Why do I doubt this administration, the numbers and their hype? The Anchoress passes this on for clarity :
Ace of Spades HQ turns on the light with thanks to Jack Shaw:
Tag Archives: In a nutshell
Somewhere Nebraska – Somewhere Springtime
Getting to Nebraska, we passed a lot of dry, brown land. Colorful Colorado was a grayish tan. But here and there bright green fields told you things were ready to burst out at the first fall of rain.
On the surface things can look bleak. Beneath the surface, they are ready to pop. What I have to keep reminding myself is that life is thriving on planet Earth. God is in His heaven and that makes all the difference. Somewhere the bountiful and beautiful is happening, maybe not here, perhaps in distant, hidden places, but it’s happening and its abundant! While, there are dry spells, and dormant periods with things that go wrong, other things are so very right.
Change, for all my discomfort, is as ordinary as air. I know that if it’s happening, at very least, God is permitting it. He always has a plan and I don’t understand simply because He hasn’t run it past me. That does make even the present dilemma a work in progress – mysterious design and all that.
In the world or in the Church, it all hangs together. We are waiting for rain. John Paul II spoke of a Springtime for the Church and I believe that now, in this very dark hour, we are actually living it. Beneath the materialism and relativism and all those other ism’s, is a harvest in the making. It waits, perhaps, on laborers and a rain of prayer, but it none-the- less is hanging fire.
I find my Springtime in my prayer. Whether my experience of prayer is dry or consoling, doesn’t matter, anymore. I am praying. Day by day, I’m just doing it…. and I’m not alone in this. Whoever is waiting on change can actually move the hands of God in His heaven, turning the dreary grey of their waiting, into a poppin’ Springtime.
For me, it’s hidden but it’s happening. For each of us, it’s a “Just do it!” thing, hanging on a decision. What you don’t see, none-the-less, is building beneath the surface of our day to day. Days past, present and to come, days for forgiving, repenting, and imploring; all prayer, all the time. Springtime will come without me, but don’t want to miss it. I want to run through the fields and feel it in my soul.
Joan of Arc – A Prayer For Lent
Asked at her trial if she was in God’s grace:
“If I am not, may God put me there, and if I am, may God so keep me! I should be the saddest creature in the world if I knew I was not in His grace.”
Mark Twain said of her:
“She was truthful when lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honest was become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of a promise was expected of no one; … she was full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule; she was steadfast when stability was unknown, and honorable in an age which had forgotten what honor was; she was a rock of convictions in a time when men believed in nothing and scoffed at all things; she was unfailingly true in an age that was false to the core; … she was of a dauntless courage when hope and courage had perished in the hearts of her nation…”
No Perspective – No Compunction!
Does the Mainstream Media feel any guilt for the media basis that is now part and parcel of its product and its legacy? Do their heavy-hitters feel any compunction for putting Barak Hussein Obama, a relative unknown with little experience and a shady past into the White House as President of the greatest Nation on this earth. The answer is “No!” and “Hell, no! respectively. Perspectively, they have no perspective!
Bernard Goldberg of “A Slobbering Love Affair” fame, reminds us of the “bubble” in which these guys live. A “Vast Left-wing Conspiracy” has not been organized, but they live and move and have their being
as though there were one. According to Goldberg, “The problem, in a word, is group-think.” An “institutional bias,” that is insidious because it is “too comfortable” and “dulls the senses,” is turning “even well-
educated journalists into narrow-minded provincial rubes.”
In a time of national crisis, those the 1st amendment intended to protect the Nation by
manning the watchtowers, are in denial and worse. They are in lockstep, much as the spaced-out fictional
Borg, zombies acting, but not thinking critically.
“Borne by Angels to the Bosom of God” – St. Therese of Lisieux
From The Story of a Soul, The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux:
“Dear Mother, I have still to tell you what I understand by the “sweet odour of the Beloved.” As Our Lord is now in Heaven, I can only follow Him by the footprints He has left–footprints full of life, full of fragrance. I have only to open the Holy Gospels and at once I breathe the perfume of Jesus, and then I know which way to run; and it is not to the first place, but to the last, that I hasten. I leave the Pharisee to go up, and full of confidence I repeat the humble prayer of the Publican. Above all I follow Magdalen, for the amazing, rather I should say, the loving audacity, that delights the Heart of Jesus, has cast its spell upon mine. It is not because I have been preserved from mortal sin that I lift up my heart to God in trust and love. I feel that even had I on my conscience every crime one could commit, I should lose nothing of my confidence: my heart broken with sorrow, I would throw myself into the Arms of my Saviour. I know that He loves the Prodigal Son, I have heard His words to St. Mary Magdalen, to the woman taken in adultery, and to the woman of Samaria. No one could frighten me, for I know what to believe concerning His Mercy and His Love. And I know that all that multitude of sins would disappear in an instant, even as a drop of water cast into a flaming furnace.
It is told in the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert how one of them converted a public sinner, whose evil deeds were the scandal of the whole country. This wicked woman, touched by grace, followed the Saint into the desert, there to perform rigorous penance. But on the first night of the journey, before even reaching the place of her retirement, the bonds that bound her to earth were broken by the vehemence of her loving sorrow. The holy man, at the same instant, saw her soul borne by Angels to the Bosom of God.”
St. Joseph’s Day – The Man Behind the Day
Who is St. Joseph? Scripture says little about this man and yet we honor him with titles such as Patron of the Universal Church and Patron of a peaceful death. The Bible simply calls him “just.” Mt 1;19 All we actually need to know is that Joseph is God’s choice.
God knows a man as he actually is in his heart of hearts from the moment God calls him by name, before he is conceived in the womb, until God calls him to Himself. Every moment, every thought, every movement of the heart, nothing hidden or forgotten, and, knowing all, God chose Joseph. He chose Joseph for Mary. He chose Joseph for Jesus. Knowing Joseph’s heart, God called Joseph “just” which means right with God.
Our generation places little value on “just.” It has no glitz. Give us “world renowned” and “phenomenally successful.” “Just” is just so unimpressive. If “just” were only as common as it sounds.
Today’s celebration will go unnoticed and unreported by the world, but the courts of Heaven ring with Joseph’s name this day. Jesus and Mary embrace him, sharing with saints and angels, their memories of his obedience to the Will of God, his humility, his protective care, his kindness and the sacrificial love that reigned over their home and their life together. Who remembers St. Joseph? God remembers St. Joseph. The God-Man remembers St. Joseph, and called him “Abba”, no doubt.
Be Holy! 