The Dirty Little Relationship Secret of Women and Purses

I have uncovered the root of the age old dilemma of why a rational woman can be in a monogamous relationship with one man for an entire lifetime but cannot remain faithful to one purse for longer than six months. Admit it ladies, we all have the pile of cast offs in the back of our closet to prove it.

A woman goes out and finds a purse that she absolutely loves, and for a short time that purse is everything she will ever need. Eventually though the purse's flaws begin to show; the cell phone pocket is on the wrong side, there is no place to secure a pen so everytime you need one you have to practically dump out the entire contents of the purse just to find one, not enough space for all your credit cards -- how on earth can you live with that -- I ask you?

After exhaustive discussion with many of my women friends, and looking over all of my stash of old purses for evidence I have come to a conclusion about why it is that women can't remain with one purse for the long haul. It is because we don't get to date our purses!

When we see a purse we like in the store we have to make a full time commitment to it. We don't get the chance to try it out for a while and see what flaws it might have before we decide to take it on. I don't know about the rest of you, but if I had had to make a decision about mrangelmeg on the first day we met, chances are he would have not made the cut, as cute as he was at the time it took a while for his charms to grow on me. On the other hand some of the guys I thought I really liked on that first look turned out to be really really not worth a second or third date (one wasn't even worth the first date, but that is entirely another story).

Yet, when we pick up that purse in the store and look it over and decide that it is the right color, or has the right kind of pockets and amenities we have to make a commitment to it. It is only after we are committed to it that we find out that it has flaws.

In a relationship with a person, you tend to learn their flaws before you make a commitment to them, and you can decide if you are willing to live with the flaws, or if you are wiling to put in the effort to help them overcome their flaws. Not so with purses. A purse has flaws that will never go away, so you just have to live with them, and they begin to grate on your nerves.

That is why a woman will put a perfectly good purse on the pile at the back of her closet at the start of a "new season" and go off to hunt for a new model. The old one let us down. We are looking for perfection.

I noticed in my research that I tend to buy almost the exact same purse, just in different colors each new season. It has a pocket for my IPod and another for my cell phone. It has a built in wallet and is medium in size. I considered for a moment just going back to one of my old purses when the latest one let me down, but as I looked through the pile all I saw were the flaws in the old ones.

Sigh, I suppose it is time to go out and try to find a new, perfect match. Maybe, just maybe this one will be exactly what I am looking for in a purse.

Hey, stop laughing, it could happen!

Pax

A New Year

It has been a year since my mom's death.  In the Victorian era it would be time to take the black wreath off of the door and stop wearing black clothing.  It is time to move on, get on with the stuff of living. They had the right idea.

Now I feel as though I can move on.  My regrets are fewer, and my memories are sweeter.  I can imagine a life without my mother in it now.  I am ready to get on with the stuff of living again.  I love my mother, but I know that she is where she wants to be, in heaven with my dad.   And I can be happy that she is there now in a way I couldn't be a year ago.

My year of mourning is over.

Pax

A Class Act from a Classy Kid

Glee is getting a new foreign exchange student this season thanks to The Glee Project.

Damian McGinty won a 7 episode arc on Glee last night on the finally of The Glee project.  He did such an amazing job singing Beyond the Sea and giving it his own unique twist (in a way that no one on Glee has ever done to my way of thinking.  A kid with an old world, Sinatra-esque charm will be a nice addition to the show's cast.

What is most impressive to me is that throughout the entire Glee Project Damian was the most humble, consistently nice and endearing, and real contestant of all of them.  Of course he was trying to win, but he didn't have to be fake or hurtful of others in order to do it.  That is just the kind of kid that he is.

And his class really showed through in this letter that was posted on the Celtic Thunder Website today.  He has been with Celtic Thunder since he was 14 years old (oh yeah, that is why he looks so familiar, you are saying to yourself).  While he is sad to have to leave them, he knows that being on Glee is just the start of a whole new part of his life.

I wish him all the best.

