A piece of truth

September 26, 2013 9:42 pm

A story I’ve heard:
Once a man walked with the devil. They saw another man who stooped and picked something. ‘He’s found a piece of truth’, the devil said. A while later the man in front of them picked something again. ‘He;s found a piece of truth again’. ‘And isn’t that troubling you, are you not angry?’, the man asked. ‘By no means. You see, he;s going to add the missing parts himself and finally a fragment of truth will turn into a lie that he will follow’, the devil answered.

This picture has appealed to me strongly. “A piece of truth” is my observations – what I see, hear and touch. A different thing is my interpretation of them. I often find it difficult to be objective about them. It’s so easy to get lost on this way. Although there is one Truth, it is not easy to discover it in life and it’s even harder to accept it.

It's not the way it's supposed to be?

July 17, 2013 6:31 pm

Again. I’m sure that each of the readers has known such moments in life. The moments when we wonder why we are where we are and why things are the way they are. IYou know, it’s like when you go in the mountains, reach the top and then everything is supposed to be OK. But why can’t you see anything, there’s fog around, and people going down said the views were splendid, your feet hurt although the shoes are not new, it keeps raining, the backpack gives you pin, even though you’ve made many trips with it and everything was fine, etc. Not that you assumed everything would be perfect, certainly not. But not that bad, either!

But who told you that’s gonna be “the way it’s supposed to be”? In fact, we never know what it’s gonna be like. Sometimes the reality comes close to the expactations, and that’s all. What’s left is Hope. The virtue. If He is with us, what can it bother us that things are the way they are and not differently? Maybe it’s better for me this way? I may develop more, I may understand something, I may grow to something. I know, it’s easily said. But these thoughts kepte me alive when things went “wrong” and I Hope that I’ll understand also this time why things are the way they are.

Michał

Good moments for the family

July 15, 2013 9:56 am

Our children and we – the parents – have great fun putting into practice the ideas for games described in the following book:
Obrazek
All kinds of rough and tumble play, pillow fights, rolling and cuddling are for us the time of laughter, relax, joy and being close to one another. We strengthen the ties among us and get rid of our resentments and stress.

According to the authors of this book physical games have an impact on physical and psychical health. Among other things, they develop children’s courage, confidence, trust and perseverance.

We recommend it!

Basia and Michał

You've got a lot

April 14, 2013 9:06 pm

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.

The colours of parenthood

April 8, 2013 8:14 pm

“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.

Silence

March 30, 2013 5:56 pm

Silence is very important to me on Holy Saturday and for me it is very connected with it. I always look forward to silence on Good Friday. Silence and sudden peace, as in a film, when after a big noise suddenly we don’t hear anything. Or as in the eye of the storm when after the madness of elements suddenly everything is quiet and we experience this peculiar relief with the awareness that something is going to happen again.

And I know that the powers of the Holy Week will not come back with this strength again. The awareness that among beloved disciples there is a traitor and that declared faithfulness turns out to be false, that disciples are unable even to keep watch at  prayer and that they will disperse and hardly anyone will stay at the cross. Although the heart is still moved by the cruelty of the Way of the Cross it knows that…

I’d leak each of my days to be fulfilled with this expectation of what is known, obvious and so desired. Of the meeting with the risen One. But now – shhhhhh… Let’s keep quiet in waiting.

Michał

Holy Week

March 25, 2013 8:15 pm

I am sure you’ve gone sometimes somewhere in windy weather. I mean here a very strong wind in your back. No, not such wind that helps you walk. But such wind when it’s impossible to stop, when we hardly control the direction and pace and when it’s even dangerous. .

What am I driving at? The Lent is just passing away. The Holy Week is beginning. I have no idea when this time has passed, really. I feel as if I, pushed by a crazy wind, unable to stop, suddenly realised where I was. I analyse my Lent, my resolutions etc.  It’s all important, it helps us adequately go through the days ahead but…

The Holy Week is not Holy because of how we have gone through the Lent. It is clear that our resolutions do not make it holy, even if they are magnificent and even if we managed to realise them in full. It is not holy because of the beautiful ceremonies in church, nor because of the queues to confessionals. It is not holy because of us commemorating the events from Christ’s life. It is holy because of these events that are truly great. And it is important how we go through these events of torment and resurrection.  The things I mentioned before are helpful here but I believe that the most important things is to get quiet and open our hearts, eyes, ears, our whole selves so that we can hear Him.

I hope that we will meet in many holy places, and certainly under the cross and at the empty tomb.

Michał

The first word: THANK YOU

February 15, 2013 12:03 am

IMG_2605

Such an arrival in the world obliges to thanks. In the hospital they said that it was a perfect birth. Numberless text messages in overflowing mobiles of the parents show that many people gave us their kindness and supported us with prayer. What’s more, it turned out that those prayers flew to the Giver of life in different languages. In such circumstances you can have a perfect labour, I recommend it.

So once again: THANK YOU.
Michał (the reader must find out which one 😉 )

Flowers

January 25, 2013 2:30 pm

I don’t know really, why I, as a man, find myself so “far” from the flowers that my wife, as a woman, likes so much. The flower shop is so close. I could even order flowers every day, knocking on my wall, with Morse code.

But… every day a flower, when I’m busy with so many things and problems? I ‘ve bought flowers already, it was only a month a go, well, perhaps three months ago, because it was for her birthday. What if I simply added flowers to normal shopping? It could be then regular.

After a lengthy analysis, many decisions and about ten unsuccessful attempts I did it and a bouquet, the expression of disinterested love, came back to the vase. Well, manhood is a difficult material. Not only for a woman. But I, as a man, like challenges.

And all this because “what do need love for if we don’t show it” *

Michał

*heard in some film.

//

Making an inventory

January 7, 2013 12:12 pm
It is inseparably connected with the new year. This time it went very efficiently. I did not have to sit up late, doing overtime, putting numbers in the columns. Everything was neatly put into columns and rows. This is the requirement – every year the same story. Everything is verified, calculated, arranged and clarified.
And I just think… if I carried out such an operation in my own life once a year? Małgosia writes about making the inventory of one’s heart. That’s just it! Do you happen to know a software that helps to make it? Or perhaps you’ve got your own special ways?

Michał