Congratulations Pope Francis!

Yesterday's news that Time magazine selected Pope Francis as their Person Of The Year surprised me just as much as when the College of Cardinals elected him to become Pope.

 

I didn't think it would really happen but I am ecstatic that it did!

 

I knew Pope Francis was a finalist for the annual honor but I really thought that Time magazine was going to go with former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who this year released hundreds of thousands of classified government documents revealing the depth of the U.S. government's surveillance on phone and internet communications.

 

But spiritual won out.  Congratulations Pope Francis!

 

 

You are the real deal!!  You not only talk about the need to help the poor but you roll up your sleeves and get your own papal hands dirty trying to make the lives of the poor better yourself.

 

People love you and are excited about your humble leadership because you are inclusive.  You are a healer.  You have come along at a time when the world at large and the Catholic community desperately needs you and your gentle guidance.

 

Recently you invited nearly 200 homeless people to join you for dinner at the Vatican and there also were news stories about you sneaking out at night dressed as a regular priest to meet with homeless men and women to give comfort and listen to their concerns.

 

You are quickly shifting the priorities of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church from abortion, contraception, gay marriage and the nuns to more Christian issues such as poverty, materialism and the inequity of the world's economy.

 

Equally as important, you are opening the doors on the Vatican bank and calling for transparency.  I say it's about time someone threw some light on the decades of secretive Vatican Bank transactions and I must add there are times when I pray for you because I worry about you.

 

But then I remember that you are a Jesuit and Jesuits are always in a class by themselves!

A Pope of Hope

From Southern Maryland to Northern Virginia, everywhere I went this past weekend people were talking about Pope Francis and his  recent groundbreaking remarks about the state of the Catholic Church.

 

Pope Francis, you are a healing breath of fresh air and you arrived on the global scene just when we needed to listen your joyous and merciful outlook on life!!

It was amazing to me that people spontaneously brought it up in conversation no matter what else was previously being talked about.  I find religion is sometimes discussed at social events but not very often.  And in Washington, DC, rarely do I ever hear Washington Redskins and Pope Francis brought up in almost consecutive sentences but this weekend it happened and I think this it's due to the hopeful and honest nature of what Pope Francis said in an interview with an Italian Jesuit magazine that was published last week in Jesuits magazines around the world. 

At a party I attended yesterday, Catholics and non-Catholics enthusiastically discussed the subject of Pope Francis, saying how much they liked him, how exciting he was and how they wished they had some one like him in their particular faiths.

 

For most people, it was Pope Francis' comment about sinning that kicked the door open and got their attention.  In the interview Pope Francis was asked "Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?"  In a thoughtful manner Pope Francis replies: "I do not know what might be the most fitting description. . . I am a sinner.  This is the most accurate definition.  It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre.  I am a sinner."

 

Really and truly?

 

Okay Pope Francis that immediately bonds me to you because I am a sinner too.  But people are blown away because this is the first time most people have ever heard a Pope publicly tell others that he sins also.  Usually there is the distinct feeling that we are the sinners but the Pope does not commit sin.  This time, it is as though Pope Francis opens his arms and says to us, "I am just like you.  We are all the same in our humanity."

 

 

America Magazine Issue with Pope Francis Interview

You can read the full interview with Pope Francis on the website for America Magazine (www.americamagazine.org), a national Catholic weekly magazine published by Jesuits in the United States.

 

Read for yourself the thoughtful and insightful way that Pope Francis discusses a wide range of subjects that touches all of our lives and issues that we all wrestle with.

 

For me, my Catholic faith is essential and goes to the core of my being but in the past decade or two I have turned a deaf ear to many things being said by the Catholic hierarchy.  That said, here are two other comments Pope Francis made in his interview that were particularly open and refreshing and signal to me a much needed change in the thinking of the Church:

 

--"I see clearly that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity.  I see the church as a field hospital after battle.  It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars!  You have to heal the wounds.  Then we can talk about everything else.  Heal the wounds, heal the wounds. . . And you have to start from the from the ground up."

