Archive for November, 2005

The South Beach Diet

Saturday, November 26th, 2005

lately, i’ve been hearing alot about this. a friend of mine is on it and so it’s been the topic of discussion in my little network. of course by no means am i on it. i’m still stuck on reverse lent — 40 restaraunts, 40 days. but the more i learn about it, the more i’m intrigued by it. not so much by the food aspect, but more by how the concepts of the diet parallel to us and our spiritual lives.

for instance, last thursday i led a campus based meeting on 100% pure. i thought it went well, and i think the members agreed. the funny thing about me giving talks, is i pray and research my talks beforehand like i should of course. so maybe i should spend a little more time looking at it, but it usually comes out ok. but there’s always part of me that things man, am i the best person to be giving this talk, or leading this worship? then i have to remind myself that God annointed me. wow, what a powerful thing to realize!

so the crazy thing is, i always feel i’m right for a talk because God uses me to say things i don’t plan, and when i go home and think about the talk, those little things God’s spits out of my mouth stick with me, and i learn so much. i think i learn more than the people on the receiving end.

so last thursday, i said something about the world that i’ve been turning over in my mind. for all my life, the world has been training my mind to think certaing things are ok that God never really said was ok. like how we should dress, how we should talk, how we should treat each other, what our eyes should look at, etc… and what came out of my mouth was, “we need to retrain our minds, to try to see what God sees. and we do that through prayer, fasting, and the sacraments.”

retraining.

and this is where the south beach diet comes in. when you start the south beach diet, you start by eliminating all carbs from your diet for two weeks. from then on, theres more phases where carb foods are reintroduced to your diet, and you maintain the last phase for life. if you ever cheat or mess up, you go back to the first phase and start over.

so back to my friend. we were at cheesecake factory and he was dying for a piece of cheesecake. another friend across the table, graduated a nutritionist. she was adamant that the diet doesn’t work, because it’s not about actually doing the diet. you have to change your life. i learned that the south beach diet started out as a lifestyle, not so much as a packaged weight loss plan.

if my friend was following the diet and dying for a cheesecake, then what good is the diet at all? sooner or later, he’s gonna fail, it has to come from the mind first, body second. if you can have that commitment to changing your lifestyle forever, then you win. otherwise, you’ll fail.

i think the parallels are so obvious, yet so intriguing. in order to change anything that you’ve been conditioned to for a long time, there has to be a drastic change, and it has to be strict and shocking. however if you don’t change the mind, make the decision to change everything you’ve previously thought, and retrain your mind, then you’re always going to be pulled in that direction.

now lets imagine a south beach diet for impurity. two weeks, live your daily life, NO impurities. don’t even watch tv or surf the web. then after some time, you begin to reintroduce those things into your life, little by little. could we be onto a south beach spiritual diet?

hmm… just something to think about. hope you’ve learned something from this long entry.

Posted in God glasses | 1 Comment »

md777.

Tuesday, November 15th, 2005

here’s a story about my kids that i hope everyone reads. especially people not from my own area.

south chapter schedule a house camp this past weekend. they prepared normally with a camp training, and all the preparatory meetings. everything was going according to plan until the day of. they arrive at the church to pick up their supposed participants and… no one showed. friday night of the camp, and they were a service team with no participants.

so what did they do? rather than get discouraged and throw in the towel and go home upset, they had the camp anyway. they gave all the talks and sharings. they picked names out of a hat and had one on ones with each other. they prayed over each other. they worshipped and everything, just as they should’ve. by the end, what could have been an oppressed weekend, turned into a rally point for our area’s God given vision.

nothing can stop what the Spirit has set in motion
people think we’re crazy, and that this was a waste of time. but how i see it, this weekend was just what God intended; after all he planned the camp in the first place. and only a prayerful people can see His vision and catch a glimpse of His plan thru His eyes.

i often look at my area and remember the phrase, “the next generation will be better than us.” nothing could be truer. i look at this past weekend and think back to all those times i hung my head when we were starting campus based back in ’99. when no one would show up after all that hard work. i look now at my area and their devotion to adoration of the blessed sacrament every single wednesday without fail. i remember our mission team for the delaware youth camp driving 3 hours at 6am saturday morning after serving at first friday mass the night before just in time for the service team meeting and the start of the camp. then i remember them stopping in north md to study together at barnes and noble in north maryland on the way home 30 hours later.

holiness is a standard around here, and 99% purity is already unacceptable. every single time my campus based calls me or IMs me, first thing they ask is, “how’s your prayer time?” just like we used to do back in the day. family comes first. confession is a must. and if one of us slips, there’s already an unspoken pastoral plan for them.

its a culture. its a way of life. maryland and virginia brothers and sisters, realize the culture that you are a part of. if we are not known for anything at all, let us be known by our holiness, by our prayer. and let us conduct it in every facet of our life. it’s who we are. realize, its who you are. your crew, your friends, how people see you… you are a holy people. live that life to the fullest.

at the years start, we said let’s take baby steps first and soon enough we’ll be ready for the plunge. 10 months later, im ready to dive in headfirst, and i know i have a whole area on my back.

is it perfect? of course there’s flaws, just like everywhere else. we’re human of course. so then, is it heaven on earth? i don’t think so. i just think its earth, the way God intended.

md777
walk on water.

Tags:
Posted in A Missionary's Life. | No Comments »