What He Said: Fr. Barron responds to Bill Maher's "Religulous"

The Longest Journey . . .

is the one that takes us deep within.

It is this inner journey where we encounter God in the most profound way, because at our core is where God resides. This journey involves spending a lot of time in prayer. And to me, the best form of prayer for the inner journey isn't verbal, conversational prayer, but silent, contemplative prayer.

I read an interesting quote by Abraham Joshua Heschel about prayer that in essence says that it is conceit to think that we can actually talk to God.  Prayer is more of an immersion in God, being enveloped and surrounded by God's love and mercy.  

That is the best definition of contemplative prayer.  When I practice contemplation that is exactly what I feel,  I feel as though I am immersed in God's love, totally surrounded by it and gaining strength from it in the silence of my prayer time.

My favorite analogy for God is the ocean.  I am a fish in the ocean and God is the water that surrounds me and sustains me in every way.  In it I move and breath and have my being.  I am so comfortable in my surroundings that I sometimes forget that everything that I have comes from God's love.   As I meditate on this image it helps me to go deeper into myself and uncover my dependence on God and my deep and abiding love for his tender mercies.

Don't be afraid to try contemplative prayer,  just remember that in this case, the longest journey, begins with one image.

Pax

Blogaversary: I'm 7 This Year!

Seven years ago this month I started on this journey of blogging my thoughts for my loyal readers to enjoy. I have written a lot of my life experiences and done some pretty darn good essays about matters of faith. I have enjoyed sharing things I have read or seen on other sights or in the news. But to be completely honest, the most important reason that I have kept this up for seven years is that I can't afford therapy.

Writing is my therapy. I would continue to write on this blog if no one ever visited this site. I have wondered at times about ways to increase my readership, but it doesn't really matter. I write for me, and in some cases, I write for God. So if someone stumbles onto my site or is directed here because of my Facebook or Twitter links and is inspired or challenged by something I write, that is God's plan.

My goal isn't to have thousands of followers or win awards for what I write here. My goal is to write what is in my heart. If what I write touches one person, then that is enough for me.

Thank you to those of you who show up here from time to time to see what I decide to share on these pages. Thanks even more to those of you who comment on my posts, because your comments make me think and make me stronger in my faith and make me a better writer as well.

I wonder what the next year will bring? It will be fun finding out.

Pax

The Real Vocational Crisis: We Aren't Praying Equally for All of Them

Twice in the past two days I have heard or read impassioned prayers for young people to be open to God's vocational call to the priesthood and religious life.  Neither prayer mentioned asking God's help for these young people to listen carefully and thoughtfully to God's call to Holy Matrimony, which is also a vocational path to which arguably most of these young men and women will be more likely to be called than to either the Priesthood or religious life.  I think this is a very huge mistake.

I contend that a lot of the problem with marital difficulties among men and women who were raised in the Catholic church might be because we live in a larger culture that sees marriage as a limited, disposable and often unnecessary institution.  And then within our churches we hear prayers for vocations which call only the priesthood and religious life as being set apart, called by God for a higher purpose.

Speaking for myself as well as my devoted husband,  we both know that from a young age we were called to the vocation of marriage.  We went into our marriage thinking of it as a vocational choice to honor God and through how we live our lives and raise our children to point others toward God.  In the act of having our five beautiful children, and raising them in the faith we are doing it for the greater good of the Kingdom.  We continually pray for our marriage as a vocation, and to help  our children be open to God's vocational call to them wherever  that call may lead them.

And yet, when the Church as a whole prays for vocations, my children only hear about vocations to the priesthood and religious life.  They don't hear about marriage as a vocation and rarer still are prayers for the vocation of single Catholic adult. (to which at least one of my children has been called I believe).

As I see it (and have only heard in one vocational prayer) Marriage is the source of all other vocations.  Without holy marriages open to procreation where will  the Church find the children  to be called to be the next generation of priests and religious?  Since the church doesn't believe in artificial insemination they won't be creating them in a laboratory.