 

--"The woman is essential for the church.  Mary, a woman, is more important than the bishops. I say this because we must not confuse the function with the dignity.  We must therefore investigate further the role of women in the church.  We must work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman."

 

St. Francis & His BFF Clare

With the recent election of Pope Francis I to head the Catholic Church, people are talking about faith and religion with a renewed enthusiasm.

 

I think people are filled with hope and that's always a good thing.

Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo! and the mainstream news outlets have been full of stories and comments about what changes, if any, this new pope may bring about.  I was at friend's house for dinner the other day and the subject of the Pope spontaneously came up.  Even my dentist started talking about it yesterday morning and I don't think we've ever discussed the subject of God.

 

You would have thought we all had some inside sources at the Vatican the way people are talking about the Catholic Church and the symbolism of Pope Francis' public comments.  It's ironic that everyone seems to be an instant expert on religion, a subject people usually go out of their way to avoid discussing.

I love the this dynamic dialogue about God and faith and the Church.  I have my own problems with the hierarchy and bureaucratic parts of the Church but the core teachings and values are the tenants of my faith.  To me, faith is a belief in a God that is merciful and good and one who provides comfort and healing. 

At the same time, women and their role in the Catholic Church is an issue that always gets me going and that's why this following story that was published in The Washington Post caught my eye.  We all know about St. Francis of Assisi and his pursuit of a simple and humble life but did we know about his BFF, Clare?  Maybe you did, but I had no clue.

This story surprised me for I didn't know about the friendship of Francis and Clare and the ministry they advanced together.  As Maureen O'Connell writes, "Her (Clare's) status as his equal made it possible for the two of them, together, to mount a spiritual reform of the church."

For every Francis, a Clare. . . Indeed!

St. Clare of Assisi & St. Francis of Assisi

For Every Francis, a Clare

By Maureen O’Connell, Published The Washington Post: March 15

Although historically shut out of the frescoed halls of power in Vatican City and more mundane but just as exclusive rectories and chancelleries around the world, Catholic women might find a place for leadership under the new papacy after all. As the talking heads have been saying since Jorge Mario Bergoglio appeared from behind that red curtain, it’s all in the name: Clare.
 

If Pope Francis seeks to embrace his namesake’s legacy of reforming the church by embodying the loving ministry of Christ, then he would do well also to embrace dimensions of the loving partnership between the 15th century Francis of Assisi and fellow Umbrian, Clare, founder of the Poor Clares, a semi-cloistered group of sisters who today number more than 20,000 in 70 countries. Like most heroic dynamic duos, these two were revolutionary. They confounded social expectations, rejected excessive wealth and power, and inspired upright living. In some ways, their partnership should be nothing new for followers of Christ, since women were pivotal both to Jesus’ ministry and the early Jesus movement. But since such partnerships remain a rarity, Francis and Clare might remind the new pope: if you want reform, work with tenacious women.
 

It seems Francis of Assisi knew that when Clare first encountered him during a Lenten reflection he gave at the church of San Giorgio exactly 800 years ago. Like him, Clare viewed her family’s social privilege as an obstacle to her spiritual yearnings and by Palm Sunday the devout 18-year-old had jettisoned the trappings of her noble life and sought out Francis for a humble one of seclusion and prayer. Francis made her escape from her former life possible and further advanced her countercultural lifestyle choice by writing the original rule or founding documents for the Poor Clares.
 

But Pope Francis would profit from the memory that Clare’s was the flame; his namesake simply fanned it. Against the wishes of the Italian hierarchy, Clare insisted that her nuns mirror Francis’ friars in everything including their refusal to own property. There would be no two-tiered holiness codes for her—if the men were capable of such a pious commitment, so too were the women. The backing of Francis no doubt bolstered her in her resolve to insist on this equality when face to face with Pope Gregory IX, who formally acknowledged her rule in 1219.

