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Excerpt from Life Lines by Forrest Church 1996 Meaning doesn't emerge from longing for what we lack, things we have lost or will likely never find. The past is over. Pine over it and what we are pining for is probably very different in selective memory than it was in reality. And longing for something in the future may distract us from our enjoyment of the present. Wishful thinking tends to be both sloppy and sentimental. We should wish to think instead for things closer at hand.
The courage to bear up under pain;
the grace to take our successes lightly;
the energy to address tasks that await our doing;
the meaning to be found in giving of ourselves to others;
the liberation that follows when we forgive another;
the comfort to be taken in opening our hearts to another;
the joy to be gained even in the most common endeavor;
the pleasure of one another's company;
the wonder that wells within the simple fact of our shared being.
I call this "thoughtful wishing"; wishing for what can be ours, what we can do, who we can be. Unlike wishful thoughts, thoughtful wishes tend to come true. Forrest Church
A reading from THE HEART OF MAN by Gerald Vann, O.P. 1944 Think of some very humble and ordinary form of making, like the sewing of a patch on a coat. You can regard it as drudgery, and do it with careless or perhaps with savage impatience; and then you turn it into a job. Or you can regard the patch very differently. You can do it with pride in your workmanship, so that it becomes a thing of beauty; then you are already an artist. You can do it with love, and so turn it into love-making; and then you are twice an artist. You can do it as act of worship of God and then you are three times an artist; you are completely alive. And why should not every action that you do be like this? But we are enslaved by a system that despises art and has no room for love and reverence; and so we can be excused if we think sometimes that "the end draws near; the soil is stale." Unless there can be a rebirth our world is doomed; and it must be a rebirth of reverence.
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