I also contend that if we worked as a church to pray for and strengthen the vocation of Holy Matrimony, and teach it as a vocation to which men and women are called the crisis in vocations to the priesthood and religious life will be overcome.  Men and women will choose marriage more wisely and with a thought toward having more than 2.2 children (if you look at some of the families in our churches today you see these kinds of couples already emerging).  More children raised in the faith means more children for God to call to vocations  to the priesthood and religious life.

So the cure for the vocations crisis is not in praying for more vocations to the priesthood and religious life, but in praying for the vocation of holy matrimony first, or at least as equal to and on the same level as the other vocations in the church.

I wonder if we had an International year of the Family within the church, and focused all of our prayers for an entire year on that vocation, what kind of miracles might begin to happen?

Pax

Knitting Myself Back Together

I just realized something about a week ago.  I haven't really been knitting much since January.  That means since the worst of my depression I haven't been able to pick up the needles and work the stitches.

Then about a week ago I pulled a book off of my stack of "to be read when I have the time" novels and began to read.  The book just happened to be The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood.  It is a book about knitting and grief.  One woman early on in the book even says "We knit to save our lives."

In an amazing God-incidence, the final character introduced to the knitting circle in the book is a woman named Maggie who is so filled with grief that she can't seem to learn even the most basics of knitting.

After I finished reading the book I read the Author's forward (in the reading group copy, Norton Publishing,). In it Ms. Hood states that during a time of grief in her own life she lost her ability to write.  I too am experiencing a very dry spell in my own writing.  I can't seem to get any ideas from my head into words on the screen.  I am at a total loss.  I barely even write in my journal.  It was such a gift to know that 1) another writer had been where I am now and found her way out of it successfully and 2) knitting helped.

So, I am picking up a project I began last Christmas when my daughter was visiting; a shawl for her to take on airplanes where she is always cold that she can use as a blanket on the plane but wear as a shawl through the airport.  It has a beautiful basket-weave pattern that is very rhythmic and will help me get out of my thoughts.  Each stitch will be a prayer for my daughter and with each stitch I will hopefully be closer and closer to feeling like I can live without the weight of my grief someday.

It feels good to have the needles in my hands again.  The yarn slips through my fingers and with each row the shawl takes shape.  In a very cathartic way it even feels good to tink and frog -- remove mistakes for non knitters.  Tink means to remove stitches one at a time  (knit spelled backward, get it) and frogging means ripping out entire rows or numbers of rows of stitches (rip-it  rip-it rip-it).  And when I finish this project I have already picked out my next one, but I need to make a trip to the yarn store for that because I looked in my needle drawer and I don't have the right needles to make it.  Wonder what treasures I will find when I get there?

Pax

Crock-Pot Healing

We are so immersed in the Microwave generation it is really hard for us to think in the long term anymore.  So when healing takes a long time it can be really hard to be a patient patient.  I am in the middle of a long slow healing process, and I am running low on patience.  I want to be back to normal now.  Each time I go to the Dr. I get good news, but even that isn't enough.  I want a microwave healing instead of a crock pot healing.

As I was thinking about this the other day I remembered a story one of my spiritual directors told me about St. Therese the Little Flower.  She was very impatient for something to happen and her spiritual director told her that you can empty  a vase by turning it over and dumping out the water or you can empty the water by dropping in one tiny pebble after the other.  Each tiny pebble displaces a bit of the water, and eventually after enough pebbles have been dropped into the vase the water will all be gone,  and in its place will be thousands of tiny pebbles.  God works in both ways; sometimes God chooses the latter way because it is more compassionate.  We need the time that it takes with each pebble drop to adjust to the change in water level.

So the slow and steady upward trend of my healing is just fine by me because God's timing, while it may not be my ideal choice, is perfect. I would love to be healthy tomorrow, but there is much I can learn as I wait; patience, cooperation, determination, courage, strength and an appreciation for how fearfully, wonderfully I am made.

