A note from a friend & Pope St John Paul 2

Today (10/22) is the feast day of Pope St. John Paul 2 (the Great). When I was 21, I spent a semester in Europe and was able to to to Rome and see JP2 and took this picture. I was standing on a chair and holding up my camera (when we still used film) and somehow got this image. It's really special to me even if I can't fully express why. He was a very holy man and he loved God so much. I asked JP2 to pray that we would have a baby and very soon after, I was pregnant with H. I know this man is still talking to Jesus for us. I believe he is interceding for me still.

I get a lot of notes and cards and emails and letters from friends and family and I wish I could copy them all here because they are really special and filled with love and memories. Today, I got a short email from a friend. She reflects on small meditations every day and today's was written by St Alphonsus (my man) and she thought of me. It struck me that it really continues with what I was praying about yesterday...that we find our holiness (or purpose) in what is real.

"...when anyone came to the Fathers of the desert and desired to be received by them he was asked: 'Do you bring an empty heart that it may be filled with the Holy Spirit?' And they were right, for a heart filled with things of earth has no room for the love of God. He who brings a vessel filled with earth to the spring will never be able to fill it with water until he empties it of the earth which with it is filled. How does it happen that so many pray and go fervently to Holy Communion [or to Church services] and still make no considerable progress in the love of God? The reason is doubtless because the heart is filled with self-esteem, of vanity, of self-will, and of attachment to creatures. He who wishes to arrive at the perfect love of God must practice poverty in spirit. He must be detached from worldly possessions, from temporal honors, from his fellow creatures and from himself." 

Real. Real is simple. We (I) read a lot of books and articles about "simplifying my life and my home and my office" but I rarely think about simplifying my soul. I think that if we live in the moment, where God is, we will naturally start to detach because we'll be living what is real...The real is solid. It humbles us, challenges us - takes us to a new place.

I have been saying "empty my bucket" and I know God will.

The mountain I have to move is in that bucket. The earth of myself. I have been learning to let it go (because it might really all go sooner than I thought) and then I am filled with the moments I am living. And those moments are where I find God. Where I find what is real.