The traditional dinner out for the Faculty on the last day before the end of Education Program took place yesterday at DJ’s Dugout Sports Bar.

As soon as you go in, you feel the place was created with you in mind. Loud music, which virtually makes any conversation impossible, and all the walls covered with screens showing all possible sports. Too loud to talk, so you can just “sit around” over the fastfood meal and watch lazily all the screens, not having to bother to switch the channels. In one word: perfect masculine world.

I look at the tables nearby and it turns out that women have come here, too. They don’t mind the tv screens, or the noise, because they have more important thing to be concerned about – conversation. How different it is from the “men’s” tables, where you generally just look in front of you. And if any conversation happens, it is to comment what’s on the screen.

Two worlds. Different and interesting. To understand each of them, to put them together to form one entity – that’s a lifetime adventure. And it’s worth lifetime.

From Omaha, noisy today

Fr. Jay

They can change our lives so much and centre them around people and not about things to do.

Today, on a winter’s morning, I went for a run (and to think that in Poland it’s so warm and here I shiver from cold before I do the warm-up. It’s so unfair!). The rain changed smoothly into nagging hail and then into snow. But I didn’t wait for this last development. Beaten with hail, I had an additional motivation to come back home as soon as possible.

On the way I met some cars that waited to join the traffic. It is really so nice when you see the drivers pull back when they see you running so that you don’t have to change your route. It is a simple gesture but not seen for the first time and it is always so heart-warming. Someone has seen you and helped you as much as he could. And ten someone will hold the lift for you or bring you some water. Our life consists of so many small gestures. You can find so much kindness in them.

I send you greetings, full of kindness.

Fr. Jay

continuation…

As you can see, our Men’s Club has grown in number:

October 2012, you can read about it HERE

April 2013

In keeping with the tradition, during EP in Omaha there is one evening out for men exclusively. The menu and the place remain the same: Anthony’s Steakhouse.

Of course “to have a steak” was just an excuse – the real goal was to meet again, talk, be with one another. Every of us has a different story to tell, and different experience, so it is good to listen to one another and discover how much we can share and pass forward.

This time we were joined by guys from France, Poland, Mexico and Peru – and apart from other new men in the club, we also had two American priests. How good it is to know we can count on each other. If need be, we know were to look for each other. Because the support among men is always necessary. And what’s more – women liked the idea of men’s evening a lot. They know that men need their own company  from time to time. And afterwards, they come back as better people. 🙂

Fr. Jay

When I look at the education program participants, it feels like home. They look just like our external students. The overwhelming majority are women, some of them expecting children, there are the husbands who look after children while their wives have classes. The breaks are filled with convesrations and the classroom is filled with prayers, becoming a chapel for us. It’s no wonder we had the sense of proximity right from the start.

Maybe that’s why it’s easier to endure the sense of longing for home. In places like that everyone feels important, needed, loved. So this is the time not only of an intense immersion study, but also of a retreat. You can pull yourself together, get ready for the mission, for the service. And the first and foremost message is: “I want to help you, because you are a very important person to me.”

Remembering all of you, especially those at Home,

Fr. Jay

We  are all thunderstruck with the news. Terrorism has never got this far. But maybe there is some logic in it. Hatred towards human being must reach also those areas where man is trying to challenge his weakness and find enough inner strength when all in his body and soul is crying for rest, for giving up. At the marathon finish line there are no losers, even if you failed to carry out your timing plan. My friend, a marathon runner, told me once: “there is no result, but no shame either” (he took part in this marathon too, and arrived at the finish 15 minutes before the explosions. Fortunately, he’s fine). Anyobody who reaches the end, carries to the finish line all the hours of training and the effort they cost. And that is a great value in itself: through training you’ve learned to be systematic, hardworking, you’ve deepened your sense of duty and got used to overcoming difficulties, obstacles, and pain…

I pray for those who lost their lives, and for those who are fighting for life in hospitals. I pray for marathon runners, because they inspire us to desire to be “better versions of oursevles”.

Tomorrow morning I’ll offer my running for them, adding the sweat of effort to the words of my prayer.

Praying for you, too

Fr. Jay

I woke up around 5 o’clock local time (around noon-time in Poland), not knowing whart to do. It was dark outside, the whole house was asleep. A wonderful time for prayer and meditation. After the rosary the meditation led me to our recent days. I was still between Polish and local time and I rememberd Friday’r reading on the feeding of multitude (John 6: 1-15).

