Festival of Life: A Prayer for Unity /  by Matthew Fleming

Loving Mother, you have created a world which is like a festival.

Help me follow you in your kindness and wisdom;

let me be open to any and all people at the banquet table -

the hungry, so I may be generous;

the suffering, so I may be compassionate;

the stranger, so I may be neighborly;

the disparate, so I may be curious;

the familial, so I may be content;

the young, so I may be enthusiastic;

the old, so I may be faithful.

May You always be present with us as we sing and dance at the Festival of Life.

"I Hate Poems" by Jasper Soles /  by Matthew Fleming

I try to write a poem,

but poems are too hard

Rhyming is for losers

and airy-fairy bards

 

To put a pen to paper

and write about your life

I've had enough of all of those,

they can only cause me strife

 

Free-verse script is awful,

for fools without a beat

Repetition's far too simple

just repeat, repeat, REPEAT

 

Those lovey-dovey ode-things,

that wishy-washy crap

And poems about hatred,

you all deserve a slap

 

Spare me all your ramblings,

I don't care how you feel

Your self-expression surely stinks

of mouldy day-old eel

 

To tell a tale of wonder

never ceases to be trite

To sing of magic wonders

is nothing but pure ****e

 

Your metaphors are useless,

your imagery is vile

Your sense of diction makes me gag,

I cannot stand your "style"

 

So save me your quotations,

please spare me all your rhyme

Shove that poem up your rear

and cease to waste my time

 

I look at what I've written,

this jumble of clichés

Looks like I wrote a bloody poem

so I'm the one to blame!

"Anything worth doing is worth overdoing." /  by Matthew Fleming

I don’t know who said “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing”.

Life is about overdoing it without getting in the way of yourself or others. This idea came to me as I was falling asleep last night (May 5, 2019). I woke with it, so I figured it must be important enough to write down and explore when I have a bit more time. This probably isn’t an exact quote from the Baltimore Catechist, but I really think it fits in with the idea ‘God loves us and wants us to be happy’.

“Overdoing it” here means do whatever you can do to the point of joy and "without getting in the way” would mean overdoing it to the point of sin (Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, or Lust).

Time…now there is something you can’t overdo. And if I let others dictate my time have I given-up God’s gift of free will? But if I have never give my time to others, how am I part of a community?

It is not that “no man is an island” (John Dunne, “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions: Meditation XVII (17)”, 1624), but rather ‘no person is human until experiencing another human’.

Can one be in communion with God if one has never been part of a community? Does loosing one’s sense of community open one to sin? There is something here I need to explore; something between community and contentment; between individualism and our endless pursuit of happiness.