It is an observant and wry memoir and travelogue, intensely personal yet speaking to universal experiences of love and loss.

Along the narrow roads and hairpin turns, the narrative reveals the beauty of the ordinary and the commonplace and asks stark questions about how we fill the empty places that a loved one leaves behind. It is a meditation on the possibility of faith, one that is unflinching, uncompromising, and altogether unsentimental when confronted by the ultimate test of belief. This book is not only a well-told memoir, but a testimony to the truth that love is stronger than death.

There is a Kindle version as well so I haven’t decided the form in which I’ll purchase this book. I’m in between books right now but have long planned to read Amy’s when released. In the interim I’m re-reading Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son. By next week I’ll be reading along with Amy and her children and visiting with old friends and bittersweet memories.

The Waiting

“I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

- From “East Coker”, No. 2 of The Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot

Having begun at last to make time to read Eliot’s Quartet, I came across the passage above in “East Coker”, a poem about life, death, and the continuity between the two. Perhaps it is more suited to a picture of a man or a woman looking across the horizon. Or a panoramic vista at twilight. But I immediately thought of a picture I took last Friday night while outside of town with my wife after we had dined out. It struck me as a sad scene of things left behind. Of a once-beloved playmate waiting eternally for a child’s return. He sits at the site of much play and imagination gazing forevermore out into the open fields beyond the treeline.

I admit that the line “wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought” seemed to fit Winnie the Pooh. That seems like something he would do. And knowing Pooh, once under the stars and the moonight, he’d still dance.

I thought of this tonight as I read a message from a friend describing some challenges placed upon her and her family’s plates. We all go through trials in this life. We all face medical or fiscal challenges for ourselves and our loved ones. Our first reactions are typically to worry ourselves sick or into a state of frenzy over things we cannot control. We feel alone and in the dark.

Stop. Be still. Pray or meditate. For me it’s a few verses from the Scriptures. Here are a few, for example.

The faith and the hope and the love are there in the waiting, not in the worrying. Things will get dark. But while God is typically associated with the light, he doesn’t just operate when the sun is up. He is there in the darkness, too.

So be still in the light and the dark. And don’t forget to dance now and then.

©2011 Jeff A Walker. All Rights Reserved.

Love is Sevenfold

Several years ago I read The Spear by Louis de Wohl. The book is a beautifully written story of Cassius Longinus, the Roman soldier believe to have been present at Christ’s crucifixion. Not only is this an interesting look at Rome and the Holy Land 2,000 years ago, but it is most importantly the story of Longinus’ conversion from a bitter, revenge-driven man to a repentant, joy-filled soul. Inspiring, a very good read, I would recommend it to anyone.

Early in the book Longinus is a youthful, overconfident and immature soldier in the Roman army who has fallen in love. He has the following exchange with his friend and father’s lawyer, Seneca:

“Love is sevenfold,” he began almost solemnly. “By definition it is an inclination of something toward something else. Take up a stone, and it will weigh heavily in your hand, because it is inclining toward, because it is drawn toward the earth, from which you have taken it. It is drawn toward its origin. It is longing for the earth, and you can feel its longing in the pressure on your hand. Drop it—and see how quickly it moves to meet the beloved—like a child running toward its mother’s embrace. A mere stone, Cassius…For such is the first stage of love, and it is in everything on earth.”

“The next stage,” Seneca continued quietly, “is the love of each creature for the self. The urge for self-preservation, of which egoism is the perversion. And the third stage is the urge to preserve one’s own kind—sexual love. The fourth is the aesthetic love, the love of beauty. You find it in animals and birds as well as in man. See the peacock strutting, conscious of his beauty, see the playfulness of lambs or colts or cats, fully conscious of the capabilities of their bodies and exercising them with joy.

“With the fifth stage of love we leave the material field behind us. Here is the love of philosophy and of abstract thinking—the love we are indulging in at this moment.”

“Here is the realm of exploration and speculation, of knowledge sought and found, and there are many who will prefer the searching to the finding, because finding puts an end to the search they love. Comes the sixth stage—the love of one person for another.”

“Surely there can be nothing higher than that!”

“Here we find not only lovers but also philanthropists and all people concerned with the fate, destiny, and well-being of their fellowmen. Yet there is a step higher still, though only one: the urge that raises man above himself, the longing for things beyond the natural and the infinite. Plato knew about it. As we grow older we perceive that even the love of one person for another is imperfect, and there are whisperings in us that still more is required of man by the immortal gods. It is a longing that may take strange forms—like the attempt to placate the gods who despise our imperfections—the attempt to move in their direction, toward the stars on which they dwell.”

“Religion, you mean?”

Seneca shrugged his shoulders. “Religion is one way of expressing it. All love is longing, even that of the stone longing for Mother Earth, the first stage of the sevenfold love.”

At the end of the book, having undergone several trials and finding himself an unwilling participant in history’s most amazing story, Cassius pauses to reflect upon the events that had just taken place, and of his life’s journey since he was a brash young Roman soldier:

Someone once told me about the sevenfold love. A brilliant man, Seneca. But he did not know you, Lord, or he would have known that there is a love beyond those seven, encompassing them all, ennobling them all and surpassing them all. Your love, which makes everything holy.

You may be saying to yourself, ‘That’s very nice Jeff, but what does it have to do with the charity and stewardship represented by me in my own life?’

Great question. Here’s the answer: within each and every one of those areas of your life is a chance for you to demonstrate to others the highest stage of the “sevenfold stages of love.” I touched upon this in something I wrote yesterday. I don’t mean that we exercise this choice just during the coming days of Lent, but each and every day thereafter. If you’re at stage three with your lover, strive to move to stage four, and so on. Continuously reach for the next plane.

I saw people celebrating a “day of peace” recently and had to stop myself from commenting to them “Why just today? Why not aim for it every day? Can’t we do better?”

I have felt weighed down more than ever by the news of the world lately. It can be suffocating and when it becomes so overbearing that it threatens to snuff out the spark of life that I have within I know it’s time to take a step back. My sense of humor has gone AWOL. I no longer have a spring in my step. I find myself growing cynical. And whereas in the past I would have lashed out as well with sarcasm and cynicism disguised as wit, I lack the will to even do that. Lent couldn’t have come at a better time for me personally to “be still”. To quiet myself. To listen for that “still, small voice” that is relentlessly drowned out by the cacophony of noise we use to surround ourselves. It is our choice. We can turn down the volume. I think sometimes we forget that.

St. Anthony of Padua said that

“Earthly riches are like the reed. Its roots are sunk in the swamp, and its exterior is fair to behold; but inside it is hollow. If a man leans on such a reed, it will snap off and pierce his soul.”

By becoming good stewards of our love and our charity we are given the opportunity to grow stronger in our love and relationship with God and our fellow man. To that end, when you lean on your faith and on Him, it will be stronger and less likely to “snap off” when it is strained and you are most in need.

Every day, in your life, you have such opportunities.

What reed are you leaning on? How strong is it?

You choose.