Moreover, Francis and Clare enjoyed an iconic friendship, one rooted in shared passions and pieties, struggles and hopes. These two needed each other in order to answer the ceaseless challenges of their respective vocational calls and to lead their communities wisely. Theirs was an intimacy of equals, liberated from narrow Catholic constructs of gender and religious vocation and open to the gifts the Holy Spirit offers leaders who seek mutuality and reciprocity: the freedom to tell and hear hard truths, the freedom to ask and offer forgiveness, the freedom to fail and start again.
 

Finally, Francis and Clare are radical; they return us to our roots by reminding us of the hallmarks of Jesus’ own ministry—simple living, a care for the poor, and a pivotal place for women at the heart of it all. Whether as financiers of Jesus and his disciples, as witnesses to both his death and Resurrection, or as deacons in the early Christian community, women were among Jesus’ most trusted companions and visible leaders. Like Clare, they did not wait quietly on the periphery and like Francis, Christ welcomed them to the center.

To be sure, patriarchy remains a cultural inheritance from which even Francis of Assisi had difficulty divesting. Paternalism often confined the Poor Clares to quiet contemplative work in the shadows of their historical male superior, a reality all too familiar to many religious and lay women toiling behind the scenes of Catholic ministry today. And centuries of theological developments and women’s movements later, patriarchy still seems as germane to the hierarchical church as white smoke to the announcement of a new pope. Men in cassocks: can’t rule with them, have to live ruled by them.
 

But still these names, Francis and Clare, suggest real possibilities for Catholic women. Like Christ whom he strove to emulate, Francis of Assisi used his power to empower a woman to become an unprecedented minister to the people of God. Her status as his equal made it possible for the two of them, together, to mount a spiritual reform of the church. That reform was significant enough to warrant the public acknowledgment of Jorge Mario Bergoglio in his transition to leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. May Pope Francis not overlook the prophetic dimension of Clare in his imitation of his namesake’s legacy.

Maureen O’Connell is Associate Professor of Theology at Fordham University, the Jesuit University of New York, and the author of Compassion: Loving Our Neighbor in an Age of Globalization (Orbis Books, 2009) and If These Walls Could Talk: Community Muralism and the Beauty of Justice (The Liturgical Press, 2012)

© The Washington Post Company

 

Chocolate or Kindness?



Finding the Balance of Chocolate and Kindness

Don't let the collar turn you off.

Fr. James Martin is a charismatic Jesuit priest who has a Lenten message that can be appreciated by followers of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Folk Religions and even atheists.

 

It's a simple message but one that is challenging for people (myself included) to practice.  And it doesn't have to be Lent to make it happen.  We can practice his message any time of the year.

 

Lent is traditionally a time when Catholics give up something.  But suppose instead of giving up chocolate (that would be me) or alcohol or potato chips, you decided to do something good?  Why something good?

 

Because it is soooo much harder to stay quiet and not say the smart remark that first pops into your head when you are talking to a co-worker or a relative than it is to walk past the bowl of M&M's.

Listen and dare to try it out:

Fat Tuesday

Today is Fat Tuesday.

 

For Catholics, today is the last hurrah before lent begins tomorrow.  That is how Mardi Gras come to be.  Essentially, Mardi Gras is French for Fat Tuesday and with Mardi Gras comes some hard partying and parades and good times before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. 

 

 

 

 

Lent is a time of fasting and serious reflection, a time of giving something up or doing something that's personally hard in order to prepare yourself for the celebration of Easter.

 

This year, once again, my demon is sugar.

 

I know all the bad stuff about sugar and how it is bad for your immune system and how it is highly addictive. Yet, try as I might, during the holidays, I cannot resist the cookies and chocolates that seem to surround me. I tell myself that when the new year arrives I will put the brakes on the sweets but then my birthday arrives in early January and I'm back on the sugar train.

