Well, I joined the tribute. If you want to be one of the 2996 bloggers who honor the 2996 victims of 9/11 then go here and sign up before it's too late. There are only a couple hundred unclaimed victims.

And now for evening prayer excerpts...

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The Lord is kind and full of compassion,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
How good is the Lord to all,
compassionate to all his creatures.

All your creatures shall thank you, O Lord,
and your friends shall repeat their blessing.
They shall speak of the glory of your reign
and declare your might, O God.

The Lord is faithful in all his words
and loving in all his deeds.
The Lord supports all who fall
and raises all who are bowed down.

The eyes of all creatures look to you
and you give them their food in due time.
You open wide your hand,
grant the desires of all who live.

He grants the desires of those who fear him,
he hears their cry and he saves them.
The Lord protects all who love him;
but the wicked he will utterly destroy.

Let me speak the praise of the Lord,
let all mankind bless his holy name
for ever, for ages unending.


There is no condemnation now for those who are in Christ Jesus. The law of the spirit, the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, has freed you from the law of sin and death.


Christ, our frail humanity is prone to fall,
-strengthen us through your help.
Left to itself, our nature is inclined to sin,
-let your love always restore it to grace.
Lord, sin offends you, repentance pleases you,
-do not punish us in your wrath even when we have sinned.
You forgave the penitent woman, and placed the wandering sheep on your shoulders,
-do not deprive us of your mercy.
By your death on the cross you opened the gates of heaven,
-admit into your kingdom all who hoped in you.


God, our Father,
you brought salvation to all mankind
through the suffering of Christ your Son.
May your people strive to offer themselves to you as a living sacrifice
and be filled with he abundance of your love.

And while not from morning prayer... it's still good

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From the 14th week in Ordinary Time

St. Augustine on the psalms, excerpt:

He is the one who builds, admonishes, instills fear, opens the mind, and bends the perceptions to the act of belief.

I really like that last one: bends the perceptions to the act of belief. May we ever have his hand working in our lives to enhance our belief in any way. What a kind God who builds us up in so many ways.

Speaking about morning prayer...

My sacrifice, a contrite spirit.
A humbled, contrite heart you will not spurn.

Praise the lord for his goodness,
and bless the King of the ages,
so that his tent may be rebuilt in you with joy.

I have been crucified with Christ, and the life I live now is not my own; Christ is living in me. I still live my human life, but it is a life of faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Accept us, for our hearts are humble and our spirits contrite,
and those who trust in you shall not be put to shame.

Lord,
fill our hearts with your love
as morning fills the sky.
By living your law may we have
your peace in this life
and endless joy in the life to come.

Speaking about morning prayer...

My sacrifice, a contrite spirit.
A humbled, contrite heart you will not spurn.

Praise the lord for his goodness,
and bless the King of the ages,
so that his tent may be rebuilt in you with joy.

I have been crucified with Christ, and the life I live now is not my own; Christ is living in me. I still live my human life, but it is a life of faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Accept us, for our hearts are humble and our spirits contrite,
and those who trust in you shall not be put to shame.

Lord,
fill our hearts with your love
as morning fills the sky.
By living your law may we have
your peace in this life
and endless joy in the life to come.

A dose of reality for Hezbollah

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The Wall Street Journal has an editorial that tarnishes Hezbollah's so-called victory.

Amir Tehari, the author, says

In Lebanon, the Middle East and the broader Muslim space, however, the picture is rather different.

He also says

Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has made it clear that he would not allow Hezbollah to continue as a state within the state.

And

Hezbollah is also criticized from within the Lebanese Shiite community, which accounts for some 40% of the population. Sayyed Ali al-Amin, the grand old man of Lebanese Shiism, has broken years of silence to criticize Hezbollah for provoking the war, and called for its disarmament. In an interview granted to the Beirut An-Nahar, he rejected the claim that Hezbollah represented the whole of the Shiite community. "I don't believe Hezbollah asked the Shiite community what they thought about [starting the] war," Mr. al-Amin said. "The fact that the masses [of Shiites] fled from the south is proof that they rejected the war. The Shiite community never gave anyone the right to wage war in its name."

This perspective peels back the layer of varnish the MSM and Hezbollah has put on the recent Mideast violence. May God grant that area true peace.

Query for My fellow bloggers...

Do you pay for your blog's website? Do you pay for any other services that support your blog?

Pic from the movie, Serenity, which is also my daughter's name

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This also happens to fit the personality of my one and only daughter. A human fireball from birth. But a sweet fireball.

Relax your lower lip, please...

She kept repeating that to me. I don't know, it just seems kind of funny. How often does someone ask you to relax your lip? The dental hygienist was resting her fingers on my lower lip and I guess she couldn't do her job when they were too taut. Guess I've had worse things told to me.

Cheers.

Can't get a Gmail invite?

If you have a cell phone, you can get an invite.

