Sabbath Sunday #11: There Is Someone Looking Out for Me

Fr. Christian Mathis (Blessed is the Kingdom) has made the suggestion that we "rest" on the Sabbath by taking a break from our normal blogging and sharing an older post of which we are particularly fond. Rest? Gladly! I don't get to do that very often, but now, thanks to Fr. Christian, I get to do it at least once a week -- and it gives me more time to spend with God, which is a wonderful gift. For the extra time I am also grateful today because I found out just a few minutes ago that my return ticket from Lithuania to California is for Tuesday, not Wednesday as I thought, so I have many unplanned things to do, associated with how to cover my Tuesday class and Tuesday student appointments. Aieee! (But it is also a blessing since it allows me to be back home on the last day for developing the proposed reorganization of my division, which otherwise would have been done by my assistants with limited input from me. Thank you, Lord, for this complicating yet helpful and comforting surprise! You always take care of me, often in the most unpredictable ways!)

I chose for this week's older post. I have copied it below to make it easier to locate it, but if you go to the post itself, you can read the comments and enjoy the image. It was one that a new reader of this blog, Matt, commented on. I figure if he tracked it down through many layers of other posts, it must be worth re-posting. Interestingly, it was not anything I wrote. It was written by a follower of this blog, someone I now consider a blog-friend, Ashley Siferd, who was writing as a "blest guest" on this blog, kindly assisting me when I was traveling and had limited to write. You also might like to skip on over to her site, If Necessary, Use Words" by clicking here. Here is the post:

There is Someone Looking Out For Me

While I don’t recall ever having a face-to-face encounter with an angel, I do believe that they are present in my life. Of course I think that those human beings who carry out certain kind acts that occur on a daily basis (like holding open a door for someone with full hands or picking up a person’s books that fell) are angels, but in this context, I mean the spiritual, ethereal beings who serve God.

I have never doubted the existence of God. Sometimes I have found myself thinking about the question, “Well, what if there wasn’t a God?” but I have never ever thought of an answer. I know that He in fact is there because on numerous occasions, I have felt His presence or that of someone who was helping me, like an angel.

I am not a terrible driver. I will admit that I have a certain degree of road rage, yes. However, I am careful. I’m both a defensive and offensive driver. But being both doesn’t mean that I will avoid every potential hazard or dangerous situation. Once while turning left onto the two-lane highway, the lady in the left lane either completely forgot that I was there or just didn’t care. She started to drift over into my lane while we were turning, and there was nowhere for me to go. I had just enough shoulder to move over, but it wouldn’t have helped because she just kept coming!

Her car should have hit me. Miraculously though, it did not. Puzzling to me also was that I was not enraged with her. I felt a calm presence in my car. I was safe and not angry. I couldn’t explain it. That is when I first realized that Someone up there is watching out for me.

I’ve recently had a few “almost catastrophes” in the car. Most of them have been not so nice folk who have nearly t-boned me while I have been going through a certain intersection. If you are driving up the hill next to my dorm, you do not have a stop sign but everyone else does. I always slow down so that I don’t get smeared, but apparently some people just don’t like to obey the law. Amazingly (and miraculously!) enough, my car and most importantly my life has been spared. Protected.

The other night I was driving home on the interstate. I had been told that bad weather was coming, but when I left campus, it was nice out…what bad weather were you talking about? I had just merged onto the interstate when it began to rain. I don’t enjoy driving on the interstate at night. I hate driving on the interstate when it is raining. What do you know? It starts raining very hard while I was driving home at night. The perfect storm, I guess, right? Well I had never had that unfortunate combination before. All I could do was pray and sing along with my mixed CDs. Even though it took me a lot longer than normal, I made it home safely. I found out later that I had been driving through a storm that had prompted several tornado warnings in the area!

Now every time I get in the car, even if it is just to go down the road two miles, I ask my guardian angel and my extra driving angels to watch out for me and to be in the car with me. I pray for a safe journey for me and the other drivers around me.

I’m sure that there have been numerous occasions when my angels have hit the palms of their hands on their heads in bewilderment, thinking, OMG what are we going to do with this girl? What was she thinking? I know I’m oblivious to some things that go on around me, but they certainly are not. I’m thankful for their constant vigilance, but I’m even more thankful that God has granted His angels charge over me. Lord knows I need them!

7 Quick Takes Friday #13

As I started to write this post, I noticed that it is my 13th Quick Takes Friday, a meme hosted by Jennifer at Conversion Diary. I was a little unnerved, seeing the number 13 so closely associated with Friday! Ah, well...here we go, anyway, in no particular order.

1. Stealing Doah. Yesterday, by request, I posted an excerpt from my book, Blest Atheist, on the Clan of Mahlou site about how many years ago Doah was dying at Renboro Hospital (name changed) and with Doah's pediatricians' implicit consent (not explicit -- he would not have been able to give that kind of encouragement), Donnie and I literally stole Doah from the hospital in a very dramatic, made-for-the-movies episode in our lives. It's a story that Doah never tires of hearing. Here are the first paragraphs. If you are interested, you can read about the whole story, including how once again God was able to bad into good, at the Clan of Mahlou site.

Told by doctors at Renboro Hospital that Doah would die for certain, the trail ahead of us to bring him into adulthood seemed hopeless and far, indeed — except that I simply have no idea what the word, hopeless, means. To me, where there is life, there is hope. Clearly, though, to maintain that hope, we would have to do something about the attitude of the doctors and hospital in which Doah was being followed.

We did not have to think long. Matters quickly came to a head at Renboro Children’s Hospital. Our knock-down-drag-out fights with doctors there pitted parent against doctor in a war that was not going to serve Doah well. In June 1980, that cold war heated up rapidly. I refused to sign papers for a fundoplication, an operation that would repair Doah’s hiatal hernia at the risk of losing him because of his breathing difficulties from a subglottic stenosis (narrowing of the trachea) that were treated by a tracheotomy. (Nowadays children's with tracheotomies have decent survival rates; back then, most of the children died.) Doah’s pediatrician, Dr. Paul, was one of our strongest supporters. He would come to the hospital, mediate disputes, and provide me with his medical opinion. Dr. Paul researched the surgical procedure. He learned that the operation (in 1980) had only a 25% survival rate in cases like Doah’s and, if the patient survived, there was only a 50/50 chance that the surgery would take care of the problem. In any event, the surgery would have to be repeated every few years. (Over the years, the surgery success rate and survival rate has approached nearly 100%, but the surgery does still have to be repeated every five years.) Given these statistics, the pediatrician agreed with us that surgery was not wise.