I was struck by the Apostles counting on their own strengths only, on what they had. The first thing they thought about on hearing Jesus’ question (“Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?”) was how much money that had and how much food one of the listeners had. They never thought about the Lord being with them and they felt helpless. And Jesus? He made use precisely of what seemed to them too modest and insufficient in this situation.

Jesys did not perform the miracle of creating of food (although he was able to do it) but the miracle of multiplication. As if he’d wanted to say: you don’t need what you haven’t got. All you need I have given into your hands. But remember just one thing: Me. With Me you’ll have enough of everything.

I have to make myself aware of it constantly, too. Especially here, thousands miles from home and the nearest and dearest and with a widow’s mite – as seen from the local point of view – in my pocket. The most important thing is that the Lord is here with me. He’s using my reality and especialy the people in it.

Finally we stayed with Michał in Chicago. We re flying only tomorrow provided our plane takes off. So we had a whole day for ourselves to recover after the very active time and after a long journey. Our friends from Chicago, Janina and Janusz, took care of us. They collected us at night and just before four o’clock at night we were in beds. In this way Michał could see Chicago (from the windows of the plane) and admire the real skyscrapers – they truly seemed to scrape the sky because of the rain and mist that obscured their tops. But we visited the monuments of Kościuszko and Kopernik.
We also had time for a Holy Mass in a true Chicago parish (the parish of Father Tadeusz), where everything is in Polish, all the inscriptions, although there is an English translation for foreigners as it turns out that there are still people in Chicago who don’t understand Polish. So we had a very flexible beginning of our stay in the States – we were abroad but everything was in Polish. Tomorrow the real stuff begins – everything in American.
Thank you for your support – thanks to you we manage to cope:)

Your foreign correspondent
Fr. Jay

Father Captain started yesterday another missionary journey of his. Thie time it will last 6 weeks and it will lead him further than the end of the world and back.

The first stage of that trip is Education Phase II at Pope Paul VI Institute in Omaha, USA – and it will involve his pastoral care during the education program for NaProTechnology doctors and Creighton Model FertilityCare System Parctitioners. He’s not travelling alone –  but together with one of our blog Authors, Michał, who could not take part in EP II in Łomianki, as his little son was just born in that time. Now he’ll get the chance to be in the heart of NaProTechnology – we’re with him with all our hearts.

The Board of Editiors, while expecting any sign of life from their Mobile Team, started to look for the Bermuda Triangle on the map, doubting it could have been on the way from Poland to Nebraska. But luckily, an hour ago a text message arrived:

We got stuck at the airport in Chicago. 25 h ago we left Home in Łomianki. In 6.5 h we have the next flight, in the “stand-by” version, i.e. we’ll board if places are available. If not, the next flight is on Friday. For now, we do sightiseeing at the airport. Talk to you soon. From Chicago, Fr Jay

So we’re looking forward to the story of creative ways to spend time at the airport – hopefully in the shorter version of travel delay. 🙂

M

Jesus said to Nicodemus “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ” (John 3:16)

I remember being moved very much by those words when I was young . I was getting to know Jesus at that time. I felt so important and chosen and loved so much. Unselfishly and unconditionally.  Simply because I am!

“Oh, how much we’d like to be in your shoes” – I’ve heard once from a couple that want a child very much but wait in vain for one. In an informal conversation I described to them daily life of oir fanily with four children, expecting the birth of the next one soon. My description was consisted by no means of superlatives only.

Another woman, very young, told me that one child was quite enough for her. She had many children at her workplace. “I am very much in favour of children but I don’t yet feel ready, mature enough” – I heard from another myoung married woman. “Lets’s be honest, we are simply afraid. If God helped me, I would be very happy, but I am unable to do it myself” – that sentence I heard when people congratulated us on the birth of our child. To have the full picture, I need perhaps to add athe opposite view: the words of a woman that I noted here:

http://inharbour.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/two-images/

The attitudes towards parenthood are so different and dependent on so many factors. I have written once on the colours of our life. They are varied, too. However – and I am absolutely sure of it – life is always a gift entrusted to us. It is a mistake to usurp the right to dispose of it completely. And this is for me a basic colour.