Sow with care

Your words can be seeds that, over time, take root in the hearts and minds of those who hear them. Speak carefully.

Own Your Happiness

Never relinquish control of your attitude.

Choose the better freedom

The freedom to follow our temptations is a subtle prison. The discipline of self-denial is the better freedom.

Rethinking our weaknesses

On an online forum I occasionally read I recently read a post from a young man who said that he was struggling with school and was worried that he might fail several classes this semester. He said he was, for instance, "not good at math".

This sort of thing always makes me wonder how we sometimes get in that frame of mind. I believe that often our struggles with certain subjects has less to do with limitations of our mental capacity and more to do with some combination of attitude, desire and effort. And, once we struggle a bit, these things feed on each other.

I've noticed over the decades that kids learn to walk at roughly 1 year old, but that some kids start several months earlier and some don't get there for many months later. I don't think I've seen anyone show a lot of concern that little Junior hasn't managed to toddle across the carpet by 15 months of age. We don't label them as "not good at walking" and set our (and his) expectations accordingly. By the age of 2 or so, I doubt you can reliably separate the early walkers from the later ones.

Shouldn't it be the same for intellectual capabilities? If there can be such a large variation in the age we are ready to walk, it doesn't seem unreasonable that there might be some variation in the age we're ready to learn any somewhat complex subject.

There are also different methods of learning a subject. If your assumption about your ability is essentially based on your experience with one method, one teacher, one textbook... you may be selling yourself short.

What things have you assumed you're "just not good at"? Consider trying them again. Your mind is powerful, and here in the 21st Century you have countless resources available to you. With a bit of effort, you might surprise yourself.

Forgiveness

As a Christian, I know that God requires me to be forgiving; when I was young, this seemed more easily achieved than it seems today. At that time, I felt I could forgive any imaginable offense against me. Now, aided by several decades of news reports demonstrating the horrific things people are capable of inflicting on others, I can imagine offenses that would be very difficult to forgive.

In particular, having children has change my focus on this topic (as it has in most other areas of life) from myself to the ones I love. It's one thing to forgive an offense against oneself; forgiving an offense against your child would be another matter.

There have been several tragic acts of violence in both the national and local news recently that have claimed the lives of innocent children. Obviously any act of violence is sad, but when one or more victims is a child I can't help but wonder what I would do if that had happened to one of my children. I struggle with sadness and anger, and I know many others do as well.

And I wonder if I could ever honestly forgive.

I know I would be required to. I know I would be required to. I don't know if I could.

I recently read "Left to Tell" by Immaculée Ilibagiza (with Steve Erwin). In the 1994 Rwandan genocide that claimed the lives of over one million Tutsis, she hid in a Hutu pastor's bathroom with seven other Tutsi women and girls for 91 days.  When she emerged, her parents and two of her three brothers had been brutally murdered.

In her three months in hiding she spent a lot of time in prayer, and she speaks of the difficulty she had with the Lord's Prayer. When she would say "as we forgive those who trespass against us", she admitted she was initially withholding that forgiveness from the Hutus who were butchering her people. I am confident I would have felt the same way.

I am less confident that I would have grown spiritually the way she did in her confinement and in the danger and difficulties she faced afterward. Her story details the brutality and unimaginable horrors she experienced and witnessed. But it also recounts her inspiring journey of faith.

In the end, through God's grace, she does find the capacity to forgive. By that, I don't mean she simply mentioned it in a quiet prayer to God alone. Forgiveness can provide healing for both the offended and the offender; part of the power of forgiveness requires that it be communicated to the one in need of it.

So she traveled to the prison that held the man who had led the machete-wielding group of Hutus who killed her mother and one of her brothers. Could you forgive? I'm not sure I could. But she visited him. Upon seeing him, she sincerely felt pity for him. She touched his hands, those murderous hands, and she said, "I forgive you."

