I have a praise report. Yesterday, I got to see my daughter and grandchildren for the 1st. time since their moving back from the army base a week ago. We had a wonderful time of reunion. I also had tricked mother and didn't tell her they were coming as requested by our daughter and the look on mother's face was priceless and tears of joy feel all around.

Our son-in-law had been injuried in Iraq (only there 4 weeks and didn't see any action- thank God) and had lose use of his left arm due to the bicep being torn in half in a freak action while repair a large piece of equipment. His buddies shut the hood of the equipment down on his upper arm, not knowing that it was still in there. The military didn't do anything to repair it.

According to our daughter, the muscle is healing back together and he can not curl up his arm completely and has full range of motion in it and his hand. There is still a bulge where the muscle is still healing and the nerve in that area is still exposed until the muscle inside covers it, which causes him pain, especially when it is bumped in that area. The top part of his fingers are till somewhat numb and he says its like touching things with a latex glove on, but he now has feeling in them and he isn't dropping things anymore.

Praise God for His healing, that which would never be repaired again and that his arm was just going to hang by his side or be in a sling the rest of his life according to the doctors.

Our son-in-law returned back to his old job Monday with a new position and a pay raise, they are living rent free at his grandmother's till they find a place of their own. God has provided in all ways for them. I couldn't just keep this to myself.

The great John once commented that I have a case of Logorea. I haven't not commented in a while because I'm not all about the T.P (heehee) anymore (is that right?); I lost my job and haven't had internet (no work computer). Now I've got a laptop (crisis averted, whew!) so I can go back to my seemingly pointless comments on T.P!!

Yeay, learning is fun.

So, I was wandering around the Intarwebs looking at Bible visualization tools, and I came across this interesting website which is an interactive mashup of the Bible and Google Earth.

I thought I'd share.  Could be a useful tool for sermons, lessons, and such.

Fishing in the stream of consciousness, researchers now can detect our intentions and predict our choices before we are aware of them ourselves. The brain, they have found, appears to make up its mind 10 seconds before we become conscious of a decision -- an eternity at the speed of thought.

Their findings challenge conventional notions of choice.

From Catholic Online:

The treatment of Governor Huckabee demonstrated, I believe, exactly what is wrong with the climate accompanying the current US Presidential campaign.

There is a growing lack of civility, and a near absence of charity, in our public discourse. 

Just something for all of us to keep in mind on Theophiles as the election approaches...

cursing the permanent haze of the neighbor's and the city's metal-halide and high-pressure sodium lights as i tried to appreciate the dying of the longest day of the year, i left the backyard and went down to the railroad tracks and followed them a little ways to a darker spot and sat down on a rail. it wasn't long before i was pleasantly surprised by my first firefly (lightening bug, that is) sighting of the year. like the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, i'll try to be grateful for what i can get.

ah, well, here's wishing theophiles everywhere a blessed summer.

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

So, I was surfing the New York Times and reading this opinion piece by Judith Warner which has an interesting point of view, as you can see from this excerpt from the middle:

It [the article Ms. Warner was reminded of while thinking about recent trends in Muslim communities where women get hymen-reconstruction surgery prior to marriage--see the story for the link there] was also from The Times, from May 19, and featured 70-odd girls, of “early grade school to college” age, with their fathers, stepfathers and fathers-in-law-to-be, at the ninth annual, largely evangelical “Father-Daughter Purity Ball.”

“The evening, which alternated between homemade Christian rituals and giddy dancing” – and which culminated, for at least one father and his daughters, with a dreamy walk in the night around a lake, “was a joyous public affirmation of the girls’ sexual abstinence until they wed,” said the Times article.

“From this, it’s only a matter of degree to the man in Austria,” I’d scribbled across the first page.

The “man in Austria,” of course, was 73-year-old Josef Fritzl, who was around that time also making headlines after it was discovered that he had kept his daughter, Elisabeth, 42, locked up in a cellar for 24 years, during which time he’d raped her regularly, and had her bear him seven children.

 Why I Witnessed To Westboro ‘Baptist’

As I walked across the sky walk over the street to the Convention Center in Indianapolis for the Southern Baptist Convention on Tuesday morning, I could not help but notice the bright yellow and green signs on the street corner being held high above the heads of the Westboro ‘Baptist’ picketers. Immediately I felt a nudge of the Holy Spirit telling me to go out and witness to these people.

Well, this one is only for our Catholic readers, but there is a new site called ParishNetwork.org that purports to be a way to "Meet the people you worship with".  Many Catholic parishes are often viewed as not welcoming or aloof and this appears to be a way to try to change that. 

I'm very curious to see where this goes.  Will it be a social group?  Will it be a gripefest?  Will it be uplifting and edifying?  There aren't many people on there right now and new members must wait five days(!) before posting a message.  The organization of it is somewhat funky as well.  It doesn't have a central forum, but forums for each parish.  There might be forums for each diocese, but I'm not sure on that either.