Bent on what we assumed was their pursuit of medical training and the chance to do what was then a relatively new procedure, the doctors insisted that Doah have the surgery. Part of me wondered whether they just assumed he was going to die, anyway, and therefore he was a good candidate for “training” surgeons on a new procedure. In any event, the doctors did not accept my refusal to sign papers authorizing surgery and took the case to court, requesting that the court grant custody of Doah to Renboro Children’s Hospital so that they could do the surgery. We were not told about this court proceeding; apparently, we were going to be deprived of the opportunity even to be in courtroom and defend our rights as his parents. Shades of American democracy as it sometimes perverted by evil forces! I found out about this intention because I read promiscuously —- books and journals and articles and medical records: all Doah’s surgical reports, all the nurses’ notes, all the medical entries of any sort. And that is where I found it. In Doah’s four-inch-thick file was a scrawled note about our being unfit parents because we would not sign for the surgery and the date of the court proceeding. The date was only two days away.

What to do? A daring plan entered my mind: steal Doah from Renboro Children’s Hospital and take him out of state to Beanton Children’s Hospital where Noelle had been treated for her spina bifida and related birth defects three years earlier. I trusted the doctors because they listened to me. The doctors I knew there even liked me. I quickly found out more about Noelle’s former urologist, Dr. Colodny, and learned that while he was at that time specializing in lower GI problems, he had at one time worked in the area of upper GI problems. He could be Doah’s doctor, I reasoned. That thought comforted me, but we still had to get to Beanton.

We developed a step-by-step plan to steal Doah from his hospital room. I shared the plan, but not the details or the timing, with the pediatrician. He looked at me thoughtfully. Then he said, “I cannot condone what you propose. However, if you do happen to end up in Beanton, please be aware that Bob, the son of my partner, is an intern there. He can provide the link back to us and make the transition of records and information smooth.” He disappeared from the room and came back in a couple of minutes with Bob’s phone number. The pediatrician’s implicit encouragement was all that I needed to put our plan into action.

The next day, the doctors were in court, and we were at the curb outside the hospital. Charles kept the car running in a “standing only” zone. What I was about to do would not, could not, take a long time, we reasoned.

Click here to read what I did: continuation of Stealing Doah.

2. The intensity of it all. As I write, I am exactly half-way through an entire semester's course, taught in 5 days! Today the students take their midterm. This is clearly a whirlwind course! For me, too. As soon as I finish the quick takes, I will have to prepare the mid-term, but I also have 8 students coming by this afternoon for short appointments about their research papers, which they will be able to write after I leave and turn in during the rest of the "real" semester, after I am comfortably back at work. I hope that they do better on the midterm than on their "surprise" quiz yesterday, which was not a surprise but seemed to be, based on the failing grades of 1/3 of the class. I went over the results with them before they went home, and I will do an hour review before the midterm today. Hopefully, some of this information will start to gel for them. Linguistic research is not an easy topic.

3. The note in my pocket. I had loaned my warm winter coat to Sr. Maria right before coming here and did not have time to go pick it up. Sister is not young and does not drive (does not have a car), so one of my friends offered to pick it up after prayer group, which I had to skip in order to take Noelle to see Ray -- glad I did since he died soon after. After I arrived here in Lithuania this past week, I put my hand in the pocket and found a note from my friend, saying "Have a safe trip and know that I will be praying for you and your family while you are gone." How nice, a warm touch from home in the cold and snow of a Lithuanian winter!

4. Shane. Good news came for Shane this week. He will be able to get COBRA. Of course, his unemployment check covers only his rent and COBRA would be 50% of that cost, so he would not be able to afford it, but it looks like Donnie and I can pay it for him by tightening our already cinched belts considerably more. The irony is that the company that fired him in order that their insurance premiums not go up due to the 2-million-dollar medical marvel of Shane's called Nikolina will have to pay twice as much as Shane for each premium. Firing Shane may not help them achieve their goal of protecting their low premiums after all. Seems like poetic justice.

5. Shane again. It has been only two weeks since Shane was fired, and he already has an interview for another job. Woot, woot! It is in the tech field; he had been working in dispatch. He wonders if the firing will not be a kick forward since he is skilled in tech and has always been the tech specialist for dispatch wherever he worked. The entry pay is lower than he was making as a supervisor, but the pay would quickly catch up. Where a door closes, God opens a window? We don't know if this is the right job for Shane or just an encouraging fluke, but he did get called back for a follow-up interview next week, a very good sign. So, he ends the week on a hopeful note.

6. St. Casimir's. On Sunday, a friend (the one who has enticed me to come to Lithuania two winters in a row) and I attended Mass at St. Casimir's. St. Casimir is the patron saint of Lithuania, so it is no wonder that the church is Baroquely grand, made of marble, and, in the winter, very, very cold. I could barely walk all the way to the front of this huge church, colder because few people were there to warm it with body heat, for the eucharist and really happy that here the Eucharist is served on the tongue only. My hands would have been far too inflexible to take it in hand. But the church is incredibly beautiful, and I, incredibly, have no pictures of it. I did not bring a camera! :(

7. A cold in the cold. Since last night I have felt a cold trying to seize me. I have been downing all the Vitamin C tablets I can get my hands on, but I may need to buy more. I don't know if it is the cold outside, the cold inside (it took a few days to locate a space heater so I spent a lot of time under blankets, typing with frozen fingers), the cold at work (now I have a space heater there, too, as do other faculty members), or the one time I went out into the cold with wet hair (something that I would not have been able to do in some countries where I have lived because of the cultural inappropriateness but here it is okay; I forgot my hair dryer -- along with, unfortunately, my long underwear -- back in California where I need them far less). Or maybe, it is the late hours I keep. I no sooner finish my evening classes here than my Blackberry is jammed with emergency messages from work, some of which I do have to handle, making for limited sleeping hours.

And now, I had better go write that midterm!

Monday Morning Meditation #22: Thou Shalt Meditate Day and Night

This picture of our mission church is not true to its appearance at this time of year. First, the sun visits in a spectacular way; the picture of the church on the right side bar of this blog shows what that looks like. Second, during the Christmas season some of the pews are moved to make room for our living creche, "living" because Fr. Ed's adopted black feral cat, Phinean, and the parish's adopted white feral cat, Suli, are frequently found curled up, sleeping, among the artificial sheep. We rarely have a mass without one or the other in the creche. It is part of what makes this historic mission town charming.

