Sunday, November 25, 2012

A Little Calcium and Vitamin D

In my quiet moments, sometimes when I reflect upon the saints, my imagination creates a world of squirrels and streams of clear, cold water and stone churches. My imagination creates a world vivid yet sterile with simplistic ideas of good and bad. How easy it is for me to downplay the struggles and hardships the saints endured.

Each saint found an unique way to serve God. Each saint provides an unique path to encounter and to serve God. Each Christian is encouraged to have an unique, personal relationship with God. Our prayers help to create this bond.

In my quiet moments, sometimes, as I reflect upon my daily obstacles, my imagination creates a world of vengeful speeches and a stereophonic soundtrack of cold despair and stony, steep stairs leading away from goodness, away from kindness, away from holiness. My imagination creates a world of brittle pomposity, brittle insincerity where good and bad trade places, stand side by side, joined as friends, allies in a world of selfishness and avarice.

Luckily I live in the real world, with friends, whose actions, honesty, struggles offer me glimpses of peace, glimpses of love, glimpses of living, breathing, praying saints moving toward God, moving closer to heaven.


Saturday, November 24, 2012

These Boots

Each day presents new opportunities for prayer and reflection. Each person moves through life in unique ways with unique insights and perspectives. There is often a desire to simplify life, to simplify our description of our place in the world. It is often easier to hide behind a generality than to uncover and to share the truth of what we are really thinking, really feeling.

And so with hope and the occasional grammatical and/or spelling error, I return to the world of words, thought, contemplated, typed, reviewed, deleted. Such an amazing process is writing and living life.

It all begins with what we see, what we imagine, what we perceive.

If our aim is goodness, then each thought, each word, each action must lead us to our goal. Our direction, our path must always be consistent. It is not enough to talk love if our deeds do not support it.

If our aim is righteousness, then each moment of our lives must be filled with forgiveness and love. Our goal is a sense of understanding, a sense of purpose, a sense of being. Being righteous is hard and filled with many earthly obstacles and temptations. Being righteous is about being accepting, compassionate, open to hope, open to mercy, open to charity.