Good Moring Digital Neighbors! Happy Sunday Friends, Refugees, Phamily, Triggeratti, Dawn Patrol, Early Birds, Fascinating People, Joyful Bigots, Conversants and Lurkers! If you celebrated Christmas, I hope it was a good one. Mine was more on the quiet side, and I was thankful for that since I was running low on the energy. I remained home, visited with some friends via Zoom, had my Christmas Feast of Kraft (substitutes will not pass) Macaroni & Cheese and a kraft beer, and watched most of It's A Wonderful Life after a good nap. All in all a good solid Christmas. I will visit my sister & brother-in-law today for a smaller family Christmas, everyone seems to be going in different directions this year. There are also the undercurrents of the omegatron variant or whatever it is called as well as the some of the vaxxed & unvaxxed tensions.
The Sunday after Christmas in Cath-O-land is the Feast of the Holy Family. Catholics and other Christians celebrate the life of Jesus with Mary & Joseph. Happy feast Day to my fellow disciples! Not a lot to know about that hidden life, since the accepted Gospels don't tell us much more than the incident when Jesus is 12. There are a number of Gnostic Gospels that tell us more about the life of Young Jesus and His Amazing Friends, but those were rejected by the Ancient Churches as Biblical Fake News. They make for some interesting reading with a very biblical vibe to them. Found on Amazon, what isn't?
Families - More people to seem to have complicated and difficult relationships than happy & health ones. There are many more ways for things to go wrong than for things to go well when it involves humanity. If 75% or higher of your family relationships are relatively healthy & happy, I bet you are among the rare ones. Celebrate that and strive to maintain it, it takes little effort for things to go sour. The % of how things can go right is much lower for so many more.
From my limited seat of listening to others, many more have very shattered and broken relationships with family members. Selfless Effort, self-awareness, the ability to resolve wounds and take personal accountability for all the water under the bridge often goes unaddressed. Family members in positions of authority rarely want to address the misuse or abuse of that authority. Scapegoating of outliers in the family is frequent as a way to encourage the "WE is greater than you" vibe that can create a silent enforcement of acceptable behaviors and topics in the relationships. It is easy to see why many opt out of family relationships or set up very limited interactions.
So much weight and expectation in families, too often it is unexpressed and just presumed that growing up in the family was enough to understand the dynamics and rules of the road. Healthy/Good families seem to find ways to express the bonds that join them while difficult families often don't have a clue. Therapy, 12 Step programs, good mentors in life, good books or other media can help one step out of the stream to examine it. Mentors, Therapist and Sponsors often seem the surest bet to me, since you can dialogue with them in your questioning and growing understanding, that can rarely be done with a book or static media.
It all begins with knowing yourself better, I doubt we can know ourselves completely, but so many seem to make the life trip with very limited self-awareness, few self questions and a reluctancy to look under the hood. Healthy families give one the grounding to engage that quest, unhealthy families don't even know it exist.
I'm thankful for the mixed bag of my family. An alcoholic father and bi-polar mother made for some fun shenanigans in the Miller household. I am thankful that at the end of their lives I got to know both of them better. I consider myself among the fortunate. Sure, there were many unaddressed issues and insufficient time and tools to work through all of it but some of the basic were covered, a fair number of wounds were healed and some understanding was gained.
Jesus, Mary & Joseph, pray for us. Happy Sunday my friends and thanks for indulging me this long if you read it all. A friend of mine commented on these stream on consciousness posts and I was very humbled. I also laughed because he gently pointed out the numerous typos and grammatic errors that abound in them. I often have to go back and edit to make sure I typed what I intended. It can be a tiresome exercise correcting Morning Tom by the more alert and Later Day Tom. 😊 Hopefully the context conveys the meaning and intention of these open sessions of my heart and head.
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! Happy Friday, my fellow pilgrims across Locals & Substack! The forecast for next week looks downright chilly, with lows in the 40s and highs in the 60s. It will make for some wonderful mornings and make that hot coffee even more enjoyable. We shall see what it does for the long-awaited autumn colors.
One cannot rush the turning of the seasons, and the trees let go of their leaves without any drama at all. Not a bad example for those of us who cling to what we can't keep and fret over what we can't control. I often wonder how much time I have wasted on things I can't affect in the least, except to express frustration and aggravation. It is difficult at times to find the balance when you venture forth on the internet.
I want to be aware, not obsessed. I want to be informed, not consumed. I can strive for self-possession or surrender to groupthink and herd feeling. It can be challenging, because the sense of belonging and the desire for connection are real. Most ...
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.”
