Over the past six months I have been dieting and started running, ok, well jogging (at best), again.  During this time I have also grown substantially in my faith.  One thing that I have learned over the last six months is the importance of slowing down -- that is ironic (in an Alanis Morissette sort of way) that someone who is focusing on running is worried about slowing down?  Slowing down and taking the time to be prayerful and thoughtful is something that is next to impossible in this world.  But that very thing is the only way I can grow in my faith life and grow in my leisure life.

One of the utmost joys I am re-discovering about running is the inability to lie to yourself.   Back more than a decade ago when I was running regularly I could always tell when I didn't eat properly or didn't stay on my jogging schedule.  Out on the road my body would let me know in no uncertain terms when I hadn't been doing what I was supposed to be doing leading up to that  day's jog. On the flip side, my body would reward me when I did eat well and stayed on schedule -- I would feel incredible during and after runs, I would get faster and be able to go further.

In the years before I first started jogging in the 90's and the time between  when I fell away and now, I found it all too easy to lie to myself.  In the beginning I would lie to myself that taking a few days, a some weeks, then a couple of months off wouldn't hurt and I could get right back to where I was.  However, the times  I  would actually get back out  on the road would be so difficult --  read, not as easy as I had been telling myself -- that it would multiply my frustration and cause me to not run more.  Rather than realizing I needed to scale back, slow down and pick up from less than where I was, I would get frustrated and fool myself into believing that I might  as well go longer between runs and eat/drink whatever I wanted because it was going to be hard either  way.  Of course this only cause more difficulties and less jogging.

I would lie to myself that I wasn't getting fatter.  No matter how much I ate and drank, I could lie to myself that it wasn't having an impact on my waistline or my health.  Even when my cloths started "shrinking" I could fool myself.  My favorite trick was, and still is, to trick myself into believing that I could devour whatever I wanted now and I would "make up for it later."  Of course, the payback part never came -- you know, those things that always get in the way of doing what you are supposed to do but don't want to do: friends, food, TV and any other visceral item that came along -- and I would continue to "borrow" against the future.  When I did actually do something like dishes, vacuuming, or even the smallest physical exertion would in my mind burn a lot more calories than what it did in reality.  Some times I was even like the federal government, I would use vacuuming to account for bad eating habits in the past and would allow me to gorge myself at a buffet that same day.  I was exceptional at lying to myself.

I still fight that same battle. I fight it with my eating.  I fight it with my exercise.  I fight it in my spiritual life. I fight it in every facet of my life.  I pray every day that God gives me the grace to, as Blessed John Paul II so beautifully said, "Be Still."  My soul craves the stillness -- God is found in the stillness and my heart longs for God.


"If you want to be happy, really really happy, use your talents to serve others." - Eduardo Verastegui

"The Bible," Saul and the Conclave

Not sure if conclave should be capitalized, so let me start by apologizing if I get it wrong.  Last night I watched the second installment of the five-part mini-series, The Bible on the History Channel.  While the first installment was more interesting on the surface, the second installment was much deeper on reflection (and by reflection I of course mean a night of weird dreams).

The character of Saul in the Old Testament is one that I have never given much though about.  He was always the guy before the most important Old Testament person, King David.  After all, King David was the boy that killed Goliath, he wrote a great many of the Psalms and was the genetic line for Jesus.  Who was Saul other than, well, "not David"?  Oh boy, did last this last episode open my eyes.

Before I get into my thoughts on Saul, a couple of side notes.  First, you can tell that Catholics made this series.  In coming back to my Catholic faith as an adult I have grown to understand how much my reality has been shaped by a Protestant mind set – not surprising given that I grew up in the South.  My experience with Protestantism is that they focus much more on the New Testament and not so much on the Old.  In the New they tend to focus more on Paul, partially I think it is because he wrote half the New Testament, but also I think there is a whole lot of him being, well, “not Peter.”  But this series spends four of the five episodes on the Old Testament – a very Catholic thing in my view.  The other aside is that I am using a Year of Faith companion book from Magificat.  This booklet contains daily reflections on Faith and in doing so profiles over 120 Biblical characters.  Interestingly, Saul is not among them.

