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  • Archive for June, 2007

    “God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” –G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

    I was in a sulky mood yesterday I decided to spend the day in a children’s park. I needed to see someone laughing and enjoying life. Who can give us the best example? The children!
    Their exuberating vitality is one of my therapy whenever I feel withdrawing. It’s natural, I’m human! What do you think of me, a super hero?

    As I was sitting on one bench, eating my popcorn while watching them, a five year old kid sat beside me and asked for some popcorn. Suddenly she said: “Mi canti una canzone, per favore?” “Sing a song for me, please?”

    Charmed by her big round eyes, I started singing my favorite nursery song… “Twinkle, twinkle little star”, gesticulating each words. At the end of my song, three kids came rushing, “ripetilo, per favore!” “Repeat it, please!”

    Their boisterous and free spirit, wants things repeatedly thus I have to sing my song over and over again. Their laughter filled my sulkiness with enthusiasm as they imitated my gestures.

    On my way back home,  I pondered.

    We are created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 5) right?  If we have this gift to laugh, to enjoy, to be amused, then surely God possesses a great sense of humor!

    Look at the nature around you, something certainly can make you smile. Hmnn,  just look at me, come on, look at me closer…

    platypus

    I’m a living testimony of His good sense of humor.

    Sometimes God gives us  a nudge and seems to say, “Don’t take yourself so seriously!” God wants to prod us into taking things a bit more lightly.  To see the funny side of it.  To get down off our pedestal and not to forget our sense of fun.

    Despite our foibles and cussedness, God continues to love us and wish us well as Tagore brilliantly described it:

    Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.”

    That’s God’s way of telling us to lighten up on our own shortcomings and those of our fellow human beings.

    The labors of our life can seem pointless and burdensome. We shouldn’t focus too much on this antagonistic perspective.  If ever monotony or heaviness permeates our soul, be quick to react against it and find ways to beef up your humor! Just like what I did.

    God never tires of making “daisies” and men.  I believe that is the  mystery of His smile. It delights God’s heart to journey through the same road because He finds it universally alike but perpetually unique.

    In our frenzied striving way of life, we tend to  long for the hit, the excitement, the stimulation ignoring what we presently have in our hands.

    So, let me say to myself: “Take it easy Ross, Life is beautiful, enjoy the journey now!”

    S M I L E   everyone!

    POSTSCRIPT:

    this is a break from my usual post like the power of prayer…

    Let’s take a pause for some laughter.

    child’s prayer

    God, grant me the serenity
    To accept a post I cannot change,
    Courage to walk past the computer without turning it on when I am running late for work,
    And the wisdom to know the difference between come to bed now meaning I’m lonely, and come to bed NOW meaning the computer has got to go! – Serenity Prayer for Computer Junkies

    A thunderstorm is God’s way of saying you spend too much time in front of the computer. – Unknown

    Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
    And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me. – Robert Frost

    I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that he has a sense of humour. – W R Inge

    Whence comes this idea that if what we are doing is fun, it can’t be God’s will? The God who made giraffes, a baby’s fingernails, a puppy’s tail, a crooknecked squash, the bobwhite’s call, and a young girl’s giggle, has a sense of humor. Make no mistake about that. – Catherine Marshall

    Perhaps modern people are so troubled with anxiety because they have no God. Humor is born out of seeing the phenomena of life tied up with divine purpose. Aristophanes, Rabelais, Gogol – – great humorists have always been most religious. Laughter has nothing to do with humor. – Pentti Saarikoski, Finnish writer

    It is a defect of God’s humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them. – Tom Stoppard

    Three Prayer Answers

    One day, three men were hiking and unexpectedly came upon a large raging, violent river. They needed to get to the other side, but had no idea of how to do so. The first man prayed to God, saying, “Please God, give me the strength to cross this river.”

    Poof!

    God gave him big arms and strong legs, and he was able to swim across
    the river in about two hours, after almost drowning a couple of times.

    Seeing this, the second man prayed to God, saying, “Please God, give me
    the strength ..and the tools to cross this river.”

    Poof!

    God gave him a rowboat and he was able to row across the river in about an hour, after almost capsizing the boat a couple of times.

    The third man had seen how this worked out for the other two, so he also prayed to God saying, “Please God, give me the strength and the tools… and the intelligence … to cross this river.”

    And Poof!

    God turned him into a woman. She looked at the map, hiked upstream a couple of hundred yards, then walked across the bridge.

