“No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it.”

—	St. Maximilian Kolbe

I'm praying for you!

:)

“We who, by the grace of God, are Catholics, must not squander the best years of our lives as so many unhappy young people do, who worry about enjoying the good things in life, things that do not in fact bring any good, but rather the fruit of immorality in today’s world.
We must prepare ourselves to be ready and able to handle the struggles we will have to endure to fulfill our goals, and, in so doing, to give our country happier and morally healthier days in the near future.
But in order for this to happen we need the following: constant prayer to obtain God’s grace, without which all our efforts are in vain; organization and discipline to be ready for action at the right moment; and finally, we need to sacrifice our own passions, indeed our very selves, because without this sacrifice we will never achieve our goal.”
— Pier Giorgio Frassati

I'm praying for you!

:)

"Listening to other people’s needs is listening to God. Noticing simple, natural beauty, hearing music, even confronting the challenge of pain and problems—that can all be listening to God too.” ~ Peter Kreeft

 

I'm praying for you!

 

:)

“A great man is not a man so strong that he feels less than other men; he is a man so strong that he feels more.”

— G.K. Chesterton

I'm praying for you!

:)

Map of American saints!!

I'm praying for you!

:)

Just got back from camp and almost forgot to get online and post this before going to bed.

Hope you've had an amazing day/week!

I'm praying for you!

:)

So I seem to have run out of poetry that isn't mushy love poetry and therefore not really intended for a prayer blog...

So have a cool picture of the ocean:

Ok, technically, it's not the ocean, but the Mediterranean Sea is salty, so...close enough?

Tomorrow I should be back to live blogging.

I'm praying for you!

:)

Waves

Water, dark and deep
obscure as my thoughts
never still, silent yet searching
waves seem to dance
dance restlessly, wandering
they have no choice, lost
on the sea, not a part
of it, lost but looking like
they belong, so no one
knows they are alone,
out of place, trying to
escape, break free of
the constant lulling dance,
each swept along in its own
                                  prison.

I'm praying for you!

:)

Spain

One more time

Amid the trees

Amid the cars

Tables jumbled

next to streets

In New York or

Chicago, the roads

are planned, society

is defined by

organization

Each thing in its

proper place.

But here, society is

a bucket of paint

With everything mixed

together in endless swirls

And it all jumps out

at you at once

the structure of

society matching

the way they go up

for Communion.

I'm praying for you!

:)

Grayscale

Bright as the sun

The sun is not bright

Dull, dead stale light

Filtered through the windows

The green on the plants

Looks more like gray

And the sun simply

Blazes, its rays scorching

Searing my skin

The whip of a guard

“Continue to exist!”

Continue to breathe!

Even without purpose

Even when the plants look

Gray and the air stands

Still in my lungs and to

Even inhale and exhale

Seems pointless, a waste

Of energy expended on a

Skeleton land, a graveyard

Where I am commanded to

    Live.

I'm praying for you!

:)

I ran away

I ran away

Away today

Far far away

On a ghost train

Past the flowers

Past the houses

I ran away

For the first time

Not going back

Wouldn’t know how

Packed up my thoughts

And memories

Stowed them away

And ran today

Ran far, ran fast

Without stopping

Without knowing

To where I run

I don’t know, I

Do not care, I

Just ran away

Away today

I ran away

I'm praying for you!

:)

Still life

Still life. I mean, dead life.

The grass doesn’t move and

the wind can’t bend the branches

on the trees. The leaves never fall,

the green never fades, but no

birds grace the forest, no bugs

crawl through the dirt. Stagnant.

Nothing dies, so nothing lives

The flowers never bloomed, yet

there they are, still and silent

waiting for the sunset so they

can greet the sunrise, but

neither will come. The sun

is in the sky, never rose, never

sets, just stays. All is ready,

everything is prepared, and so

it shall remain, waiting for

the birds to sing, the bugs to

crawl, life waiting to live.

I'm praying for you!

:)

To be or to have

Both are happy

The wife, the nun

Both are joyful

Both fulfilled

She kneels at the altar

child in her arms

awestruck at Christ

gazing in wonder

at the love outpoured

She points at the host

hidden in the tabernacle

Her child smiles, his

dimples light up her face

Does he merely

appreciate her voice,

her embrace, or maybe

just the shiny gold box?