 

The problem is that sugar makes you feel better.  At least it makes me feel better for the moment of that I eat it.  I read somewhere that when you eat sugar, it tells the brain to release dopamine, a chemical that the brain also releases when certain drugs are ingested or when you exercise a lot.  I'm always trying to remind myself about this sugar-brain connection but then I start to think about freshly baked cookies.

 

 

 

 

 

My friend Eileen makes the most outrageously delicious cookies in the whole world and when I see a plate of them offered at get-togethers, there is no way I can resist them.  Her cookies are like potato chips: you can never eat just one.

 

Whenever I think I'm the only one who is out of control about sugar, I pick up Kris Carr's book, Crazy, Sexy Diet, and I go directly to her chapter on sugar.  Here is an except from Carr's chapter entitled, Cupcakes, Coffee & Cocktails:

 

"Look I know firsthand how hard it is to heal addictions.  I come from a scarf-and-barf, drink-too-much history.  Date night with myself was a debaucherous romp into coma-ville.  I'd buy a bunch of cookies and wine, pop the top button of my jeans, and chow down.  Occasionally my higher self would guide me to the trash can before I finished every last crumb.  An hour later my lower self would bark orders to pick through the trash and retrieve the delicious drugs like a back-alley junkie.

 

Elegant people don't dig through the trash.  The chic and stylish don't attack their doughnuts with Windex.  Yes, I admit it.  The only way to keep my paws off the contraband was to blast it with Windex.  Clearly I was out of control."

 

Lent is arriving at the perfect time for me.  I need to be motivated to give up the sugar for an extended period of time and this way I'll be doing it for a higher purpose and a heavenly being.

 

And maybe, just in case, I'll keep the Windex nearby.

 

Newtown: A Priest's Tears

Monsignor Robert Weiss

I always think of priests as people who have heard and seen it all.

After years of listening to thousands of people confess their sins (large and small), and executing innumerable weddings, funerals and baptisms, I can't imagine that priests are surprised by anything anybody does.  I'm sure their deep faith gives them hope and optimism about human behavior but there probably isn't anything new under the sun for them.

Until I read about Monsignor Robert Weiss.

Weiss is a priest at St. Rose of Lima parish in Newtown, CT and he horribly lost more than 10 parishioners in the tragic and shocking shooting of December 14 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School.  Weiss personally knew many of the children who died at the school for he had baptized them and he compassionately stayed at the scene to continue to counsel and absorb the anxiety, regrets and raw grief of the schoolchildren's parents.

Weiss was interviewed on television about the shooting.  I watched him try to describe what the people of the town were feeling and during the interview he started to cry.

I silently thanked him for crying on television, for showing his vulnerability and his strength.  It is not a sign of weakness to cry.  It is letting your grief run free and in that freedom is where you can sometimes find the strength to go forward and to also find a sense of healing.

After my husband died, I cried a lot.   My son had a hard time watching this happen and always asked me to please stop.  But I really couldn't.  Sometimes it was in public and sometimes it was privately.  But my tears were my way of  releasing my grief and I always felt better afterwards.

Grief that is held inside only keeps hurting.

People are afraid to talk to others who are grieving because they think that by mentioning the deceased person's name they will upset them and they will cry.  So what if they cry?  Take their hand and hold it.  Put your arms around them and hug them.  Quietly tell them they are not alone.

Monsignor Robert Weiss has shown us how to handle unspeakable acts of horror and deep grief.  Here is The Washington Post story about his beautiful acts of human kindness: 

 

 

Monsignor Robert Weiss

St. Rose priest mourns with his flock after witnessing his parishioners’ grief

By Anne Hull, Published The Washington Post: December 16

 

NEWTOWN, CONN. — As if it were any normal day, Monsignor Robert Weiss had his usual breakfast at the Sandy Hook Diner — a short stack of French toast and two strips of bacon. Waitresses call it the “Monsignor Special.”

Within hours of that hometown breakfast Friday, Weiss found himself in a room at a firehouse, with parents on folding chairs, in what would become one of the worst days in American history.

