Bad Habits

more interesting than writing?

Sorry for the month of radio silence; it was not intentional. I can trace it to apathetic feelings about the news, busy home life buying a condo, training associated with job changing. But mostly I trace it to playing a Star Trek game, falling into a bad habit again, and letting go of my drive. I'm susceptible to games and tv, complacency, maybe some feelings of despair and disconnection. Those bad habits stop my progress in any of my projects and good intentions, like running through the sand into the sea. What are your bad habits?

Thankfully, today I was turned around by the gospel reading of the loaves and fishes, and an excellent homily by a French Jesuit. He asks, "Are you the young man with the pitiful number of barley loaves and fish? Are you the Apostle responsible with distribution? Will you use your insignificant gifts to achieve the unimaginable with God?" That really struck me, since my gifts are pretty measly, and I need encouragement to use them, especially when I'm in a bad habit.

What other bad habits hold us back?

We know some of the habits in the Church: fear of change, patrimony and  machismo, anthropocentrism.

What are our cultural bad habits? Many of the same, I think: self-obsession and isolation, greed, denial of our place in time and space. How can we break our bad habits? What is our loaves and fishes story, that will encourage us to appreciate our measly gifts and act on them? What will make us bring them forward to share with each other?

CERN: impossibly large and complicated.

The Higgs Boson discovery is a good place to start - we now know more about our universe's history than ever before. We are learning about the forces of our world - forces equal to gravity and motion. The Higgs helps us understand why things that have mass have mass, which is a pretty basic element to understanding who we are, how we fit into the universe, and how our measly actions here in our lifetime affect the cosmos.

New paradigms break old paradigms by overwhelming the younger generation with the 'rightness' of the new ways - new technology and new perspectives overcome old superstitions and old prejudices. We Millennials are the new generation, tech like CERN and the Higgs are our new tech that are overwhelming the old ways. How do the old ways respond? How do we continue to learn them with a straight face, continue to draw value from them? Those are the questions I hope to answer here, with Millennial Faith.

Thanks for staying tuned!