Contemplation Circles

I wasn’t sure what to write after this past week and the only thing that brought me back to the keyboard was pressure from Gen. And having free time.

I keep wondering how people can live without faith. For me it would be near impossible to survive or at least, that is how it seems to me. Someone questioned my faith the other day. They asked me if I had any to get me through the hard spots in life. I told them that without faith I couldn’t get through them. They seemed to doubt me, or at least wanted to plant doubt inside me. “Are you sure?” the question kept coming. I’m sure.

One of the most beautiful things is seeing faith blossom in someone. To see the understanding of faith growing in their mind is amazing.

At the last feast we sang Hooray for the World. There is a line in that song, in case you are unfamiliar with it, that says, “Everywhere we go we have new friends to meet!” It is one of the last lines and after the song was done, or maybe while we were still on the last note, my little buddy Caiden cried out, “We do have new friends to meet everywhere!”

It’s moments like those that I realize I have faith. Or when I find myself praying in the middle of class or on my way to work.

"Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God." –Blaise Pascal


I wonder if people cannot understand faith if they do not first have it…

Jolt of Joe

As soon as I start thinking about my job, and the bad joe I have to serve, and how my life has turned boring, and how I am boring...I get a jolt. Of course that's the perfect time to get a reality check. How self centered am I? how awful? I feel the heart in me ripping apart. Multiply that by a thousand and maybe you will have the sound, the sensation about what pain is. But even a thousand seems to small, too insufficient.

I want to save you from these currents but I can't. I can't swim them well enough myself.

"Pain is only valuable once you know that you've learned from it."

The Way it Was

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot; others transform a yellow spot into the sun –Picasso


I once had a friend tell me that a painting was not art. A painting is just a reflection of what one see's around them, he said. Then what is a picture? I asked. Ahh, a picture, and he smiled and told me that that is the artist's eye.