The 66-year-old priest is known as Father Bob to the 3,500 families who belong to St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church. On Sunday, what Father Bob craved — after long hours of counseling and grieving and not enough sleep — was a good Scotch and a place to let go. Half of the 20 children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary were members of Weiss’s congregation, and he had baptized many of them.

After the 10:30 a.m. Mass on Sunday, in a rectory full of law enforcement officers and priests, Weiss wept.

Nothing at seminary had trained him for this week. Nothing about his 13 years at St. Rose. Nothing about his understanding of the world.

“I thought about Paul,” said Weiss, his black clergy shirt unbuttoned and his white collar in his shirt pocket like a pen. “Paul said, ‘In my weakness I find my greatest strength.’ ”

On Friday morning, Weiss was working in his office when he received a call from authorities to lock down the school at St. Rose. There had been a school shooting. Weiss left the rectory and walked 100 yards to the church, where students were gathered for regular Friday morning Mass. Weiss interrupted the priest who was officiating and told him to stop and keep the students inside the church.

When Weiss heard that the shooting had occurred at Sandy Hook, less than a mile away, he grabbed two other priests from St. Rose, and they rode in Weiss’s BMW to the school. Three priests in clergy collars were a welcome sight.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” said the police officer who flagged them through the secured perimeter.

When Weiss pulled up, he saw teachers organizing students into lines in the parking lot. The ­second-grade teacher held up a sign that said two, and the third-grade teacher held up a sign that said three. And the students — who had been told to close their eyes while they evacuated the building to avoid seeing the carnage as they rushed past — obediently began forming lines.

Not every child was there. Some had run into the woods when they heard the shots. A few had run home. And some were inside the school.

Frantic parents were arriving. Children burst from their lines upon seeing their mother or father, while parents ran toward the lines.

Reunion after reunion whittled the lines down, leaving only parents, empty-handed and desperate. They were taken to the nearby firehouse where the Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire and Rescue Company operated.

Weiss walked over, too. He knew half the parents from St. Rose. He had officiated at their weddings and the baptisms of their children, some of whom were now unaccounted for.

Inside the firehouse, parents texted relatives, called babysitters to stay late and called around to likely places where their missing children might have gone.

That room, too, was whittled down.

“If your child’s name was not called, please go into this room,” an official said, directing the remaining parents into an adjoining room.

Investigators asked each parent for a photo of his or her child. Wallets and purses came out. No shortage of photos. Next came the questions. What color is your son’s hair? What did she wear to school that morning?

They all had a child in the first grade. They were hoping and praying that a classroom had not yet been evacuated, or that their child had been taken to the hospital. Couples debated which one should leave to check the hospitals.

In the room of folding chairs, time passed. Weiss felt the tension rising in equal measure to the sense of dread. Parents started coming to him with regrets.

A mother said she shouldn’t have taken her daughter’s DVD player away. “She wasn’t a bad child,” the mother told Weiss. Another mother who came to Weiss said it was her fault she sent her daughter to school that morning. She blamed herself, telling the priest she wasn’t fit to raise her other children.

About 3 p.m., Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy came into the room. The gruesome announcement was his to make: 27 people inside the school had been killed, and 20 were children. All would be taken to the medical examiner’s office.

With the news came the most raw display of human grief that Weiss had ever seen or imagined — wailing, weeping, screaming, people sinking to the floor.

Some parents wanted to go inside the school and see their children. They insisted or begged. They wanted to go inside the school. The answer was no. The school was a crime scene and couldn’t be disrupted. The parents did not yet know an assault rifle had been used to kill the children.

The room began to clear out. At 3:20, a mother’s cellphone rang with the reminder to take her son to Cub Scouts.

That night, Weiss was called to the police station and was assigned to call at the homes of two victims, along with a state trooper and a grief counselor.

He knocked on one door at midnight — that of a husband whose wife had been killed in the shooting — and the next door at 1:30 a.m.

