Do all dogs go to heaven?

Heaven being the fulfillment of all desires. If I ever make it to heaven, I couldn't be happy without my pup. Jesus would never allow me to be unhappy in heaven so I will see my pup in heaven, provided I actually make it there, which is the bigger quandary.
My pup on the other hand, would be totally happy in heaven without me so unfortunately for me, she's no help for gaining my entrance, but here's a cute argument on the subject.

You tired of me yet?

'For what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord our God, is to us whenever we call upon Him?' Dt 4:5

Oh, and I've been calling and calling. It seems to me weakness, falling and falling again into sin so much so that I'd rather turn away sometimes, but the weakness lies in failing to call out again and again because God doesn't tire of reaching out to help us out. If we don't fall, if we don't fail, how will we know how strong God is who comes to pick us up? How will we know how much he loves us if we don't give him the chance to help us when we need it most?

I love Naman, the syrian leper

What struck me in today's reading (2Kg5:1) is that Naman's pride nearly puts him in the same position as the prideful Jews irritated with Jesus' assertion that God healed the Gentile, not the Jew in Lk4:24 with 'no prophet is accepted in his native place'.

Naman even though he did an ordinary thing, he took a bath to be cured, he didn't want to. It was beneath him, such a simple thing to do, but it was his servant girl that prompted him to search, his servant that prompted him to do as simply as he'd been told. Had it not been for them, Naman would have never glorified God in such a simple way. He came away a changed man, humbled, but it would have never happened had it not been for the witness of the servants, the nameless, faceless, unthanked servants. The servants didn't do it for love of Naman or for personal gain, they did it for love of God. Their faith moved the mountain of Naman's arrogant pride and they did it from the position of subordinate servitude.

Divine Appointments

Most people refer to them as coincidence, hogwash. They are divine appointments. You know them.They are unexpected, unplanned sometime irritating, sometimes uplifting, but always they leave you forever changed. Divine appointments, be open to them and they'll change your life.

Blessed are the meek for they have the power to rip your lungs out and the self control to restrain themselves.

I spend groupie time at the airport waiting for a flight crew to show so I could start my international travel, like some teenager waiting for Justin Bieber. In the end my family crew showed up to take me home.
Monkey boy said 'You're back! your back! I missed you! Did you bring back my cookies?
Peachy cooed, 'Four weeks went by so fast mom! I'm so glad your home. I missed you.'

They missed me for a whole 7 hours and hugged me like I was gone for a month.

Jesus, sweetheart, I love you but seriously that was a rough 36 hours of travel with more ups and downs than a roller coaster. I'm upgraded, I'm not, I am, I'm not, rude agents, flight delays.
I have a very small understanding of how freaking difficult it is to be meek. Wanting to cuss someone out, yell at them and then to restrain yourself and utter a blessing instead is the most difficult thing I've ever had to do. It tops giving birth without anesthetics. Seriously. Anyone who thinks it's easy to be meek has never once tried it. Never.

Bulbs, bulbs everywhere and not a scent to sniff

I'm looking forward to visiting a few gardens while in Europe. Hopefully I'll get to see a few budding gardens. Spring! Spring! Spring!

Te quiero

It's tough trying to talk to my dad. He's not a man of many words and he doesn't linger in phone conversations, and I'm ok with that but sometimes I just want to hear his voice. Last night I called, late, knowing my mother would be asleep and he would either be sleeping while watching tv or sleepraying,(I am personally a fan of sleepraying.) but always with an ear out for the phone.  He was sleepraying.
Our conversation was very brief and my only reason to call was to convey a very short message, today's title in fact. He's finishing up his radiation therapy this week. He says he's feeling fine. He gave me his blessing and told me how much they love me and to give their love to the kids. What else needs to be said?

Monkeyboy madness

My son, aka monkeyboy has this habit of taking off his headgear (for his braces) at night when he's dead asleep. The boy sleeps like a log. He can be woken up at night easily and drift right back to sleep but that interim time is absolutely wasted on reasonable conversation. I noticed last night when I went to bless him that his headgear was missing so I quietly patted his cheek and said 'Oh, Papa'll be in to see you, won't that be fun?' and went to my bedroom and waited for the Drill Sergeant to check on his little charges and while I sat quietly this was the exchange I overheard:

    Papa: Get up!
  Monkeyness: YEAH. YEAH. It's OK.
  Papa: You took off your headgear. Put it on.
  Monkeyness:It's on. It's on. I'm ok.
    Papa: Get up! You're headgear. You took it off.
  Monkeyness: I'm UP!! I don't have the book.
    Papa: Here it is. Put it on!
  Monkeyness: I KNOW!!!
    Papa: Goodnight buddy!