I completed the book of Deuteronomy this week. It seemed rather repetitive. I guess I am not the only one God has to remind frequently of what I should do.

The description of Moses's death was interesting to me if for no other reason than I have climbed Mt. Nebo many times, seeing on a good day the Promised Land, as did Moses, and on a cloudy day nothing but the valley in which Moses is buried albeit it no one knows exactly where. Having slept in the wilderness of the Old Testament, swum in the Sea of Arabia (known today as the Dead Sea -- bobbed would be more accurate since it is not possible to swim normally there), lived among the contemporary Ammonites, and crossed the Jordan River on a regular basis over a two-year period, the descriptions of the wanderings of the Jews and their sallying forth into the Promised Land seem almost like a description of the various deeds of a past that is knowable. These are not esoteric places from some kind of "book" that I am reading. They are real places that I have been blessed to experience as a routine part of my life.

While I enjoyed reading through this history, nothing "hit" me until I reached the first chapter of Joshua, verse 8. It seemed like a nondescript enough verse, but it hit me between the eyes: "This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein; for then thou shalt make thy ways prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success."

Reading: Joshua 1:8

Meditation: God has been uncommonly kind to me since the time that He clobbered me over the head to get my attention to the matter that He really does exist. Since then, it has been a rare moment when I have not felt His presence. Feeling His presence, however, is a very different thing from meditating on His words. Meditating on His words turns monologue into dialogue.

Monologue is when I ask for help, offer thanks, sing praises. Monologue is about my relationship to God.

Dialogue comes from listening -- to that still small voice, to the words of God coming from another person, to scripture read aloud, and so on. Dialogue also comes from reading scripture and meditating on, from lectio divina, from images that God sends in answer to questioning prayer, and to observing actions that also come as answer to prayer. Dialogue is not about my relationship to God; dialogue is about God and me together, our relationship.

Meditating day and night can make constantly being in the presence of God even more meaningful. I gather great comfort, especially when chaos and promised disaster are raining down upon me at work in particular, in sensing the presence of God and knowing that I always have somewhere to turn for help. That is God keeping His promise to me. Meditating on His word is my keeping my promise to Him. So far, He has done the better job! So, this verse, as I said earlier, hit me between the eyes, and I have resolved to hold up my end of the relationship better in 2010. (Hm, that sounds like it could be a good New Year's Resolution.)

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to repent for letting God do so much more work than I in this wonderful relationship He has accorded me (i.e. all of us who want it), to thank God for His uncommon kindness in this respect, to give praise for His supernaturally incredible way of breaking through the mundanities of life to appear right beside me just as I need Him. After that, I will spend time in contemplation, developing the dialogue that I do crave even when I seem to get distracted by daily trifles and devolve into one-way prayer.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Sorry for the somewhat late posting. I fell asleep while writing this in the wee hours of the morning, then had a videoconference at work (one of those daily trifles that distract?), so had to do my morning meditation following the noon Mass and before heading off for some medical tests. There was time enough for a brief morning prayer before work (monologue again!). I do prefer the wee hours of the morning for contemplation. They are more peaceful, but as the verse says, "meditate day and night!"

Monday Morning Meditation #26: Meeting Our Goliaths

This week I read the next chapter of I Samuel. I was stopped by the story of David and Goliath. Now, this was not a new story for me. Even those not raised on the Bible do generally know this story, as do probably the vast majority of non-Christians in the Western world (and some in the Eastern.) What stopped me, then, was not the newness of the story but a new understanding of it.

Reading: I Samuel 17

Meditation: Perhaps surprisingly the first phrase that caught my attention was David's comment that he had no fear because after all he had taken lambs out of the mouth of lions on many occasions. Now, I think I would be quite hesitant to approach a lion even if the occasion were to present itself, but I also know that somewhere deep inside us is a need to protect that for which we feel ourselves responsible, whether it be our children or something else. It seems a part of all nature. Bears are usually timid around people until they bear young and become fiercely protective of them. Likewise, we recently had a local hen hatch and raise a brood of chickens in our yard. (The local wild fowl have the run of San Ignatio by law and by people's protection, maybe the only place in the USA with this unusual situation. So, the hens get to choose where they raise their broods.) One day a stray dog (we have a few of those, too) grabbed one of the baby chickens. The other chicks ran in many directions, and Mama Hen went wild, flying to a roost high in our tree, alternately clucking her other chicks to return and squawking in despair about the little one in the jaws of the dog. I heard the commotion, went outside, and immediately saw what was going on. Without thinking I ran over to the dog and pried the little chick out of his mouth, scolding him for being a "bad boy." Mama Hen was soon reunited with all her chicks, including the one that the dog had tried to scarf up, the latter none the worse for his great adventure, and everyone went on his or her merry way. It was only then that I realized fighting an unknown stray dog bigger than I over a baby chicken was probably not the best reasoned thing I have ever done. But, in reading David's comment, I certainly understand the emotions that propelled him.

In the story of David and Goliath we find a great deal of abandonment of self to trust in God, not that unsimilar to the abandonment that comes, as David said, from rescuing lambs from lions (or perhaps chicks from dogs). I have never had to abandon myself to a situation where I had to literally kill a Goliath, but metaphorically, figuratively, sure. I am certain we all find ourselves face to face with a Goliath in our life, and we have the choice to trust God or run away and let someone else take care of the Goliath (or be "killed" by it ourselves).

In seems like I have a whole family of Goliaths in my life. Each time one is conquered after a little while a new one appears. Each time the Goliath is vanquished by the grace of God and little more (just a pebble). When, for example, Blaine, Ksenya, and Shura appeared in our path to be taken care of, we had no money. God found it for us, including a million dollars for Shura's medical care. The Goliath of poverty was overcome by a pebble slung in the right direction, in Shura's case toward a billionaire (with some re-direction from God -- we had the wrong address; he lived in a different state, and to this day I do not know how it was that he received my letter).

Oh, yes, there is often a Goliath in front of us. It could be poverty. It could be a legal or medical obstacle. It could be a difficult supervisor at work. It could be loss of a job like Shane is experiencing right now. It could be so many things. Were it only one Goliath! Killed once and gone forever! However, if you are like me, it seems to always be a matter of one down and many to go. One down and a clear road today, but rounding the corner tomorrow, oops!, there we go again!

