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Showing posts with label Thanksgiving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thanksgiving. Show all posts

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Praying the our Father: Thanksgiving

By David Torkington


File:Catacomb Via Latina Jacob ladder.jpg
Jacob's Ladder in the Via Latina Catacombs (Wikimedia Commons).



My earliest and happiest memories  are of going to visit my grandfather. It wasn’t because he played games with me, gave me  my favourite chocolate or even money to buy myself an ice cream on the way home, it was just because I  loved him. He  was such a lovable kindly man  that it was more than enough just to be with him and feel myself enveloped by his  love. This was before I even went to prep school. By the time I did he was dead  ‘though by today’s standards he was still a young man barely old enough to  draw his pension.

However he left me a legacy of love in his eldest daughter who was my mother.  She was the most loving mother one could wish for, who in spite of the dyslexia that blighted my early life enabled me to grow up with confidence and imbued with a security that only love can give.

I can still see  my grandfather in my imagination with a mop of  white hair and a moustache to match. I saw him over a year ago in my bathroom looking at me through the mirror. I was just raising my hand to shave the soap suds from under my nose that had left me with a white moustache and there he was looking back at me. I had never thought I looked like him before, never given it a second thought, but there he was looking back at me.  It  was undoubtedly him. The only trouble was the face that looked back at me wasn’t the kindly loving face that I remembered with such love, would that it were.


Continue reading at David's blog David Torkington.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

How can you grow in generosity this season?

By Elizabeth Tichvon 



File:Michele Pace Del Campidoglio - Still-Life with a Female Figure - WGA16798.jpg
Still Life with Female Figure by Campodoglio (Wikimedia Commons).



"...Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees.  He said to the host who invited him, 'When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment.  Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.  For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous'”  (Luke 14:12-14).

Jesus calls us to invite the needy to our banquet table. His message doesn't discourage us from welcoming friends, family and wealthy neighbors, but asks that we bear in mind our intentions. It's against human nature to give lavishly without looking for repayment. But Jesus insists that we give without expectations. How do we do that?
 

Perhaps we can start by practicing generosity toward those with no means of reciprocation. Consider the young lady in prison without loved ones to send money for an occasional luxury such as a soda or bag of chips. The retired nun on a small income, standing in the grocery checkout line. The father of nine, longing to take all of his children to a ballgame, but can't afford one ticket. The poor beggar with nothing but her clothes and unassuming nature. We may find it's easier to give without the prospect of receiving, when we give to such persons.

Continue reading at Elizabeth's blog  click-elizabeth.