Pax

Be Careful How You Word Your Prayers

So, I have had a horrible dry stretch in my writing.  I have attempted at least three times a week to open the files for either project I am working on and I sit for at least a half hour staring at a blank computer screen and I can think of nothing to write.   I haven't even been able to write blog posts that I think are very good.  I have written a few that I thought were passable,  but not like the old days. 

I mentioned it to a friend how frustrating it feels to be a writer with nothing in my head to write and she told me a story.  

There is a psychologist who works with people in Los Angeles. At times he works with creative types like screenwriters and authors.  When one of his patients has writer's block he says they should try this:

Every day when you wake up you say a prayer asking God to allow you to write the worst sentence you have ever written, and then set about the task of writing.  Somehow giving yourself permission to write lousy prose breaks through the mental block you are experiencing.  

So, I did just that, for weeks I prayed that God would allow me to write the worst sentence I had ever written.  Then I sat there at my computer and still nothing came.  Then one day I was sitting at my computer trying to write a blog post about gratitude and it happened.  I wrote three of the worst sentences I had ever written in my entire life.    They were trite, uninteresting and  made less than no sense.  

I sat at my computer, and looked at them and almost cried with relief.  God had answered my prayer.  

I learned two very important lessons that day:  1) God answers prayers in God's time, so be persistent in prayer.  and 2) be really specific about what you want from God.  Why couldn't I have asked in my prayer for God to allow me to write like I used to write; meaningful prose from deep in my soul?   Prose that was so beautiful that sometimes I would read it and wonder at the fact that it had actually come from me.  

Thank you God for answering my prayer, but next time could you give me what I need and not what I ask for?

Pax

Downloading Patience

So, I am sitting here at my favorite Starbucks, sipping a Zen tea and waiting for a very, very long download to complete to my computer/Garmin.  It occurred to me that watching something download is the New Millennium equivalent of watching paint dry.  It is the most boring, frustrating activity I can think of doing.

Silly me, I forgot to bring a book with me.

It wasn't until I had been watching the numbers go down, then back up, then down, then back up again for about  thirty-five minutes, that I was wasting a great opportunity to practice patience instead of annoyance.  I mean really, here I was drinking Zen tea, and becoming more and more frustrated instead of using all this wonderful free time to let my mind center on God.

I began to take that inner journey,  letting go of everything; my surroundings, the smooth jazz coming from the XM radio station playing in the background, the download status that kept trending up-then-down on my computer screen, even the fact that my hair was still a bit wet from my workout at the gym just before I came here, and sat with my eyes closed and centered myself on that seed, planted deep inside.  (The image I have come to use as my center).  Conscious of my breathing, and then even letting that go I let the moments slip away along with my frustrations, cares, heartaches and prayers.

I allowed myself to completely rest, wanting nothing, seeking nothing, doing nothing.

Patience is surrender.  Surrender is peace. Purity of heart is to will one thing.

Who knew downloading Garmin Maps would be the pathway to peace?

Pax

Blimey!

Even funnier if you realize that the accent he uses in Law and Order UK isn't his real posh upper-middle class British accent either.

Jamie Bamber is a really versatile actor.

BBC America Rocks.

Pax

The World-Wide Outrage No One Talks About

It is estimated that there are up to 160 million women missing world-wide.  This has been attributed to poor healthcare, nutrition and education in third world countries.  But this is only half of the story.  Second trimester abortion for gender selection has become the norm in countries like China where the ratio of men to women is becoming more and more out of balance with each generation since the practice began just after the one child per family rule went into effect.

Read a great opinion piece on the topic here.  

When will Women's Rights Organizations take up the fight to save these women from wholesale slaughter for the sake of male dominance?

Don't hold your breath.