Maybe we encounter many Goliaths (or at least I do), so that learning to trust God becomes a matter of habit. The more we trust and find the trust to be to good avail, the greater and more automatic our trust becomes. At least, that is my calculated, meditated guess.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to repent for those times that I have tried to take on Goliath on my own or to worry that Goliath will win, to thank God for always being with me and giving me the pebbles with which to win over the Goliaths that appear in front of me, and to give praise for His incredible faithfulness in guiding my puny pebbles so that I know that I can trust Him in anything and everything. After that, I will spend time in contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Monday Morning Meditation #26: Meeting Our Goliaths

This week I read the next chapter of I Samuel. I was stopped by the story of David and Goliath. Now, this was not a new story for me. Even those not raised on the Bible do generally know this story, as do probably the vast majority of non-Christians in the Western world (and some in the Eastern.) What stopped me, then, was not the newness of the story but a new understanding of it.

Reading: I Samuel 17

Meditation: Perhaps surprisingly the first phrase that caught my attention was David's comment that he had no fear because after all he had taken lambs out of the mouth of lions on many occasions. Now, I think I would be quite hesitant to approach a lion even if the occasion were to present itself, but I also know that somewhere deep inside us is a need to protect that for which we feel ourselves responsible, whether it be our children or something else. It seems a part of all nature. Bears are usually timid around people until they bear young and become fiercely protective of them. Likewise, we recently had a local hen hatch and raise a brood of chickens in our yard. (The local wild fowl have the run of San Ignatio by law and by people's protection, maybe the only place in the USA with this unusual situation. So, the hens get to choose where they raise their broods.) One day a stray dog (we have a few of those, too) grabbed one of the baby chickens. The other chicks ran in many directions, and Mama Hen went wild, flying to a roost high in our tree, alternately clucking her other chicks to return and squawking in despair about the little one in the jaws of the dog. I heard the commotion, went outside, and immediately saw what was going on. Without thinking I ran over to the dog and pried the little chick out of his mouth, scolding him for being a "bad boy." Mama Hen was soon reunited with all her chicks, including the one that the dog had tried to scarf up, the latter none the worse for his great adventure, and everyone went on his or her merry way. It was only then that I realized fighting an unknown stray dog bigger than I over a baby chicken was probably not the best reasoned thing I have ever done. But, in reading David's comment, I certainly understand the emotions that propelled him.

In the story of David and Goliath we find a great deal of abandonment of self to trust in God, not that unsimilar to the abandonment that comes, as David said, from rescuing lambs from lions (or perhaps chicks from dogs). I have never had to abandon myself to a situation where I had to literally kill a Goliath, but metaphorically, figuratively, sure. I am certain we all find ourselves face to face with a Goliath in our life, and we have the choice to trust God or run away and let someone else take care of the Goliath (or be "killed" by it ourselves).

In seems like I have a whole family of Goliaths in my life. Each time one is conquered after a little while a new one appears. Each time the Goliath is vanquished by the grace of God and little more (just a pebble). When, for example, Blaine, Ksenya, and Shura appeared in our path to be taken care of, we had no money. God found it for us, including a million dollars for Shura's medical care. The Goliath of poverty was overcome by a pebble slung in the right direction, in Shura's case toward a billionaire (with some re-direction from God -- we had the wrong address; he lived in a different state, and to this day I do not know how it was that he received my letter).

Oh, yes, there is often a Goliath in front of us. It could be poverty. It could be a legal or medical obstacle. It could be a difficult supervisor at work. It could be loss of a job like Shane is experiencing right now. It could be so many things. Were it only one Goliath! Killed once and gone forever! However, if you are like me, it seems to always be a matter of one down and many to go. One down and a clear road today, but rounding the corner tomorrow, oops!, there we go again!

Maybe we encounter many Goliaths (or at least I do), so that learning to trust God becomes a matter of habit. The more we trust and find the trust to be to good avail, the greater and more automatic our trust becomes. At least, that is my calculated, meditated guess.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to repent for those times that I have tried to take on Goliath on my own or to worry that Goliath will win, to thank God for always being with me and giving me the pebbles with which to win over the Goliaths that appear in front of me, and to give praise for His incredible faithfulness in guiding my puny pebbles so that I know that I can trust Him in anything and everything. After that, I will spend time in contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Sabbath Sunday #10: Doah Went to Court, or God Knew Best

Fr. Christian Mathis (Blessed is the Kingdom) has made the suggestion that we "rest" on the Sabbath by taking a break from our normal blogging and sharing an older post of which we are particularly fond. Rest? Gladly! I don't get to do that very often, but now, thanks to Fr. Christian, I get to do it at least once a week -- and it gives me more time to spend with God, which is a wonderful gift. Being in the Baltic Sea resort town of Klaipeda, which is located one the western side of Lithuania, I am 7-10 hours ahead of those of you who are in the USA, including my family, so most of my Sabbath is already over, some of which I enjoyed at a Mass at St. Casimir's Church, named after the patron saint of Lithuania and located down the road from where I am teaching an intensive course in second language research methods at LCC International University, a repeat performance from last year at this time. (There's probably something perverse about coming to a beach resort only when it is lying under several feet of snow and ice!)

I chose Doah Went to Court, Or God Knew Best for this week's older post. I have copied it below to make it easier to locate it, but if you go to the post itself, you can read the comments and enjoy the image.

Doah Went to Court, Or God Knew Best

With another interesting comment coming in early this morning on the topic of God (not) answering prayer, I am thinking again about the post about my catechism classes and the teenagers' frustration when God does not give them exactly what they want -- and, in reaction, they declare that God is dead or does not exist. (Of course, much of that is for the dramatic effect of us teachers, and the rest of it is to keep up the "cool" image of the cheerleaders and ball players in the class.) What I tell them is to look beyond their own agenda and see what God might know that is better than what they want.

A highly troubling personal example bubbles to mind when I think about prayer and God knowing best. When I first returned from Jordan three years ago, I learned that my mentally challenged son Doah had gotten into some serious trouble at the local mall. At the time, he was living in a group home for disabled adults and working at a sheltered workshop, as he does now. He was in his mid-twenties, but because he never surpassed 4'7", he never seemed to be older than 8-10 years old, which is the outside limits on his mental development as well. A very affectionate person, he had seen a young girl he knew at the mall. She was with her parents. He went over to her and hugged her. At that point, all manner of chaos broke loose. Although Doah's size was the same as the girl's, the girl was only 13. The parents freaked; Doah does look "different." Mall security seized Doah, and off he went to jail. The group home director got him out of jail, but the district attorney wanted to prosecute even after the parents, who had finally figured out what was happening, dropped the charges. The DA had a goal: Get retarded people off the streets of Salts, the city where Doah lived.

