How to waste time and energy

How to waste time:

  • focusing on “what” instead of “why”
  • reading but not applying
  • not carrying your cross
  • not searching for the truth
  • being bored
  • not being grateful
  • doing stupid stuff
  • planning too much, not doing
  • not being disciplined
  • getting sucked into things that you have no control over

How to waste energy:

  • being addicted
  • worrying about things you cannot control -> pray instead
  • emotional connection to people who do not care
  • not being at peace
  • doing stupid, purposeless stuff
  • planning too much, not doing
  • doing, but not planning and considering purpose
  • planning for something that may not happen
  • theory without application, application without theory
  • spending energy on things you have little control over

How to get and spend energy:

  • focus on “why”, the purpose
  • be creative
  • sleep well, play well
  • love, give
  • being healed, grace from God -> prayer, being connected to God, beauty
  • being grateful
  • learning, trying new things, forgiveness, mercy
  • focusing on things that you can control, yet letting go to trust and have fun
  • focus on things that will happen, e.g. planning a good death for a good life
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Share by not sharing

Most of what I was going to post on this blog was meant to augment my life manual but I’m thinking I should modify what I should post on this site.

I do have a deep desire in me to give a legacy to you [whoever reads this blog] but I’m reminded again that all of this site is mere words.  After attending a friend’s father’s funeral it reminded me that when I die, there probably won’t be much time with words to say all that I would like to say; is my idea leaving people with a website a foolish way to die (“I’ve died now; go look at my website!”)? – how impersonal! Hopefully I would have already affected people’s lives in a very personal and good way long before my death, hopefully I would have already created loving, joyful, peaceful memories for people to remember me by (though I need not necessarily to be remembered except for what is necessary for my salvation).  Hopefully through my prayers and actions I would have made their lives better.

The life manual seems more of a template for one to live by.  Life should be more about giving [sharing] of oneself than receiving. While the life manual was created through my own life experience it isn’t necessarily who I am; it almost seems an impersonal way to get to know me.  Even if I enumerate all of my attributes, beliefs, principles, etc. it cannot fully encapsulate who I am. You cannot really know me without personal contact with me [which is a reminder to me I need to share more of myself with people if they are going to get to know me]

I will share some of my experiences, my progress, my creativity on this blog.  It seems if one is growing and connected to God who is love, who is the creator of all things, they will be creative and have more things to share. In that sense I will keep myself accountable, by sharing. At the same time I need to remind myself to participate in the lives of people and attending to eternal things (e.g.: love, prayer, people/family, giving life, truth) i.e. I need to share [on this blog to be accountable] by not sharing [instead of making blog posts for example on love, I should be making love 🙂 ].

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St. Augustine on Love

“Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being “in love” which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.”

-St. Augustine

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On love

What tis this
Whose action speaks of liberty, beauty, joy..
Whose being cultivates trust, yields wisdom, heals hearts
By angels wings and wing’s angels
Unites with the creator, elevates all creation
From generation to loving generation
An eternal gift?

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Ten Commandments For A Husband And Father

Summary to add to reminders:

  1. Develop an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus, allowing Him to forgive you of your past, to talk to you, to heal you and to guide you.
  2. Get your priorities in order:  Jesus first, your wife second, your children third, your work fourth, etc.
  3. Realize that you are the “priest” of the home.
  4. Make sure you know what your children are being taught at school regarding morals and values.
  5. Pray with your wife and regularly so.
  6. Spend quality time with each child.  Treat each child in a unique and personal way.  The power of a father’s affirming love is tremendously overwhelming and something truly wonderful.
  7. Consecrate your home to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
  8. Do not let sports or outside activities become more important to you or to your children than Christ and family.
  9. Pray that each one of your children may answer the call to the vocation that Almighty God has chosen for him or her from all eternity.
  10. Ensure the frequenting of the Sacraments by your family members.

Original Source: http://www.courageouspriest.com/ten-commandments-husband-father

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Concepts, Methodology, Principles (revision 7)

Concepts and Methodology:

  • Start with Why
    • Beauty, Vision, Goals
    • Grace
    • Humility to see what God wants you to see; see yourself as God sees you, looking at the bigger picture
  • Focusing on the Human Person – 5 Love Languages
    • Concepts of completeness/Seeing the big picture – I want to give you the best, I want to give you my all
    • Knowing thyself
  • Wisdom – seeing God in everything, looking at the bigger picture and the meaning of real education
    • The Trinity is in everything
    • Since God is Love, the 5 Love Languages are in everything
    • Seeing Truth in everything – the value in cross-discipline principles
    • Deriving meaning from relationships
  • Learn from the experts yet know that since you can’t know everything, they cannot know everything either
  • Wheel of life
  • GTD – a system that allows you to be more in the present, free of “open loops”
    • Review
  • Mindsweeping
  • Mindmapping
  • Atomic transactions

Principles used to create this Manual:

