watch­ing this com­mer­cial, and read­ing this arti­cle just fur­ther rein­forces the truths that as Jesus teaches me to love, St. Joseph teaches me to man up.

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i say with regret that this has not been one of my bet­ter lents. and with that said, hello lent.

in nurs­ing school, the con­cept of col­lat­eral cir­cu­la­tion was one that caught my atten­tion. here’s why; say some­where in your arter­ies a block­age occurs. you would think that if blood was unable to flow to a par­tic­u­lar organ because of this block­age, it would even­tu­ally die, or gan­grene of that area. but our bod­ies don’t give up so eas­ily to a small block­age. what it does is that it gen­er­ates blood ves­sels to bypass the occluded area thereby allow­ing blood and oxy­gen to enter the affected organ. this resiliency to death shows how the body cre­ates alter­na­tive means to get what it wants.

i feel this exam­ple of our human bod­ies is a reflec­tion of our human­ness. that some­times even when we try to block out parts of our desires, we some­how find another way to express another human/worldly desire.

fast­ing & feasting

fast­ing is great, its an act of self denial. but feast­ing that does not bring glory to God doesnt give mean­ing to our fast. the inter­play between fast­ing & feast­ing has been quite the strug­gle. sure i can say ive done well in areas that ive been mind­ful of. but that alone does not cover all the tools the devil can use to sep­a­rate myself  from God. its so sad to look back and see that a fast that i had high hopes in just lead to me hav­ing the time to ded­i­cate in another equally triv­ial out­let. death to worldly desire delayed. col­lat­eral cir­cu­la­tion in full effect.

a taste of true feast­ing. since ive been on vaca­tion ive been able to seek God in dif­fer­ent and at times more obvi­ous set­tings. the basil­ica of the immac­u­late con­cep­tion in mary­land, st patrick’s cathe­dral in ny, ran­dom explo­rations of new churches. con­ver­sa­tions at length with great peo­ple through dif­fer­ent walks of life; sight­ings of Jesus in the every­things. these things that ive been able to do in this vaca­tion are things that i am more than able to do in my daily rou­tine. its merely the deci­sion to desire God or myself. decreas­ing in self, increas­ing in God.

“prayer is an all-efficient panoply, a trea­sure undi­min­ished, a mine never exhausted, a sky unob­structed by clouds, a haven unruf­fled by storm. It is the root, the foun­tain, and the mother of a thou­sand bless­ings. It exceeds a monarch’s power. ..I speak not of the prayer which is cold and fee­ble and devoid of zeal. I speak of that which pro­ceeds from a mind out­stretched, the child of a con­trite spirit, the off­spring of a soul con­verted – this is the prayer which mounts to heaven… The power of prayer has sub­dued the strength of fire, bri­dled the rage of lions, silenced anar­chy, extin­guished wars, appeased the ele­ments, expelled demons, burst the chains of death, enlarged the gates of heaven, relieved dis­eases, averted frauds, res­cued cities from destruc­tion, stayed the sun in its course, and arrested the progress of the thun­der­bolt. In sum prayer has power to destroy what­ever is at enmity with the good.”

i think that some­times its eas­ier to remem­ber that God is all pow­er­ful and that He will deliver us through what­ever storm in life we may be caught in. While this remains as the truest words of promise, its impor­tant to remem­ber that Prayer keeps us con­nected to God. this reflec­tion on prayer by John Chrysos­tom reminded me just how strong prayer is. that our rela­tion­ship with God doesn’t just stop at the acknowl­edge­ment that He is present, but also that He longs to con­verse with us. not just in peti­tions and thanks, but also in ado­ra­tion and eros love. its amaz­ing to think that the things listed above are all pos­si­ble if we had that much faith in God. the type of faith that is formed and blessed through deep prayer and love for God.

in con­ver­sa­tion with my girl­friend dur­ing a car ride to a local eatery, the topic of emo­tion & logic came about. in an attempt to be more con­tem­pla­tive indi­vid­u­als, we explored this; your wel­come, socrates. LOL

emo­tion & reason

emo­tion can be a very con­vinc­ing agent. both social and cor­po­rate media under­stand this just about as well as any­body does. when the magic made the finals in ’09 own­er­ship spent well over 10mill in lux­ury tax in ros­ter changes in excite­ment of cre­at­ing a dynasty that breeds cham­pi­onships, an excite­ment that led to sell­ing out sea­son tick­ets the fol­low­ing year. or when feb­ru­ary 14 comes around, soci­ety sells the emo­tion of ‘love’ and ‘romance’ in the air, an excite­ment that causes many men to go broke (just kid­ding). emo­tion though at times can lead peo­ple to pas­sions that are not well directed. ‘snap­ping’ or ‘blowing-up’ at an indi­vid­ual is emo­tion in its full-on pas­sion­ate form, it lacks the acknowl­edge­ment in that moment because it is dri­ven by emo­tion alone. the thing about emo­tion is that it is short term. it acts on impulses. it acts on desires. it acts on now.

rea­son on the other hand, is smart. it ana­lyzes. it knows its not the end of the world, or if it is, its prob­a­bly true LOL. rea­son allows for cities to be built. orga­ni­za­tions to be ran. when the magic made the finals in ’09 own­er­ship brought in vince carter to deliver a clutch time shot maker to bury the celtics, cavs and lak­ers (in that order). it did so because it felt it was the best chance of win­ning. log­i­cally, it makes sense, it is also a fact they most cer­tainly will. rea­son, as with emo­tion, can be erro­neous. a busi­ness­man who seeks only profit will never invest in the good of soci­ety if invest­ments in other indus­tries yield a more prof­itable account. in this sense, rea­son in its full-on log­i­cal form can­not see what’s to his left, or to his right, but only means to an end. rea­son seeks long term. rea­son sees facts.

heart & mind

emo­tion is the expres­sion of the heart. rea­son is the seek­ing of truth. emo­tion seeks to Love. rea­son seeks to Know. these two enti­ties of are not called to be received in a dom­i­na­tion of one over the other, for we know the pit­falls of each. but in a har­mony to please God. Eros seek­ing Agape. the Word being fath­omed. this is the great­est and most impor­tant request of Christ of us: Mt 22:37–38.

‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment.

under­stand­ing how much empha­sis and care­ful detail Jesus put into His words when He spoke, i love how this piece of scrip­ture doesnt say to love with ONLY your mind, or with ONLY your heart. the empha­sis on the bal­ance of these two, not plac­ing one over the other reveals to us; actions lead only by heart alone, or by mind alone, does not bring our utmost to Him.

for this lenten sea­son i hope to be a more bal­anced indi­vid­ual. not so much emo­tion so when i fail a fast i don’t lose sight of the rea­son for the sea­son. or too much logic where i ratio­nal­ize or even lose touch of the heart of lent. but a bal­ance of when i fail on one, the other would keep me bal­anced. that through any chal­lenge gone bad, i could lean on my foothold of my mind for God, and my heart for God.