“An ocean of mercy waiting for us”

The Year of Mercy is drawing to a close, leaving us the commission to keep it going in our respective ways. I just encountered the MercyStories series on the YouTube channel for the Knights of Columbus Supreme Council. I was drawn to “Poster Child of Divine Mercy: The Testimony of Fr. Donald Calloway, MIC” because the Marians of the Immaculate Conception, Father Calloway’s order, have been important to my husband and me for many years. Their promotion of the Divine Mercy devotion has been profoundly effective.

Father Calloway’s story is one for me to keep in my heart as I see the Holy Door at the church near me closing at the end of the liturgical year. The Mercy of God knows no calendar. In hearing each other’s down-to-earth stories of mercy in action, I can see the hand of God reaching out to us in unexpected – not to say unnerving – ways. We can be inspired to hope and act in a way that manifests that mercy, passing it forward.

Father Calloway’s testimony is in the video linked below. As he says, there is “an ocean of mercy waiting for us.”

https://youtu.be/r1BIr6PS7Dg?si=7QvbRhXtnANFuShx

For veterans:”God bless them day in and day out”

I share this every Veterans Day. I’ll never understand why these words haven’t gained more currency. Possibly it’s because they didn’t show up in a meme. They were part of an article in The American Spectator in February 2011. Ben Stein wrote this, and as the daughter and mother of veterans, I owe him thanks for his expression of gratitude.

What title of nobility was ever as great as, simply, “American”? What wild dream of my ancestors in Czarist Russia could compare with what I have now, how I live now? Who makes it possible? The men and women who fight our wars, who have lost legs, who have lost lives, who have lost their minds to the cruelty of war. God bless them day in and day out.

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Re-collection

Reblogged from Granite State Walker

I walk for fun, to explore, to more-or-less exercise. I also walk to keep my head on straight. I wouldn’t have gotten through today without a couple of miles outside.

I’m a political critter, you see. I’ve been a campaign staffer, an activist, a blogger from the State House, to name a few pastimes. Yesterday was election day after the nastiest campaign year I’ve ever experienced. This has been a backed-up-sewer of a season.

Nothing will flush it out except time on the trails.

All I had today was time for a couple of local miles. Manchester’s Piscataquog rail trail came through for me. There were enough leaves left on the trees to serve as a canopy. The overcast sky suited me; bright sunlight would have left me with a slashing headache.

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Forty good minutes: enough time to escape agitation. Time to block out the noise, turn away from the news feeds, take lots of deep breaths, recall what’s important.

A man biked past me. I recognized him as the unofficial adopter of the trail, picking up bags of trash, neatly hanging fresh plastic bags every hundred yards or so. Seeing him was oddly consoling and reassuring. He has a simple, selfless volunteer’s dedication to an unsung job that consists of keeping a public area pretty.

Beat that, candidates.

Decompression is going to take awhile. Today’s walk was a good start.