I have taken him up on that advice to be sure. Some of the guys here feel bad about sleeping in , or about sleeping during the afternoon. In my schedule it is listed as napping. For instance, after mass I may skip lunch and nap while I reflect and meditate upon the readings and the Eucharist.
By some miracle and strange confluence of events my afternoons are currently free. Given half a second at scheduling time, that would honestly be a priority. I'm not lazy (though let's face it, slackers need preists too.) And I am not necessarily a slacker. I actually work fiendishly on just about any project given me as long as it does not have anything to do with balancing my checkbook or writing twenty page research papers.
I think one of the most amazing things about journals is that they in no way begin to account for the vast wealth of human experience which pours itself into any given day.
A classmate here recently mysteriously, quite disturbingly, disappeared ( 'from formation', not 'from the face of the earth' else everyone would have heard about it on the evening news by now.) One can only wonder about such things. What happened? One wonders.
I read some wonderful essays today in American Scholar magazine. Anyone who reads .....(i.e. anyone spending any amount of time on the internet...erm....ahem...) should read it. In the latest issue there is a hilarious, though disturbing work by Merril Joan Gerber, (who preferred to leave her ouevre unresolved,) detailing the recent vacation of herself and her husband in Florence, Italy. Is this a passive-agressive strike at her alleged beloved? Only time will tell. While I doubt her ponderings will become the next soap opera, she is nonetheless publishing a work this Fall: Boticelli Blue Skies: An American in Florence, by way of the University of Wisconson Press. I, for one, will certainly be checking it out.
Oh, and about the badmovie, click here ~~~~> Incredibly Bad Movie.com.
There is much to do this weekend. I wonder how my weblog will turn out, and if I will keep up with it. It is so far much easier than keeping a log in a book. I had bought one of those nicely bound journals at Barnes and Noble and have kept up with that on and off, though it is a lot easier to sit at my computer and type my thoughts into a weblog. After all, our beloved pontiff does encourage us to use the internet for good purpose. So..... later.
posted by David Greenleaf at Friday, August 30, 2002
Thursday, August 29, 2002
Well after all that, I have unwittingly destroyed that template I struggled over so lovingly. Augh!
And with an upset stomach to boot. Now I am doubly upset, and my website is even more lame that it was when last I was lamenting it's lameness.
Back to the drawing board...... but first, a good night's sleep. This is just too much for one evening.
posted by David Greenleaf at Thursday, August 29, 2002
And with an upset stomach to boot. Now I am doubly upset, and my website is even more lame that it was when last I was lamenting it's lameness.
Back to the drawing board...... but first, a good night's sleep. This is just too much for one evening.
posted by David Greenleaf at Thursday, August 29, 2002
Today has left me with an overwhelming feeling of nausea. I guess it was lunch, though there is a bug of some sort going around. I was going to attempt changing my template today, because after some reflection, it is a bit cheesy. But frankly, who really cares? I'll have to experiment and come up with something a bit more appropriate, or at least more engaging.
Yesterday one of my friends told me he is gay. He announced he had something to tell me, which of course led me to think immediately that he was coming out. He did, and it was good. I have gay friends, I have straight friends, I have bisexual friends. I would write more about that, as it seems terribly important in the current miliue of the Church. But it's difficult to write much more when you're stomach is agog. That will prove a subject for much fruitful reflection as this project progresses. Sexuality.... embodied spirits aflame...... directing the energies within.... the fundamental goodness of the human body.... the beauty of a chaste life.... (Is agog a word to be used in connection with a turbulently upset stomach?)
Today, on the Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist, I read about a 70 year old nun who was decapitated somewhere in Baghdad. Sister Cecilia Hanna was found beheaded, evidently by a local mob of some sort.
Assyrians say they were the first nation to adopt Christianity as state religion in 179 AD, more than 100 years before Armenia, which prides itself with being the first Christianized country. The Assyrians also claim were the ones to have built the first Christian churches and to have been the first to translate the New Testament from Greek into their vernacular, which still resembles the language of Christ.
The Chaldean Church, to which the murdered Sacred Heart of Jesus nun belonged, is in union with the Vatican and has approximately one million members, half of whom still live in Iraq, while the rest is spread around the world, Bishop Ibrahim said.
Well. God bless Sr. Cecelia Hanna.
Yes, evil is afoot in the world. And it is fundamentally all the more important to affirm goodness and truth in our lives.