Lizzie, my oldest daughter, was visiting at the time that Doah's first appearance in court took place. We had only about a day's notice. I had just returned from a long time out of the country, and the group home was not used to my being around to inform about such things and had somehow also missed informing Shane, who looks out for Doah when Donnie and I are not around. Donnie was still in Jordan. So, Lizzie and I went to court with Doah. However, because Doah is not conserved and is of age, neither of us was allowed to appear with him. We had to sit in the back of the courtroom.

When the judge called Doah, he read him the charges: sexual molestation. (For a hug!??!) The judge then asked Doah if he understood the charges. Of course, he did not. He appeared quite confused, and the judge repeated, "Please answer me. Do you understand the charges?"

Doah responded, "You give me credit card? I buy something?" Now the judge was confused! He looked around the courtroom, somewhat desperately, and saw Doah's social work leaning over the barrier.

"Are you with this young man?" he asked.

The social worker identified his name and position and was allowed to approach the bench. He told them that there was family in the area and that the family wanted a private attorney. (The judge had been about to assign a court-appointed attorney, and, I fear, that would have been a railroad job. The DA would have had his highly visible case that could have turned into sanctioned discrimination against an entire class of people.)

We have a friend who is considered one of the best defense attorneys in Salts. I had actually been instrumental at one point in putting him on the fast track to practicing law in California so he helps us out from time to time. He took Doah's case gratis. He thought it would be open-and-shut, but it turned out that the DA would not budge. He had a chance to make a name for himself and get his agenda implemented, and he planned to do it. Our lawyer was temporarily stymied, and Doah was definitely going to be put on trial. There were only two possible outcomes of such a trial: (1) jail for a year, or (2) probation and identification for life as a sex offender.

So, if Doah were your son, which outcome would you pray for? Being in jail would have taught my little imitator how to do many bad things that would have followed him the rest of his life to his detriment. Probation was fine, but being labeled as a sex offender would also have followed him all his life to his detriment. So, I asked God for the only thing I thought could possibly work: for God to make the decision on what would happen to Doah.

The morning after that prayer, our lawyer called me excitedly. He said he had turned the case over and over in his mind and saw no way to win; he had spent a couple of days trying to convince the DA that what he was doing was wrong-headed and not appropriate in this case and still saw no way to win, given the DA's stubbornness. Then, when he got out of bed that morning, a thought from nowhere had tumbled into his head: the DA has a supervisor. So, he went to the DA's supervisor, explained the whole case, told him that he had known Doah since Doah was 9 years old, and that what had happened was only a result of Doah's generally friendly nature. The supervisor agreed that there was more than met the eye, requested a psychological examination, and said that a third option would be added: If the psychological examination confirmed the lawyer's analysis, then Doah would be put on probation for a year and if there were no further incidents all court records would be expunged as if nothing had ever occurred.

And, so, that is exactly what happened. The psychologist said that Doah had the mental acuity only to determine whether a behavior was good or bad but not the ability to understand that a good behavior becomes a bad behavior depending upon circumstance. That would be too fine a distinction for him to make. In other words, hugging is good at home, school, church, parties where you know everyone, but it is bad at the mall. Doah could not possibly draw that kind of conclusion, given his mental capacity. So, option three was taken by the court, and a year later the DA himself requested that the case be withdrawn and the records removed.

How blessed we were that God had a third answer. How happy I am that I did not ask for one of the only two options that I knew about. (I suspect, though, that if I had asked for one of those options, God would still have introduced the third, better, one.)

So, yes, I say to my catechism students, God does say "no," and we should be grateful that God knows best!

7 Quick Takes Friday #12

I arrived in Klaipeda, Lithuania just in time to contribute to the 7 Quick Takes Friday meme hosted by Jennifer at Conversion Diary. This, though, is only because while it is near the end of the day Friday here, it is the high point of the day in the USA. It has been an eventful week, beginning with sadness last Friday with the death of Ray, only one day after Shane lost his job, and ending on more positive tones. So, here is a quick round-up, not by day exactly, more like by topic, of this week.

1. Mass. Thanks to Martin Luther King Day being a holiday, I was able to go to daily Mass twice in a row: Monday and Tuesday. I had taken Tuesday off because I had thought I would be flying at that time, but the situation with Ray threw some of those plans out of kilter. I even had time on both (!) days to have coffee (milk for me) with friends who had also been at Mass. I have been traveling so much they had forgotten who I was (not really), but catching up is always fun to do, especially when there is no real time limit.

2. SFO. Sunday I attended our Secular Franciscan meeting. I have not been in a few months. November I was in some state/country or other -- forget exactly where. December was cancelled. For some reason (well, actually because I brought up some requests), it turned into a prayer fest (inspiring), followed by a delayed holiday exchange of gifts (fun). Everyone had brought food donations for a local project, and I offered to take them to the project director. Good intentions rarely going unpunished, I managed to back the car into a tree when I backed up to get closer to the door for loading the food. Inconsiderate tree! It just did not seem to want to move out of my way. So, I have a dent in the back bumper that proves to Donnie that I really am as bad a driver as he thinks I am.

3. Prayer Group. I always look forward to our Monday night prayer group. I co-lead with a spiritual director, Robert, who comes down from the St. Francis Retreat Center. Actually, he does the leading, and I do the shepherding in the sense of networking, reminding people, gathering the clans. Since I had not expected to be in town Monday, I did not send out the routine notices, and I learned how important they are: no one showed up except Sr. M and me. From a selfish point of view, that was great. I love Sr. M and learn a lot from her, and we had two hours or more to share scripture, experience, and prayer. What a great way to end the day!

4. Shane moving forward. Shane has spent the week recovering from the shock of losing his job in spite of just having received a raise for outstanding performance. Although the Human Resource office has forbidden his supervisor, who disagreed with the decision, from telling Shane the reason, it would appear that little Nikolina's $2 million insurance bill accompanied by the significant amount of leave that Shane had to take at one time was the reason. The reason does not matter as much as finding insurance coverage for Nikolina, and surprisingly, Stanford University Hospital offered to try to help. Apparently, there are programs now for people in such dire circumstances. So, Shane spent some time in Palo Alto this week. I will provide an update to the Clan under Siege post on Clan of Mahlou once I get settled in here on the cold Baltic Sea.