Pax

Laude Sion

Today is the Feast of Corpus Christi,  no it isn't they day that we celebrate the city in Texas, but the Body and Blood of Christ our Savior.  What better way to do that than with this amazing Sequence written by Thomas Aquinas:

Laud O Zion

ZION, to Thy Savior sing,
to Thy Shepherd and Thy King!
Let the air with praises ring!
All thou canst, proclaim with mirth,
far higher is His worth
than the glory words may wing.


Read the rest here. (in Latin and English)


What does the Body and Blood of Christ mean in your life?

Pax

Tonight: Sharing Burdens Sharing Joys

Have you ever heard the saying that sharing your burdens cuts them in half and sharing your joys doubles them?  That is the way it has been between my sister and I.

We were both born in March, two years and one day apart so we shared a birthday celebration our entire lives.  Although I went to college and she didn't we both married guys from the same fraternity at the Engineering school in the town where we went to High School, even though she met her husband when she was still in High School and I didn't meet mine until I was nearly out of college.

When our children were growing up we shared the joys and hardships of raising our kids.  When our mom became ill it was together that my sister and I shared the burden of her long term care.  If not for having my sister to help me think through the decisions that had to be made I would probably have been in a lot worse shape.

Last year as my sister and her husband were dealing with the horrible accident that nearly took the life of their son and the ensuing lengthy rehabilitation, it just happened that my sister's and my birthday fell right in the middle of their ordeal.  Mrangelmeg and I took it upon ourselves to drive up to the rehab hospital with our oldest daughter so that she could stay with our nephew while we took my sister and brother-in-law away for a night of celebration and relaxation.  They rarely left the hospital to do things for themselves.

We took them to a wonderful dinner at my favorite steak place where, because it was my birthday, we got an amazing desert called Mile High Chocolate Pie.  It took all four of us to eat one piece.  It was the most wonderful evening and really helped them relieve some of the stress of their long ordeal.    

Our husbands' birthdays are in June,  four days (and one year) apart.  

This year, to repay us for the favor we did them,  they have invited us to join them for another dinner at the same steak house tonight, on my brother-in-law's birthday (to celebrate the men's birthdays).  I think as much as my brother-in-law wants to celebrate sharing the joy of being together again, he is really looking forward to that Mile-high-pie.

At least no one is going through a major trial this year,  but we will share the little sorrows and joys of parenting,  as there are always those.  And we will talk about the memories we have of growing up, and all the years we have known each other, and the upcoming retreat we are all attending at St. Meinrad (my Holy Hill Gradual School), because my brother-in-law has been on retreat there and wants us to join him.  (How funny is that?)

It should be a very enjoyable evening.  I am looking forward to the company, well, that and the pie.

Pax

Summer Memories

When I was very young I had a friend named Jeff.  He was a year ahead of me in school and wasn't afraid of anything in the entire world.  I was in awe of that, because I was afraid of just about everything.

Jeff was a daredevil.  We lived on a very steep hilly street, and Jeff's house was one block higher up the hill from mine.  Jeff would ride his Schwinn Racer bike so fast down the hill and go flying past our house like a blur.  I was too afraid to ride as fast as he did.  In the winters we would sled down the hills of the park across the street from our houses and Jeff could make his sled go so fast, careening around trees and flying off the end of the hill out into the middle of the street.   It is a wonder he didn't break his arms or legs each winter.

One winter,  Jeff got the insane idea that he and I should  pour water down the concrete embankment on the side of my front steps and let it ice over and then slide down the ice on our feet.  He convinced me that nothing bad could possibly happen to us, so we did just that.  We carried pitcher after pitcher of water out and poured it over the concrete, watching as it froze the snow into a sheet of ice.  When he judged that it was frozen enough he took an running start and jumped onto the ice and slid, with a bit of a wobble, all the way down to the bottom of the stairs.