Anyway, back to the point.  As I said before, not much of an Old Testament kinda guy.  But this series has allowed me to rediscover Old Testament stories and sort of read along to get a more complete understanding.  What I read and watched last night about Saul has me fascinated.  Granted, it is only one night and more accurately a few hours, of what can only be loosely called study but Saul seems to be deep inside me.  On the surface Saul thinks he is a good king and honest servant of God.  However, he seems to know deep down that he is anything but.  He seems to want to portray and even believe that he is a good person but does things that demonstrate otherwise.  More important in my reflection is that Saul seems to want to really believe that he is doing the Will of God, a sort of belief about the person he wishes he was and not the person he actually was.  I can relate to that.  It has been less than three years now that I have come back to my Catholic faith.  Where I was prior to that was very Saul-like.  I wanted to pretend that I was a devote Catholic.  I wanted to put on the airs, even to myself, that I was something more than a CINO (Catholic In Name Only).  However, deep down I knew that I was a dangerous Catholic, dangerous because I knew just enough to believe I could defend my faith, but too ignorant to truly do so.  I have spent the last three years growing in my faith and in my understanding of what the Church teaches, trying to become less Saul and more Peter.

Since the announcement of the resignation of Pope Benedict I have had this uneasiness about the direction of the Church and the next Pope.  I have been fearful that the next Pope wouldn’t be as good as the last few (in my life time I have only known two popes, so I can’t really say much about those prior, other than they seem to have been good and devout men). I am of course prayerful that the Cardinals will follow the Holy Spirit and elect a good, strong Godly man, but I wonder (and I will admit a lack of faith plays a some part in my thoughts) if the Cardinals will allow Saul to infest the conclave and elect a Pope that seems to be good on the surface, but knows he is not up to the task.

I guess a lot of this trepidation comes from how the Church has handled the sex abuse crisis.  Seems to me that there is a large part of the political Cardinals, for lack of a better way of putting it, inside the Vatican that do not demonstrate a strong enough faith that “the gates of Hell shall not prevail” against the Catholic Church.  This leadership appears to be hiding behind large doors and beautiful art and not projecting itself as leaders that believe that Jesus will guide His Church.  My take is that the people who run the Church now do not want their failings as human beings exposed in a way I think would be cathartic to a lot of the faithful.  I pray that I am wrong.  I pray that this attitude will not overtake the conclave, that the Cardinals will let the Holy Spirit and not the ghost of Saul dominate their deliberations and guide their voting.

"If you want to be happy, really really happy, use your talents to serve others." - Eduardo Verastegui

Same ol' sinner the same ol' sin - Lenten version

This is a line from a Third Day song (forgive me, but I am in a hurry and can't recall which of their many great songs it is from) that speaks to me about me.  Since I have come back to the Church, and even more-so while I was away, it seems that my confessional visits are broken records.  What I find odd is that even the more I study and grow in my understanding with God, it seems that my sin was the same.  Then came Lent. 

In listening to a podcast, and I sadly cannot remember which one, I got the idea of giving up sin for Lent.  It might sound odd, it certainly seemed odd to me while I considered it, giving up something or Lent that I am supposed to be giving up anyway.  However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it is, at least for me at this time the perfect Lenten sacrifice.  After all, what is Lent about other than being more mindful of what takes us away from God?  What takes us away from God more than our mortal sin?  If there is something that is routinely keeping you away from the Eucharist, that is God in the flesh, what better way to get closer to God than not doing those thing? 

It is odd to me that what I cannot do for 325 days of they year I can do for 40 days in Lent - be it dieting, giving up diet Coke or whatever the change in my life that Lent seems to make possible.  It seems even more so with mortal sin.  Seems that the knowledge of the loss of Heaven would be more of a deterrent than Lent, but not in my weird mind.  But whatever it takes and so far I have been successful on this part of my Lenten vow.  And now, off to Mass . . .


"If you want to be happy, really really happy, use your talents to serve others." - Eduardo Verastegui