Each July, Loyola Press offers a daily post on some aspect of Ignatian Spirituality, which as you may know, is near and dear to my heart. Last year, I was a bit delayed in getting the word out, but not this year…
I hope you’ll check out their site, not only today, but every day leading to Ignatius’ Feast day, which is July 31st. I think you’ll be glad you did!
🙂 Happy July 🙂
I just got back from finishing up another residency component for my doctoral studies. All I can say is it’s good to be home.
Although I really enjoyed my time in Washington DC, I was ready to sleep in my own bed, pray in my own garden, cook my own meals.
Happy May Day! The picture above and the guest post below are from Spirit Daily, a website I visit often. Given my recent posts about my own garden, I thought the post does a great job of taking garden imagery and adapting it for spiritual insights. I hope you’ll think the same.
Sorry for the long delay between postings. I’ve had so much going on that life just got in the way.
With so much going on, including the death of my mom last month, I realized I needed to take a pause, to catch my breath, and to refocus. So, in the spirit of St. Ignatius, I made a retreat.
I was on the hunt yesterday for a climbing rose named New Dawn. It does very well in my area, and it’s mentioned often on a weekly gardening radio show I listen to. Sadly, it’s a bit early to plant roses here in Maryland, so there were none to be had at the nursery. I’ll have to wait till the beginning of May, right around Mother’s Day. Of course. I was thinking about my mom when I decided to go out at get this rose.
Last week, I was praising the joy of the impending spring. The season was being heralded by some wonderful little dwarf iris that were blooming by my driveway gate.
This week, starting tomorrow and ending late Wednesday, snow, snow and more snow for the Baltimore area.
I hope you had a great weekend. I know I did.
Actually, the whole week was pretty good for me. I got a lot accomplished, including some much-needed exercise. I also had the chance to catch up on some reading, met with several folks, and lastly I got some good prayer time in. The weekend ended on Sunday night with probably the best session my men’s group has had since we started almost two years ago.
Earlier this week, I had lunch with a young friend. He was active in my youth group when he was growing up, and from time to time we get together for some good food and conversation.
On this particular day, John wanted to do some shopping at Trader Joe’s when we were done with lunch, and, since it’s one of my favorite stores, I was happy to join him.
If you’re familiar with Trader Joe’s, you know that there are always buckets of flowers near their front doors, all available for purchase.
Wow, what a crazy week this has been! We started the week with the surprise resignation of Pope Benedict. As the week went on, we learned that there had been hints for quite some time that if the pope reached a point where he felt he couldn’t fulfill his responsibilities, he would step down. It certainly is a time to pray for the Holy Spirit’s wisdom!
Next, we’ve had a week of near miss asteroids and meteors falling from space and causing all kinds of havoc. Funny, almost immediately, people were wondering if the pope, the asteroid and the meteor were somehow divinely connected.
This past weekend, I started reading a terrific new book by Jim Manney. God Finds Us is all about the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, something near and dear to my heart.
As it turns out, early this morning I was reading the chapter entitled “It’s Supposed to Be Hard,” and the focus is on what Ignatius had to say about humility.