"What I do mourn is what we lose when by official policy or official neglect we allow, confuse or encourage our soldiers to forget that best sense of ourselves, that which is our greatest strength—that we are different and better than our enemies, that we fight for an idea, not a tribe, not a land, not a king, not a twisted interpretation of an ancient religion, but for an idea that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights."

- Senator John McCain

No statement says it all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness
No program accomplishes the Church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everyone.

This is what we are about:
We are seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capacities.

We cannot do everything,
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and do it very well.
It may be incomplete,
but it is a beginning,
a step along the way,
an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference
|between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Amen.

Archbishop Oscar Romero

Mood: darb

On the Stereo:  believe ~ yellowcard

so i've been meeting a lot of new and interesting people of late. in particular girls.  i'm not especially trying to find a girlfriend right now but i admit i am attracted to them in some form or another.  (i think there'd be something wrong with me if i wasnt.)  here are girls that are smart, easy going, beautiful, but the more interesting point was stated by my ever so astute roommate as he exclaimed last night, "wtf, why do all the hot ones have to have boyfriends..."

hm....good point buddy. lol why do all the hot ones already have boyfriends?  I mean, is there some place where these lucky bastards go to pick up these girls months before they land on our radar?...or am I just completely blind?  heck, could be both. lol. 

the only sound theory i can come up with is that careful, "nice guys", such as myself at times and apparently my roommate, just aren't assertive enough to get themselves on the radar of these girls early enough. so they end up with some 6-3  abercrombie and fitch hemp-necklace guy, while the "nice guy" is still a nervous wreck over asking for the girl's number until he finds out she already has a boyfriend and he silently curses himself for his trepidation because he knows in his heart how much happier she'd be with him... lol ... such is life. 

so to all the "nice guys" out there, grow some balls. lol :)  maybe then we'll stop hating ourselves for what could have been, what might have been, or what should have been.  Remember, fate favors the courageous, and reckless abandon in pursuit of love is always a good thing. 

so ponder on kiddies, and till next time....drink heavily...

  (^_^)

Mood:  Fah Fah Fah

On the Stereo: Blueside ~ Rooney

"I always wanted to be a Tenenbaum"

Another drunken night, and another wasted morning, you've gotta love college.  So much to do, and so little desire to do it.  Theres something magical about these morning-afters.  Its like you're completely satisfied in doing nothing...

"Everyone knows that Custard died at Little Bighorn.  What this book presupposes is...maybe he didn't."

My family is finally growing up.  My brothers are moving out of the house this week into their own places and their own worlds.  I find this a bit disconcerting.  I mean throughout my adolescent-teenage life, they've both been at college far away from me and our lil home in Reading.  But I took comfort in that no matter where they go, they'd return home and I'd be there.  And now that they're both finished with college, beginning their professional-adult lives and I'm the one away at college, I feel like when I go home, it won't really be home because they won't be there... Does that make any sense?...  I mean it is inevitable, and I know that.  I've always known that.  Its just that now its here...  and i never expected it to have this kind of impact on me.  I guess I love my family more than I ever realized. 

"I don't know where the lies end and the truth begins.  I asked myself what I could do for mamimi. I decided to stay by her side...forever."

Mood: Unwonted

On the Stereo: October Nights ~ Yellowcard

People spend their entire lives trying to disprove god, and for a short period in my life, i wasn't really sure if I believed in him either.  I mean how could such a being exist when so much of the world's wonder has been explained through scientific explanation.  Oh the burning bush wasn't a spiritual symbol, just a coincidental occurance in which the high temperature of the desert with the flammable of oil produced by the bush caused the bush to rise in flames.  or humans couldnt have been created by god...that we've disproven such a notion through our studies in evolution... or that the wonderous aurora borealis' shine is simply plasma, a cloud of solar ions, trapped in the earth's magnetic field leaking down and interacting with the gases of the ionosphere creating a glowing affect. 

Growing up studying sciences, this notion began to eat at the back of my brain.  If we can explain it through science...does that take away from the idea of god?  sometimes it certainly seems like we've encroached on god's spectrum of power.  But if I learned anything from my studies of science from middle school to college is that a lot of the time science can explain what's happening, but no one can clearly give me a why it's happening or fill in the holes in our theories that are just there, inexplainable.  We chalk it up to chance occurances, or nature's reaction to stress,....or we can't chalk it up at all.  And in my opinion, its in this Why and in the unknowns where god dwells.  Sure the burning bush can be explained scientifically, but can it explain the impact that such a "chance" occurance had on one man and in turn, the world?  Sure evolution seems like the answer to man's creation, but we still can't explain how our bodies work in perfect symphony and irreducible systems such as the eye.  Because the more we find out, the more questions we end up having. And this cycle will not end.  People get so caught up trying to explain things searching for the enigmatic why and how...that they forget to sit back and allow themselves to wonder... Sure you can sit in class and learn how the northern lights work and not feel god at all in the process... But if you ever get the chance to see them, allowing yourself to wonder, You'll feel him. We can't disprove god through science and data because we can feel him...when we look at the lights of the aurora borealis or at just simply at the stars...sending a wave of awe over our bodies and goosebumps on our skin.