5. A Matter of Attitude. The United Airlines plane that was supposed to carry me to Frankfort for transfer to a Lufthansa flight to Vilnius did not leave the San Francisco Airport on Wednesday. Flight 900 was simply a doomed flight, all because of as broken PA system. Apparently, planes cannot fly without a way to communicate between crew and all passengers, not just those in some of the cabins, and since the plane we were on had a PA system that ignored the back rows of economy class, we returned to the airport three times after trying to take off while mechanics scratched their heads over how to fix the system. They wanted to turn off the broken speaker but did not know which circuit breaker to pull. As a result, they pulled us -- off the plane and into seven hours of waiting for another plane. People became cranky, as did some of the customer representatives. (I think I shall send some suggestions to United; Shane used to work the complaint counter at Sears when he was 16 and did a better job of not personalizing the comments of frustrated people than did some of the senior airlines people on Wednesday. Patience is a virtue in such cases.) Of course, it is a two-way street, and not being cranky usually gets one a better deal. For me, it paid off: a hotel room in Frankfurt and dinner. Yes, I was a day late in arriving, but at least I arrived during the day. The alternative would have been to debark the plane in Vilnius at 0001 in the morning, with no place but a snowbank for a bed, Klaipeda being four hours away, the driver snoring away in the comfort of his own home, and the only nearby hotel having closed its doors two hours earlier.

6. Frankfurt. Oh, the lark of it! Yes, I was stranded. Yes, I was supposed to start teaching Friday. Yes, both the students and I would have to make up the missed hours. Nonetheless, there I was in Frankfurt, speaking German. Rusty German, to be sure, but I was able to practice it at check-in, dinner, the ticket counter in the morning. I rarely get a chance to speak German (although a trip earlier this year did help to refresh my memory), and for me the practice and renewal of the language was worth the irritation of an interrupted flight. Oh, and did I mention that the duck dinner was sumptious?

7. Klaipeda. Finally! I arrived in Vilnius in the early afternoon on the coldest day in history for that date's temperature, easily picked out the tall driver from the university, clambered into his station wagon, and proceeded to chat for the next 3-4 hours, the length of the drive from Vilnius to Klaipeda. The driver did not speak much English but was quite at home in Russian. A chance to practice another foreign language although Russian does not seem "foreign" to me. The only difficulty was my lack of a four-hour bladder, four kids having demolished the only bladder I ever had with constant kicking throughout pregnancies. Fortunately, we found a roadside facility about an hour from Klaipeda, and I was much more lively after that.

However, now I have to go to bed (yes, I know it is only noon in the USA), so that I can get up and prepare to teach six hours of class tomorrow (down two hours from the eight hours that the dean had promised (threatened?) the students. We can get in all the hours required for the semester in the next two weeks with only six hours a day on weekends. Only?? It will be interesting to see if the students can match my fortitude for work. And so, without further ado, good-night!

Monday Morning Meditation #25: Not As Man Sees

This week I read past the rejection of the Israelites of God as their king and their demand for a human king and past the story of King Saul and his periodic turning away from God and God's forgiveness again and again. All of this sounds like a modern-day story, and I suppose I could have reflected on any of it. However, I did not feel God leading me in that direction. Rather, my mind came to rest on the story of the annointing of David as successor to Saul. Samuel, in trying to discern which of the seven sons of Jesse the Bethlehemite presented to him would be king was led to think that the eldest, comeliest, tallest, and strongest was the most suited. "But the LORD said unto Samuel: 'Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have rejected him; for it is not as man seeth: for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.'" It was ultimately the less physically endowed, harp-playing David who was chosen.

Reading: I Samuel 16:7

Meditation: I wonder how many better decisions we might make and better conclusions we might reach if we were to see as God sees, not as man sees. How many times have we judged a book by its cover, to use a modern expression? One of the most well known instances of this of recent days would be Susan Boyle's appearance in front of the Britain Has Talent judges. One could see their mirth at the thought that such a frumpy woman could sing. They even toyed with her. And then she opened her mouth!

A student of mine a number of years ago did a graduate thesis on presidential elections in the United States. Quite surprisingly (perhaps surprising only to me because I am so very short), the tallest candidate nearly always was elected president. (Hm, our presidents are getting taller and taller -- and, given this criterion, Hilary Clinton never had a chance.)

When we judge people from the outside, we make the mistake that God prevented Samuel from making. And because we do not see as God sees, there is likely much evil passing as good among us for evil can dress itself in the garbs of good very easily, slipping into our lives, living with us, and being widely accepted simply because it looks like good.

We may never be able to see as God sees, only as He helps us to see when the need arises. Nonetheless, we can come a little closer if we look at the heart, as God instructed Samuel, and not at the body, and especially if we put aside our preconceived ideas of beauty, good, and worthiness and listen to what God tells us about each of these and about the people, things, and ideas in our lives. No, we cannot see as God sees; we will always see more or less as man sees, but we can keep in mind that our eyesight is not 20/20 spiritually and allow God to lead us when our vision is especially clouded.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to repent for those times that I have tried to see with my own eyes, to thank God for pointing out what I should really be seeing, and to give praise for His incredible patience in being willing to teach me over and over again how to see. After that, I will spend time in contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Sabbath Sunday #9: Tender Mercy

Fr. Christian Mathis (Blessed Is the Kingdom) has made the suggestion that we "rest" on the Sabbath by taking a break from our normal blogging and sharing an older post of which we are particularly fond. Rest? Gladly! I don't get to do that very often, but now, thanks to Fr. Christian, I get to do it at least once a week -- and it gives me more time to spend with God, which is a wonderful gift.

Given Friday's death in the family, with which we are still coping, I hope you will understand if I simply point to yesterday's post on that matter, Tender Mercy, rather than taking the time to find an older, perhaps more interesting, post.

Many thanks to all of you for your condolences and especially your prayers at this time. They -- and you -- are appreciated.

Tender Mercy

Many, many thanks to all of you who have been praying for Ray and our family, especially those who promised to pray at 6:00 last night as he was taken off life support. There was no way to let you all know that the 6:00 prayers were excess -- but, then, are any prayers really excesss? -- for Ray had already passed away by that time.

At 9:20 a.m., Noelle called me at my office. She told me that the hospital had just called. The doctor relayed the information that Ray's respirator hose had suddenly and unexpectedly torn, and he had died instantly. The doctor added that no one had touched the hose at all, so there was some puzzlement as to how it had happened; this is not something that they routinely worry about or look for.

