Month: December 2010

Be Intentional

I was driving the other day and came upon an interesting conversation on the radio. The person was talking about a concept called intentionality.

Basically, the idea is that we needed to be more intentional in our actions, and I was thinking that it was a great thing to reflect upon as we prepare our hearts and minds for Christmas.

Here’s a couple of examples right of the top of my head. You go to mall looking for a gift for someone special. You know you have limited resources, but you have that trusty credit card…

This past summer, one of my former staff members got married. Being a bit older, they have plenty of things already, and I was really struggling with what gift to give them. Then I remembered a friend telling me about an organization called Charity Water, which works to bring clean drinking water to people in Africa.

I went to their website and found out that for a $40 donation, two people would be able to drink clean water for 20 years. That’s right. It’s hard to believe, but for $10 billion dollars, we could eliminate this health crisis which kills more people in the world than all forms of violence combined. Americans spend about $450 billion on Christmas gifts each year.

Ignatian Spirituality Inspiration Prayer

Deck The Halls

We had our first snow flurries today. Not much, and not for long, but a sure sign of things to come. Our cold weather prompted me to start breaking out the Christmas decorations.

This is way early for me, especially because I’m not expecting any company for the next couple of weeks.

Maybe it was the comment from my friend Will, the new dad 🙂 about how much he loves the Christmas Season.

Maybe it was my co-worker Jordan reminding me that this will be her son Brendan’s first Christmas 🙂

Whatever it was, something’s different. I usually like to hold on to Advent for as long as I can, since it sets the stage for a more Christ-centered celebration on the 25th.

Ignatian Spirituality Inspiration Prayer

Me, A Saint?

Most of us don’t think we have it in us. We have this lofty vision of what a saint is, and we might believe our own faults and failures preclude us from ever having such a title attached to our names.

Well, that’s just not so. When Mother Theresa received the Nobel Peace Prize, she got up to the podium and said that, although she was grateful to receive the award, she wasn’t quite sure why she was getting it.

She went on to say that she felt that she had done nothing extraordinary, but rather she had simply done what we are all called to do. Another time, she was asked what was the difference between a sinner and a saint. She replied, “the saint kept getting up.” So, there is hope for us after all 🙂

Inspiration Spirit

Resolution Check-up

Eleven months ago today, a lot of us made our usual New Year’s Resolutions.

We decided to get more exercise, be more kind, take better care of ourselves, save more money, enjoy life more, just to name a few.

We started off great, but then around January 20th, life started getting in the way.

By March, I could hardly remember what I was thinking on that cold January day. I decided to do what?