Click here and click where it says: Sign up for Gmail using your mobile phone

Wow, a beautiful piece on coming to terms with life

Romaryka is a great writer.

Incidents and Accidents: These Days

It's kind of long, but beautiful and poignant.

So I got an invisible site tracker to keep a spying eye on you bloggers...

My tracker

Speaking about morning prayer...

Morning prayer excerpts:

O Lord, grant us salvation;
O Lord, grant success.

Let everything that lives and breathes give praise to the Lord, alleluia.

Thank God I don't have to move...

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Well, a good ending to my landlady drama.
She was waiting this morning as I was getting ready for morning prayer. She sat on one of the chairs in the living room, one of the ones that I had been blocked access to.
She had a copy of the rental agreement in front of her. She started the conversation off by pointing out that the agreement didn't mention full house privileges. That alarmed me, I didn't even think about that possibility. I thought I was sunk from the beginning. I swallowed down the panic and held my ground.
Then she pointed out that she was giving me free storage space in the garage. She calculated how much that would come to at $40/ month by 8 months. Ouch. I stood there mute.
Then she told me about her feelings about me using the couch. I have to admit I've been a couch potato for the past few months. I work a split shift which gives me 5 hours off in the middle of the day. I would often come home and watch TV during that time and quite often fall asleep. She visits the house twice daily in between the two jobs that she works and would mostly see me on the couch. She is an active person and seeing me inactive on the couch so often must have grated against her nerves. So that explains her motives in cutting me off from the living room I guess.
So, I promised to not sleep on the couch anymore and to clean the bathroom more diligently and pay her the remaining $100 for rent. She agreed to return me to full house privileges.
She said she was sorry and to act like none of this ever happened. She said we were both Catholics and asked me to pray for her as I headed out the door.
A good ending for a trying time.
Thank you to any of you who prayed for me....
God is good.

Blogging success- note to self

Good advice for beginning bloggers from the evangelical outpost.

Thanks to LaShawn Barber's blog which I found out about via sigmund, carl and alfred.

An old pic of me, about 10 years ago when I was thinner.

Pug Bowling

I couldn't stop laughing the whole video through!

Pug Bowling

Thanks to Jules at Maced With Grace

Man, this is hard...

My landlady took a turn on me for the worse. For no reason at all, she blocked off the living room and TV from me. When I moved in a year ago the agreement was $450/ mo. for full house privileges, which has since gone up to $500. So, today when I pay rent I am only gonna give her $400 for the month since she withdrew the full house privileges.
I feel all stressed out now. I hate moving....
So, for those of you so inclined, please pray for me. Pray that my landlady will be reasonable and will grant me favor and not oppose me.

Conservative Catholic magazine that is faithful to the Church now has its subscription at a rock bottom price!

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CRISIS magazine is at it again. They are offering annual subscriptions for only $10.00.
I was offered this 2 or 3 years ago through an email campaign and have ate up every issue since! This is a quality conservative Catholic magazine that writes mainly about political and cultural issues of our day. They did a full issue strictly on John Paul the Great after his passing that was beautifully done. The book reviews are top quality and their feature articles are the best. They even did an article on communion rails for you stalwart ones out there.
Check it out, it's worth the money. Click here to get the discount rate.
Here is the link to subscribe to their free e-letter.

Here is the latest e-letter in its entirety.

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Taking Back The Church? Crisis Magazine e-LetterAugust 17, 2006*

Before I get to the e-Letter, I want to let you know that for the next week, we're offering a full year subscription to Crisis Magazine for only $10. You can get a new subscription, a gift subscription, or renew your subscription for just ten bucks. I'll give you all the details at the end of this letter. In the meantime, you can click here to order: https://www.ezsubscription.com/cri/sub.htm