I was terrified, but didn't want to look like a sissy, so I took a try,  it was the most amazing sensation I had ever felt; even better than sledding.  We both took another turn, and then another, which was probably wearing down the ice because on my next turn down the slope I lost my balance completely and fell face first onto the edge of one of the concrete stairs.  I cut my forehead just above my eyebrow, and there was blood everywhere on the crisp white snow.   Facial cuts bleed quite a bit,  apparently.  Jeff went running into my house to get my mom,  when they came back out he was in tears apologizing over and over because it had all been his idea.  My mom had to put a butterfly bandage over my cut eyebrow to stop the bleeding, and then ice over that to keep it from swelling but the cut wasn't really all that big.   To this day you can see the scar there above my eye from our little luge adventure.

He had a fascination with leprechauns, and for one entire summer he carried around a huge butterfly net determined that he was going to catch one in the woods of the park.  My brothers put a doll head in the knot hole of one the trees in the woods and teased him that they had seen one on their way home for lunch.  Jeff got all excited and took his net and ran off into the woods. I remember the look on his face,  he was so full of glee that day.  He was so close to his goal of having his own pet leprechaun.  We followed him up into the woods my brothers giggling  and giggling so hard .  He was so sad when he realized that they had tricked him.

We went to an Elementary School that had an open campus meaning we were allowed to walk home for lunch if we lived close enough to get there, eat lunch and get back in our forty-five minute lunch period.  Since both my mom and Jeff's mom were both better cooks than what we could get from the cafeteria,  we often walked home for lunch; Jeff would leave me at my house and walk the extra block to his house.  When it was time to go back to school Jeff would stop at my house and wait for me so that we could walk back together.  We had wonderful talks about so many things on these walks.  They were very special times.

I remember the last day of his sixth grade year when we were walking back to school and he said, "I am going to miss this next year", because he would be going to Junior High and I still had another year of elementary school/   I didn't say anything then, but I would miss them too.  I took my lunch a lot more often in sixth grade,  somehow going home for lunch had lost its charm.

Jeff had a paper route before I did, in fact it was because of Jeff probably that I got a paper route.  He got his because he wanted a new bike and a new fishing pole and his mom said they couldn't afford it,. so he went out and got himself a job as a paperboy to make enough money to pay for the things he wanted.

He loved to fish, and most of the spring, summer and fall he was never without his fishing pole and tackle box strapped to the back of his bike.  The Mississippi river was just a few miles from our house and he loved to ride down there on his own to fish, sometimes for the entire day.  I hated fishing,  this was one adventure we never shared.

You may wonder why I am suddenly reminiscing about my old friend?  It is because the summer that I was 12 years old Jeff died. On June 8, 1972 Jeff came home from his paper route, gave the money to his mom and went down to the river to watch the fishermen, something he did all of the time.    He was never seen again,  People in the community searched for nearly a week first finding his bike and then his badly decomposed body naked and strangled on June 15.

I miss him so much this year especially for some reason, maybe because there has been so much loss in my life.  Even my sister called to say she had dreamed about him just the other night.   Was Jeff too fearless for his own good?  Was he killed by a serial killer passing through the area?  We have always wondered.  My younger brother spent years trying to solve Jeff's case, which remained open until the mid 80's when the FBI declared it closed due to lack of new evidence.  

We had an idyllic childhood,  we had total freedom to roam wherever we wanted to, miles and miles away from home, until the summer Jeff disappeared, Then everything changed.  I don't know if we were scared, or our parents were scared, but we didn't get as far from home after that summer.

I have wonderful memories, and frightening dreams and a little scar over my eyebrow.  Jeff would be 52 years old this year.  I have always wondered what kind of man he would have become.

Come Holy Spirit Come

the earth was a formless wasteland, 

and darkness covered the abyss, 

while a mighty wind swept over the waters

Genesis 1:2

Today is Pentecost.  The day when we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles in the Upper Room and the birth of the Church in the world.  For me this day has an entirely different meaning as my faith matures.  

I have become a person of faith not because of God the Father or God the Son,  but because of God the Spirit.  I can relate to the vast wasteland living in darkness waiting for something to happen,  until the Spirit swept over me and moved me to a deeper understanding of myself and my relationship with God, the universe and everyone I encounter.  