Immaculée's story shows me that, although I really have nothing to forgive anyone, I have work to do there. You can know you have a weakness before you've ever been challenged. I thank her for sharing her story. Wherever you are in your journey of faith, it can be inspiring to find stories of those who have faced life's difficulties with grace and spiritual growth. How much more rewarding it is than much of the other material we read or watch!

Spring Break 2013, Part I (Spontaneity)

On the last Friday before Spring Break, sweet wife suggested we try to work in a road trip while the kids were out of school. The following workweek was already looking ugly for me but the important meetings were all Wednesday afternoon or later. She had to work her usual Friday night shift, but had taken the rest of the weekend off because Saturday was her birthday. I was able to get Monday and Tuesday off so we had a little time to get a trip in.

But where? Austin? San Antonio?

"Let's go to the Grand Canyon!"

What? Oh, absolutely. It's only a bit over a thousand miles away and we'll have all of four days to get there and back. That's perfect! Oh, wait. I'll be working late Friday to try to get enough done to leave things in good shape for a couple of days so won't be able to even start getting anything ready until Saturday. She works the night shift and won't be in any shape to supervise the preparations. Of course we are going to want to work in at least a little birthday party. And since we'll be getting a late start, let's go ahead and go to 5:30 mass so we don't risk having to find a church on the way there. So now we're down to roughly 3 days of vacation with about 40 hours of driving. Awesome.

So Saturday evening we pointed the minivan westward and set off. We ran into snow falling near horizontally in strong winds somewhere in the Texas panhandle in the dark of night and almost turned back. We pressed on through that, through construction and through aggressive tumbleweeds. About seventeen hours later, we arrived in beautiful Flagstaff, Arizona - without hotel reservations. I don't completely remember all the reasons for not having ensured we'd have a place to sleep, but it did seem to fit with the overall theme of the trip. The spontaneity of that decision was a lot more charming at home in Texas than in the shopping center parking lot where we sat flipping through our iPhones trying to find a place that met our requirements.

We did eventually find nice and affordable accommodations. We enjoyed a good meal together and began making vague plans about the next day's drive to the canyon and return home. 

I'll try to write about that day soon, but I have to say that despite the short notice, the lack of planning and the amount of driving in such a short amount of time, it was a great experience. For me, I was with the people I love most so that's already a win. But I think it was a reminder of something important. Life in this modern world can get very busy and often there isn't time to do things you want to do. Do them anyway. Find a way to make the time. It doesn't have to be perfectly planned or pretty. It's okay if it's unreasonable and impractical. Just make time to make memories with the people you love.

Clutching My Blessings

One of the readings in last Sunday's mass was the story of the prodigal son. In the course of his wonderful homily, Father Jim reminded us that the word 'prodigal' is used to describe someone who spends extravagantly, and noted that were are called to be prodigal in a different way: we are to take the abundant grace we receive and lavish it on the world around us. It is not ours to be bottled up and kept.

Our graces and blessings may come in many forms: wisdom, talent, wealth, and time, to name a few. Whatever the form, we should consider how they can be shared with others in service to the Father. Blessed Charles de Foucald, whose own youth is said to have been spent in a fair degree of prodigality, once said, "If God allows some people to pile up riches instead of making themselves poor as Jesus did, it is so they may use what He has entrusted to them as loyal servants, in accordance with the Master's will, to do spiritual and temporal good to others." This is true not only of monetary riches but of all that we have been given.

Many years ago my father-in-law, Joe, took my oldest son Evan to the barber. After Evan's hairs had been properly cut, Joe gave him money to pay for the service - plus a little extra for the tip. However, after paying Evan pocketed the extra cash; he was young then and didn't quite understand the concept of tipping. When Joe explained that the bills he had pocketed were intended for the barber, Ev somewhat angrily shoved his hand in his pocket, clenched the bills in his little fist, and argued that they had been given to him and were his.

When Joe related the story to us, it immediately made me consider the blessings I receive. How often do I clench them tightly in my fist and selfishly think of them as having been given to me for my own use? I am richly blessed; I must remember that these blessings were not so much intended to be given to me as to be given through me.