March 15, 2010

Verse of the Day
"God indeed is my savior; I am confident and unafraid. My strength and my courage is the Lord, and he has been my savior." Isaiah 12:2

Song of the Day
El Shaddai by Michael Card
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzqwG-ZQDUE&feature=related

Food
Nothing new on the food front.

"Stuff" Detachment
Cleaned out the shed on this beautiful day and got rid of a lot more than 3 things. It felt terrific. Over time, this purging of stuff has to pay off.

Spiritual Growth
I recently was in the victory ring for one of God's miracles. Here is what happened.

I was waiting in line to check my books out at my local library. There usually isn't a line, but that day there was. So, I naturally began looking around to pass the time. I was flabbergasted to see in full view of the check out counter a magazine with a woman's upper body almost fully revealed. So, I talked to the woman in charge at that library. I was told to fill out a request for consideration, so I did.

I received a letter stating that they would not remove the magazine, cover the magazine or place it in a different location. But if you wanted to follow up more you could meet with the director of the county's whole library system, so I did.

Prior to going to meet with the director, I researched covers from this magazine, GQ, from the past 2 years to find much worse things than that original cover. Several of them had naked women either on the top, bottom or both, sort of covering themselves up. I brought these with me for my meeting. The director admitted that she was planning on saying "no", but now after seeing the images I brought she needed to reconsider.

I met again with her a month later. She explained in detail all the people she talked to about this and exactly what she considered, but "no" was still the answer. I went on to talk about how frustrated I am that in our world everyone hides behind rules and will never step forward and do the right thing just because it is the right thing. Moving that magazine is the right thing. My 7, 6, and 5 year old children shouldn't be seeing naked people on magazine covers when they are checking out Mary Poppins. We have to check the books out. We can't avoid that area. All to no avail.

I went home and prayed. I told the kids to get ready for Mass because we needed to pray that this woman gain the courage to do the right thing, to figure out some way to make this work. I could tell she agreed with me, but didn't want to "compromise the integrity of the library". As we were getting ready, the director called to tell me that she was looking at the layout of the magazines and that if you place GQ alphabetically by its full name Gentleman's Quarterly, that places the magazine over a shelf and at the bottom, completely out of sight for those checking out. I hung up and we headed to Mass to thank God for the miracle. He allowed her to "follow her rules" and protect the children. Praise God!

Today's section title from Searching for and Maintaining Peace by Fr. Jacques Philippe: To Grow in Confidence: A Child's Prayer

We need to have a contemplative gaze on Jesus Who gives His life for us, nourishes us with "too great a love"

"Finally, too many people are distressed because they are not contemplatives. They do not take the time to nourish their own hearts and return them to peace by gazing with love on Jesus." Since the assaults of evil through thoughts of discouragement and distrust are never-ending, shouldn't our prayers also be never-ending?

"Let us therefore learn to abandon ourselves, to have total confidence in God, in the big things as in the small, with the simplicity of little children. . . this is the true response to the mystery of evil and suffering. . . In abandoning myself to God, I experience in a concrete fashion that "it really works," that God makes all things work together for my good, even evil, even suffering, even my own sins. How many occasions that I dreaded, when they arrived, in the final analysis proved to be supportable, and finally beneficial, after the first impact of pain. That which I believed to be working against me revealed itself to be to my benefit."

And that my friends explains my blog from yesterday about suffering and seeing the benefit later. Interesting how that led right into today's subject. I hadn't read it yet.

Tomorrow: One Abandons Oneself Completely or Not at All

Today's Menu:
Breakfast: Oatmeal made with whole milk, mashed bananas, and cinnamon, Jone's mild sausage links, grapes

Snack: Half peanut butter sandwich. The hour change for some reason threw us way off, so we didn't have an official lunch. Being that it was 60 degrees, Curly and Race Car were outside from noon until 6pm. Girls joined them after we finished school around 3:00pm. It was a beautiful day.

Dinner: Tacos (Old El Paso Stand and Stuff taco shells, flour tortillas, tomatoes, lettuce, cheese), strawberries