Miracle of St. Anthony's

I was extremely moved by the following Youtube about the legendary high school basketball coach Bobby Hurley, Sr.. Watch it for yourself, but there was a couple things that really moved me,

1.) Total selfless dedication, -here's the facts about this guy, he was offered the head coach of St. John's and Seton Hall, he decided to stay and coach a school in one of the worst neighborhoods in the country, that doesn't have a gym. His full time job is a parol officer. He turned down millions of dollars a year so he could make a difference. Someone pointed out to me over the weekend, that he has made a lot of money recently, with a successful book, a movie, as a speaker, etc., but I love this as well, because all that shows, is that if you are the best at whatever you do, its likely, that monetary success will follow.

2.)Striving to be the best- The last line of the youtube is, "I will never allow the bar to drop," I almost thought it was a mistake- 23 State titles, "are you kidding me" If a school wins 1 state title, they have bragging rights for life. This guy has won a state title 60% of the years he has coached. Incredible!

3.) Attitude- You'll notice, they end their huddle with, "Attitude" every time, plus there's 2 great line's, 1st, "you are playing terrible tonight, look at your body language," 2nd, "Its not about you," We can't control our circumstances, we have no control over our past, but we do control our attitude, we do control our body language!

President Obama and Notre Dame

I like to stay away from politics as much as possible, but my wife talked me into writing about President Obama and Notre Dame. The debate centers around abortion, so before talking about abortion, I think its important to be sympathic to those people who have had one. Here's why, in basically every case you are dealing with very good people, who have been lied to by the world. This is what makes abortion such a difficult issue, there's real live people involved, and their pain after an abortion is real, but so is God's invition to mercy, and forgiveness, and ongoing peace for life.

A couple things to start the discussion that have happened recently in Philadelphia, 1.) a group of developers purchased an older building to re-devolop for a business use, they found a "bald-eagle" nest in the facility, live "bald-eagle" eggs, and the job was shut down for over a month, while these eggs were safely removed from the building, and the judge in the case made it very clear that if any harm came to the eggs, there would be a mandatory sentence awaiting the person's that harmed these eggs.

2.) In Philadelphia right now there's ads on our major news station about an election that involves "puppy mills", one of the party's involved is vowing to shut down all "puppy mills" across the State.

Let me point out that I totally support protecting "bald-eagle eggs", and I totally support closing "Puppy mills", the purpose of the story is to give the abortion debate some context. Bald eagle eggs and puppy mills, and baby whales are all very important, but they don't rise to anywhere near the protection a child deserves.

That brings me to President Barrack Obama's invitition to speak and receive an honary doctorate at Notre Dame, one of the most famous, if not the most famous Catholic schools in the world, I personally had no problem with Notre Dame inviting him to speak, my problem is with them honoring him. Arizona State is a secular school, and they got it 100% right, please come speak and inspire, but no honary doctarate, because you have only been President for 120 days. Show us why we should honor you. The secular school got it right, the Catholic School got it wrong. President Obama mentioned this in the first paragraph of his speech, and I had to think that the Priests from Notre Dame had to feel embarrassed by this.

Imagine if a popular president believed that Slavery was ok, would Notre Dame ever honor that man. The Catholic Church has an obligation to protect and defend the most innocent among us, and anyone that believes abortion is ok, should never be honored at a Catholic School.

Gratitude

I am usually not a huge Opera Winfrey fan, but sometimes she offers very good advice. Recently I read some comments she made about the idea of a "Gratitude Journal". Each day, to simply write down 5 things you were grateful for, it could be big or small, the examples were, "you were thankful for your kids, your wife, your job, down to, you were thankful for a meal you had, a conversation you had with a friend, something beautiful about nature that really caught your attention, going for a jog, etc, etc." The book recommends doing this for 30 days to form a habit of noticing things to be grateful for.

What a great habit, St. Paul says to, "dedicate yourself to thanksgiving," and the more you go out of your way to notice your blessings, the more you will be caught up in how many blessings are out there in the world.

One blessing among many for me is art. I have always had a special love for art, since I was very young, and recently I have taken it up again, sort of as a creative release at night. It has been a tremendous blessing for me, because when I am drawing, I am able to think clearly about other areas of my life that need creative thinking, almost always when I sit down to draw, another idea will come to me.

On the right hand side of the blog, is a drawing I recently finished entitled, "Blessed Damian Confesses," Blessed Damian went to the Leprosy colony in Hawaii to serve the leper's spiritual needs, which were many, because of being outcasts, there was a deep sense of abandonment from God, and Damian went there to bring God's closeness and love, in the process, he contracted leprosy himself, and because he was the only priest on the island, and other priests were afraid of leprosy, he would wade into the water, and yell his sins to a priest on the boat, and receive absolution. The point of the drawing, is that so many people over-complicate confession. I've had to realize through the years that its Jesus who seeks me in confession, not the other way around, because I make the effort to get to confession, its easy to believe that its me seeking Jesus. Its Jesus who desires like a Good Sheppard to seek me out, and set me on His shoulders,"

Success means different things.

A friend pointed something out to me from last weeks post on Faithfulness and Success. He said as a Christian, when you promote success, you need to make sure you talk about what success really means, or believers can fall into the "big lie", which is this. "If I do everything right, if I say all my prayers, if I am loving, if I work hard, then life will just be roses for me, as if God is basically my personal ATM machine, I dial the numbers, and God gives me the cash. No loving relationship should work this way. Imagine if you were only kind to your spouse or your friends when you wanted something. God wants our heart, just like every lover wants our heart, our spouse doesn't want kind sentiments only, they want our hearts.

Jesus would have prayed the 118 Psalm, "O Lord grant salvation, O Lord grant success,". His life was the perfect success, but from the worlds eye's it would have only appeared that way some of the time, some times the disciples did not understand, some times, "His teachings were too hard," and people left. Not exactly worldly success, and of course the cross. "In His will is my peace," the same saying could be, in His heart is my peace.

The point is this, we have the perfect Father, and He sees the whole picture, while we can only see what's right in front of us. We can find joy in this, that our success is in the hands of this perfect Father. Following His will, and listening too His "Still, small voice," is all the success we need, and this is where our happiness will lie.