And for now, I will go nurse my ailing corpus with a restful and prayerful sleep.
posted by David Greenleaf at Thursday, August 29, 2002
Yesterday one of my friends told me he is gay. He announced he had something to tell me, which of course led me to think immediately that he was coming out. He did, and it was good. I have gay friends, I have straight friends, I have bisexual friends. I would write more about that, as it seems terribly important in the current miliue of the Church. But it's difficult to write much more when you're stomach is agog. That will prove a subject for much fruitful reflection as this project progresses. Sexuality.... embodied spirits aflame...... directing the energies within.... the fundamental goodness of the human body.... the beauty of a chaste life.... (Is agog a word to be used in connection with a turbulently upset stomach?)
Today, on the Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist, I read about a 70 year old nun who was decapitated somewhere in Baghdad. Sister Cecilia Hanna was found beheaded, evidently by a local mob of some sort.
Assyrians say they were the first nation to adopt Christianity as state religion in 179 AD, more than 100 years before Armenia, which prides itself with being the first Christianized country. The Assyrians also claim were the ones to have built the first Christian churches and to have been the first to translate the New Testament from Greek into their vernacular, which still resembles the language of Christ.
The Chaldean Church, to which the murdered Sacred Heart of Jesus nun belonged, is in union with the Vatican and has approximately one million members, half of whom still live in Iraq, while the rest is spread around the world, Bishop Ibrahim said.
Well. God bless Sr. Cecelia Hanna.
Yes, evil is afoot in the world. And it is fundamentally all the more important to affirm goodness and truth in our lives.
And for now, I will go nurse my ailing corpus with a restful and prayerful sleep.
posted by David Greenleaf at Thursday, August 29, 2002
Wednesday, August 28, 2002
...but as always, we must face it eventually. I'm approaching middle age, I have high blood pressure and cheesy lame website.
I'm given to wonder, is there even anything remotely Catholic about this website save for the fact that I am a seminarian? Perhaps I should change the look of the page... it is a bit frightful. Personally, I'd rather spend the time studying the Gospel of John. It's infinitely more appealing than learning html. Oh beginnings. So painful at times.
I will look for some Marian art. Can I even post that on blogspot? What kind of a name is blogspot anyway? Will I ever do anything else in my weblog besides ask rhetorical questions? What are the metaphysical ramifications of asking nothing but rhetorical questions? Let me post a quick weblink just for the heck of it.
Here ~~~>Johhanine Site is the website for Johhanine literature. It's vastly interesting. Much more so than my own website. Ahhh... time will tell the tale. Someday I will look back at this and laugh. Bahahahaha.
I spent time today in Adoration. That was a beautiful experience, on today the Feast of St. Augustine. We had an awesome mass this morning also. I know, how can a mass be awesome, aren't they all awesome? How much more awesome can you get besides Calvary and the Eucharist? Well, it just was. I was very uplifted in the experience. The music was incredible...the homily was great.
In adoration I had planned on spending a half hour, but before I realized the time an hour had passed. I was dwelling upon the term logos the Word..... Word! The Word enters history, is seen and recieved in community, it'a mysterious.... a mystery. I was flooded with peace today.
In the beginning was the word
and the word was with God
and God was the word.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came to ne through him, and without him nothing came to be.
In him was life
and life was the light of human beings;
And the light shines in darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.
The word, between transcendance and immanence, is a mystery to me.
posted by David Greenleaf at Wednesday, August 28, 2002
I'm given to wonder, is there even anything remotely Catholic about this website save for the fact that I am a seminarian? Perhaps I should change the look of the page... it is a bit frightful. Personally, I'd rather spend the time studying the Gospel of John. It's infinitely more appealing than learning html. Oh beginnings. So painful at times.
I will look for some Marian art. Can I even post that on blogspot? What kind of a name is blogspot anyway? Will I ever do anything else in my weblog besides ask rhetorical questions? What are the metaphysical ramifications of asking nothing but rhetorical questions? Let me post a quick weblink just for the heck of it.
Here ~~~>Johhanine Site is the website for Johhanine literature. It's vastly interesting. Much more so than my own website. Ahhh... time will tell the tale. Someday I will look back at this and laugh. Bahahahaha.
I spent time today in Adoration. That was a beautiful experience, on today the Feast of St. Augustine. We had an awesome mass this morning also. I know, how can a mass be awesome, aren't they all awesome? How much more awesome can you get besides Calvary and the Eucharist? Well, it just was. I was very uplifted in the experience. The music was incredible...the homily was great.
In adoration I had planned on spending a half hour, but before I realized the time an hour had passed. I was dwelling upon the term logos the Word..... Word! The Word enters history, is seen and recieved in community, it'a mysterious.... a mystery. I was flooded with peace today.
