Good Morning Friends & Digital Neighbors! Happy Monday and the week of Thanksgiving here in the US of A! 🦃 I hope you all had a good weekend, mine was very good except for the the sudden loss of a parishioner and friend. Even in sorrow there is gratitude, and in loss there is deepened appreciation for those we love.
I can't say I wake with excitement, but I usually get out of bed and get rolling with the day. Thinking of what the day holds, what I will share here or discover in the post of others, what the flow of the day entails. It begins with prayer and coffee, and then continues with more coffee and roaming about the inter-webs, visiting the Smokehaus, Coffee Talk on Zoom, vesting for Mass, welcoming the faithful, celebrating the Sacrifice and by then it is about 8:30 AM and the day is in high gear. Off and running to whatever unfolds planned or unplanned it will be for the good. Happy Monday Friends and off to the poem and some vintage Thanksgiving imagery this week from Rockwell and Leyendecker.
Each morning I awake
with excitement
overwhelmed by the leaves
turning outside the window,
the scent of fall,
the slant of morning light,
the books on my nightstand
filled with promise
the books on the coffee table
in the living room where you sit
already awake
in the unfolding of day
reading or writing, coffee in hand,
looking up and smiling, as you do.
Michael S. Glaser
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
Padre - Tom Miller invites you to a Coffee Talk, Speakeasies, Schmoozes, Tea Times, Afterhours and other gatherings.
https://teams.live.com/meet/93792382189049?p=DiBHsYfuECPgDrG7vO
2026 Coffee Talk with the ADD Irregulars
Thursday, January 1, 2026
6:00 AM - 8:00 AM (CST)
Occurs every day starting 1/1 until 12/31/2027
Coffee Talk - Daily beginning at 6:00 AM Central Time Zone - USA
White Pilled Wednesday - A break from the heaviness of news and current events to focus upon things more personal & positive for the first hour of Coffee Talk.
Afternoon Chats - Most Tuesday, Friday & Sundays 2:00 PM Central
Other chats as posted in the community.
Good morning, digital neighbors. Blessed Sunday to all. Every day there are reasons aplenty for gratitude, but Sundays are crowned with it for disciples of the Risen One and worshipers of the Triune Mystery. Life has its rhythms, much like the seasons. Our cyclical calendar year is like that: certain feasts and holidays come and go through the course of the year. Part of my prayer is like that as well. The Liturgy of the Hours follows a four-week psalter for most of the hours and a one-week cycle for Compline, Night Prayer. The first hour of the day follows a split cycle: four weeks for the psalms, and a year-long cycle of longer readings from Scripture and the writings of the Fathers, the saints, or other ecclesial sources.
The challenge of ritual prayer is for it to become selfless, not mindless. Our focus is on the prayer and worship being offered, without being too caught up in ourselves. Many want to get something out of prayer, but if it is only about the receiving, worship runs the ...
XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
