Tag Archives: Catholic

Ash Wednesday

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Today is Ash Wednesday.  What a day it was.  Started off with a dentist, ended up with me walking through slush in the driving wet snow.  Not exactly the funnest of days.  But I guess appropriate for the beginning of Lent.

I’ve decided that this Lent, I will work on resolving a nagging deep personal issue.  I will not go into the details, but it is a serious issue that needs resolving.  Along the way, I also want to dedicate more of my time and works to the Lord.  After He gave me all my gifts, my life and everything.  It is only fair I do something in return.

I plan on doing a lot of writing and editing of writing, inspired by Catholic faith.  I think this will not only be a good direction for my spiritual development, but also my personal too.  Considering that I am an editor of the Alexandrian and a writer it just makes sense.  And also the amazing comments from my readers… I feel like I should do this:

So my plan is to spend my free time each day writing a part of my novel, or working on the next issue of the Alexandrian, or working on expanding the magazine.  Hopefully by Easter, I will have a quite collection of work that I can offer up.  And for the benefit of my readers and friends.

Catholic Writing Reprint: Learning to Love God

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Author’s note:  This short story is reprinted from the Fall 2010 edition of The Alexandrian.  It concerns about an epiphany I’ve personally experienced and that has deepened my faith.  The original publication can be found here: http://thealexandrian.org/journal/learning-to-love-god

Learning to Love God

Dorian Pula

I decided to take a short break from cleaning in the kitchen. I dried the plate in my hands, put it away on the shelf and hung the moist dish cloth over my shoulder. I wandered out of the kitchen and into the living room. The hardwood floor heated by the summer sunlight warmed my bare feet. The floor creaked every few steps I took.

The house stood empty, still and silent. The ticking of the wall clock filled the living room. I stopped a metre or so from the grey piano in the living room. A flimsy picture rested against the piano’s music stand. The picture portrayed Christ as a king wearing a regal cloak and crown of red and gold against a background of golden rays. I stared at the picture and wondered how different artists portrayed Jesus in different ways. Sometimes He looked welcoming and friendly, sometimes powerful and regal, and sometimes hurt and bloodied.

In my own mind I portrayed God as a loving but stern Creator. I envisioned Him sitting on some throne in the heavens, great white beard flowing and commanding the universe with a stern look and pointed finger. I thought how foolish it would be for His creation to go against His commandments. How foolish it would be to upset someone who could make you unexist as easily He made you exist. Not that this thought ever stopped me from doing foolish things against His will.

Still I tried to follow the two most important commandments that Jesus taught. I understood the love thy neighbour part. I learned to accept, respect and even love others. One can learn to love humanity even with its flawed attempts at happiness, love and peace. But how does one love God? After all I always envisioned God the Father, sitting from a far, looking fatherly but more or less abstracted from the day-to-day affairs of the world.

As I stood there and stared at the picture I wondered if I could ask God that question. I did not expect any real answers. After all in my mind God, not only felt distant but that also He had better things to do than to answer my idle questions. But decided to try anyways. And so I prayed for wisdom.

The air became unbearably hot, dry and dusty. The walls closed in forming a narrow street in ancient Palestine. An angry mob surrounded me wearing cloaks, tunics and sandals. The mob jeered at a convicted man half-escorted, half-manhandled by rough Roman legionnaires. I felt safe as my cloak hid my identity and let me merge in with the crowed.

I watched silently as the convicted man limped down the street toward to his execution. His figure bent under the heavy wood beam fastened to his arms. His torn and blood splattered clothes hung loosely over his torn, disfigured, swollen and bruised body. One of the soldiers pushed the man forward, causing him to fall on his knee in front of me. I recognized the man as the Lord when turned His face towards me. The black crown of thorns cut into the Lord’s swollen forehead and dark blood dripped down the creases of His face. As He laboured to stand up, I imagined my own body turning into the symphony of pain and torment that He endured. I recoiled at the sight of the gruesome, blood stained and tortured Lord. Horror filled me as I realized that some His wounds were in fact my own sins.

I looked at the Lord with pleading eyes. Why did you choose this? Why does the King of the Universe who defined the very laws of existence choose this fate? Why take this pain, cruelty and humbling from a wretched race who rejects You time and time again? Why this? There must best be some other way.

Because I love you, I respect you and honour your will even when you reject Mine. The Lord responded with a serene look that was out of place.

This is madness! Only a madman would do this. I shouted at the Lord in my mind.

Or a man madly in love. The Lord replied and first century Jerusalem melted back into the comfort of 21st century Toronto.

The house stood empty, still and silent. The ticking of the wall clock filled the living room. A hot burning tear streamed down my cheek. The comforting aura of technology and human ingenuity gently prodded me back into reality. I continued to stare at the picture. But I felt different. My heart overflowed with warmth, joy and gratitude. I wiped another tear that started growing in my eyes. Now I understood that God wasn’t some remote deity who merely watched His creation from afar. Instead God is so madly in love with His creation, He let His creation kill His only Son. And by His death and resurrection He redeemed and saved His creation, unworthy as we all are of this mad love.


