Dear Friend,

Among the many books written by Henri Nouwen (1932-1996), one stands out as an enduring little classic, The Wounded Healer. For those who knew him, this book is especially powerful because, without expressly intending to do so, it describes very well the man himself. It was because of his own wounds that he was able to touch the lives of so many people. “By his wounds we have been healed,” St Peter wrote of Jesus (1 Peter 2:24).

Dear Friend,

Margaret Cregg, my high school classmate, wrote that in the mid -1990’s her uncle, Father Walter Sangster, began to notice some uneasiness in his throat and a dragging in his leg. When he went to the doctor, he found that he had an incurable disease that cased progressive muscular atrophy. His muscles would gradually waste away, his voice would fail, and his throat would soon become unable to swallow.

Dear Friend,

A bishop friend of mine in Ireland recently sent this to me and I want to share it with you:

Ten Commandments of "Human Relations"

1. Speak to people. There is nothing as nice as a cheerful word of greeting.
2. Smile at people. It takes seventy-two muscles to frown, only fourteen to smile.
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Dear Friend,

All blame is a waste of time.

No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you.

The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration.

Dear Friends,

Pope Saint John XXIII often reminded people, "Do not forget your prayers. These may be as short as you wish if you find long prayers too hard, but do not forget them. Even a sign can be a prayer."

We all have our routine and we don't always want to change it. Never-the-less we can find more time for prayer, if we just look at our daily routine.

Dear Friend,

Once armies carried cannonballs with them, afraid they would meet the enemy somewhere and have nothing to shoot at it.

In terms of specific gravity, grudges are about as heavy as cannonballs.

But it makes little sense to carry them.

Dear Friend,

THE WORLD NEEDS WOMEN AND MEN…

who cannot be bought;
whose word is their bond;
who put character above wealth;
who possess opinions and a will;
who are larger than their vocations;
who do not hesitate to take chances;
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Dear Friend,

In his book, An Anthropologist on Mars, neurologist Oliver Sacks tells about Thomas, a man who had been blind from early childhood. When he was 50, Thomas underwent surgery and was given the gift of sight. But as he and Dr. Sacks found out, having the physical capacity for sight is not the same as seeing.

Dear Friend,

In the early days of the church BAPTISM was a declaration that the believer was definitely identifying with that group of people who were called Christians and were often despised and hated.

To be a Christian meant taking a leap of Faith.

Dear Friend,

I heard a story of a little girl who walked to and from school daily. The weather one morning was questionable and clouds were forming, yet she made her daily trek to the elementary school.

As the afternoon progressed, the winds whipped up, along with thunder and lightning.

Dear Friend,

The Bible defines worldliness by centering morality where we intuitively know it should be. Worldliness is the lust of the flesh (a passion for sensual satisfaction), the lust of the eyes (an inordinate desire for the finer things of life), and the pride of life (self-satisfaction in who we are, what we have, and what we have done). Worldliness, then, is a preoccupation with ease and affluence.

Dear Friend,

In football they have a "huddle."

The goal of the huddle is to give you thirty seconds to call the play, that is why they give you a huddle.

At a professional football game there may be sixty thousand people watching you huddle, they don’t mind you taking thirty seconds to call the play.

Dear Friend,

Jesus calls us to be people who live in present-tense.

An average person’s anxiety is focused on:
40% -- things that will never happen
30% -- things about the past that can’t be changed
12% -- things about criticism by others, mostly untrue
10% -- about health, which gets worse with stress
8% -- about real problems that will be faced