Weiss knew both families well. They belonged to his church.

In all those hours of counseling and comforting, no one asked the priest, “Why?” The question came later, starting on Sunday, and Weiss did not have an answer.

 

© The Washington Post Company

Aren't You Over It Yet?

I am Catholic but I often find strength and wisdom in the teachings of other religions.  We're all here in the same boat and we're all here to get along, so why not reach out and see what we can learn from each other?

With that thought in mind, I am sharing a short insightful piece that a friend gave to me.   It is written by a rabbi and I found his thoughts to be very comforting.  I hope you do too:

Getting Over It

By Rabbi Earl A. Grollman

My wife died fourteen months ago.  Even though I don't feel as bad as when she first died, I'm still in terrible pain.  My friends ask me, "Don't you think it's time you're over it?"  How do I know when I've finished grieving?

 

Grief is not a weakness or an illness, even though some may treat you as though you were sick.  "Getting over" the death of a loved one is not like "getting over" a cold, a broken bone or an allergy.  There is no time limit, quick fix, or an easy cure.  Grief is a continuing, slow, consuming process -- a physical, spiritual, and emotional response to agonizing separation.

 

Even with the passage of time, sadness does not completely disappear.  There will be moments when you feel like your old self, as well as low periods, especially during holidays and anniversaries.

 

Here are some encouraging signs that you are effectively dealing with grief:

 

--Your body doesn't hurt so much.  You feel a little less discomfort and a little more peace.  Memories are recalled with more pleasure than pain.

 

--You care how you dress and look.  You enjoy some old interests, activities and hobbies.  You cope more effectively with other problems in your life.

 

--You are able to envision and plan future events with a degree of exciting anticipation.

 

--You think more of possibility rather than impossibility.

 

--You invite family and friends to be with you.  You reach out to others.  You commemorate holidays without feeling guilty for enjoying the day.

 

--You delight in keeping the room temperature at 65 degrees when your loved one always wanted it to be at 74 degrees.

 

--You accept your grief, your fears, your aloneness and say, "I miss her/him so much but I have to go on living."

 

"Getting over" the death of someone you care deeply about doesn't mean that you will be the same person you were before the loss.  It doesn't mean that you've forgotten the person who died.

 

You don't get over it.  You just continue to go through it.  A widower who understands this message said eloquently: "I am less because she is no more.  But I am more because she was part of my life."

Election Chatter

American Flag in Ocean City, MD

Maybe you talk about politics.  Maybe you don't.

Either way, we have 86 days to go until Election Day and now that the presidential and vice presidential tickets for both parties are set, it's going to be a long, hard slog.

How to survive in Washington, DC and remain hopeful that everyday conversation can remain civil?

It is possible.  Vent while you're putting your make-up on, while you're taking a shower, while you're walking around the house.

Or don't get sucked into negative energy.  One positive and healing action I have been following over the past few weeks is boycotting the local and national morning television programs.  I look forward to watching the 7 pm evening news but I am doing my bit for energy conservation by not turning on the television in the morning.  It has become a wasteland.

If I want to find out about the weather or traffic before I leave for work, I go on the internet and look it up.  The majority of stories that air in the morning are not news stories -- the celebrity drivel is off the charts -- and half the time I'm not even sure that the reporting is accurate.  It's the same stuff over and over again because the television stations need to fill air time. 

So let them fill it.  I'm just not watching and OMG my outlook on the upcoming day is now so much calmer.

The issue of staying hopeful during these times is also addressed in September 2012's Oprah magazine and Donna Brazile, a weekly contributor and political commentator on CNN's The Situation Room, wrote the following insightful piece:

How Can I Stay Hopeful?
If the nightly news makes you want to ditch civilization and move to a desert island, you're not alone.  Here's how Donna Brazile keeps engaged.

