If I had all day

I could spend it just following a daisy-chain of links. I end up places and it becomes a real challenge to figure out how I got there. Here, for example, is an interesting blog called, simply, Betty Duffy. I think I got here from Happy Catholic, but I'm not positive. Well, best get back to work even though it is Friday...

Change is...

Change is that mysterious wedding between my willingness and God's grace.
I really believe that even my willingness is a grace, too.

From the blog A Song not Scored for Breathing

Lines and Colors

This looks like a website Caroline would like. It describes itself as "a blog about drawing, sketching, painting, comics, cartoons, webcomics, illustration, digital art, concept art, gallery art, artist tools and techniques, motion graphics, animation, sci-fi and fantasy illustration, paleo art, storyboards, matte painting, 3d graphics and anything else I find visually interesting. "

Seven Favorite Christmas Carols

Seven of my favorite carols, chosen at random:
1. Hey for Christmas Baltimore Consort, Bright Day Star Custer LaRue: What a name. what a voice!
2. While Shepherds watched Sherburne If you've never heard this shapenote version—do yourself a favor--marvelous!
3. Silent night , Johnny Cash -- just listen
4. Il est ne , The Bells of Dublin, The Chieftains. I used to imagine my daughters doing a circle dance to this, as they sweetly sang! never happened...I love this album because it sounds like a bunch of friends getting together and making music and having fun!
5. Daquin’s Noel (for organ) I would love to hear this before Midnight Mass some year.
6. Lo how a Rose e'er blooming
7. Christmas is Coming A Christmas Together, John Denver and the Muppets. This whole album is fun---this song gives you a taste.

The peaceable kingdom!

I’ve been thinking about this prayer because the opening line was quoted several times during the Pope’s recent visit to Great Britain. Fr. Larry had it printed up on his ordination cards, and I’ve always liked it, but had forgotten about it:

The Mission of My Life
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 am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments. Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.

As one who often feels perplexed, I especially like the reference to how my perplexity may serve Him.

This and more of Newman’s prayers can be found here.

"Is Kristin a Brat?"

I was reading this post about Kristin Lavransdatter, (one of my all-time favorite books, highly recommended), which I got to from here (another post about KL) when I read this quote from KL's author Sigrid Undset:

Is there something we ought to have known but weren’t told, and is that why we do such terribly stupid things with our lives?

Boy, can I relate to that! It so often seems like I'm wandering around in the dark...

Be Bold!!!

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"To write is to think, and to write well is to think well," David McCullough once said in conversation. - - read this morning in an article by Peggy Noonan

Words to live by...

Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
.....Howard Thurman

Thanks to Happy Catholic!

just for fun...

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Words to ponder...

Dame Gertrude More, Spiritual Exercises

O lett me sitt alone, silent to all the world and it to me, that I may learn the song of Love.

Dame Gertrude More was the great-great-granddaughter of St. Thomas More.

Thought for the Day

Feeling is the tentacle we stretch out to the world of things

---Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism, ch. 3

Words to Ponder

I heard this today on EWTN:

Jump and the Lord will catch you.

This was Dr. Douglas Grandon talking about his journey from Anglicanism to Catholicism. You can listen to the interview on "The Journey Home" . I don't think this means we act irresponsibly, but rather that if we are seeking to follow the Lord, don't let our fear stop us.

I ran across this at The Anchoress. It's long, but worth reading:


I love this simple definition of grace from Dom Augustin Guillerand, O. Cart, a French Carthusian.

This is the secret of peace, after committing a fault. What is past is past. And if we accept the consequences, while bracing our will, we can be sure that God will know how to draw glory even from our faults. Not to be downcast after committing a fault is one of the marks of true sanctity, for the saint knows how to find God in everything, in spite of human appearances. Once your will is sincerely “good,” then don’t worry…
In all that we do, and at every moment, God has ordained an exact balance between what we have to do and the necessary strength to do it; and this we call grace. Our part is to bring ourselves into line with grace.
God uses all the horrors of this world for an infinitely perfect end, and always with an infinite calm. It is part of his plan that we should feel the blows and experience the wounds of life: but more than anything else he wants us to dominate them by virtues of faith, hope and charity, and so live on his level. It is these latter which will raise us up to him, and then we shall share in his calm, and in the highest part of our being.

If anyone in my family reads this, a copy of Dom Guillerand's book (link above) would be wonderful Father's Day or birthday present!

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Miracles

Miracles are nothing other than God's ordinary truth seen with surprised eyes.
---Gerald G. May, M.D. Addiction and Grace

Some sobering thoughts for us procrastinators...

I just found this quote at a website called The Seanachai:

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” — Goethe

So stop worrying about all those reasons it won't work or you can't do it---get started!!!

Check out The Seanachai while you are at it. His most recent podcast is a short reflection on the benefits of writing longhand.

A prayer for family

PRAYER FOR HOME AND FAMILY - Robert Louis Stevenson

Lord, behold our family here assembled. We thank Thee for this place in which we dwell; for the love that unites us; for the peace accorded us this day; for the hope with which we expect the morrow; for the health, the work, the food, and the bright skies that make our lives delightful; for our friends in all parts of the earth.

Let peace abound in our small company. Purge out of every heart the lurking grudge. Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Offenders, give us the grace to accept and to forgive offenders. Forgetful ourselves, help us to bear cheerfully the forgetfulness of others.

Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavors. If it may not, give us the strength to encounter that which is to come, that we may be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving to one another.

As the clay to the potter, as the windmill to the wind, as children of their sire, we beseech of Thee this help and mercy for Christ's sake.

I just did!

I could survive for 1 minute, 47 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

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