A quick post tonight… It’s Friday night. I just found out that my parish abruptly cancelled all-night Adoration. That’s sad. Since I started making frequent Adoration part of my life, I have really come to look forward to the hour or so that my son and I get to spend in the presence of Our Lord. I think he likes that I take him to Jack in the Box at midnight right after we leave the church. But I also think he has taken to looking forward to seeing Our Lord. We pray five decades on our way to the church together. Then we pray the other ten during Adoration. We’ve been blessed to be able to bring others with us – friends of ours who might not otherwise go have made a habit of the first and third Friday nights. But not tonight. Alas!

In other news, this community is truly wonderful. By that I mean tha Trad community. I spoke today with a prominent tech adviser who gave me some excellent pointers on starting up my podcast. It’s coming, folks. And thanks to the advice I got today, it might even sound technically great! I have also received lots of great advice from readers through email. Thank you, thank you to all of you for your kind assistance.
Also, one of my good friends moved away suddenly this past week. It was necessary for him to do this. He got a great job offer. I don’t like that I won’t see him much anymore. We enjoyed hanging out, talking about the Church, and lifting weights (mostly in the form of weighted whiskey glasses). But, such is life. Another good friend came by this evening. In our conversation, as two grown men do on a Friday night after the a long week, we tossed back a few gin and tonics and my friend got a little “sentimental”. That’s guy code for he was sauced. Don’t worry, I drove him home. Happens to all of us once in a while. In his “sentimentality”, and I cannot recall for the life of me why this came up, he said, “You [me] have really lived through a lot of tragedy. How do you deal with it?” He was referring to the many deaths in my family from my early childhood through to the present. Hey, big families mean big deaths. I told him, “Look, it’s all part of the beauty of the life that God gives to each of us.” I didn’t want to get all philosophical on him. There’s nothing worse than trying to share one’s “wisdom” with one who is inebriated. It gets lost in several directions. But the reality is that God gives to each of us the life He gives to us. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the Lord!” Look, I don’t really know much else. But life is beautiful, that’s for sure. Treasure the people God has given you – your spouse, your children, your friends. Love them enough to correct them in their sins. Love them enough to laugh with them and cry with them. Love them enough to will their eternal happiness. I think that’s pretty good for a guy who’d just slammed the finest Dutch courage distilled in North Texas. Man, that stuff is good.*
Our Lady of Prompt Succor, pray for us!
*For those interested, I’m referring to Greenhouse Gin, distilled in Sherman, TX. Not to be confused with Greenalls which is distilled from the sewage-water of a nearby gin distillery. Cheers!