Now I’ve come to the realization (read: honesty) that it is time to lay this blog to rest. Further spiritual-related posts from my life will be done at the unfinished person blog. Please update your readers to follow my journey ever toward becoming a more complete person than I am now. That struggle never ends, because the now is ever fleeting.
The reasons for the closing of this blog are many, and are magnified for me by the recent closure of Humor-Blogs.com, but come down to two main factors:
Time: When I began this blog, I was working basically one-part time job as a newspaper correspondent. I recently have started two new part-time jobs: as a librarian assistant and as an online freelance writer.
Energy: I don’t have the energy to keep up this blog, a reading blog I had, a running blog where I began blogging, the unfinished person blog, plus Unfinished Rambler.
Brief blog history (for those playing along at home):
Blog history (not including a brief experiment with Vox, unknown date, because I removed blog; others still exist in the backwaters of the Interwebs until… ):
October 2005: Just A (Running) Fool begins
Dec. 12, 2007: Journey with the Saints begins
March 13, 2008: Unfinished Person is born
April 24, 2008: Just A (Trail Running) Fool begins
April 25, 2008: Just A (Reading) Fool begins
April 28, 2008: Unfinished Rambling(s) begins
November 2008: Unfinished Rambler is born
March 17, 2009: An unfinished person II debuts on Tumblr, as supplement to Unfinished Person and Unfinished Rambler blogs.
Thomas Merton enters the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. 1941.
I saw this on a desk calendar at the hospice where I volunteer last Thursday, Dec. 10. Earlier that day, in meeting with my spiritual director, I discussed discerning whether or not I wanted to become a deacon in the Catholic Church.
I also discussed with her some of what I mentioned about my volunteering at the hospice. She asked me if I ever considered being in a helping profession as a caregiver or maybe a counselor.
Then later that day, while on the phone with a college friend, who is helping to hold me accountable on my continuing quest for a full-time job (I work two part-time jobs right now), he mentioned a website that trained “biblical counselors.” I did check out the site, but from what I understand it is for those who already have an associate’s or bachelor’s degree in counseling. Plus while it looked like a good course, it is not accredited yet.
I’ll be honest too that as a Catholic, I would prefer to be trained by Catholic counselors IF, and to me isn’t a prerequisite, I were to be trained for “Christian” counseling. To me, counseling would be more important than necessarily the Christian aspect of it — not that I don’t think that it is important or that my faith couldn’t “shine through” even if not directly and not in a heavyhanded way. At least, those were my initial thoughts on Thursday.
So the next step is exploring the diaconate on our diocesan website to see what it has to say about becoming a deacon.
All this to lead into:
So far what am I grateful this past week?
1. Having a spiritual director with whom I can meet each month to discuss my spiritual life — and where it might be going next.
2. A friend who helps to hold me accountable. A couple of weeks, he called me after a few months of not calling and was pretty blunt with me about my lack of activity on the job search front. For that, I am grateful.
For what am I least grateful this past week?
Mainly, one thing: after all the great conversation with my spiritual director and my college friend, I forgot to pick up my wife from work, forcing her to borrow the company van when she didn’t have an appointment the following morning and shouldn’t have had the van. Ironically, I was talking with my friend when I was supposed to be picking her up.
Lord, help me to be more attentive to what I’m supposed to remember day to day and hour to hour, and guide me in my spiritual journey this coming week, month and in the following year.
For what are you grateful this past week or maybe, eh, not so much?
It’s Sunday morning and earlier this morning (much earlier) I listened to a homily on EWTN for a daily Mass for Saturday from Alabama. In the homily, the priest discussed snow falling there and how the moisture seeps into the ground similar to God’s grace seeping into our souls.
It got me to reflecting back on this past week on how I have and have not allowed God’s grace to work its way into my own life. The grace is always there, I believe, but sometimes I believe we don’t allow it to work its way down into our being or at least we try to hinder it from working on us. So for this week’s Sleeping with Bread, I thought I’d phrase the questions as follows:
Where last week did I allow God’s grace to work its way into my soul, and then out to others?
Where last week did I try to block God’s grace from finding its way into my core, and thus again out to others?
I’ll start with the second question first.
This past week I made a decision to quit the local men’s chorus of which I’m a member. In short, and to put it bluntly, the crankiness of the older men (at 40, I was the youngest member by far with the majority of the men between the ages of 60 and 85) has gotten to me. So when approached by one of the chorus members at a McDonald’s Friday morning about why I missed chorus practice I told him that it was the negative attitudes of many of the men in the chorus.
I opted not to be diplomatic and say, “Personal reasons,” but told him exactly what I thought. While true, I probably just should have been polite. Instead, I gave him the blunt response and when pressed, told him at least twice.
The only place in the conversation with him where I may have allowed God’s grace to enter was when I deflected any criticism of any one person, or name any of those members who I think have the negative attitudes. That was especially good since he was one of those I could have named! However, I am not like that, or at least try not to be. I can think of at least one other instance in the past few years, where I have deflected criticism of individuals, and just said, “They’re good people. It’s not their fault.” In a small town, with everyone related, it’s best just to keep it general sometimes.
The overall point is diplomacy and while in this situation Friday morning I did speak diplomatically in not naming any individuals on one hand, I should have kept silent on the exact reasons for the sake of peace, on the other hand.
Now to question 1.
The one place I can think of where I have allowed God’s grace to operate is at the hospice where I have been volunteering, mostly overnight shifts (in fact, that’s how I was able to watch the Mass on EWTN this morning as we don’t have cable or satellite). On two different nights last week after I came in, I had the opportunity to listen to the concerns of the sons of the guest at the hospice house. The one son spoke to me for about an hour and a half; the other, maybe half an hour. In both cases, I mostly listened, but contributed a little with what I hope were kind, encouraging words.
At the time of speaking to both sons, unlike Friday morning with the older chorus member, I kept silent on certain topics and was more diplomatic when they brought up legitimate concerns about the operation of the hospice. Also with both sons, without revealing any of the conversations, both needed to get some hurts — one, a lifelong one– off their chests, even if only for a moment in the case of the son with the lifelong hurt. I now think that perhaps I was able in some small way to act as a “kind of” Christ for them to make their burdens a little lighter, even if only for a moment. At least, I pray it was so.
At one point in the conversation with the first son, I believe I actually prayed silently for God to give me the right words to say, and I believe He did. Sometimes as I mentioned in the situation Friday morning with the men’s chorus members, it is not always so.
Lord, help me to see moments of grace that You impart to me and I, in turn, can impart to others.
Question for you: Are you allowing God’s grace, the blessings of the Universe or however you want to word it, to filter down and out to others? Maybe this week you could try. Maybe this week I can also.
This post also can be found on my main blog, an unfinished person (in an unfinished universe). There, you can get hopefully a more complete picture of this unfinished person: body, mind and soul.