  • Supernatural Ideas:
    • Humility
    • Truth
    • Love
    • Meekness
    • Trust
    • Beauty
    • Gratefulness
    • Joy
    • Faith, Hope, Charity
    • Magnanimity
    • Mary – wisdom is seeing everything in Love, should we not see everything in the eyes of Mary?  Mary, crown of God’s creation, model of whom we should desire to become
    • Time & the present
  • Supernatural and Natural Models:
    • Catholicism:
      • Jesus:
        • The Eucharist
        • The greatest 2 commandments
        • Love and the cross
        • Suffering
      • Dominican Order:
        • Dedication to the Truth
        • you cannot give what you don’t have
        • I assimilate truth though many sources using the principle “find truth where it exists” so while some sources are secular I consider them as an attempt by natural means do discover truth.  I believe the supernatural as described by the Catholic Church trumps systems derived though natural, humanistic means e.g. truths of the Catholic faith trump those attempts to discover truth through psychology.  Psychology can be an imperfect means to describe phenomenons.  There’s more humility in accepting that mysteries exist but it’s ok to attempt describing it and derive meaning.
      • Miles Christi:
        • The greater glory of God
        • Mediations:
      • Cursillo
      • Theology of the Body
    • Philosophy:
      • Logic
      • Socratic Method
      • The intellect, the passions, and the will
    • Leadership:
      • Leaders keep little promises
    • Psychology:
      • Boundaries
      • 12 Steps
      • Cross Generational Disease
      • Completeness
      • HALT
    • Theory vs Practice and the value of experience:
      • Wisdom vs Knowledge
      • My Experiences
    • Mathematics and Computer Science:
      • Agile methodologies
      • Optimization
      • Debugging
    • Martial Arts:
    • History:
      • Contemporary problems
  • Supernatural Means:
    • Prayer & Adoration, Meditations, Novenas, Sacramentals:
      • the importance of mystery
    • The Little Way:
      • My personal affirmations:
        • Let it be done to me according to your word
        • Fiat Voluntas Tua
        • Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
        • Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto thine
        • St Joseph, Light of Patriarchs, Terror of demons, Guardian of the Holy Family, protect me in all dangers
        • Mary, Most Pure, Mother of God, who makes the Love of Jesus real to me, show thyself to be my mother
        • All for Jesus, all through Mary, in imitation of you St Joseph
        • Jesus we adore you, Mary we implore you, Joseph Most Just, in you we place our trust
    • Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Anne

Guidelines:

  • Since the average human mind can only clearly hold 7 plus or minus 2 ideas in their mind, it seems to effectively apply the information learned, it needs to fit into 9 ideas
  • if we focus on each idea each with its own 9 ideas, the core of the information is a magic matrix of 81 points; it’s silly to think all the mystery and greatness of the universe can fit into 81 points but I’d like to think the system of how to live and organize your life can be communicated in 81 points
  • to leave room for mystery and engraining in our mind, sub points can be 12 points – a balance of what can be controlled (by cognitively fitting in our mind) and what cannot be controlled (at least in part due to us not being fully able to cognitively fit it in to our mind)
  • I’ll use Dunbar’s number to limit the number of references I’ll list so you can be more effective at practicing what I give you.  Holiness is not about knowing everything in the encyclopedia, on some level it is about practicing core points well
  • Everything should fit on on page that isn’t too long; there can be links but it should not be more than 3 levels deep
  • Everything is a gift from God, I’ll use the format of the Trinity to “re-gift” God’s gift: Piety (Heart, recognizing Mystery and Beauty), Study (Mind, diving deeper into why), Action (Body, infusing both into something practical and can touch people)
  • For the most part, I’ll avoid mentioning too much of the wisdom I’ve learned (I have my own set of principles, collections of my personal experiences, quotes, lessons I’ve learned, etc).  These are very special to me and I don’t want it to take away from my capacity to be intimate with you.  (see 7 levels of intimacy).  Be with me in person and I can share this with you.  These nuggets of wisdom are for you to discover from the foundation I provide.  I don’t want to take away from the grace and God’s plan for you


 

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Don’t get too comfortable

“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.” – C. S. Lewis
If I look for truth, I may find comfort – but I may not. Life is not about being comfortable. It’s about pressing forward out of my comfort zone. It’s about getting up everyday and accepting whatever challenge I am faced with, staying faithful to the truth and searching for the meaning and value in the suffering I endure.
The Christian life is not the secret to success, but the shortcut to sainthood. It is not here to cure your pain so much as to keep you from wasting it.
We are obsessed with getting rid of pain. That’s often a good thing, but it’s not the most important thing. What’s more important is the soul that is forged in the fire of that pain. In this fire, we discover the truth about who we are.
We are reminded that we are small and weak and in need of help. That we have limits and are in need of a Limitless One. This is the truth. Too much comfort puts us in danger of forgetting it.
You weren’t made for this world, so don’t get too comfortable.

Source: http://theradicallife.org/dont-get-too-comfortable

 

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Beauty necessary to restore culture

Beauty must play a central role in our efforts for evangelization and cultural renewal, because it is a gift from God to lead us to him, Bishop James D. Conley said in an address at a recent apologetics conference.