That event made unnecessary the need to go to the hospital at 6:00, give permission to remove Ray from life support, and watch him die. While Noelle is experiencing much grief from losing Ray, there was wonderment and immense relief in her voice as she told me what happened. She had been very apprehensive about the planned trip to the hospital.

"This is a blessing, Mom," she told. "A real blessing. He did not die by my hand, by my concurrence that he should be unplugged. He just died because his life was over."

Sometimes God's kind mercy is so startling that one cannot even say a normal prayer but just keep repeating over and over in awe and gratitude, "My Lord and my God, THANK YOU!"

Concurrently posted on Clan of Mahlou and Modern Mysticism.

Joy in Despair

For me, in dark moments, moments of grief, I am helped by focusing on moments of joy from the past, knowing that life is a balance of both. As we await the pulling of the plug and the formal end of Ray's life, with the understanding that he really died a week ago and has been artificially kept alive thanks to marvelous modern technology, I think back to something that happened a few years ago and which I describe at the end of my book, Blest Atheist.

Even if there are difficulties ahead, there will be help and protection. There will also be rewards. There always are. With God, the rewards are unanticipated and unusual. The simplest among them are the greatest.

One evening last December, the thought came into my head that I should take my evening walk around the mission grounds early. Normally I walk there around 9:00 p.m., and it was only 6:00 when I felt the push to go outside for my walk.

No, I thought. Why would I want to go now? Even though the eventide falls around 5:30 on December nights in San Ignatio, I still prefer to go later—after dinner and dishes and before retiring for the night. It is a marvelously restful way to end the day. Walking brings out the happy endorphins, and just being at the mission provides great encouragement toward prayer.

No, I’ll go later, I thought and began cleaning the kitchen in preparation for dinner. Then the impulse came again. The “argument” went back and forth a couple of times until I approached Donnie, who usually accompanies me on these walks.

“Donnie, how do you feel about taking our evening walk early tonight?” I asked.

“Why?” he asked.

“I don’t know why,” I answered. “I just feel like we should go early.”

Donnie acquiesced and quickly assembled his pipe tools. (He likes to sit and smoke while I walk.) We opened the door and stepped out under the night sky. And there it was, spread across the heavens: a breathtaking lunar ice halo.

Ice halos are rings of light that surround the sun, moon, or other sources of light, such as street lamps. The ones in the heavens are caused by millions of ice crystals in thin, cold, cirrus clouds floating in the troposphere reflecting and refracting light. This particular ice halo was circumhorizonal, a rare phenomenon for which adequately descriptive words, other than scientific ones, are even rarer. Refracted light from the moon spread in a 360-degree circle all around the sky on the same level as the moon yet at the same time touching the horizon wherever we turned—or so it seemed although in actuality the circle of light was parallel to the horizon and not lying upon it. The halo filled the whole sky, with the full moon in its zenith filtering a stream of light through a gossamer foramen in the firmament onto the mission grounds below.

I could almost hear the proud words, “Look what I did!” The hymn of Isaac Waats came to mind instantly: “The moon shines full at His command, and all the stars obey.”

On the mission grounds canopied by the horizon-to-horizon crystal glow, I walked, my arms extended. Irrepressible joy spread past my fingertips, riding on the splendor of light toward the horizon.

Then it was gone. Had I come at my usual time, I would have missed it.

These then are the things that have been seen and experienced by the blest atheist. All the events reported herein [in the book] have enriched my life, but the greatest of these was God sharing with me the lunar ice halo: “Look what I have done!” The hound of Heaven had finally caught me and then had shown me what I had been missing: “Look what I have done!” Indeed, I could almost hear those words and a few more: “Look at what I have done—for you, for all people, because I love you whether or not you even believe that I exist.”

All the miracles that God has done in my life and in the lives of others through me have been wondrous, but pulling me outside to view the ice halo stands out above them all as the most affirming act of God’s love. The miracles were about healing and turning bad into good. They have been important, of course. Viewing the ice halo, however, was about relationship: God’s relationship with me, God’s relationship with all of us. When God called me from my house onto the street and into the field at the mission, I understood that I was special—not special out of many, but special among many, special like all people are special to God.

On an individual level, I was and am at best only a Good Samaritan, and still God wanted a relationship with me. In so many ways, I was and am but a child who finds the adults who can help a sick child artist, a crying lady, a boy in white, or an orphan dying from brain tumors. Like a child, I have no burning desire for financial gain, material possessions, or fame and power. Those desires were beaten out of me in my youth. Although many of these things have appeared unbidden in my life, my true treasure is the people who have come into my life from all continents of the world. There is where my heart is. I want to “pass on” the good that God has brought into my life by using my linguistic proficiency, cultural acumen, and multi-domain knowledge gained from living in the land of splat! to connect people who need help with people who have the ability to give help, no matter where they live or what language they speak. For what good is money if it cannot be used to help those in need? What good are material things unless they make this world a friendlier place: a blanket to warm a homeless man, food for a hungry family, clothes for those burned out of a home? What good is power if not used to empower the powerless to be free to flourish? What good, too, is dreaming an impossible dream if it does not kindle the dreams of others? What good is reaching an unreachable star if it does not sprinkle light onto a dark existence? What good is happiness if it does not splash joy onto dispirited ground, inspiriting the life within to sprout and reach for the heavens? If, indeed, as I have found, helping those in need, making the world a friendlier place, empowering the powerless, kindling dreams, lighting the dark, and splashing joy across the land is what a Good Samaritan does, then I want to be a Good Samaritan for life. To my delight, God seems willing to use me in that capacity. For certain, God knows my heart and what I treasure.

God has many Good Samaritans. Some, like me, are blessed to help a few wounded souls in intensive ways. Others are blessed to help many people in more extensive, but less intensive, ways. Some God leads with their full knowledge. Others, like me for so many years, God leads through their hearts alone. In return, God gives them a treasure far greater than money, honor, power, or prestige: they know a perfect joy that nothing else can give.

I am sure that others saw the ice halo that night for God encourages all people to step bravely out of the grey boxes in which they are cowering and stride buoyantly forth into a divine world resplendent with color, love, and joy. In our tiny town, though, I was the only one who showed up at the mission to see the splendor on that particular winter evening. Others may have showed up elsewhere for the ice halo could be seen for miles. Perhaps even more were called to behold it but were not listening. Those who did listen experienced an unrelenting tug to come outside and witness an awe-inspiring manifestation of God’s loving caress ephemerally spread against the heavens and permanently imprinted in the mind and on the heart.


