Zen and the birds of appetite

Too many ideas have crossed my mind this week. Last time, I wrote about putting writing in perspective because Jesus didn't write. I intended to follow that up with learning a second language, but Jesus had a way to connect with others of a different language, so I am not giving up learning Spanish just yet. I feel someone may benefit from it in the future. That's why I tell myself I pray and read so much, so I can share the fruits of contemplation with others.

When we went to Texas in February, I was reading the Tao Te Ching (the "Bible" of Taoism) and thought how compatible it seemed to the Franciscan charism (in Roman Catholicism). I was surprised to see that same idea articulated in Zen and the Birds of Appetite by Thomas Merton, which I finished this week. That book also led me to ask the question: How does one reconcile true poverty (not having even an empty space for God like Jesus had on the cross) with wanting to enlarge our capacity for the gifts God wants to give to us. The answer I came to was that our spiritual journey has different needs at different places/times and so one will lead to the other, but it's still something that we must ask/allow God to do in us.

Again, there seems to be a disconnect between my inner journey and my outer journey. This week we went to Hoss's because the girls earned free meals for their report cards and we had time to go out to my work before hand. We went to Idlewild with my mom the next day. We went to her house the day after that, when Claire was done helping with Katarina for swimming and pizza. That was the first day I missed mass. Yesterday, we went on our first of three runs with donuts afterwards in lieu of running Plum's 5K, and made it back in time to go to lunch bunch and let me get Klondikes on sale and a lottery ticket. I've since learned my lottery ticket lost, so I bought another today with my number instead of the limited randomly generated numbers.