Skip to main content

Soon, very soon.

In a little over a week, I enter into household life in the People of Praise, living with a family of six plus another guy near my age who I'll be rooming with. In a little over a week, I begin a high-skilled job consisting of a skill I studied fractionally in college and not since then.

That's it, in a nutshell. These past few weeks have been a flurry interviews, trying to stay out of jail, abetting my patient landlord, falling out of contact with some, falling into contact with others...

Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability – And that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you. Your ideas mature gradually – let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Defy the old Dragon,
defy the jaws of death,
defy fear as well!
Rage, oh world, and quake,
here I stay,
singing in perfect peace!

- Jesu, meine Freude, by Johann Sebastian Bach

The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry; the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked; the shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot; the money that you keep locked away is the money of the poor; the acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit.
- St. Basil

Popular posts from this blog

Today's Gospel - the sanctity of marriage

Matthew 19:3-12 : Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?" "Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." "Why then," they asked, "did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?" Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery." The disciples said to him, "If this is the situation between a husba...

Encountering Embodied Humans

A couple nights ago I went to Theology on Tap to hear John O'Callaghan speak about "The Church & Science and Technology - Are Science and Technology the Enemy?" He didn't refer directly to the Catholic Church at all throughout it, but referred more implicitly to the body of Christ which the Church consists of. I'd like to summarize my experience of it rather than a comprehensive overview of all of it. Regarding the ethical dilemma of creating technologies that may be used for evil, there are two things to consider: We need to remain concerned about the big picture and not just the work on our desk. I work in a small division currently which forces me to be aware of the business opportunities and risks rather than just the programming that has been assigned to me. This needs to be equally true of our moral ethics. The relationships we experience in our work are quite possibly more important than our work may be. We struggle with whether the variety of e...

our Ford Explorer saga

Two weeks ago, Cathy & I drove up Greenlawn Ave heading toward my house, and when we took the left turn onto Cedar, I accelerated out of the turn in hope of fishtailing a little bit on the snow before straightening out, which I enjoy and feel like a race car driver when I do it. This time, instead of straightening out, my Explorer continued to rotate and turn on the ice, eventually sliding perpendicular to path of the road. We were slowing down, but not enough to avoid hopping the curb and giving a tree a little tap. It didn't sound too bad, but when I got out and looked, I saw a bumper bent in, headlights on one side cracked open, and the impact bending a side fender, contorting the wheel well. My heart dropped a little bit, I grimaced, and asked myself and Cathy why I had decided to do that. Approaching the holidays and the wedding, we did not need any new complications. We had a full day planned, so I put it out of my mind and decided I would get a quote on the repairs ...