Note: Concurrently published on all Mahlou blogs.

The Paper Clip

When I reached my seat on the Washington-Phoenix leg of my flight home last week, I found a paper clip on my seat. Now that was a rather odd item to have been left behind, I thought, and commented on it to the person in the seat beside me.

“Maybe you will need it,” she said, off-handedly, and we went on to discuss other, seemingly more relevant things.

Later, we became absorbed in our own readings. I had casually pulled the U. S. Airways magazine out of the seat pocket in front of me and started flipping through it, more as a warm-up to doing any serious reading – I had brought a book with me – than anything else. Then, my interest was piqued. I noticed the title of an article about open-space work areas. We are having heated debates on that topic at work, as I strive to put an additional 100 people into our current space. The space committee had just handed (well, e-mailed) me a plan the day before that I knew would draw an irate response from some employees who will have to give up private offices that they have had for nearly ten years and join the open-space environment. The article reported on research, published by Harvard Business Review, that showed a range of advantages to open-space designs and provided excellent grist for a reply to my employees’ anticipated concerns.

That was one article I wanted to save, but I know me. If I put the magazine, which passengers are encouraged to take with them, in my carry-on, I might or might not remember when I took it out that this particular article was there, and after a day or so, I might simply toss out the magazine along with others. (I frequently bring home the airline magazines in the event that Donnie might like to read something or I might like to re-read an article, which, hah!, only happens in my plans). However, I had the perfect solution to the memory-failure dilemma. I had a paper clip. I clipped the magazine open to the first page of the article. Now I would, for sure, remember and have the article available when needed because it will be needed.

So the lady beside was right. I was going to need that paper clip. It’s the little ways of taking care of us that sometimes make God seem the most powerful.

Monday Morning Meditation #24: Here I Am, Lord

I just could not find anything in the remaining chapters of Joshua upon which to reflect, nor in Judges. Perhaps it was my restless soul, given the current state of alternating hope and despair re Ray. Stumbling on mechanistically into I Samuel, Chapter 2, the passage in which God called Samuel to himself, brought me out of my intellectual stupor. Yes, that is a story no one can read through casually. It has so much significance for our own lives.

Reading: I Samuel 3: 1-10.

Meditation: How many times have we been called and, like Samuel, attribute it to some earthly event or person? How many times have we ignored a call because we were too busy, not listening, or afraid to step up to the duty? Discernment is not always easy, but sometimes we don't have to do all the work ourselves. Sometimes we don't have to do any of the work at all; God takes the initiative and lets us know what He wants us to do through other people, scripture, seemingly personally directed homilies, other events, and myriad other ways. When God wanted me in my current position, He closed all the doors to my staying in Jordan, and when I decided to leave, God found ways to let me know that He wanted me to stay, including sending people to me with the comments I needed to hear in order to decide to stay. (See my earlier post, The Jobs God Would Not Let Me Have and the One He Insisted I Take and Keep.)

The important thing is to be 100% open and willing. Once I realized that God really wanted me in my current position, I immediately stopped looking to move on. At that point, an extraordinary thing occurred: my boss raised my salary considerably because he had learned that I had been interviewed elsewhere and he wanted to keep me. It was more money than I needed, and I assumed that it had come in part as a blessing from God. So, I have returned most of the money to God through sending it to various charities. It does get spread quite thin at a time, but it is what allows me to use God's credit card and keep payments current. I give where God points out I should give. Ah, the blessings from saying "Here I am, Lord; I will serve You wherever it is You want me to be" have been tremendous.

I love the song, "Here I am, Lord,", which goes on to ask, "Is it I, Lord?" It is one of the songs listed on the right side bar, but I am putting the URL here to make it easier for those who have not heard it to listen to it. To listen to the song, click here.

I hope you will find that song as much of an inspirational beginning to the week as I do. And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to repent for those times that I have not quickly enough realized that God was calling me to do something or other, to thank God for trusting me with some of His tasks, and to give praise for the extraordinary power that allows Him to reach us through all the interference that comes from what we call daily life. After that, I will spend time in contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Sabbath Sunday #8: What I Wrote on Genny's Site

Fr. Christian Mathis (Blessed Is the Kingdom) has made the suggestion that we "rest" on the Sabbath by taking a break from our normal blogging and sharing an older post of which we are particularly fond. Rest? Gladly! I don't get to do that very often, but now, thanks to Fr. Christian, I get to do it at least once a week -- and it gives me more time to spend with God, which is a wonderful gift.

Hoping for something lighter than recent fare, I chose What I Wrote on Genny's Blog for this week's older post. I have copied it below to make it easier to locate it, but if you go to the post itself, you can read the comments and enjoy the image.

What I Wrote on Genny's Post

Since I do have to get some sleep before leaving Duke University, where I have been this week at a conference, I decided to take the easy way out and post here something I wrote on Genny's site, about which she commented on my post about panhandling. (That's not really cheating, is it?) Genny was complaining that her house was full of bugs because her son loves them, but she finds them, well, a little off-putting. What I wrote to her was the following:

My son's house is filled with bugs, like yours, because my 7-year-old grandson, Nathaniel, is fascinated with anything that flies or crawls. We think he may grow up to be an entomologist -- he knows the scientific details of hundreds more bugs than I do. For example, we were walking to a local art fair downtown (downtown being three blocks in our 6x8 block town), and I pointed out a butterfly sitting on a hedge to him. "Grandma, that's not just any butterfly," he responded. "It's a painted lady." Well, pardon me! His wish list right now is for a black widow spider -- he thinks the red hour glass is beautiful. We do have them, but I don't want to be the one to try to catch it.

Still, it is all an improvement over his little scientist father who at the age of 9 nearly burned our house down twice with his fire experiments. (1) The bathroom: he set two candles with the same amount of parafin on fire -- one short and fat, one long and lean, to see whether shape affected speed of burning; on that experiment, we lost our bathroom. (2) The roof: I caught him dropping burning objects from the roof. When confronted, he responded, "Newton said that two objects fall at the same rate regardless of mass, but if one were to be on fire, wouldn't there be thermal uplift, retarding the rate of fall?" Oh, my! We spent the next nine years, throwing out every match we found and conducting daily treasure hunts for matches.

Stick with the bugs -- they won't destroy your home! ;)