Ella Carte, Sensitive Catholic

The Guilt of Giving Up Pleasures

Rachel Gray at her blog Infused Knowledge (Losing weight during Lent) asks the searching question:
Have any of you ever used Lent as motivation to go on a diet?
Her answer is pointed, for me anyway, as I need the whole force of the Catholic world behind me before I can give up the sweet stuff.

It could be argued that you lose out on the spiritual merit of a fast if you're doing it to look good, because you have received your reward in full in this life. But you know, that's still better than my method, which is to gain weight before Lent (three pounds this year) by telling myself I can eat whatever I please because the fast is around the corner!

Nice one, Rachel - a little guilt, a little encouragement.
So it is with just a small few qualms (tiny, tiny amount) that I say I am giving up sweeties until Easter Sunday, by which means I hope to purge my sins and find my lost waist .

Roman Imposition

I watched the Holy Father lead the Ash Wednesday ceremonies from St Sabina's Basilica in Rome on EWTN (love that channel). Were other people as surprised as me to learn that ashes are 'imposed', not daubed, marked, put, placed or anything else? Imposed. Nothing like a glimpse of Rome to make you feel like a provincial.

One Thing Alone I Crave / Unum sit Mihi Totum

One thing alone I crave

namely

All in everything

This One

I seek

the only One

do I desire

Rooted in One

is all

from the One

flows all

This is the very One

I seek

will have

only then

be filled

Unless I drink

this Spring

I thirst

for nowhere else sup I to be fulfilled

What or Who this One is

I may not say

can never feel

Nothingmore or less

is there to say

For the One is not simply in all

the One Being is over all

YOU are my GOD

holding me

within my very SELF

Let the Lost be Found

I was lost briefly as a child. I was in sand dunes. Everywhere I looked was the same, and nothing was familiar. At one stage I saw my older sister looking around from the top of a dune, but she didn't see me, and the wind was so loud she couldn't hear my screaming. I knew, really, really knew, I was lost forever.

Of course, in the way of children, I got over my fear the second I was found and moved on to the fear of what was going to happen when my overwrought mother caught up with me. But I remember the fear every time I hear of a missing person. Every time, it comes back. There is no worse feeling.

And so I pray, every day, this little prayer:

O Lord, Let the lost be found.
Whether on the land,
Or on the sea,
In the city,
Or under the ground,
Let the lost be found.

On Waking

by John O'Donohue(1954 - 2008)

I give thanks for arriving
Safely in a new dawn,
For the gift of eyes
To see the world,
The gift of mind
To feel at home
In my life.
The waves of possibility
Breaking on the shore of dawn,
The harvest of the past
That awaits my hunger,
And all the furtherings
This new day will bring.

Dame Catherine Gascoigne: One thing alone I crave / Unum sit mihi totum

Dame Catherine Gascoigne: One thing alone I crave / Unum sit mihi totum