November 29, 2008> 12:23 PM
proto advent thoughts Yeah, yeah, I know she already has the Baby and they're on their way back from Bethlehem, but I like the image. You may buy Christmas cards with this image at Printery House. They have lots of very nice cards. We usually get ours there. This year we ordered these. And we don't order many so don't everybody be expecting to get one, especially if you live close to me - we don't do in-town cards. We're lucky if we even get the ones we bought out for family and people who live away from here. I have to make myself sit down and do that in the next week.
Yes, Advent is the season liturgically leading up to and awaiting the Christmas event and season. We should observe it. It's cool. It's probably good for us. But, as Pete also mentioned, I like Christmas music and am presently listening to Charlie Brown Christmas as I write this. Our Christmas tree is up. I think I'm saying, these things do not necessarily interfere with my awaiting Christmas. They might even help. And let's not be Advent Nazis Okaaaay? OK, good.
My two youngest children are actually having a civil conversation about something in the other room right now. I think I'm waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop.... No, nothing yet. Thanks be to God! :)
I am now officially at least a semi-regular daily Mass going nerd. I bought myself a St. Joseph Weekday Missal (Vol. 1, Advent to Pentecost) yesterday at Benedictus, our local Catholic bookstore. I love that place. Usually I just wander around dreamily looking at all the stuff and don't buy anything, but I convinced myself that this would be a good thing to have.
I'll write more on this later, but thinking about the statement that - War is not an intrinsic evil - turns my head inside out. Now, do you mean that war, in this broken world, is sometimes unfortunately necessary in order to maintain order and stave off all-out chaos on earth? Is that what you're trying to say? If so, sure, I'll give you that. Of course it is. But here is our Christian dilemma: we are supposed be about the full and complete restoration of God's Kingdom on earth, which ultimately is about ploughshares, not swords. Swords are ultimately to be put down by the whole world. Like I said, I'll write more about this later, but here's the deal - killing any human being for any reason IS certainly intrinsically evil - it's against His Original Intent. Now, the fact that it is a "necessary evil" (ever hear that phrase?) is another story - one I believe Christians should opt out of.
The first thing I would address is the first part of their question - the "grow significantly... in the next year" part. I'd have to ask what they meant by "significantly" first of all. OK, I'll switch gears to addressing this person... I wonder, why is it you want to grow, what you call significantly, in the next year? What does that mean to you? I would encourage you not to look at spiritual growth as something that can be done by leaps and bounds in a specific frame of time. A year might even seem long to our Western minds, especially our American minds, but as I have come to see it, a year in spiritual growth terms is a drop in the proverbial bucket. We're on a looong journey and we need to not forget that. Short cuts produce a "short cut" kind of growth.
...was interpreted by someone as this: "lower your expectations for growth" and something about how God couldn't grow us fast if He wanted to. ha! Sorry, I had to laugh. Yeah, that's exactly what I said - exActly. Holy goodness. No more comment, I just thought that was funny - both "ha ha" and weird funny.
Well, I wanted to do 7 things cause it's a cool holy number and everything, but oh well, I can't think of anything else. So, Happy Advent to you's all.
November 29, 2008
> 12:23 PM
Yeah, yeah, I know she already has the Baby and they're on their way back from Bethlehem, but I like the image. You may buy Christmas cards with this image at Printery House. They have lots of very nice cards. We usually get ours there. This year we ordered these. And we don't order many so don't everybody be expecting to get one, especially if you live close to me - we don't do in-town cards. We're lucky if we even get the ones we bought out for family and people who live away from here. I have to make myself sit down and do that in the next week.
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I am now officially at least a semi-regular daily Mass going nerd. I bought myself a 
