I’ll be very annoyed with myself if I have actually lost my phone. I didn’t have pockets today. Do you find it difficult when you don’t have pockets? I carried it around with me all day and absentmindedly left it out when packing up. I was a bit frazzled and tired at the time. Still am annoyed with myself. One thing that I was pleased to be able to do, was locate it (at work) and lock it remotely. Gotta love that kind of technology.

The bus is here and I’m now on it. Hope I have some friendly faces waiting for me when I get off the bus!

Interesting insight into the life of St Augustine from one who followed him as bishop of Hippo and was a close companion during his life.

I am always filled with anticipation after purchasing a new mug. I have learnt the hard way what not to look for in a mug. I will list a few:
1. the mug is too narrow and develops an unpleasant odour because it gets slimey at the bottom
2. the coffee doesn’t come out because there is only one hole in the lid to sip through (the air can’t escape)
3. the mug leaks everywhere
4. the mug doesn’t hold much
5. the mug falls over all the time
6. the lid is not made of a material that lasts and starts to split and get smelly
7. the mug is made of some material that effects the taste of the coffee

I could go on and on. I have learnt a lot about what not to buy in a drink bottle too. Pretty much the same reasons really. Our kids tend to chew on the lid which is a bit unfortunate.

The loaves in the miracle were only five and seven in number before the disciples began to divide them among the hungry people. But when once they began to distribute them, though the wants of so many thousands were satisfied, they filled baskets with the fragments that were left. Now, just as that bread increased in the very act of breaking it, so those thoughts which the Lord has already vouchsafed to me with a view to undertaking this work will, as soon as I begin to impart them to others, be multiplied by His grace, so that, in this very work of distribution in which I have engaged, so far from incurring loss and poverty, I shall be made to rejoice in a marvellous increase of wealth. (On Christian Doctrine 1.1.1)

The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes is present in all four Gospels. Even St John has a version! The point St Augustine is making above is that the miracle occurred in the breaking/sharing of the loaves and fishes. The disciples cooperate in the miracle with their actions.

I like that as a picture for blogging: in the sharing of thoughts, ideas, quotes, pictures with God’s grace faith is encouraged and multiplied without our knowledge. Yet if the thoughts, ideas, quotes, pictures are never shared, the miracle can never happen!

I was reading the Prolegomena on Saturday and came across this:

The defects of both Protestant and Catholic modern views of Augustine and of this text encourages us to look for alternatives. That which has proved most useful in the present work is easily stated. For Augustine, and for late antique men and women generally, religion is cult – or, to use the word we use when we approve of a particular cult, religion is liturgy. Anti-clerical Parisians and Protestants may agree that priestcraft is dangerous stuff, but Augustine would not concur with them. The central decision he makes in the period narrated in the Confessions is not to believe the doctrines of the Catholic Christians (that is important, but preliminary), but to present himself for cult initiation – and the threshold there is a matter not of doctrine but of morals. Bk. 8, the vivid narrative of hesitation and decision, depicts Augustine agonizing over whether he could and would live up to the arduous standards he thought required of one who would accept full initiation into the Christian cult. His decision to seek that initiation, taken provisionally in August 386, 27 carried out on the night of 24-5 April 387, was the centerpiece of his conversion.

This is so central: Augustine’s story is not one primarily of knowledge but of the decision for baptism. Sometimes people miss this and find the Confessions a difficult book to read. A book they somehow feel needs to be intellectualized rather than internalised. For example, how close to the original intend is this, St. Augustine’s Confessions as the Prototype of Today’s Widely Disseminated Catholic Conversion Stories? (Remembering, of course, that few modern “Conversion stories” end with baptism but rather reception.)

Have we intellectualized Christianity to such a point that the cultic presence of God has lost its savour?

A few people have asked me if I have been pampered today. My day began with the children being told that they had to let me sleep in. Much as they thought it would be a fabulous idea to come in and visit me at 7am, I much preferred a sleep in. I was then very happy to receive breakfast in bed and a latte.

We went to mass as a family. It was lovely. I did, however get a little worn out with #6 and #4 bouncing around pretending to make pizza using shopping bags as ingredients and my handbag as a pizza oven. Part of the sermon was about loving people. It has given me much to think about.

This afternoon I needed to do some of my paid work to ensure that I have worked enough hours this fortnight. It was nice to not have to cook tea, yet again. I am not sure when I last cooked.

The Jesus Prayer is the perfect prayer for a commute, for it allows you to enter into a deep form of prayer, one that ushers in peace and joy, and opens your heart wide to Jesus. I’ve often recommended the Jesus Prayer for commuters who have problems of road rage, and the Prayer has transformed their drive into a peaceful, Christ centered commute.

One can learn many things from the monastic life to use at home in the Domestic Church.

I was struck by how the following is very similar to Plato’s Cave:

Wherefore, since it is our duty fully to enjoy the truth which lives unchangeably, and truth for the things which He has made, the soul must be purified that it may have power to perceive that light, and to rest in it when it is perceived. And let us look upon this purification as a kind of journey or voyage to our native land. For it is not by change of place that we can come nearer to Him who is in every place, but by the cultivation of pure desires and virtuous habits. (On Christian Doctrine 1.10.10)

While it is not the same as Plato it certainly has the platonic idea of the soul’s journey as an ascend to the light/truth. (I think Augustine says as much in Book X of the Confessions?) One can understand Augustine’s hesitation – to put it lightly – on visiting the theatre as an example of the illusionary character of life, or maybe the darkness of life, without the Light. I wonder how the Doctor of the Church would feel about TV today?!

But notice that Augustine’s concern is more than a means to an end. Or maybe the “end” is not a mystical carrot hung before the Christian? The “native land”, by context, is not what the Christian tradition has called heaven. The native land is the soul’s “rest” in the unchangeable light that is Truth.

Anyway, just wanted to share that!