Tuesday, April 22, 2008

A Religious Basis for Being Yourself

"God speaks to you not only through His supernatural grace, but also through the individual nature which He fashioned into the person you are today. He would have you make an intelligent, reasonable use of the gift that is 'you'."

From, Anthony J. Paone, S.J.
Confraternity Of The Precious Blood
(an order of cloistered contemplatives)

This appeared yesterday on Scott Burkhead 's Daily Spiritual Guide, a wildly eclectic daily mix of genuinely uplifting tidbits.

And now for my commentary on this text:

"Reasonable" worries me a little, because it's easy to view something difficult as impossible, and therefore unreasonable. The use of the male pronoun bothers me too. But with those caveats, I love this idea.

My own religion is a patchwork; and this belief of the authentic self being a gift fits into it nicely. Moreover, I like a moral basis for something I'm working on talking myself into. We all hear a lot about being "selfless." I think we have to be ourselves before we have anything to offer anyone else, and before we have a self to transcend.



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Today's Bold Move

I find that if I'm a tad cheeky about my choice of little things, it fires me up to be gutsier and more imaginative about more important things.

So today getting dressed I discovered that, to avoid the unseemly bare midriff, this sweater needed more than the one button the hip manufacturer provided.

Hidden safety pins didn't work at all.

My cool solution (oh, I'm so pleased) was a couple of pins of the decorative sort. The possibilities are tremendous: we could do this with political buttons. Two Barack Obama buttons, or two Hillary Clinton buttons, as the case may be.

Campaigners, listen up! I hope you jump on this idea. It's yours at no charge.



These "buttons" are acting as booster rockets to my day.

Any little boldness boosters of your own you'd be willing to pass on?





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