Dear Friend,I've come to a conclusion about dissenting Catholics and how they compare to their more faithful counterparts. Here it is: Faithful Catholics start families. Dissenting Catholics start organizations.If you need proof for the second point, I give you Take Back Our Church, the newest dissident group on the block. Started four months ago by former Jesuit and Newsweek contributing editor Robert Blair Kaiser and California businessman Robert Miller, the group joins an already crowded gaggle of dissenting organizations.So, what differentiates Take Back Our Church from Call to Action, or FutureChurch, or Voice of the Faithful, or The Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church, or any other similar group?Good question.Take Back Our Church's Web site is stuffed with the same nonsense you've read before: The Catholic Church is authoritarian... Current Church leaders have turned their backs on Vatican II... The faithful need to reclaim their Church, and reshape it to match their needs. And so on.None of this is terribly surprising, given Kaiser's involvement in the project. He came out with a book earlier this year entitled, “A Church in Search of Itself: Benedict XVI and the Battle for the Future.” If you don't have time to read it, let me give you a quick synopsis: The Fathers of Vatican II ushered in a golden age of openness, tolerance, and progressive action. Unfortunately, the dark forces of John Paul II and his diabolical collaborator, Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, clamped down on this movement of the Spirit, dragging the Church back to the Dark Ages. In light of this, thinking Catholics need to reclaim their Church... and maybe even start an American Catholic Church of their own (more on this in a moment).Sound familiar? This is the same tired song we've heard from all the other grey-haired dissidents of Kaiser's generation. Of course, there's an added note of desperation in this latest entry. The years are starting to thin the ranks of Kaiser's allies, and even liberal commentators acknowledge that younger Catholics are noticeably more orthodox than their elders. So if you're Robert Blair Kaiser, now is the time to act, before the dissident generation is no more. And here's where it gets really interesting...You see, Kaiser's organization is calling for more than just reform... they want an autochthonous American Catholic Church. An autochthonous Church isn't the same as an autonomous Church, as Kaiser is quick to point out on the Web site. Rather, an autochthonous Church is a native Church... an ecclesial body organized and run by people in that specific country. In the autochthonous Church of Kaiser's dreams, the faithful would elect their own bishops. But that's not all:“We will write a Declaration of Autochthony, one that will challenge our priest-people and our people-people to work out a constitution for the American Church that carefully puts aside the Rome-based secretive, half-vast, culturally-conditioned legalisms codified in canon law in return for the kind of servant Church envisioned at Vatican II.”So... a democratic Church with elected bishops and a national ecclesial constitution. If all of that sounds more political than spiritual, it's no coincidence. According to Take Back Our Church's July 4 e-mail to supporters:“This will be a political battle in a Church that has gotten us used to the idea that there's something shady, maybe even something sinful, in trying to overturn the old pyramidal structure. We plead 'not guilty' to that charge. But we do plead guilty in our wish to overturn -- at least in the United States -- what the last pope called 'the divinely instituted hierarchical constitution of the Church.'”At least they're honest. They don't want a hierarchical Church that disagrees with them, so they need to overthrow it.Easier said than done. While Take Back Our Church may be long on ambitions, they're falling short on methodology. Indeed, right now, their principle concern appears to be finding members. As of July 4, they had a total of 580 people on their roll. Not terribly impressive. But don't worry... they do have a strategy for growth:“Right now, we'd like each of you, 580 of you, to scour your e-mail address books and urge your twenty closest friends to go to our website and sign in. Do it now.”Okay, so maybe they need to work on their growth strategy as well. But that gave me an idea...I haven't made the $10 subscription offer for Crisis in quite some time. So I'm going to do it right now. It's the perfect counterbalance to Take Back Our Church's membership drive. Let's see if we can get more faithful Catholic subscribers than they can get dissident Catholic members. Here's the deal: You can have a full year's subscription to Crisis for just $10. That's ten issues... just a dollar an issue.You can also give a gift subscription for $10... it's the perfect gift for your parish, your pastor, a student heading to a secular (or liberal Catholic) college, etc. Really, every Catholic should be reading Crisis.Finally, if you already have a Crisis subscription, you can renew it for a full year for just $10. That's almost 1/3 off the regular renewal price.There's absolutely no limit on the number of subscriptions or renewals you may order. I want to get Crisis into the hands of every Catholic in this country. This is, after all, an apostolate as well as a business. So while this may look like an odd business decision, I do believe it's important for our overall mission. If I'm serious about bringing authentic Catholicism into the public square, I've got to step up to the plate.So that's why I'm making you this offer.Of course, there's a small catch: The $10 deal ends at noon Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday, August 23. I suggest you order sooner rather than later. The devil has a way of distracting us from things like this... until it's too late.Don't let that happen.Click here to order: https://www.ezsubscription.com/cri/sub.htm

Look, we often complain when dissident Catholics worm their way into parishes and chanceries and distort the Faith. Here's a chance to do something about it. Think of Crisis Magazine as a vaccination against the disease of dissent. I'll talk to you next week,BrianP.S. This is a great time to subscribe to Crisis, or to renew your subscription. We have a bombshell issue coming up in December... the fruit of a long-term project. I can't reveal much more than that right now, but it's going to be an issue everyone will be talking about. And there are some well known figures in the Church who won't like it one bit.

To learn more about CRISIS Magazine, visit http://www.crisismagazine.com/subscribe.htm

Followup to God's heads up for me...

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Sadness... My poor friend at work got fired yesterday. She was one of my favorite co-workers. Sigh....
I don't want to mention her name here. She is kind of young and sort of lacking in self-control and she repeated an earlier offense of mouthing off at a customer, although the phone call was disconnected. Still, it's a no-no. Dang, she was always so sweet to me. A very friendly smile awaited me every time we greeted each other and she always said something neighbourly to me when I would comment on our workday. Oh, my young and impetuous friend, I will pray for you. May this be a learning point for you and a chance at getting another good job. May God use this difficult time to bring a blessing into your life. May he comfort you in your pain. Bye, friend, I am sad I no longer can work with you, but there's a great chance we'll see each other in heaven. Keep on praying.