HHS and a Revolutionary Church

I have a post at IgnitumToday called "HHS and a Revolutionary Church":
http://www.ignitumtoday.com/2012/02/08/hhsrevolutionarychurch/

Hope you like it!



JPII at Igreja da Encarnacao in Lisbon



A weekly picnic (now with three people), including homemade snickerdoodles!

Full gallop

That's me riding on a beautiful horse named Nesga ("little piece") this weekend! My friend was nice enough to invite me to go with her and we took a ride around the riding school. How do I ride horses and still manage to complain about my life? I manage somehow. I am coming to the conclusion I'm really spoiled. Then we went to a cafe with a beautiful ocean view and latin music. I felt like I was on a trip somewhere tropical. Finally, I went to a birthday dinner at a factory-turned-restaurante called Lx Factory in Lisbon which had a brick oven in the middle of the room and lots of rustic decoration. Even though it sounds like a dream weekend, it was pretty crazy and busy. From now on, I'd like to make my plans and time more meaningful, intentional and s...l...o...w. That's the moral of the story of my weekend.  

"In art there are neither mistakes nor touch-ups,
the beauty is in the artist."

Conclusions about weakness

I'm only posting once this week, pretty far off from my ideal of every weekday. This week didn't go as planned, it was a lot more worried/busy and less peaceful than last week. That's okay though, things don't usually go as I plan and that's a good thing. They are usually far from ideal. I've been realizing some things these past few weeks:

• I have a lot of problems. Emotional and psychological problems that prevent me from living my life as fully and happily as I'd like, and probably as God would like. This might seem basic, but it has been hard for me to come to the realization that I have just as many problems as the people I think who "have a lot of problems".
• When I forget I have problems, God will remind me.
• The game of Catholicism/life gets harder as you go progress, like any good game (as Marc Barnes from Bad Catholic puts it so well here).
• Other people know I'm not perfect and like me anyway.
• God knows I have problems. He was counting on it. He created me anyway and gives me all the gifts/responsibilities I have anyway.
• I'm the one that can't stand admitting I have problems... I have lots of pride.
• God is curing and helping me along, but it's a life-long process.
• My problems help me connect with other people that have problems.

Christopher West has a new book out! It's already on the way to my house. You can watch an two video interviews with him about it here:

http://www.thinveil.net/2012/02/interview-with-christopher-west.html

I love what he said about why he took his year-long sabbatical. He says teachers/apologists tend to think they have something really remarkable to offer, but in fact, as St. Paul says, all we have to offer is our weakness. He says he has been reflecting on his own poverty. They were really words of hope for me, especially after coming to the conclusions above. I've been confronting and trying to accept my own poverty/weakness, because that's really all I have to offer.

My basil and cabbage flower trying to survive the winter
and my lack of knowledge on how often to water them

Being Portuguese and making soup

Picnic guests

Who doesn't love a picnic? What better way to share time and food with friends? In my opinion, it's much better than a restaurant or even eating at home. It seems like a dream come true that my friend Alex and I are starting to meet up for picnic lunches once a week. On our second weekly picnic, we were attacked by dogs as usual and one of them was a Jack Russell Terrier! I thought it was hilarious that while most dogs run up to us and then politely sniff from a short distance, the terrier (puppy!) went right for the food and I had to hold him back! Luckily, he was small.

La paix de coeur (peace of heart)

   In trying to make decisions in my life, I remembered a little book I bought two years ago that was suggested to me by an American who said it was a book to be "read and reread" several times. It's called Searching for and Maintaining Peace: A Small Treatise on Peace of Heart by Father Jacques Philippe.