It is On My Desk

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No, I’m not mocking Marika’s blog name.  Rather this morning I am tired and uncreative.  At this point, the creative artist starts stealing ideas from more inspired artists.

Over the course of my university career, I learned the elegant art of organization.  The results from just a little effort and some smart thinking goes a long way.  Now I feel compelled to organize, pile, list and label everything.  Not because I’m a neat person by nature.  I just found organized chaos makes one so much productive than in an disorganized chaos.  And I’d rather waste my time dragging my butt out bed in the morning at sloth’s pace than waste time looking for my keycard frantically.  Instead of asking myself, “Where did I put so-and-so.”, I’d rather tell myself, “Great!  Found that things, and did the task.  Now I can do something for myself now.”

This morning I dragged myself out of bed to the sound of a humming computer.  Yesterday evening’s upgrade of my desktop to Jaunty went smoothly.  Except for a few prompts concerning configuration files.  With tired eyes, I clicked through said files, and then went to the task of pretending to be awake.  Some idle surfing later, then I tired to find that blasted receipt so I could expense a piece of hardware.  In contrast to what I said in the above paragraph, organizing papers still eludes me.  After a bunch of looking around I still couldn’t find what I needed.  Saddened I left for work, and tired hard not to fall asleep.

Today starts the first day of a new project at work.  And I start the day extra early for personal reasons.  Should be a fun new project.  But as I look what is on my desk, somethings impress me and others distress me.  The lack of the receipt spoils my attempt of filing my expenses yet again.  The lack of my laptop’s mouse, means a forced existance with only the touchpad/trackpoint.  The lack of coffee in my cup is of minor temporal concern.  I just need to stumble toward the coffee machine down the err… hall or aisle or office space.  I’ll figure out what to name I should call it when I wake up.

Presence and lack of certain items on my desk, help or hinder my efforts today.  The standard pen, notebook, laptop, headphones and USB pen drive means I can be productive to today.  I really miss my mice though.  The IBM branded water bottle is a nice touch.  The bastards never gave me a job, not being an intern and all.  But I like the bottle and soft briefcase I got from them.  The soft briefcase on my desk I could do without.  Paperwork, bills, papers and sad dysfunctional Internet Tablet all hide there.  They will demand I turn my attention at them.  The briefcase is there so that I can’t just wave away the work.  The chocolate bar wrapper sat on my desk until I noticed.  Nice chocolate waffer… not so great substitute for breakfast.  But breakfast I plan to grab from the sandwich bar downstairs once they open in a bit from now.

A welcome change to the items on my desk is the change of books.  Yesterday I finally finished Joseph Tissot’s How to Profit from Your Faults.  A fine read, but a hard read with so much quotes of saints and biblical references.  The books discussed how to deal with sins and all that inconvenient stuff a modern technocrat living in a postmodern positivist-relativist world, sometimes wishes he could wave away.  But alas the soul remains and the fallen nature of humanity is what it is.  Might as well find a way to make oneself better, even by exploiting ones faults.  Today instead I have Mary Beth Bonacci’s Real Love book.  A lighter read about dating, marriage, sexuality and all that jazz from a Catholic perspective.  Normally I don’t mention what I read, due to the obvious personal nature of things.  But today I don’t really care what anyone thinks.  And if I can piss off a positivist-relativist by showing that a logical thinking technocrat feels the need to read “God nonesense” and to delve into “antequated” religious thought, then that will make my day.  Rubbing salt into the wound I’m an anarcho-capitalist.  And I’m building your future world.  Enjoy!  Hopefully I managed to offend someone and ruin their day… just to meet my quota of negative karma feedback. 😛

Also I write this stuff, since I know part of my audience is of a traditional Catholic leaning.  And I just want to throw at least some token support and love your way.  God bless.  As for my open minded, non-discriminating friends, you understand the importance of transparency and free thought.  So I’m sure you don’t mind my occasional religious rants.

Another sort of welcome addition to the desk is the cellphone.  Yes another Nokia device, and not your standard phone.  Before I open up the box and set it up, I’m going to deal with Nokia’s tech support team again.  And Nokia tech folks, you are all wonderful people working for a very forward thinking and innovative company.  Having to send my Canadian bought IT to a repair place in the US via an American address IS NOT very forward thinking or smart.  Since the cellphone seems to have Asian roots, I’d rather not have to send it to Taiwan to get it repaired.  Unless of course you guys want to pay for the shipping, in which case I have no qualms.

Anyways enough of my rant today.  I need to get a coffee, reboot and get some work done for my dear, generous ex-client before I get to work on my new project.  Take care everyone.  I hope I haven’t offended to many of you.  Or my rant was not too long…  Have a happy April Fool’s day.  Avoid becoming a fool today.  Just adding some more words to get the word count to over a 1000 words (1006).  And I’m off.