Ten years ago, I was hired by CNN as a pundit, bloviator, spin master -- and those are just the nicer names for what I do.  It was an incredible opportunity for someone like me, who enjoys the political process -- but it came with certain risks to the soul.  News shows are often formatted like gladiator battles: The Democrat goes "head-to-head" with the Republican; we "faceoff"; one person "slams" the other.  I've been called a racist because I support affirmative action; I've been called a bad Catholic because I believe in birth control.  At the same time, I'm supposed to vilify the opposing side.

I often get depressed by this political environment.  We're inundated with stories about congressional gridlock and a deeply divided public, all the while the planet overheats, unhinged dictators in  the Middle East run amok, and the economy goes off the rails.  Like many Americans, I've sometimes doubted the functioning of our government.  Take the night the U.S. Supreme Court ended the vote count in Florida during the 2000 presidential election, or that horrifying period after Hurricane Katrina when I could not get anybody at FEMA on the phone to help me locate my missing disabled sister.

But ultimately, I don't have the luxury of tuning out.  Instead, I think of my mother, who taught me to find the good in every person and situation.  She never let us lose hope -- and she always made sure we believed Santa Claus would come, no matter how dirt-poor we were.

She's the reason I've spent my free time this summer looking for nice things to say about Mitt Romney, even though I don't plan to vote for him (for starters, he's an honorable, decent and loving father who obviously cares deeply about this country).  When I feel myself getting steamed up over an issue, it really does help to remember the rich humanity of my so-called opponents -- even one as formidable as former Bush advisor Karl Rove.  Competing against him was blood sport -- and yet he and I have great rapport.  We discovered early on that we share a love of history.  Karl doesn't just know dates and facts; he can tell you what people were eating, drinking and thinking in 1896 -- and he's always sending me books by Joseph Ellis.  He's proof that it's possible to disagree with someone on just about everything but still respect them.

Of course, I don't look for the good in others just on the campaign trail.  I see it in the policeman on the beat who's there when I am walking home late at night, and the air-traffic controllers who make sure the plane lands safely (I don't know who these people are, but I'm always praying for them).  It may not be easy to believe in government, but I can certainly believe in the postal worker who tucks my mail neatly into my box so it won't get wet when I'm traveling.

It's people, not politicians, who make this country what it is.  When I look around me, I can't help having faith.

Angels & Faith

Faith is usually defined as having a confident belief in the truth of a person, idea or thing.  Faith is also defined as having a secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will. 

Hmmmm....trusting acceptance.  For me that is always the part of faith that I am constantly working on.  I have been thinking a lot about faith these days and it's role in my life.  I don't know what the future will bring, but of course  I always hope and pray that it's going to be something good.

And if it's not something good, then I hope and pray that I will have the faith and strength to deal with it.

I have found that my faith has changed as my life has unfolded.  When my son was born, my faith in the future and in the world as a whole was off the charts.  He was a beautiful baby and everything about him worked as it should and my husband and I truly felt blessed as parents.

When my husband died,  I felt as though I was being severely tested and punished.  I couldn't see beyond the next 10 minutes and I had no idea what would happen the next day.  I wasn't even sure that that I wanted the next day to arrive.  I had no energy to build or plan a future.  It was all about surviving.

It was during this time that I re-acquainted myself with angels.  From childhood, I have always believed in the existence of angels and their power to inspire and protect us.  Maybe it has something to do with the Catholic notion of everyone having a guardian angel that God gives to you when you are born and your guardian angel watches over you until you die.

There have been times in my life when my guardian angel has worked overtime and I have definitely felt as though she has yanked me out of some dicey situations.  It's too bad she hasn't had the ability to sometimes put masking tape over my mouth because that would have been equally as helpful!  I am not alone in my faith about angels.  I asked a guy that I work with about angels and he quickly replied that he knows for sure that he has a couple of guardian angels dedicated to watching over him!

Joking aside, I do believe that God has a plan for all of us and that angels watch over us and do their best to keep us on the straight and narrow.

Have you ever felt the presence of an angel in your life?