WAITING

Problem with the idea of WAITING is that it pulls me into the future, and distracts me from the wonder of this moment, so full of LOVE - that love that 'shines on us like the sun' and rises over us like the dawn.

So how do I wait and rejoice at the same time?

Happy ADVENT Everyone!

Just spent a 'day off' with the parish, thinking about Advent. We looked at reading, sang hymns, discussed ideas, and made each other laugh and smile.
In the end, I have only one prayer - may we live out what we talked about. One quote I brought home:
If you see someone without a smile on their face, give them one of yours, you never know how far it will go.
I was reminded of St John of God, (or was it John of the Cross) who said: If you want love, put love and then you'll find love.

CHRIST THE KING

Bless all the people this Sunday, especially all the priests, and help them to speak from the heart about You as King of our lives. This isn’t an easy topic since our only experience of royalty these days is of constitutional monarchies who have very little actual power, even if they have still some influence.

This is where I think my idea of calling You ‘Almighty’ instead of ‘Lord’ comes into its own. Almighty still means ALL MIGHTY –

all powerful,

the one who can do anything, and everything.

The One who is boss,

in charge,

who makes the decisions,

most of all You are the One who makes things happen.

So our dear Jesus is Almighty Jesus,
and our Holy Spirit, is Almighty Holy Spirit,
and Our Heavenly Parent is Almighty Motherly Father.

The implication of this is that we can stop fussing, stop worrying, and let You run the world, and run our lives within it.
We can know that You who are LOVE, love each and every one of us – no one is excluded from Your love.

Even those whose behaviour prevents them from experiencing Your love, are still loved by You, and You are still searching to their last breath for a way to smuggle them into heaven – saying as You always say for all of us: ‘Motherly Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’
(Image above taken from webpage at http://www.ctkterrytown.parishesonline.com/scripts/HostedSites/Org.asp?ID=4652)

The Liberties

Just thinking of my visit to the Francis St Parish Centre and my contact with people of the Liberties. Bless them all, in whatever way they need. Thinking of a young man being treated for cancer in St James Hospital. There must be dozens of others like him. give them the hope they need to live on, instead of 'dying in advance of death'. Give them courage - you have to be terrified to have courage.
Amen

THANKSGIVING

Seems to me we owe a big THANKS to LOVE for the outcome of the US election. Of course, maybe it won't turn out the way we expect - the motto is 'in LOVE we trust', not in OBAMA we trust. But if he is as loving as he seems - and I am cynical enought to wonder about this, him being a politician and all that, if he really is that LOVING then we really are in for big changes.

GOD - LOVE and pronouns

Not sure if I wrote about this before.
I have a theory that as God who is LOVE is a unique being, it is grammatically inaccurate to use a pronoun as a short way to save a letter or two (he = two letters as opposed to God which has three or Lord which has four).

Then there is a second reason for not using a pronoun - this applies to English. We only have three choices: he, she, or it. In my mind none of these fits the Almighty, who is a Spirit (not a thing) and who as a spirit doesn't have gender.

What this means for me is I now aim to call the Almighty 'LOVE' whenever the bible says 'God'. I find people seems to understand better what I am talking about when I use a word from their vocabulary (LOVE) and not one from mine (God).
And to be more accurate, and avoid genderizing, I aim to say 'the Almighty', rather than 'the Lord' - again 'the Lord' means nothing in modern society.

This can be a bit clumsy at times, but I love the nuances of meaning that often emerge.
Know that the Lord is God. He made us and we are his – his people, the sheep of his flock.(Ps 100) becomes:
Know that the Almighty is LOVE. LOVE made us, and we are LOVE'S - LOVE'S people, the sheep of LOVE'S flock.
Wow what a challenge I find that - to be one of the LOVE people!

Saw WYB last night, about a loving and happy couple who don't agree with aborting babies who might have spina bifida or cerebral palsy.
Sweet LOVE, you shone through the eyes of this couple, and each of them said in so many words, "things are the way they are, you just have to make the best of it."
Help me to make that happen in my life too.
And especially help parents who when offered death for their child, choose life instead. It's about having the courage to face future pain, not knowing how you will survive, and afraid that you won't.

Thanks giving Oct 2008

Tonight we had a farewell Mass for Fr Ben who is leaving St Dominic's to go to Montenotte in Cork.

He gave a lovely homily about being thankful to God for all the goodness he had experienced from the community during both of his ten year stints here.

Most of all, he made it all so simple - Love God and do your best, and know that God loves us no matter that we aren't perfect yet.