Is it bad of me that I just sit in silence chuckling?? It used to be Papa would argue with him until I mentioned 'um hunny, he's fast asleep and completely clueless. Don't argue with him.' That's when drill sergeant stepped up. Yes I AM a total wimp about waking him up which is why I delegate that task to the drill sergeant. I, much like Hobbes, am there for the cuddles and the smooches.

It's Lent! The pagans are coming!

My pagan coffee buddy recently noticed that I've been refraining from partaking of our afternoon oreos with coffee. He assumed I was on a diet so when he pressed me I revealed 'well it's Lent and I gave it up'.
He was shocked and pressed me further to find out that skipping oreos were the least of my penitential practices this Lenten season and as I'll be traveling to Europe shortly he commented how stupid that was since I wouldn't be able to partake of all the luscious pastries available abroad. He pulled out his smartphone and proceeded to tempt me with all sorts of dessert pictures and I just smiled until he said to a colleague, 'She gave up all this stuff for Lent. I thought maybe she was on a diet, and that'd be ok, but she gave it up for Lent. That's just stupid!'

'Oh, really!' I retorted. 'You give up all sorts of stupid stuff and do all sorts of stupid things for your girlfriend because you love her and you're gonna tell me I can't do something equally extraordinary for someone I love?'

My how the tables turned.

PancakeBreakfast.org

There's this cool website for Catholics that allows you to find mass times anywhere in the world, uber useful when you travel to other countries or cities in the world. Well now I've decided the world desperately needs a Pancake Breakfast app, or at least I do. When I lived in Rochester, I could singly tell you which churches had pancake breakfast and when. In fact I might have been know to frequent any church that had a pancake breakfast. Pope Benedict XVI preaches unity among Christians, and I was just doing my share of reaching out to any and all Christian denominations. Seriously, I have no shame. It's pancakes folks!
So the local Knights of Columbus held their oh probably 1st pancake breakfast of the year, on the 1st Sunday of Lent! Lent. Seriously, that was painful.
In my spare time(oh, that's funny), I am SO putting together a pancake breakfast app. There's all sorts of churches here, so I should have some success... maybe.

Oh, you sexy thing!

Evil is attractive. It's sexy, appealing and it gets your motor running until that is you come to see it in the fullness of light and then you find that it's gross, appalling and the motor's not so much running as choking. That's something that fasting can bring to your prayer life. It helps shine the light in the dark. It helps open your eyes to evil and that is related to something fascinating from the Genesis account of the fall of Adam and Eve. Their eyes were opened to evil (because it became part of them, kind of like cancer) AFTER the fall and only then did they noticed their nakedness. (The serpent told them if they ate of the fruit they would be like God, knowing good and evil, but the liar refrained from telling them that God doesn't know evil. It's not part of him. He knows evil like a doctor knows cancer. A Dr. doesn't get cancer in order to treat it.) The fact that they had innie and outie bits prior to the fall was an existence they didn't even notice until AFTER evil entered the picture and tipped the scales of their ordered appetites to disorder. Fascinating.

So perhaps it's just and fitting that since we came to know evil by partaking of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, we can come to know God (and see evil like he sees it, outside of himself) by refraining from partaking of food.

Jesus, don't you dare tell me what to do!

I had a friend of mine tell me her story of why her mother left the Catholic faith and it had to do with guilt. You know the kind, 'Catholic guilt'. Don't do that you'll go straight to hell. Isn't it just like the devil to present half truths or present truths upside down? As soon as you tell someone not to do something, that's the first thing they will attempt to do as they berate you with, "Don't you dare tell me what to do!"

But Jesus isn't like that with sinners. He's seen us wandering looking for him in all the wrong places. If we choose to look for him where he can't be found we'll be rewarded with restlessness, and unhappiness because as St Augustine said 'Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, Lord'.

 Looking straight in the face of all our shortcomings, all our wanderings far from God, guilt and shame lead us to set things right. The Catholic guilt my friend explained was like a dog who'd been reprimanded and sitting in a corner without hope, but to be Catholic is to live in hope, to be saved by hope. Catholic guilt looks first to self because ultimately sin damages a relationship, the relationship between self and God. Then guilt longs to see those crooked ways made straight, and knowing that it cannot, it looks to the only one who can, God, who is forgiving, and longing for our return to Him. The only response one can give in the face of such generosity is a repentance that says, 'Lord, if there is anything good about me, it is you. I give myself back to you. I only want to live, love and serve you from this day forward.'

After a good holy confession, Jesus himself wipes away our sins, and God is pleased to forget our sins. If He is pleased to forget my sins, who am I to be dredging them up repeatedly?

What is Lent?