“Our New Evangelization must work to make truth beautiful. By means both ancient and new, we must make use of beauty – to infuse Western culture, once more, with the spirit of the Gospel,” the Bishop of Lincoln said Sept. 28 in his keynote address at the Catholic Answers National Apologetics Conference in San Diego.

“By means of earthly beauty, we can help our contemporaries discover the truth of the Gospel. Then, they may come to know the eternal beauty of God.”

Bishop Conley told CNA on Oct. 1 that his decision to focus on beauty and culture at an apologetics conference was well-received, and that Catholic Answer’s development director, Christopher Check, “thought it was a real sort of game-changer,” because apologetics efforts can often be rejected by those with a relativistic mindset, who are not even open to entering into a standard apologetics discussion.

But to lead with beauty “opens (others) up to consider the argument” in a way they might not otherwise, the bishop reflected.

Bishop Conley opened the address by sharing a story of his first session of spiritual direction when he entered seminary. Spiritual direction typically involves a detailed discussion with a priest.

When he arrived for his first meeting, the priest, Fr. Anton Morganroth, who had fled Nazi Germany, was playing a Mozart sonata, and proceeded to finish it.

“After a few moments of silence, eager to get started,” Bishop Conley shared, “I broke the silence and said: ‘so are we going to have spiritual direction, father?’ Fr. Morganroth turned and stared right through me and said: ‘son, zat was your spiritual direction, you can go now.’”

This example of being caught up in beauty is a demonstration of how the transcendental can open minds and hearts to “the realities of the spiritual life,” the bishop said.

He emphasized that evangelization is concerned not only with individuals, but with transformation of culture as well.

“We’re starting to get a sense of our cultural mission,” Bishop Conley said. “Catholics are working to recover our traditions, and to build community … to foster a way of life that is true, good, and beautiful.”

He added that faith “is meant to be the basis of culture,” and explained how he was converted to the Catholic Church through the Integrated Humanities Program run by professor John Senior at the University of Kansas, which exposed students to the beauty of Christian culture.

This experience of beauty, he said, allowed him to be open to the great philosophers and theologians of the past, rather than assuming “that truth was found in the dictates of popular culture.”

“Senior was not an evangelist, in the traditional sense of the word: he did not preach from a pulpit, or write works of apologetics. His goal in the classroom was not to convert us, but to open our minds to truth, wherever it might be found. And he did that primarily through the imagination.”

Despite not being a traditional evangelist, the bishop said, Senior “was a remarkably gifted evangelist,” and through his sharing of the beauty of historic Catholic culture, hundreds of University of Kansas students became Catholic in the 1970s.

Their conversion “was not the result of proselytism in the classroom nor was it engaging in apologetics,” Bishop Conley said. “It occurred because we became lovers of beauty, and thus, seekers of truth. Beauty gave us ‘eyes to see’ and ‘ears to hear,’ when we encountered the Gospel and the Christian tradition.”

Senior and his colleagues “knew that students had to encounter beauty, and have their hearts and imaginations captured first by beauty, before they could pursue truth and goodness in a serious and worthy manner,” the bishop explained.

He observed that in the midst of intellectual and moral confusion, beauty can break through to hardened hearts, and that “every instance of real beauty points beyond itself” to God, who “invested this world with many forms of captivating beauty, so that created things would lead us to contemplate the transcendent glory of the Creator.”

While God “speaks to our souls through intellectual truth and moral goodness” in addition to beauty, “these forms of communication have become problematic. Many people, especially in modern Western culture, are too intellectually and morally confused to receive such a message.”

Because of this confusion, beauty may be the transcendental which “can get through, where other forms of divine communication may not,” the bishop taught.

“When we begin with beauty, this can then lead to a desire to want to know the truth of the thing that is drawing us, a desire to participate in it. And then the truth can inspire us to do the good, to strive after virtue.”

Bishop Conley said that “clearly, beauty has a major role to play in the New Evangelization” and enumerated three ways in which this can be done: through liturgy; appreciation of historic Christian culture; and openness to beauty in all its forms.

He called beauty in liturgy the “most essential” point, noting that “worship … is the basis of Christian culture” and pointing to examples of great converts who were struck by the solemn rites and extraordinary chants of the Catholic Church.

The bishop’s second recommendation was to become familiar with the beauty of historic Christian culture, such as Gregorian chant, in order to help others who appreciate it to understand the Christian beauty that inspired it.

Finally, he invited Catholics to “open our own minds to beauty, in all its manifestations” in both nature and culture, which will help us to understand beauty as “an earthly reflection of God’s glory.”

Concluding, Bishop Conley quoted famous Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who wrote in “The Idiot” that “beauty will save the world.”

“It will,” the bishop added. “When it points to God’s enduring love.”

“There are many souls to rescue, and a vast cultural wasteland to restore. Both tasks will require fluency in God’s language of beauty,” he said.

“To speak this language, we must first begin to listen. And to listen, we must have silence in our lives. I pray that God will open our eyes and ears to beauty, and help us use it in the service of the Truth.”

 

Source: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/beauty-necessary-to-restore-culture-says-bishop-conley/

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