Open Letter To A Friend That's Hurting

Dear Christine,

You are a strong-willed person and that is one of the greatest things I like about you. It is an attribute that makes you a wonderful friend and a wonderful competitor.

You believe in things greater than yourself and for that you will always run into others that treat you unkindly, dishonestly, and even maliciously at times.

I don't know their motives or why they behave as they do toward you. They will talk the talk of "tolerance" and yet treat you very coldly and with a rage of intolerance.

You are a very loving person, Christine, and I know I myself have treated you at times with something less than love. For that I, I'm sure you know, am sorry.

Things for which I'm thankful this Thanksgiving 2010

For this year, a list of things for which I’m thankful – in no particular order –

I am thankful for the health I have – the gift of senses – sight and hearing and touch and smell and taste – and the ability to feel emotions – compassion and love and joy and happiness – and even sadness and hurt and guilt and shame (for from these, too, I learn things if I’m willing to listen).

I’m thankful for smiles from checkers at the grocery store and the stories that patients share with me.

I’m thankful for the unconditional love of my family who I think sometimes could only love me unconditionally.

I’m thankful for the work I get to do and the co-workers with whom I get to work – sometimes they confuse me and annoy me and disappoint me and even hurt me (and yes, you can be hurt without your permission), but other times they cheer me up, the listen, they encourage me, they teach me, they make me smile, they share with me, they care, and I think, in their own way, some of them love me (not unconditionally, but inasmuch as is appropriate among co-workers).

I’m thankful for the gifts that God has given me – His Mercy, His Love, His Grace, His Charity. Goodness knows I rely on all of these in abundance.

I’m thankful for friends God has placed about me – some who – sometimes it seems – out of nowhere surprise me with a call or a letter or a smile or they just pop into a memory and offer me wonderful insight or an escape to some distant time of different hopes and dreams.

I’m thankful for this little place I call “home”.

I’m thankful for raindrops and snowflakes and mud and sunshine and rakes and brakes and streams and ponds and rivulets and lakes and oceans and swimming pools and running shoes.

I’m thankful for steering wheels.

I’m thankful for the understanding of people who see with a clarity of soul beyond the pale and veneer and for the depth of wisdom of human nature they possess and share.

I’m thankful for wood and stud-finders and laughter and TVs and computers and antennas and radios.

I’m thankful for pants and pens that write and pocketbooks and pencils and teacups and pencil sharpeners.

I’m thankful for chairs and pliers and spoons and stable tables and forks and nails and knobs and picnic blankets – that all do what they’re supposed to …

I’m thankful for dogs and fish and marbles and to a lesser degree cats (only because they make some people happy).

I’m thankful for the warmth of blankets on a cold night, fans when it is hot, good books and the ability to read, and electricity.

I’m thankful for the people that help me when I need it and I’m thankful for those who accept my help when I’m able to lend a hand.

I’m thankful for many, many, many, many things I all too often take for granted.

I’m thankful for a wonderful life that God has given me for which all too often it may appear I am something less than thankful.

This day of Thanksgiving is a miraculous day to give thanks to God – and this day is a gift unlike any other, Thank You, God!

Give It Back With Love

Take it easy, take it slow,
Take it as you may
Take it where the wind may blow
For another day

Words can bruise, words may wound,
By thoughtless word or deed
The tongue's a sword
And surely may lead a soul to bleed

Mistakes are made and bruises fade
This too shall pass, they say
Take it easy, take it slow
Then give it all away

The darkest night precedes what might
Be the dawning of
The day you take it in with pain
And give it back with love

Heaven Scent

A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. Still groggy from surgery, her husband David held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news.

That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency cesarean to deliver the couple's new daughter, Danae Lu Blessing. At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound and nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctor's soft words dropped like bombs.

"I don't think she's going to make it," he said, as kindly as he could. "There's only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one."

Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Danae would likely face if she survived. She would never walk. She would never talk. She would probably be blind. She would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation. And on and on.

The Gift of a Smile by Ellie Braun-Haley

The transition from living in your own home and directing every aspect of your life to being confined to a wheelchair and being dependent on others for everything, is a traumatic change. Five months after mother’s ninety first birthday my mother fell and this one single incident changed mother’s life.

She was in hospital for months and then moved to a Nursing facility. We knew she would never go home again and then came the day when she too knew it.

Lost and Found by Phil Callaway

Lost and Found by Phil Callaway

One dear old duffer on our course has given up on golf altogether. Oh, he doesn't mind hitting a ball now and then, but if you're standing near the tee box when he swings, you'll notice that he purposely aims for the creek. And when the ball goes where he intended, he feigns disappointment.

"You go on ahead," he smiles, "I'll catch up later."

As he says this, he slides his ball retriever from his bag and slips over the edge of the bank where the shanked balls hide. Every other club in his bag has failed him, but not this one.

It is a sad thing to watch the hunter become a gatherer.

Catholicism and Galileo

The following article is transcribed from the January 7, 2001 edition of Our Sunday Visitor.

On Galileo, “conventional wisdom” is bunk

Church authorities erred in judging the 16th-century astronomer’s views. Now, if only today’ Catholic-bashers would deal with the facts of the case

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By Robert P. Lockwood

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It was one of the most dramatic moments in the history of science. It was 1633. And there was Galileo, bent and broken by the tortures of the Inquisition, retracting that which he knew to be true – that the earth orbits the sun and moves on its own axis. Blind religion had conquered science.

Yet, as he leaves the court for life imprisonment in the dungeons of the Inquisition, he musters on last moment of courage. The he promised never to teach again that the earth is anything but a motionless orb in space, he defiantly mutters aloud, “Eppur si muove!” (“And yet it does move!”) It would take 360 years – not until the 1990s – for the Church to apologize and admit that the astronomer had a point.

That’s the conventional wisdom on the trial of Galileo. And it is all bunk.

Galileo was never tortured and never spent a day locked in a prison cell. The famous quote attributed to him was invented by a writer 125 years later. And within 100 years of Galileo’s death on Jan. 8, 1642, well before science was capable of proving his theories, his published works received an imprimatur from the Church.