Stones

We made an appointment for confession with Fr. J yesterday afternoon. I think we will do this more often. Fr. J is a kind retired priest, very wise and insightful. He's the one that we chose for Bobcat's first holy communion. Fr. J has a reputation for being a bit long-winded. Which is lovely if you have the time to visit, but can make for some rather lengthy homilies (aka, sermons). And he really likes to take his time in confession, getting to the root of the issue and truly counseling. He takes at least 20 minutes per person, and there are usually 30 people in line. You do the math... Making an appointment is definitely the way to go!

Fr. J said many things during my time, and one of the things that really struck me was this. He borrowed a quote from the (apparently well-known) Methodist missionary E. Stanley Jones. It went something like this. Life is going to throw stones at you. You can stand there and get hit and beaten down and destroyed by them. Or you can catch them, and build with them, and climb on top to get a better view of life. I'm sure I'm not doing it justice, but the way he explained it really blew my mind.