Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Friday ADD Irregulars, WSN Revelers, and all you Patrons, Lurkers and Lost who may have found their way here.
For most of this week I have been slow tumbling prayer. One of the real fruits of prayer, meditation or contemplation is to equip us for the life to come. On Ash Wednesday I mentioned to the home crowd art Mass that for 9 months our bodied are prepared for a life outside the womb. The one things that mattered most to us in the womb was the umbilical cord which is the first thing we lose when we are born. It is our life line in the womb and totally useless outside of the womb. Gestation is preparing a body for us to be engaged in this wonderful world. Everything about pregnancy and gestation is in preparation for the the life to come.
Just as a body is prepared for us, so this thing we call a spirit or soul is something to assist in the life to come. That does not mean that we are just souls in the afterlife, there is a body once again to be with us, something like this one, and something not like this one. The Resurrection and the Transfiguration are glimpses beyond this reality.
The soul-spirit is something that can grow, mature and blossom in this life to bear fruit in goodness. But its real purpose is prepare us for life beyond the grave, to behold the Luminous, to embrace real, enduring, overwhelming and unimaginable Communion that pushes us to the loss of self without the abnegation of our person. But the communion we are promised is not just with the Luminous-Divine-Mysterium but with all these other souls that may know or not even have a clue that their personhood is is the strange dance of body & soul.
For the non-seeking types (which are legion) some things occasionally prick their souls, stir the spirit or give them this brush with something under the hood. Nature, music, the arts (that point to beauty, not the self-loathing, oversexualized, ugliness of much of modern "art) and a few other things awaken this transcendent hidden part of humanity. Those moments are amazing and can sadly be missed and discounted without ever wondering what just happen, without ever asking what did I just experience?
Religion is supposed to be the superhighway to awakening the soul. For some it is, many still miss the point participating but rarely seeking beyond the surface and the corrupt use it as a means to build their kingdoms here disregarding the soul entirely. Spiritually is the answer for many, which is good and personal, but often misses the communal dimension of religion. My main gripe against people who proudly declare that they are spiritual and not religious is the danger to be just a navel gazing as the religious types who repeat content of faith without much reflection. Blaming religion is easy for many of the pasts atrocities, but the culprit is humanity en masse, the powerful and the mob are a dangerous combination and a doorway to the death of many.
The wrestling is what matters to me, the tension between curiosity and discomfort when one starts seeking. The real challenge is that our survival instincts from the days before cultural-personal awakening make us avoid discomfort. We can comfort ourselves to death, but we get to boredom and emptiness long before death. Distraction can keep the boredom at bay, but cannot completely fill the void unless we sink into addiction. Once we become an addict, and it can be any number of splendid things, our precious IT is our pseudo-consolation taking our hand to personal ruin.
Religion-Spirituality-Interior-ness allows the soul to seek beyond this life. Prayer is the road to trying to interact with this Beyondness that many believe has revealed Him or Themselves in some way or another. Prayer is seeking to change us and not Him/Them, prayer is awakening us to the Hidden One and hopefully making us more engaged with this life, even those who are still sleep walking and oblivious to the soul and only think prayer is a means to will fulfillment rather than will transformation.
Spiritual gestation - it is underway for all of us. It is profoundly enriching in this life and unlike our umbilical cord is something that equips us for the life beyond the grave. Another ramble, and not terribly on point, but hopefully it made some sense to you Seekers and Readers. I am so thankful for my fellow Disciples of the Master that I know here, I am ever so grateful for other children of Abraham that I have met here, I am delighted to know so many others who are spiritually stirred and sharing the fruit of their interior-ness with us. Happy Friday friends.
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! S.H.I.T - SURE HAPPY ITS THURSDAY! We had a radio personality say that every Thursday when he signed on to his program. It must have stuck for I still remember it to this day. Either way, welcome to a new day, and let's continue our visit with M. Scott Peck's collection of quotes.
Today's section on happiness deals with contentment. One of the things I pray for along with an ever deepening faith is to be reasonably content in my life and in my happenings. I don't want to be complacent, which is very similar to contentment in its origin but yields vastly different fruit. Complacency leads to boredom, which seems to be a major affliction in modern living, whereas contentment leads to gratitude and perspective. Well, it ought to if one is really trying to practice contentment, to take nothing for granted, to name your benefits and blessings, and to strive for growth of virtue rather than the accumulation of MOAR!!!!
MOAR is a pain; Amazon markets MOAR ...
They pump up the antisemitism in order to gain control. Their actual goal is to take out all of western civilization. Their greatest goal is the United States of America.
So when Americans and Europeans are voting against "Jews" they are actually voting for self-genocide.
The enemy is both evil and clever. They win if you are naive and gullible.
Hate is like an addictive drug. It feels great at first. Ecstatic. Powerful. Makes you want more and more. It becomes all you think about. Then it kills you.
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.”