In the beginning was the word
and the word was with God
and God was the word.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came to ne through him, and without him nothing came to be.
In him was life
and life was the light of human beings;
And the light shines in darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.
The word, between transcendance and immanence, is a mystery to me.
posted by David Greenleaf at Wednesday, August 28, 2002
Tuesday, August 27, 2002
On the third day God created the water and the vegetation.
Vocationally, today is not a great day. It is what one of the priests here would call a "No" day. Yesterday was a No Day also. I find it disturbing to have a No Day; but if I think about it, I have not had a No day in quite some time. Until yesterday that is.
Basically a "No Day" is just miserable. I had no clue today would be one, or I would never have commenced this project.
I am not, by any means, a rigid orthodox person. I see Tradition in wholistic terms; and I look at Pope John Paul II, who is so orthodox he is almost liberal.
I am definitely going through a period of orthodoxy. In ministerial and pastoral terms, I have several friends in positions of ministerial import who do not take the teachings of the Church to heart. So my diliemma is, what are they doing in ministry? The administrative aspects of ministry are one thing, but what about the formative aspects? We are conformed to the life of Christ.
Can one who is flagrantly flaunting the notions of chastity, continence, modesty, and simplicity, be involved succesfully in ministry? Or can they only be involved in professional aspects of administration? Should they be involved in either? Moreover, should they involved in formation? I don't think so. But then there is my past; which partook, to a degree, in the very same aspects of life in which these people are currently partaking. Briefly though, and in no way my fundamental option.
I wish that I could be more profound in this moment. But I can only be straightforward. In this moment of time within the Church, I think that we need persons of integrity and candor. And after all, what do we do when our bishops are in the news daily, and they pretend to obey the norms of the Church; when in actuality, they do not.
This is not an easy time.
Even for the moderates amongst us.
posted by David Greenleaf at Tuesday, August 27, 2002
Vocationally, today is not a great day. It is what one of the priests here would call a "No" day. Yesterday was a No Day also. I find it disturbing to have a No Day; but if I think about it, I have not had a No day in quite some time. Until yesterday that is.
Basically a "No Day" is just miserable. I had no clue today would be one, or I would never have commenced this project.
I am not, by any means, a rigid orthodox person. I see Tradition in wholistic terms; and I look at Pope John Paul II, who is so orthodox he is almost liberal.
I am definitely going through a period of orthodoxy. In ministerial and pastoral terms, I have several friends in positions of ministerial import who do not take the teachings of the Church to heart. So my diliemma is, what are they doing in ministry? The administrative aspects of ministry are one thing, but what about the formative aspects? We are conformed to the life of Christ.
Can one who is flagrantly flaunting the notions of chastity, continence, modesty, and simplicity, be involved succesfully in ministry? Or can they only be involved in professional aspects of administration? Should they be involved in either? Moreover, should they involved in formation? I don't think so. But then there is my past; which partook, to a degree, in the very same aspects of life in which these people are currently partaking. Briefly though, and in no way my fundamental option.
I wish that I could be more profound in this moment. But I can only be straightforward. In this moment of time within the Church, I think that we need persons of integrity and candor. And after all, what do we do when our bishops are in the news daily, and they pretend to obey the norms of the Church; when in actuality, they do not.
This is not an easy time.
Even for the moderates amongst us.
posted by David Greenleaf at Tuesday, August 27, 2002
Monday, August 26, 2002
As we read in John, �whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and I will reveal myself to him.� To love is, in part, to reveal, to confess, to be open; to be not afraid.
So, a confession of my life, of how my life is, would have to start at least, with looking at how my life came into being; from where have I come? From where, indeed. So we look at the beginning.
What does Scripture say about the beginning��. �In the beginning the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss.� Ahhh�. My youth.
�God created man in his image, in the divine image he created him: male and female he created them.�
I am created in the image and likeness of God, and I am good. So then why do my actions often consider such a great neglect of my being born in the image and likeness of God? Original sin is�. That.
This gives cause to look at sin in our lives. We hear often that there is not much mention of sin today, when it seems like we hear of it�s effects more and more often. Perhaps this is from living and acting as if we are, indeed, God-like, with none of the fruits of reflection upon the nature of sin in our lives.
If I am a child of God, made in his image and likeness, and I am good; that is a high calling. What natural elements of my life detract me from that? Which elements help me to live up to that? If Jesus Christ is the new Adam, the model of a humanity called to glory, then that is cause for reflection in my life as well. I certainly fall far short of that model.
