CelticPriest

Today I have been thinking about compassion. With it we can enter into the life of another person without judgment, or the need to change them or change ourselves so that they might like us.   With compassion we can really listen and actually hear. We can look and honestly see. We can move gently in the world without having to be seen to be the center or the fixer. Matt Fox has some great stuff to say about compassion. So does St. Julian of Norwich. Read. Or talk to your spiritual director. Or just meditate. I say just, but I've been meditating for over 40 years. It isn't easy to stick with it. But it is worth it. For some, walking a labyrinth helps. Or just being outdoors. Use a mantra or a candle or a rosary or Mala beads. In the long run it will change our lives. Our personal background noise will become something holy and full of peace. Self seeking will ip away, the AA Big Book says   We "will know a new happiness and a new freedom. ...

Author Adrian McKinty's Detective Sean Duffy Series is about a Catholic cop in the RUC during the Troubles.  While darker than Louise Penny's Three Pines series, the stories are still the One Story about enlightenment. In case you can't tell, I have been reading a lot during the pandemic.  In fact, I have both print and audio of most of the Duffy books. More and more I turn to audio, because my RA and OA make my wrists hurt after about 15 minutes of using even my Kindle.  As a tesult, much depends on the reader's interpretation of the material.  Often, an actor does a better job than the writer.   When "all things are working together for good," one is not tossed out of the story by overacting or poor accent work, or the obscurity of literary or musical or other cultural references.  The writer must write with an absolutely honest voice and the actor must approachthe tale from a gut deep honesty. In this series, in my opinion, all these criteria are well met T...

When I was little, I used to get up at night and play in the dark.  Scared the caca out of my Dad I think.  But for me, it was a safe place and time to play.   Now I am old, and I can't sleep much at night.  The deep, silent night still feels safe to me, and I can get a lot done without worrying about bothering people. It also feels to me like it's connected with my conscious contact with God. Now, I know that we humans are natural pattern seekers.  That behavior has survival value, evolutionarily as well as individually.   If getting up to play in the dark feels fun and safe, it might become connected in my mind with finding it fun to play with words during dark times, even as an adult.  Once upon a time I had a huge crush on Little Joe Cartwright of Bonanza fame.  I plastered pictures of him all over my bedroom walls.   One day I came home from school to find my dad had put funny captions on all the pictures.  I was crus...

I apologize in advance for the mixed tenses in this post.  I consider myself lucky to be able to share this much of myself at all.  Thanks, God! Hi.  My name is Patti. I'm an alcoholic.  Once upon a long-ago time, a child sat upon a couch, one leg tucked up under her, the other bouncing over and over off the chill linoleum floor.  In her right hand was a small sewing item used for taking out stitches.  Slowly, with deep concentration, she picked at some decorations on the arm of the couch.   It was a new couch, proudly purchased in installments by a fairly young couple to furnish their small apartment.  It was in government housing, available to the couple because the husband served in World War II as a U.S. Marine.    The child on the couch, a slightly overweight brown-haired girl, deliberately picked and picked at the stitches, making the couch arm ragged and ugly.  She smiled, but her eyes were not happy.   Sh...

I have come to believe that there is only one story to be found in the best of fiction and in the best of spirituality.  That is the story of the Christ:  Birth, Death and Resurrection. For example, in the fiction of Louise Penny, in her series about Inspector Gamauche of the Surete in Quebec, popularly referred to as "the stories of Three Pines," the Inspector is the major hero, who is not only flawed, but enlightened.  As in most fiction, all the characters can be seen as aspects of the author, which makes me wish I personally knew Ms. Penny. One of the most admirable aspects of the Inspector is his willingness to walk through the fire to reach the truth, in himself and in others.  The village of Three Pines seems to represent heaven, in a very Celtic Way:  All ground is holy ground, and any ground can be heaven or hell, depending on the awareness of the truth of those who can perceive it.  It seems to exist both in time and outside of time.   T...

 Happy Sunday!  It is a nice, cool morning here at the moment.  I hope we won't get any of the predicted dry lightning storms between now and Monday evening.  Climate change is not for sissies, is it. I have been remembering the good times from when I was little.  Being four years old and Aunt Wanda making fun of me because I was "pretending" to read.  Actually reading, though it was difficult to puzzle out how to pronounce in my head the word "laughing."  I somehow thought there was an "n" in the word, and it worried me Monthly "potluck dinners" when everyone brought a covered dish to share and a "party piece" to perform.  Sometimes a poem to recite, or a song to sing, or an instrument to play.  Didn't matter how good you were, only that you were willing to share.  We rolled back the carpet and everyone danced.  Men, women, together, alone, even the children dancing to the music of the fiddle, the piano, the guitar, whatever ha...