This from my one of my favorite Archbishops.

There's a little black band on my wrist today...

The Archdiocese of Denver is handing out little black wrist bands as a Lenten reminder and I just love the quote from the founding priests who said:
"Oh, there's a lot enthusiasm on Ash Wednesday," said Father Randy Dollins of St. Mary Catholic Church in Frisco, who developed the Sacrificium program. "Much more, let's say, than there is on the fourth Sunday of Lent!"

Yeah, by the 4th Sunday of Lent, I'm usually wondering when will the ordeal end, and judging by the typical Ash Wednesday mass turnout I'd say he's right on target. Ok and while I'm onthe subject, who shows up for mass just to receive the ashes and then heads home. What's the point there? I don't get it. That really blew me away. Seriously, you showed up just for the ashes. Well, at least they showed up and I have something else to pray for: metanoia, metanoia, metanoia, because apparently I need it.

If you haven't seen it, here's Nick Alexander's hit from last year on these forty days which inspired the blog title, "There's a little black dot on my head today.."

Dear Tooth Fairy,

My son, him-sir monkey boy, had an abscessed tooth so the dentist ended up pulling it. Last night he writes a letter to the tooth fairy. Mind you, the boy knows who exactly is the tooth fairy but nonetheless he wrote:
 
Dear Tooth Fairy,
Please place $20.00 here.

Thank you!

His comment in the morning was 'I knew you'd laugh when you saw it so it would wake me up!'

Can I abstain from fasting?

It used to be I was actually quite a champ at fasting. It was the glue to my prayers and boy did I ever use loads of glue. Lately though I've been a little low in the glue department.

Now, I knew I'd have to stock up on glue again since I've had a few special prayer intentions lately, and because of Lent but seriously, I've been putting said glue buying spending spree on hold until today.

See, I've always needed motivation for fasting. I used to have motivational prayers, images and other activities to occupy myself when I fasted. I would direct my attention to spiritual matters. I used fasting as a way to get my bodily senses in order and if my bodily senses kept trying to get me to sin, I would say 'Keep it up and we'll fast again tomorrow and you know I mean it!'. Lately however and for whatever reasons, I haven't been able to get myself excited about fasting. Who does? Well I now have the motivation. The extra 10 pounds I've put on saw to that especially when I ended up seeing the images of me from the whole body scanning I just had today. Let me tell you, that is motivation enough! I think I'll go collect one of those images and keep it near me for when I start to slip. When not if.

Whatcha doin' for Lent?

Anything special?
It's that time for prayer, fasting and almsgiving. As if the rest of the year isn't?

I suppose Lent affords us an in-depth look, kind of like spring cleaning, at our spiritual life. What's my prayer life been like? What does my prayer look like these days and what can I do to make it more personal? Prayer and God for that matter, is about a relationship. Just like my relationships, there is a personal dimension that at times can grow familiar, rote even and we can take it for granted. For example, when I start into a conversation, it can be the same every time, especially with my dearest friends. I'll go to those things I know my friend struggles with or I know is important even though it may be the same conversation starter EVERY time. Even though it's rote (kind of), it's familiar but in that familiarity, we are intimate. I couldn't start in on a conversation like that with just a complete stranger because we haven't established any form of intimacy. With friends though it's different because there is a personal dimension there to which we are both invested.

Prayer can be like that. It can be prescribed, going through the same motions, but it doesn't make it less intimate. In fact, it can be more intimate when we are aware that we know and are known by our God. That's not to say it will feel intimate. With my closest of friends, I don't tend to feel any sort of intimacy because it's already present. Example, I call my friend by her first name instead of by her designated title of Dr. or Professor because of that intimacy. (I only use the title when I'm making fun of her, still intimacy!) In fact, it can become so routine that I forget that our relationship is so intimate and personal and I take it for granted. It's the same with my prayer life. It reminds me of a priest friend of mine who once told me about his struggle to be awed by the mysteries of God in the midst of proclaiming said mysteries to the masses, by using the phrase, 'can't see the forest for the trees'.
Lent is that time where we are reminded to stop and take a good look at the trees and the forest.

Thanks Father J!

"The important opinion is God’s opinion, not that of your friends and neighbors. And God does not ask us for Pharisaic perfection in the performance of our duties; rather, he asks for a heart full of love (the sincere desire to love) and a humble determination to make a decent effort, no matter how hard it may be."

For the love of God, shut up!

That's Pat Archbold's blog here. There should be reverence in the church at all times. Unfortunately, it's no longer the little kids who need to get shushed in mass. While I'm on the subject, grown men should not be chewing gum during mass although he's not chatting up his neighbor during Father's homily discussing his grandaughters' latest exploits.