    Author unknown

    SENSE of HUMOR QUOTES

    If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. Mahatma Gandhi

    Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs. –Christopher Morley

    Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is. Francis Bacon

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    In the middle of the journey of our life
    I found myself within a dark forest
    where the straight path was lost.” –

    Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
    mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
    ché la diritta via era smarrita.
    Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy- Inferno, canto I Lines 1-3

    After my last post, I can’t seem to find a glimpse on how I’m going to talk about the power of prayer. I feel so empty inside. I feel something is missing or maybe I am looking for my own way of writing it, not according to what the Good Spirit is telling me. I waited. I am just flowing like a falling leaf not knowing where the wind will take it.

    Five days counting and nothing! This evening my friend Bea dropped by carrying a book “The Divine Comedy” by Dante. She asked me to translate some italian lines in english. I told her it was my favorite book in College days and I considered it the world’s greatest work of theological poetry. As I was trying to translate Canto I of “Inferno”, memory of a past spiritual rebirth starts flashing before me.

    In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself within a dark forest, where the straight path was lost.” were the first three lines. They keep on stirring my memory, back into my past.

    Yes I have ” journeyed through life” on my whims to follow my own desires, my obstinacy to bend to rules and narcissism to ignore and understand a human affection for me. If there are seven deadly sins, I had eight !

    My indifference was the eight and I believe it is the epitome of all evil!  When there is indifference, you don’t feel love nor hate. You just live alone on your own island blind to other’s feeling and situation.

    Lost path

    That condition was  my “dark forest where my path is lost” as Dante described his life. My life followed a wandering course like a planetary vagabond. Through my drifting, I became unhappy, unsatisfied. I felt lost! 

    A “light” in my dark forest , beamed  on my “muddy” ground. It is that perfect moment which led me to be conscious of having erred and strayed.

    And in the “midst of my journey“, He presented Himself to me like a dawning day or a strike of a lightning. It was similar to Saul’s experience on his road to Damascus .

    That Light was my saving grace. Its touch, a  soothing balm to my weary soul.  It was the first moment I felt God caressing my life. I never knew Him. I heard about Him but never had a contact with Him. I never talked to Him.

    How did I know it was God? Something changed inside me. I felt a supernatural aura, a Presence too intense to make my indifference changed into reaching out, my inner wounds were healed, my hollow strength became weak, my self- fortress crumbled! Most of all, if you believe it or not, I heard his voice saying: “Ross, I love you.”

    His words, His touch made me discover the right path. He made me discover a “relationship” between us two.  His compassion and mercy for my sins made me realized His personal Presence in my life making me see what is inner beauty and what is true fullness of life.

    Now, you might asked me, what am I trying to converge between my conversion and power of prayer?

    Well, I am convinced it is the focal point of our prayer life.

    It is that personal relationship with God that will uplift your prayer.  It is a personal love relationship between you and your God.

    It is analogous  to your love relationship with your “significant other”. You constantly seek her/his presence. You yearn to hear her/his voice, to stay beside your partner…to talk, to listen, to observe or simply, to be a loving presence! True??

    To be touched by Love is important for it becomes your fulcrum to lift up your soul to God. Prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a cry of recognition and of love, it is the heart that prays.

    Prayer is not a half-hearted ritual recitation of words; it is an outpouring of the heart.

    Let me reiterate, it is only when you recognize His loving presence in your daily life, your prayer becomes to be powerful to see beyond the horizon, to see beyond the stumbling blocks of life, to feel beyond pain, to feel tranquility in being empty-handed or feel joy when you feel un-needed…all because…you simply love LOVE!

    The power of prayer begins to unfold!

    to be continued…

                       Bless The Broken Road  by  Rascal Flatts

    [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAwHyYuhdgM[/youtube]

    CONVERSION QUOTES

    Once my heart was captured, reason was shown the door, deliberately and with a sort of frantic joy. I accepted everything, I believed everything, without struggle, without suffering, without regret, without false shame. How can one blush for what one adores?” – George Sand

    I believe that a man is converted when first he hears the low, vast murmur of life, of human life, troubling his hitherto unconscious self.” – D. H. Lawrence

    The great danger of conversion in all ages has been that when the religion of the high mind is offered to the lower mind, the lower mind, feeling its fascination without understanding it, and being incapable of rising to it, drags it down to its level by degrading it.” – George Bernard Shaw

    Jesus tapped me on the shoulder and said, Bob, why are you resisting me? I said, I’m not resisting you! He said, You gonna follow me? I said, I’ve never thought about that before! He said, When you’re not following me, you’re resisting me.” – Bob Dylan

    I used to say: there is a God-shaped hole in me. For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.” – Salman Rushdie

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