People are different

Compare and Contrast.

I remember doing the HSC and a common question option on my Geography exam was "Compare and contrast the vegetation/climate of two regions etc.."
Well I always enjoyed comparing and contrasting and it has been a pattern of human life that has always fascinated me. I like comparing people and contrasting their habits.
One interesting example is my blog posts.
I write various kinds of blogs although one is more popular.
My blog of spiritual enlightenment, inspirational thoughts and writings I have read over the years is the least popular. The most popular is the one that details the flaws of those who are leaders of church and state.
But what I fail to understand is why?
I write a blog subject that lauds the good of people like Mother Teresa, various saints and holy people and am lucky to get 25 people read it for the whole of the time its available online. While at the same time, sending only to the same group of people, I write a blog that details the failures of church leaders and government wannabes and get over 9.000 reads in one week!
"Why is that?" I ask myself.
A while back there was a fiesta in our town and it was presided by two bishops, twenty five priests and two deacons and attended by a huge crowd that I estimate was four hundred people. That probably is the size of our whole community. Small but I like it.
Anyway the very next day at Mass the congregation totalled twenty.
The priest was also surprised at the contrast and commented at the start of Mass like this:
"Yesterday there was such a huge crowd of people at Mass. Today there is nobody".
I felt like raising my hand and calling out, "We are not nobodies Father!" but I expected to be tut-tutted by the people around me who are all so respectful of their parish priest.
Whether there is 500 people reading this or five, I still exert the same amount of energy and I still edit it carefully before posting (of course there will still be mistakes).
I am writing a book at the moment which is filled with a compilation of spiritual wisdom that I have gleaned from various sources over a long period of time. I am sure it will not sell as many copies as my book of jokes.
Why is that?
I don't know. But it baffles me about the tendency of humanity to steer away from things that are positive and helpful and draws them towards the peripheral, more temporal things.
As another example: I don't know why my wife will spend hours online searching for recipes and skin treatment miracles, while she shuns the stories I direct her to, which are filled with advice on how to build small ecclesial communities or direct a group of local residents on how to develop a community produce garden.

I am still hopeful that I can inspire people to want to read my advice even if they don't like me.
Maybe that will only happen after I am dead, but my desire has always been to make a difference in the world. I suppose it doesn't matter when it happens or whether I live to see the results.
Anyway, that's the thought I wanted to share with the five or six people who are interested to read it.
And by the way, the recipes Josefina finds are pretty amazing and her miracle skin treatments, although a waste of time and resources in my opinion, seem to make her feel good.
Blessings!

Finish the towers you start

Jesus tells an interesting parable to people who ask to be His follower.

He reminds those ambitious people that, choosing to follow Him means you better run to keep up and it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

It’s in the gospel of St. Luke (14:28-30)

“For which of you, desirous of building a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, if he have what [is needed] to complete it; in order that, having laid the foundation of it, and not being able to finish it, all who see it do not begin to mock at him, saying, This man began to build and was not able to finish?”

To you who are reading my message for you is that I hope you finish things you have started. It took me over 16 years until I finally published my expose of the machinations of the Catholic Church and its influence over the power structures it operates under. Unholy Silence (www.unholysilence.com) was always going to be completed but until it was available for people to read, I felt unfulfilled.

I have also written a few other books that are at various stages of completion as well as a few landscape paintings that are yet to have their final touches with the brush. I hate leaving things undone. Maybe you do too?

What is that you always wished you had done? What is stopping you doing it?

I know many people over the years who told me things like, "I left my husband/wife after 20 years of marriage because he/she was holding me back from achieving my dream".

Now I would never promote divorce just to fulfil a dream but I do encourage people to seek personally to have no regrets about things they wished they had done.

I feel my personal sense of happiness comes from believing I am working towards my life's purpose. I can go to my grave a happy man if I have fulfilled all I set out to do. As St Paul said, "I have run the race and all there is left is to pick up the garland (the prize)".

You should finish the things you started.

The passage above from Luke is doubly relevant and appropriate to me because it was literally true. It’s a long story which I will tell you the short version of here because I am sure I must have written it somewhere before in my blog.

To me, a church is not a church without a bell tower, displaying the symbolising of the cross above the treeline so everyone in town knows where the church is. Also it has bells to ring out the start of Mass and the end of funerals and weddings.

At Padre Pio Parish in Glenmore Park, the bishops didn’t share my enthusiasm for the tower I wanted to complete so they froze my access to MY OWN PARISH funds!

Was I annoyed? Was I feeling defeated? No. I just raised my own. Miraculously people came forward giving donations that equalled the EXACT amount I needed to complete the work.

Thirty eight thousand dollars. People just came from nowhere giving me big sums of money.

Now if I was the crook cleric I am being accused of by my adversaries I could have taken that money and run. No one knew about the donations (except the parish secretary whom I always briefed on everything I was doing – with the exception of my wife on the side). But the donors all said, “I don’t want this receipted, I don’t want any adulation, I don’t want any recognition. I’m giving this to you Kevin because we believe in you”.
 

In fact, I received lots of donations for that church not because people believed in Catholicism, the Pope or even God. They did it because they trusted me and believed in the ideals I stood for. Of course I am not saying, I wanted to be believed in more than God. Of course I tried to point the glory back to the Creator in whose honour I was building the church and tower. I didn’t take it with me. I couldn’t if I wanted to. I knew I would leave the area one day but I still wanted God to be honoured and all to see that glowing cross illuminating the cold nights of Glenmore Park and remember how much Jesus loves them.
 

Of course I hope they spare a prayer for the poor priest who appeared to have abandoned them, when he in fact, moved on to a different phase of life with a different tower to build.

More blessings to you for reading!