Brother Uncle

Lectio Divina

"Naked I came forth from my mother's womb,
and naked shall I go back there.

The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;

blessed be the name of the LORD!”

Job 1:21

I tell you, brothers, the time is running out.

1 Corinthians 7:29

Library

Finished Resurrection. Plodding through Priscilla and Aquila about every other day. Reading a little of the Spanish textbook near daily. Catching up now on recently arrived Catholic periodicals. All this reading has been going more slowly since getting more material to read in our class sessions.

Log

Been blue since yesterday on account of the Sept. 11 anniversary. Irritable and cranky. But light shined through the dullness today.

My sister, Jennifer, delivered her second child, a daughter, at 8:18 a.m. Eastern time. She named her Jade Adele. I am an uncle for the second time.

The arrival of my sister's first child, Jesse, in February 2010 prompted an examination of where I was in my faith journey. That summer, I renewed formal contact with the Capuchins through the office of vocation ministry.

Life is short. I will be thirty-five years old in two weeks, and for all I know I may have already lived half or more than half of my life. There is work to be done, and sometimes I feel like I have hardly even begun to do what God wants most for me to do. I have done many things, and it would be wrong to say I have frittered away all my mind, heart, soul, and strength on trivialities, but sometimes I feel that I am always on the verge of being and doing things differently but never truly changing.

It's funny how you get the congratulations when someone else in your family has a baby. It's not you did anything to merit the praise! But so it is, too, with the gifts God gives birth to and bestows on us. God has given so much to me, though I am quick to forget it. The Spirit of God has touched me and made me grow in wisdom and strength, and it won't be to no purpose.

Today: continued our study of the biblical foundations of our prayer life. Using Mark's Gospel as our departure point, we learned how to study a biblical text using commentaries, dictionaries, ecclesial documents, and the like. This afternoon: hermitage time, spent in part by writing letters to Boston friends. Finished a week of kitchen cleanup duties with the evening shift.

Weather

Holding steady as the new moon approaches. Its goodness, however, has been ignored. It ought to be praised.