After Mass, we had tea and buns and lots of chat with people many of whom I hadn't seen for ages.I love my parish. Such lovely people and I got a chance to ring the bell during Mass, though afterwards Sr Blaithnid told me that bells were gone since Vatican II. Imagine - and I never noticed. Hope they bring them back

Thinking of all those Bishops gathered in Rome and the work they are doing.
That will make a difference to the whole world, eventually.

Got this link in the ZENIT newsletter that I get each morning by email.
I liked the upbeat comments from Pope John 23rd about the possibility of good in the world of the present, and how he didn't agree with the 'doom 'n gloomers' of his time.

"In the every day exercise of our pastoral ministry, greatly to our sorrow we sometimes have to listen to those who, although consumed with zeal, do not have very much judgment or balance. To them the modern world is nothing but betrayal and ruination. They claim that this age is far worse than previous ages and they go on as though they had learned nothing from history -- and yet history is the great teacher of life.

"They behave as though the first five centuries saw a complete vindication of the Christian idea and the Christian cause, and as though religious liberty was never put in jeopardy in the past. We feel bound to disagree with these prophets of misfortune who are forever forecasting calamity -- as though the end of the world is imminent. Our task is not merely to hoard this precious treasure of doctrine, as though obsessed with the past, but to give ourselves eagerly and without fear to the task that this present age demands of us -- and in doing so we will be faithful to what the Church has done in the past 20 centuries."

SUNDAY - LOVE DAY

Well, if God is LOVE, and Sunday is God's day, then Sunday is LOVEDAY.
so what do I do on the LOVE-DAY?
I go to the LOVE-HOUSE (God's house)
And I sit there for half an hour and think about LOVE.

I reckon that if all the people in the world sat and thought seriously about LOVE for half and hour once a week, the world would be a different place

The key word is SERIOUSLY.

That's where I often fall down.

Am I cynical?

This message was sent to me from the Xt3 website at Xt3.com

Dear Friend in Christ, please join the new project "Pray to Stop Abortion Everywhere" This new bill being discussed in Victoria, Australia MUST BE STOPPED. The bill forces doctors to perform abortions and allows abortion until nine months!! We must PRAY as well as work to stop the evil of Abortion and the project will help others to see just how serious it is. We in Australia beg for your help in prayers!!
Carmel Reeves

I'm feeling invaded somehow, and the Rebellious Child part of me is glowering and muttering 'You can't make me pray'

Interesting that for the whole month that I had my son visiting, I never managed to make time to enter anything on this blog.

So now its time to go back to being the change I want to see.
Anyway, dear LOVE, I do bring before You all the babies endangered by abortion all over the world, and ask you to help parents to think things through before they take this drastic step to end the life of their child.

Got It! for once

I know its late, but better late than never!
Praying is such a human activity - the idea of stopping from the business of living the life that is given to us, and reflecting on the wonder of that gift, and what it means to the world that this soul - ME - is alive.
Well, maybe I should qualify, and say: 'what it potentially means to the world...'
But then, who knows what potential?
I remember reading one time - in a book by a Jesuit John Powell, that 'everyone, at every minute, is doing the best they can - even the most awful criminal'.
His theory was that since we are created for LOVE, for good, we strive after that as a matter of course. Even the bad that we do, is for a 'good' that we perceive at the time, even if our judgement is clouded.
It's an extraordinary thought - that if we could do better, we would - the good keep pulling us towards itself.
It's also an extraordinary thought to think that we can be so stupid as to be codded by the enemy into going after the lesser good, when the greater good could make us so much happier.
LOVE teach to to have the courage to let go the lesser good, and to trust You to deliver to us the greater good, who is LOVE Yourself. Amen

O-o-h oh not brilliant

What can I say - where is my COMMITMENT? Where is my MOTIVATION? What is going on at the 'psychological level' that I keep 'forgetting' to write up this page?

Well, I am still committed to praying for a blessing of change in the world, and I'm still motivated to pray, seeing I have no right to ask other people to do something I am not willing to do myself!

It's writing the page that is the glitch.

Maybe I should be thinking of what change is already happening. I just saw this VIDEO of something happening in SPACE. Well, out there, news of things happening, and changes in what used to be there, don't even reach us, sometime for thousands of years. So I need to stop being so fixated about wanting to see change on earth in my little lifetime. LOVE help me to appreciate things the way they are for as long as You want them to be that way. Amen

A Patchy Year

Wel;l, I set myself the challenge to write something on this page every day for a year to be a change in attitude towards the parts of the world I don't currently like.

Even as I write that, two things strike me:
1. that it is very hard to stick at something, doing it every day. Over the days since I started, I've missed more than I've entered.

Well, 'endorse myself for effort, not for success' is one of the principles of Recovery, a self help group that promotes mental health.

