Poverty. in America

When I was in Calcutta the Missionaries of Charity always referred to Mother Teresa saying something about there being great poverty in America that cannot merely be fixed by giving people food. It is loneliness, people being neglected, people not giving compassion to others and caring for each other. A much deeper hunger that is much more difficult to fill when it is caused.

My friend (who will someday, I believe, be a Missionary of Charity) told me when we're judged at the end of our life we're judged on "how we responded to Christ's need for us in the poor". I believe that these poor extend to more than just the hungry and the dying and those poor that Mother Teresa talks about in America. It extends to those who have been cheated and hurt; those who have this marred vision of what God is like and what the Church is like.

To be completely honest, it breaks my heart more to see how people have been hurt by vessels of the Church (teachers, priests, religious, anyone who represents the Catholic Church and extends herself to the members of her body) than it is to see people starving and dying every day. What a challenge it must be to be a priest and see this every day and know that it is your duty to love and bring spiritual health back to these people. What a mission of Christian love, of charity we have in front of us!

UIOGD

Snowww!!!!!

There's snow. There's a lot of snow!

Yesterday Jon brought me home from Sammamish. I spent the whole Thanksgiving weekend with him and his family, and it was awesome. We had a great thanksgiving meal, went to check out old town Snohomish and all the antique shops the day after Thanksgiving, went swimming with Jon, went to see a few movies (don't see "The Fountain", do see "Deja Vu"), spent some time relaxing, and did a little shopping for the family at Fry's. All in all a very cool weekend. Since Canada has a different Thanksgiving, it didn't matter to my family that I wasn't home. We already had ours! My sister was in Costa Rica anyways, so my parents were babysitting the munchkins.

Anywhoo....yesterday we were in the car leaving Sammamish and it was raining a little, then it started raining harder, and by the time we got around Everett it looked like Blizzard conditions. There were cars in the ditch left and right between I-5 and the highway to my parish. Most of them were SUVs. So sad. While I was practicing music in the Church (since our Choir Director and entire Choir were trapped at home from the snow) Jon was putting chains on the car. We went to mass with about 12 people and then made our way out to the Mexican restaurant for dinner, where surprizingly there were tons of people. Weird.

When we left the restaurant the roads looked like they'd been plowed a little, so getting back to my house on the island wasn't a problem. My apartment however, had no power. Ack! Good thing I had some candles and one of those nifty-no-batteries-needed-flashlights. Jon ended up leaving, thinking that the roads would be totally fine, around 9pm. Thank God he made it home okay amidst the nastiness of I-5. My apartment didn't have power all night.

Amazingly, my coworkers got to my apartment in the morning to pick me up for work this morning. But when we got to the church it didn't have power either!! It came back on around 11:00am. We left work early because it was still snowing and we wanted to be able to get home. I took some firewood from the padres rectory in case the power hadn't come back on yet at my basement apt. Thank God, when I got home the power was on and running. Still running, though it went out for about a second an hour a go. Let's hope that doesn't happen again.

I think it's still snowing......I don't think I'm making it in to work tomorrow. It's absolutely beautiful outside. I hope the power stays on....... Hope you're all safe and warm!!!

Last weekend

I had a fabulous weekend. It was Jon's 24th birthday last Wednesday so I decided to do a little surprizing. So Friday we went to Lonsdale Quay and hung out there for a bit, wandered around shops, ate a Beaver tail (you Americans know them as Elephant Ears), bought some tea, tried some fudge, checked out the view of Vancouver. Then off a little further north, we had a little bit of time to kill so we went to the Fish Hatchery....ha ha! I know, but the river was cool, and we saw a few fish swimming around. But the final destination of the night....tada!!
Surprize dinner at the Observatory on Grouse Mountain!
We got up to Grouse Mountain 3 hours early and wandered around in the Snow a bit, saw the Grizzly Bears in the sanctuary up there, played chess in the chalet, Watched a short film in their Theatre in the Sky and had an amazing dinner at their Observatory fine dining restaurant.

After dinner we headed to Prospect Point at Stanley Park and were lucky enough to catch a bit of dry sky to appreciate the fabulous view of the Lions Gate Bridge and North and West Vancouver. Only one scary thing about this....we were stalked by racoons. I don't know if these were the rabid racoons that you're warned about in the signs around Stanley Park, but they sure were friendly/scary. They came right up to the car when we pulled into the parking space and were sitting right beside the car door looking at me through my window making their racoon noises. We sat in the car not knowing what to do for a few minutes, freaked out 'cuz they could be rabid. They left when another car came. We got out and wandered over to the lookout and they snuck up on us again, and another time after that! Freaky!!! So anyways, after catching some awesome views, eating the best food ever, and being chased around by animals we called it a night.