Courage to Change...

People sometimes say, as one gets older one becomes stuck... unable to change and move forward.

This is a huge fallacy as some of the greatest inventions and achievements in this world have come to us through people who never give up / people with the courage to change.

Change happens, whether we want it to happen or not.  

As long as we have a good heart and are willing to move forward, then we will be able and willing to go forward with whatever changes come into our lives.

Perhaps this is the real secret, to work at always having a good heart / a positive attitude to the invitations that come our way as regards change.

God will invite us, perhaps sometimes give us a little push, yet there is such high regard for our freedom of choice that the responsibility lies with us.

Am I a positive person?  

Am I willing to move forward with the changes that are presented to me?

Good questions to ask myself and to come up with the right answers.

Let's have courage to face the changes that come our way and with a good heart, move forward!

Accepting Failure

I believe it's in our nature to want to succeed at all we do, or at least give of our best.

However, there are and will be failures.  Our human and imperfect nature will cause us to fail / to make mistakes etc.

If we are aware of our tendency to fail / to perhaps at times try too hard to succeed, then we will not be surprised at our mistakes and shortcomings.

Rather, we will be surprised at how often we succeed.  

This would be a great and positive attitude to have and prevent us from becoming upset or depressed at failure.

God has a plan for each one of us and we often learn more through our failures than our successes.

Pride has a way of sneaking into our best efforts and giving us a sense of inflated importance.

We might then forget to thank God for all the graces and help we receive.

So, next time we feel ( and often it may only be a feeling ) that we have failed, then we can remind ourselves to thank God for this important lesson.

By accepting failure, we learn to accept ourselves just as we are in the sight of God.

TIMING...

Timing is so important, the right time to speak / to be quiet / to respond to the care of another, or not.

People can be so private and yet what unites us all is love.

No wonder the saints looked on God as the oracle of love / God is Love.

When we open our hearts to loving and caring, then we move and are moved in a way that gives time to what is the right thing to do.

Our understanding may not know and yet our hearts will respond to what is right because we are moved by love.

Was is St. Augustine who said, 'Love and do as you will.'

What a strange thing for a saint to say and yet what wisdom is contained is that very statement.

Perhaps the only condition that is needed in this wonderful and yet suffering world of ours is the ability to respond to Love. 

When love dictates, our timing will be spot on and we will be moved by He who loves us.

Compassion

To be a compassionate person is not always easy, in fact it can be difficult at times.

What creates  difficulties is our attachment to ourselves / our opinions / our specific way of doing things or saying things which can be so opposite to how others say and do things.

This is not a problem really if we are willing to be open to understanding, yet even more so, open to loving.

Understanding is good enough at times, yet can also be why we are at variance with others.

When we are willing to love we learn to go beyond our understanding and our own opinions. 

We learn to enter into the world of another person.

Such a blessing this is, to be able to come away from ourselves for the sake of love.

When we look at the life of Christ who had perfect understanding and imbued with the Spirit of God, we can see the benefit of going beyond the human and seeking out the soul of another person.

Compassion is the fruit of loving / of caring / of stepping away from ourselves for the sake of Love.

Gratitude

The person who is able to be grateful, no matter what, is rich indeed.

When we think of the reality of how much we are spoiled / spoiled with good friends / spoiled with health / spoiled with life and more especially, spoiled with the gift of Faith.

How could we not be grateful?

Perhaps there is a blind spot in each of our lives where we only see what we want to see, and so we are like someone who has lost the vision of sight, we are blind.

I can only imagine what it must be like to be unable to see / to be surrounded by darkness and left dependent on the sight of others.  It would indeed be an affliction and yet, often we may find ourselves living in a world of darkness because we don't want to see.  

We may want to fool ourselves and be guided by our selfish pride which is blind to reality.

If this should happen to us, then we can only pray for guidance and have the good will to accept the advise and help  that comes from good friends.

God is the Light of the world.  It's not God's intention that anyone should live in darkness.

The secret of having spiritual vision is based on our ability to be grateful to all that comes our way, even those things that hurt and cause pain.

A good Father will protect His children, yet He will also allow them to experience pain for the sake of Truth so we can be healed.

Gratitude is the key to happiness.

Home coming

My friend, Paul and I will be on our way home from Gran Canaria tomorrow, 14/3/2017.

It has been a long and fruitful trip for me, learning about myself and relationship with others etc.

What is especially of value is my relationship with God.

Had I begun to lose my Faith. Could it be possible for someone who enjoys going to daily Mass to somehow fall away from the core of one's believes?

I realise now that Faith is like a living organ that needs to be exercised a lot.

A living Faith is based on becoming a loving person, willing to respond to God's Will in each day of our lives. Perhaps a good help is to recognise the Presence of God in each and every person we have contact with.

After all, a true relationship is based on love in practise. God is Love!

Creative Beauty

Here in Gran Canaria, I am surrounded with Creative Beauty, man-made in many ways yet especially God made. This morning my friend and I climbed up to the Cross, a man-made monument which has become a climbing point for many people, especially tourists.

The climb up via pathway was not difficult, but the short-cut in coming down was hard, very hard for me, yet thank God, without mishap.

I will cherish this memory of standing at the foot of the Cross, remembering Calvary and our blessed Mother looking up at her Son, our Saviour. Oh, what a moving yet loving proof of God's love for us.

I will also cherish the splendid view of Anfi beach on my right and Patalavaca beach to my left.

In a way, the more we are surrounded with beauty, the more able we become in our awareness of God's presence in our lives.