Or is it more, does he

see Christ, see Him there

hidden from adult eyes?

She kneels at the altar

covered in white

only her hands and face

visible, her eyes lit up

like those of the child

she could have had

She gazes in love

at her perfect spouse

Who died so she might have Him

She teaches no one

She does not wonder

what the child sees

For she is the child

Perpetual youth

The virgin bride

Staring in joy

gazing in wonder

at her perfect spouse

Giving himself to her

Once, but for all time

The act always fresh

She receives every

day for the first time

Every night her wedding night

in an eternal consummation.

I'm praying for you!

:)

I'm going home today! Which means that I won't have internet access, because I'll be on planes all day. And then tomorrow I'm going to summer camp for the next week, which means:

It's actually Wednesday right now, and instead of studying, I'm queuing up blog posts for you :P

Here's something I found in one of my notebooks:

We are not eyewitnesses of our own lives. My word alone is not acceptable proof of my age, my parentage. Not because I am untrustworthy, but because I cannot know. Our memory fails us as infants, and thus we know our age only from others. I trust my parents, a piece of paper, to tell me that I was born of my mother, conceived of my father, on the day and at the time they claim. That I was born human, not born a sprite or a starfish, I have only the word of others. I cannot know this for certain on my own. And thus, those who live without faith, it is easy to see how they doubt even human nature, for how can I know that I am such a creature, that my insides are formed in a certain way, that I have always been so, without trusting in someone or something – my parents, paper documents, what my senses tell me has been detected by science, that strange creature that has no more senses than we lend it, and yet claims to give us proof beyond the capabilities of our faulty senses. As far as I know, I was born a starfish, and I lived a thousand years beneath the sea before emerging finally into the realm of experience we call human. To stay in this realm, to believe I will not return to the sea as a starfish or forage the forest as a bear, I must have faith, and this is what it means to be human.

I'm praying for you!

:)

“Self-doubt is one of the deadliest tools of the devil. If God calls you to it, you can do it. He pays for what He orders. When we doubt ourselves, we doubt - on some level - the Holy Spirit’s presence in us."

—

Mark Hart

I'm praying for you! :)

I found this in my notebook. Apparently I wrote it in April:

I'm drowning in my thoughts. It figures this would be the way I'd go, since I never learned to swim. The things we don't do, the chances we don't take, they always come back to bite us in the butt, don't they? Or to fill our lungs with water, whichever the case may be.
Yet another week, lost to the all-consuming darkness. No, I don't have amnesia, although I wish I did. If I couldn't remember, then I could fill my memories with whatever I wanted. Maybe I went sky-diving or mountain climbing. Hell, maybe I just sat outside on a bench and studied for that exam. Anything, any fake memory I could create, would be better than the truth.
"How was your weekend? What did you do?"
Nothing. I did absolutely nothing, stared at the ceiling, at the walls, at the floor, scrolled through webpages full of nothing until my eyes were bloodshot. All the pain of a hangover without the thrill of the party.
My life is empty because my head is too full. Regrets from the past - what should I have done? What could I have done? Anything? No, it's not worth thinking about. New topic. Why do we always want what we can't have? The second a guy tells me he loves another girl, his face turns into that of an angel. I'm stabbed with anguish over a guy I never wanted until wanting him was forbidden. "Would you consider being a nun?" Never, not in a million years. "You're not called to be a nun." But what if I want to be? When I stand next to the train tracks, in front of the sign saying not to walk on them, I want to throw myself onto them. I don't want to die, don't get me wrong, I just want to disobey.
Did they want to disobey, those first disobedient ones? Was that part of the fall, or was that our nature all along? We say, "Oh, of course they wanted the fruit. It was forbidden." But is that true? We want the forbidden fruit, but did their souls scream to them to disobey for the sake of disobedience? How could they scream out that, if no one had ever disobeyed?
I mean, I guess it's telling that all the stories talk of the first humans f---- it up. It's not like Adam and Eve had kids and grandkids and everyone lived happily until some little screw-up ruined it for everybody. No, we couldn't even make it to a second generation of existence without falling from grace.
I don't know where I'm going with this. Typical me - start writing my thoughts before they're collected, just like I open my mouth before I decide what to say. I could avoid so much trouble if I just spent 30 seconds thinking before putting pen to paper or parting my lips. But when you're drowning in thoughts, when your ship is sinking because it's filling with words, you don't stop to think which drops of water to get rid of first; you just start bailing as fast as you can.