These are some of the theological elements with which I struggle. In regard to myself at least. There are many more issues with which I struggle, but "if these were described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written." The wisdom of Scripture. But that is another story, for another time.
And there there is wondering about persuing this option with my life. Should I move away from here I wonder? But there is the fruit of much work here, to be reaped. More studies, more reflection. More time for the preparation. I will know what to do when I do it. That is a way of not really saying much, while hinting that I am in a turning point in my formation. I do feel called to preisthood. I wonder if I am called to this diocese though. That is what I will pray upon.
posted by David Greenleaf at Monday, August 26, 2002
So, a confession of my life, of how my life is, would have to start at least, with looking at how my life came into being; from where have I come? From where, indeed. So we look at the beginning.
What does Scripture say about the beginning��. �In the beginning the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss.� Ahhh�. My youth.
�God created man in his image, in the divine image he created him: male and female he created them.�
I am created in the image and likeness of God, and I am good. So then why do my actions often consider such a great neglect of my being born in the image and likeness of God? Original sin is�. That.
This gives cause to look at sin in our lives. We hear often that there is not much mention of sin today, when it seems like we hear of it�s effects more and more often. Perhaps this is from living and acting as if we are, indeed, God-like, with none of the fruits of reflection upon the nature of sin in our lives.
If I am a child of God, made in his image and likeness, and I am good; that is a high calling. What natural elements of my life detract me from that? Which elements help me to live up to that? If Jesus Christ is the new Adam, the model of a humanity called to glory, then that is cause for reflection in my life as well. I certainly fall far short of that model.
These are some of the theological elements with which I struggle. In regard to myself at least. There are many more issues with which I struggle, but "if these were described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written." The wisdom of Scripture. But that is another story, for another time.
And there there is wondering about persuing this option with my life. Should I move away from here I wonder? But there is the fruit of much work here, to be reaped. More studies, more reflection. More time for the preparation. I will know what to do when I do it. That is a way of not really saying much, while hinting that I am in a turning point in my formation. I do feel called to preisthood. I wonder if I am called to this diocese though. That is what I will pray upon.
posted by David Greenleaf at Monday, August 26, 2002
Sunday, August 25, 2002
[8/25/2002 5:08:18 PM | David Greenleaf]
Not very far away from where I write this, lies an old dog sitting under a very large, very old tree. I wonder at her loneliness, and if, in it, she finds joy. I hope that she does. Sitting looking out of my own window, high up in the treetops, I often think about her, that I left her behind to come here. There is a lot left behind in our lives.
But why a confessions page? Maybe because I think often of the seeming purity of other men's lives in formation; and that many older seminarians can understand St. Augustine's need to publish his own life's shortcomings. I have not done anything so horrible. But I can admit that several phases of my life have been less than preistworthy.
Maybe I just need to learn about living a life in public. Can I take that? Maybe not. I don't want that, after all. I'd rather spend my time under the old tree with my dog, thinking about God. But we are not called to that in life, are we? Maybe I can document some of my struggles, some of my fears, and gain a greater clarity in my discernment in the years ahead.
I would not think to be a preist, but only a better man. If I am not a good man, a good person who seeks spiritual integration, and to know God, then I am nothing. If I am a good man, fulfilling my baptismal call, then I will be a good preist. At least capable. Then and only then.
So, for now. Here we are. posted by David Greenleaf at Sunday, August 25, 2002
Not very far away from where I write this, lies an old dog sitting under a very large, very old tree. I wonder at her loneliness, and if, in it, she finds joy. I hope that she does. Sitting looking out of my own window, high up in the treetops, I often think about her, that I left her behind to come here. There is a lot left behind in our lives.
But why a confessions page? Maybe because I think often of the seeming purity of other men's lives in formation; and that many older seminarians can understand St. Augustine's need to publish his own life's shortcomings. I have not done anything so horrible. But I can admit that several phases of my life have been less than preistworthy.
Maybe I just need to learn about living a life in public. Can I take that? Maybe not. I don't want that, after all. I'd rather spend my time under the old tree with my dog, thinking about God. But we are not called to that in life, are we? Maybe I can document some of my struggles, some of my fears, and gain a greater clarity in my discernment in the years ahead.
I would not think to be a preist, but only a better man. If I am not a good man, a good person who seeks spiritual integration, and to know God, then I am nothing. If I am a good man, fulfilling my baptismal call, then I will be a good preist. At least capable. Then and only then.
So, for now. Here we are. posted by David Greenleaf at Sunday, August 25, 2002