Of course I have to admit here that I am moved by the Spirit within the structure of the Catholic Church,  it is where I find I can express my faith with complete authenticity.  I am fed by the Eucharist, and  refreshed by the Reconciliation,  and my marriage is a vocation lived out in sacramental holiness on a daily basis.  The more I learn about my church (as human and flawed as it can be at times)  the more I fall in love with the intimate connection it gives me to this Trinitarian, relational God who is One, yet Three, forever in motion in a Celestial dance and in whom I I move and breath and have my being.

The closer I move to this ineffable force that draws me deeper and deeper into a love relationship with my faith I am finding that as I am learning more and more Pneumatology (great big word that mean Spirit talk) The Spirit is the guiding force compelling me onward, or in the case of most spiritual journeys, inward.

The Spirit moves like a gentle breeze, or a mighty wind, and moves me where it wills.  As I learn to move with the Spirit the dance becomes easier.

So today is a day to remember the Spirit of God.

How does the Spirit move you?

Pax  

  

An Evening of Animated Blues Well Spent

This past weekend was my semi-annual visit with my Gradual School family in our favorite little house down on the grounds of the Monastery/School of Theology where we spent so many years together studying theology, scripture and philosophy.  Now when we get together we usually don't have an agenda, but rather spend the time mostly eating, drinking, chatting or sitting in companionable silence as we each read our own books.  Sometimes we shop at the gift shop or Scholar Shop (the Theology School Book Store).

On this particular weekend we were surprised by our beloved professor Fr. Damien when he brought a movie with him and asked us all if we wanted to watch it instead of our normal round of conversation.  Of course, because we love him and trust his judgement implicitly, we said yes and put in the DVD.  Boy did we get more than we bargained for.

The movie was  Sita Sings the Blues   (see below).  It was the most amazing animated adventure.  It weaves a contemporary story of a young couple with the Indian Myth of Rama and Sita from the Ramayana (a well known tale to all young Indian children).  and in between the two is the music of Annette Hanshaw from the 1920's era.   I wish I could explain it better, but it is something you have to experience for yourself.

So, Netflix, or Amazon, or however you can, find a way to see this wonderful little movie.   You will not be disappointed and you will learn some wonderful Indian Folklore in a very inventive way.

Pax

Catholic Summer Reading Program

Where Do You Hear The Voice! of God?

I have for years contended that there are many secular songs that can be perceived as songs of love from God to us if you listen with the Ignatian view that you can find God in all things.  In fact in certain cases I would contend that the songwriter's intention was to leave it open to that broad interpretation when he/she wrote the song.  Many of the band U2's songs have that impact of double meaning, on one level a love song and on a deeper level a song of searching for a deeper relationship that goes way beyond human love.

I have always had a very special affinity for "You Got Lucky" by Tom Petty.  From the first time I heard it, many years ago I have thought that it could be heard as a love song from God.  Perhaps my feelings were colored by the fact that at the time I was a lonely college kid who didn't have a date in sight and was looking for love from someone, and found consolation in the thought that God would always love me and I was truly lucky that God had "found me".

The other night when I was watching my new favorite competition show on television:  The Voice! on NBC,  I had another AHA moment about a song I have probably heard hundreds of times sung by Keith Urban, but on this particular night it was sung by an 18 year old woman.  The song is Stupid Boy,   and it turned into an entirely different song, about losing faith instead of just losing a girl.   It gave me chills.

I don't know why this surprises me so much.  I have always felt that You'll think of Me,  by Keith Urban is a song about turning  away from God.  We can move away, but we can never get so far away that we don't have that thought of God in the back of our minds no matter whoever else "arms" we find ourselves in.

So there are many songs that bring me to thoughts of God,  okay so no matter how masterfully it is sung,  I will freely admit that "Baby Got Back" doesn't have anything to redeem it,  but then maybe someone else can find the God-ness of that particular song.

What secular song makes you think of God in a way that takes your breath away?

PAX