I'm praying for you!

:)

So, I only have two full days left in Spain, and I'm kinda ready to leave, but kinda not.

It's weird, that we always miss the place that we're not.

And I'm always saying I want to go home, but when I'm "home," I'm wishing I were somewhere else and I say things like, "Well, I really don't feel like this is home right now."

Because in all honesty, nowhere on Earth ever feels entirely like home. And I've come to realize (not entirely on my own), that it's because nowhere on Earth is home. My home isn't in Memphis or in Nashville or in Palma de Mallorca. My home is in heaven, and I'm always going to be a little homesick as long as I'm not there.

I'm praying for you!

:)

I don't want to stay anywhere forever. I'm a lot fonder of beginnings and endings than middles. I figured out recently that one of the reasons it's so hard to talk to God and to listen to God is because God lives in the present, in the middles. To communicate with Him you have to be entirely in the present. When I'm trying to talk to God, my thoughts will drift and suddenly I'm thinking about something earlier that day or I'm formulating thoughts in head about how to talk to someone the next day, etc. When you're talking to someone in front of you, you can let your mind wander to the past and future without getting too far behind in the conversation, especially while they're talking. Multi-tasking! But when you're talking to God, you have to actually concentrate 100% on the conversation, or you won't hear Him. And we don't like to concentrate 100% on the now, the present moment. We live our whole lives waiting for the next cool thing to come along, and along the way, we forget to actually live, even for a moment.

So talk to God today. And stay completely in the present moment. And listen. For bonus points, don't talk about anything relating to the past or future. Simply talk about how awesome He is, right now, in the present.

I'm praying for you!

:)

I have been studying for two days straight and I can't think of anything profound to say. Here is a picture of a kitten that my friends and I met on the beach.

I'm praying for you!

:)

This may sound kind of silly, but compared with all the modern "Christian" songs in the world, I much prefer listening to normal mainstream love songs and imagining God singing them to me (or me singing them to God), because the reality of human love expressed in the best love songs is really just a reflection of God's love for us.

For example:

I'm praying for you!

:)

So, apparently, I've spent so much time with Jake this semester that he can now tell when I'm having a profound internal religious experience without me saying anything. In other news, God told me I was called to marriage and my first reaction has been to spend 2 months wishing (although not whole-heartedly) for a vocation to religious life. I guess the grass is always greener...

Also, I think Jesus is getting tired of my frequent freak-outs in regard to my vocation, because He's started just saying things like, "You can be happy and serve me in absolutely any vocation."

I'm praying for you!

:)

“Instead of praying for them to get what they “deserve,” pray for Kermit Gosnell and others to get what they don’t deserve. After all, we were given the ultimate gift that we don’t deserve; freedom and forgiveness in Christ.”

—	Claire Culwell, Survivor of abortion (Her twin was aborted at 5 months but she survived, doctors didn’t peform late term abortion since it was too risky to birth mom)

I'm praying for you!

:)

“One sees great things from the valley, only small things from the peak.”

—	GK Chesterton

I'm praying for you!

:)

“All I wish is to love until I die of love.” - St. Thérèse de Lisieux

I'm praying for you!

:)

So, a friend posed this question (series of questions, sorta) to me the other day, and I thought you might have some thoughts:

What determines “good” art in an objective sense? How can it be judged in an objective manner? Is this possible? If there are only subjective manners of judging the quality of art, can we determine objectively which of these manners are “good” manners of judging art?

I'm praying for you!

:)

“Every Person is what he loves. Love becomes like unto that which it loves. If it loves heaven, it becomes heavenly; if it loves the carnal as a god, it becomes corruptible. The kind of immorality we have depends on the kind of loves we have.”

—	Ven. Fulton J. Sheen

I'm praying for you!

:)