Miscellaneous Stuff

I've wondered what my opening words should be after an absence of nearly six months and, truth be told, I have no idea what they should be. I will, however, start out by thanking all of you kind and compassionate cyber friends of mine who were conscientious enough to keep us in your prayers, especially my late grandmother. Your comments and well wishes were a tremendous source of strength for me during this very dark period in my life. Thank you and God bless all of you.

I continue on with my life because I know that is what my grandmother would have wanted. Seeing us grieve would have been unacceptable to her and would have certainly broken her heart. But despite this willingness to move on, I do so with the heavy drag of her loss weighing down on me. I guess it's too soon to feel "normal" again.

And now, to go off on a tangent with the following...

A Desire More Desirable than Any Satisfaction
The following passage, believe it or not, came from one of the many sources of literature that got C.S.Lewis on the path to Christianity:

"Oh God, bring me to the sea's end,
To the Hesperides, sisters of evening,
Who sing alone in their islands
Where the golden apples grow,
And the Lord of Oceans guards the way
From all who would sail
Into their night-blue harbors —
Let me escape to the rim of the world
Where the tremendous firmament meets
The earth, and Atlas holds the universe
In his palms.
For there, in the palace of Zeus,
Wells of ambrosia pour through the chambers,
While the sacred earth lavishes life
And Time adds his years
Only to heaven's happiness."
~ Hippolytus by Euripides

Can you not detect a tremendous sense of longing in the above passage? This particular excerpt tells me that the pagan who wrote it, despite the fact that he had never heard of Judaism and lived centuries before Christ, longed for something beyond this world. I thought to include it in this post to illustrate just how innate the longing for God and Heaven can be and how that desire - fulfilled only by something beyond this earth - can be more desirable than any satisfaction. Most of humanity I think feels this vacuity in their lives. And not knowing what this hunger is, they fill the void with materialistic possessions and other earthly accessories.

I end my first post with one of the most beautiful chants that I have heard. It is the Parce mihi domine (Spare me, Lord) by Cristobal de Morales. I posted a version of this chant a long time ago.

And one last thing. You may have seen this short video somewhere else. I LOVE this one! It's celebrating new vocations.