Your blog has been a joy to read, but I enjoy it most when you keep to the basic score: \u201cWhy I am Catholic.\u201d That was a very genial idea. You are at your best when you share the simple things that you ENJOY and APPRECIATE about being Catholic, the things for which you discover yourself to be profoundly grateful. But when you started linking to other blogs, right and left, I found myself thinking: \u201cOh, oh, it\u2019s happening!\u201d I don\u2019t read your blog to follow links to other blogs. I read yours because in your writing about the people around you in your parish, I can see my own lifelong Catholicism and the Church herself in fresh and simple ways. On a number of occasions what you wrote has made me smile and sent me off on a reverie\u2014remembering people and places and events from my own life\u2014until my screen saver kicked in. Please don\u2019t feel that you HAVE to keep this going at any cost. Don\u2019t feel that you absolutely have to post one or two or three different things each day. You have heard the term \u201cburnout\u201d before, haven\u2019t you? No one who suffers from it ever expected to. I don\u2019t want to read: \u201cFolks, that\u2019s it! I\u2019m quitting this blog because I need to get my life back!\u201d I\u2019d be happy to see you post once a week or less if it\u2019s a genuine \u201cWhy I am (happy to be) Catholic\u201d moment.<\/i><\/p>\n
I shot back a sort of weak rebuttal combined with thanks, which of course is a contradiction. And Father Danielsen\u2019s comments have been rattling around inside me ever since. Especially because I have spent valuable time today meditating on my \u201csaint of the day,\u201d Hilarion, a spiritual son of St. Anthony of the Desert, and believe me, I can\u2019t find one honest reason to write about him. Hilarious, wouldn\u2019t you say?<\/p>\n
I started this blog with a purpose\u2014to sort out the reasons why I am a Catholic and to communicate them clearly and effectively to people I love, especially my wife and children. When did I start going off track? Probably when I received the first praise from \u201csomeone important.\u201d But certainly when I started tracking response to the blog with \u201cthe best software available.\u201d And yet\u2014the purpose remains, along with my love of being Catholic.<\/p>\n
So here\u2019s my proposal, gentle reader. I will not be posting every day, or every other day necessarily. I will post when the Spirit moves me, and I hope, I pray that I will not take that promise lightly. I will post when something inside me says, \u201cI love being a Catholic, and I want people to know why, and here it is . . . \u201d Then I will do my best to tell you why.<\/p>\n
And by the way\u2014for all those, like Ferde, who think my Friday posts on \u201cJoan of Arcadia\u201d are throwaways, you have another thing coming. Because I will continue posting on Fridays about JoA! And any other day I have a good reason to be Catholic.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, if anyone wants to send me their heartfelt <\/i>reasons for being Catholic, I will review them and post those that I think can make a difference.<\/p>\n
Until the next time the Spirit moves . . .<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I received an e-mail last evening from a priest living in a foreign country whom I will call Father Danielsen. He and I have corresponded off and on since he discovered this blog a few weeks back, and his comments have been uniformly supportive. I feel very grateful for his comments and for his support, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n