2. The second thing that comes to mind is that maybe the world is OK the way it is, and maybe I need to change myself to fit into it. Surely that can't be the case ... surely we are expected to leave the world a little better than we found it.....

Whatever, it is to LOVE I must turn for the answer, and loving the world the way it is (unconditional love) is not such a bad idea.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU

Thanks LOVE for the warmth of the sun on my back streaming in the window as I write this.
I am thinking of that bit in St Paul:

Never worry about anything. Instead, in every situation let your petitions be made known to God through prayers and requests, with thanksgiving.(Philippians 4:6)

There's a lot to think about in this verse.

Don't worry
Pray about what you need
Give thanks.

Simple - we just have to do it. - and we can make it simpler if we say: LOVE of my life, You know what I need. Help me to want what You have in mind for me - even if I don't understand at the moment.

7 days later ....

So much for the resolution to write every day -

I was away at the Fleadh Ceoil and didn't have easy access to internet.
Did I pray all the same?
Yes, kind of ....

So start again!
That's part of the CHANGE I WANT TO SEE - that failure isn't the end of the world
That failure is AVERAGE, normal, to be expected of average people.
The only failure is the failure to begin again.

I need to be redeemed every day - or maybe it is more accurate to say I need to apply the fruits of the once off redemption to my day by day needs.

Almighty LOVE, be patient with each of us, and teach us to be patient with ourselves and with each other.

Words? Whose words?

So if I'm going to 'elevate my soul to God', how do I do this?
Do I use words, like I would if I was talking to my husband?
Or is 'heart-talk' sufficient?

What the definition said was a 'raising of the mind and heart to God' - well that sounds as if it could be wordless.
But then, don't I have to use words to formulate my thoughts.... Maybe not always.

I like the definition of contemplation that I once heard:
God looking at me looking at God. (or to translate that into my preferred name for the Almighty:
LOVE looking at me looking at LOVE

Why do I prefer that wording? My experience tells me that those many people who think they don't believe in GOD, actually believe very strongly in love, and since I believe passionately in the Scripture that says God is love, I have started using LOVE (all capitals) as my favoured name for the One who some people would say is Un-nameable.

So then, dear LOVE, take this lovely world of Yours and protect it from the mistakes of human beings. Amen

Postings to this blog over the next few days may be sporadic. I'm planning to write each day, but may not have access to post. If so, I'll post the entries when I return next week.

B16 on Prayer as service

This is something the Pope said last Wednesday when he was talking to visitors at his summer home in Castel Gondolfo (August 13 2008) (emphasis mine)

I know well that the first service I can render the Church and humanity is, in fact, prayer, because by praying I confidently place in the Lord's hands the ministry that he himself has entrusted to me, together with the destiny of the whole ecclesial and civil community.

Those who pray never lose hope, even when they find themselves in difficult and even humanly desperate situations. Sacred Scripture teaches us this and it is attested in the history of the Church. How many examples, in fact, we can recall of situations in which it was precisely prayer that sustained the journey of saints of the Christian people!

He says it much better than I can. It is this 'service rendered to the Church' that I want this blog to be about.

Day Two - Praying about what to write.

So then, if this blog is to be about 'listening prayer' - listening to what God might be wanting to say - then I'd better start right here.

Make myself still as I sit here at the keyboard - hear the sounds of the computer, my husband moving in the house, but listen for the ideas that might be appropriate.

Catechism definition of prayer from my childhood (as I remember it):
PRAYER is an elevation of the soul to God,

• To PRAISE Him for his goodness,
• To THANK Him for his benefits,
• To ASK for what we need, and to obtain forgiveness for our sins
• And to obtain the GRACE not to commit them again.

St. Francis de Sales tells us: "Pray for your prayer's success." so Lord of LOVE , You know I want to pray for what You want me to pray for - in our culture, actions, and attitudes. Make this a good prayer. Amen

Be Doers of the WORD and not hearers only

Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves.
For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his own face in a mirror.
He sees himself, then goes off and promptly forgets what he looked like. (James Chapter 1, verses 22-24)

I find it whimsical that I should be quoting St James. I never thought much about him, until my recent effort on the Camino de Santiago de Comostela.

Here was a person who practiced what he preached. Jesus said: Go and teach all nations, so James set out to teach in Spain. When he had done that, he went back home, and was martyred in the Holy Land.

But he had to be listening to Jesus in order to hear that clear command.
Prayer is more about listening, than about saying words.

And in my experience, God doesn't only speak when you are on your knees. Sometimes He talks through events and circumstances, sometimes through nature, and very often through other people who may be unaware that they are angels in disguise.