   It really is very good, but only when I had a specific problem now and reread it did it REALLY make sense. It has a great introduction about the importance of peace, then it has several chapters about the things that commonly make us lose our peace and how to react to them and finally it ends with a few writings from the saints about this topic. "The first goal of spiritual combat," he says in the introduction, "that twoard which our efforts must above all else be directed, is not to always obtain a vitory (over our temptations, weaknesses, etc., rather it is to learn to maintain peace of heart under all circumstances, even in the case of defeat." (p. 12)

The chapter called "Unrest When We Have Decisions to Make" really helped put things in perspective for me and I'd like to share a few quotes of it with you:

   "The last reason that we are going to examine and which frequently causes us to lose our sense of peace is a lack of certitude, the troubling of conscience that is experienced when it is necessary to make a decision and we are not able to see clearly. We are afraid to make a mistake that may have disturbing consequences, we are afraid that it may not be the will of the Lord.

   Situations of this type can be very painful and certain dilemmas truly agonizing. The general stance of abandonment and confidence of which we have spoken, this approach of putting everything into the hands of God which enables us to avoid 'dramatizing' anything (even the consequences that our errors might engender!) will be particularly precious in these situations of incertitude."

   "The first thing to say (and this is in complete harmony with what we have said up to this point) is that, faced with an important decision, one of the errors to avoid is that of being excessively hurried or precipitous. A certain deliberation is often necessary in order to properly consider things and to allow our hearts to orient themselves peaceably and gently toward a good solution."

   "In this regard, we must know that everyone will encounter, above all in the spiritual life, certain situations where one would not have sufficient light, would be incapable of making a necessary discernment or of making a determination in peace, without recourse to a spiritual advisor. The Lord does not want us to be self-sufficient and, as part of His pedagogy, He permits that sometime we find ourselves in the impossibility of finding enlightenment and peace by ourselves; we cannot receive them except through the intermediary of another person to whom we can open up."

   "Having said that, it is important to know one thing. Whatever the precautions (prayer, reflection, advice) that one uses to obtain enlightenment before making a decision and in order to be sure of doing God's will (it's a duty to take these precautions, because we do not have the right, above all in domains of importance, to decide lightly), one will not always receive this light in a clear and unambiguous manner. Confronted with a specific situation, we ask ourselves (and we must always do this!): 'What must I do? What is the Lord's will?' We will not always have a response!"

   "When the Lord leaves us thus in incertitude, we must quietly accept it."

   "Often we torment ourselves excessively regarding our decisions. As there is a false humility, a false compassion, we can also say that, concerning our decisions, there is sometimes that which one could call a 'false obedience' to God. We would like to be absolutely certain of doing God's will in all of our choices and never to be mistaken. But, there is, in this attitude, something that is not exactly right for a variety of reasons."

   "We want to be released from having to decide for ourselves. But, frequently, the will of the Lord is that we do decide for ourselves, even if we are not absolutely sure that this decision would be the best."

   "He [God] asks of us goodwill, the right intentions, but in no way does He demand that we would be infallible and that all of our decisions would be perfect! And additionally, if all our decisions were perfect, this would, without doubt, do us more harm than good! We would quickly take ourselves for supermen."

   "Perfectionism doesn't have much to do with sanctity."

   "When one is far from God, the adversary tempts him with evil: he attracts him to bad things. But when one is close to God, loves Him, desires nothing but to please and obey Him, the devil, while he tempts him still with evil (this is easy to recognize), he tempts him even further by good. This means that he makes use of our desire to do good to trouble us. He does this by making us scrupulous, or by presenting us with a certain good that we must realize but which is beyond our present strength, or which is not what God asks of us - all to discourage us or to cause of to lose our peace. He wants to convince us that we are not doing enough or that what we are doing we are not really doing for the love of God, or that the Lord is not happy with us, etc. He would make us believe, for instance, that the Lord is asking such and such a sacrifice of us that we are incapable of doing, and this will trouble us greatly. It creates all sorts of scruples and worries in the conscience which we should purely and simply ignore, while throwing ourselves into the arms of God like small children. When we lose peace for reasons similar to those we just mentioned, let us tell ourselves that the devil must be involved. Let's try to regain our calm and, if we cannot do it by ourselves, we should open up to a spiritual person. The mere fact of speaking to another person will generally be enough to make our confusion disappear completely and to bring back our peace."