prepared by Fr Michael Whelan sm

It is well nigh impossible to have true conversation at speed!

Slow down – with yourself and with other people.

Choose to do some ordinary things each day deliberately:
Making a cup of coffee.
Setting the table.
Eating a meal together.
Washing your face.
Walking along the street.
Making the bed.
Learn to wait upon the moment. Dwell. Abide.
Listen with the ear of the heart!

“Nothing is ever completed … Incompleteness is a part of nature and it takes
great art or great wisdom to know when to lay down the brush …
we should always avoid perfectionism.”
(Jean Monnet, Memoirs, Trans. Richard Mayne, Doubleday, 1978, 521.)

Advent Prayer
(To be said each morning)

“Lord, keep my heart always set on You today,
so that from it will flow the springs of life.
Protect me from crooked speech,
and put devious talk far from me.
Let my eyes look directly forward,
and my gaze be straight before you.
Keep straight the path of my feet,
and all my ways will be sure.
Let me not swerve to the right or to the left;
turn my feet away from evil. Amen”
(Adapted from Proverbs 4:23-27)

“When you visualized a man or a woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity — that was a quality God`s image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.”
(Graham Green, The Power and the Glory, Penguin, 1971, 131)