Be truly glad. There’s a wonderful joy ahead. – Peter 1:6 Oh Peter. The fisherman with the shoes. The guy tagged by Jesus as the rock on which to build a church. How about that Jesus, the punster? I have to wonder how he saw Peter, how ironically he might have been saying to Peter,…
Tag: faith
Presence
The spirit of Christmas is peace; the heart of Christmas is love. – Ada V. Hendricks Christmas presence, not presents. That was the motto of my childhood home. You could say it was down to economics, that with a large and humble family like ours, building up expectations of material wealth would be unrealistic. You…
Blessed Are They
Christmas is joy, an inner joy of light and peace. – Pope Francis If there were one gift I’d have given my Mom, aside from the A-frame house she always thought would be wonderful, it would have been a chance to meet her Pope. Her pope was John Paul II, the Polish pope. Or maybe…
Silently
The joy of the Lord is my strength. – Nehemiah 8:10 So there’s Nehemiah, ringside at the Ultimate Fighting Championships. Or is that him at the Rumble in the Jungle, as the ‘Ali, Bomaye!’ chant starts up? Is that him swaggering behind Bruce Lee? What is the appearance of this strength? What is the joy…
Light Emitting: of Evangelists and LEDs
His life brought light to everyone. – John 1:4* Who is the everyone in this grand statement? Philosophers, evangelists, the faithful and apologists have driven their camels of thought through the eye of that needle for many hundreds of years, down generations, as the church’s fortunes ebb and flow, with tides of temporal influence. when…
A Song of Joy
This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad. – Psalm 118:24 This is the day that the Lord has made Let us be glad and rejoice! Let us be glad and rejoice in it, this is the day that the Lord has made. The melody rings in…
Always: Goad to Joy
“Be Joyful Always” is today’s Catholic instruction for Advent*. That’s a tough one. What about the moments, or whole days of moments, when I suspect myself of so many wrong turns? How am I to be joyful about the times I couldn’t, the times I didn’t, the times I turned one way rather than another,…
In Giving, Receiving
This seems like a good time to mention Catholic Medical Mission Board and their work around the world, to provide health care for the most poor. I’m following their online Advent Calendar this year, reading and reflecting on the meditations they post for each day of Advent. I’m doing this in honour of my Mom, a lifelong…
For My Mother
April 17: Nocturne: Tiny Now She is tiny now, my mother and jokes in the morning, when her teeth aren’t in, how she whistles like a little bird. And i want to reach back to the nights when she brought the piglets in laid them in the woodstove oven so tiny, but she believed in…
Tool Of God
It has been a long, dark winter. Today marks four years since the tsunami that devastated Tohoku, with its continuing legacy of nuclear refugees, radiation leaking into the sea, untold ramifications to come to us all. I pray that those who are responsible to act directly upon Fukushima have been doing so with integrity,…
Prairiepomes 