Before You Die...

I started a great book today: The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die by John Izzo, PhD.

Izzo interviewed over 500 people that other people pointed him to as having a sense of profound peace about themselves: from town barbers to Holocaust survivors they all have something to teach us. A full review comes when I finish.

Saints and Sinners

Dr. Maureen Tilly of my famed Alma Mater, Fordham spoke at Apostolst--the young adult group at St Paul the Apostle on Saints and Sinners and was remarkable.

One of the quotes I'll keep with me is:

"Be patient: God isn't finshed with me yet."

How often I forget that I am a Saint in the making and that the saints are such interesting people. We (no pun here) sanitize the saints and forget that St. Francis rejected the status quo of his father's riches and stood naked in the street. We are apt to think of him as a quiet man in a garden talking with the animals. (In truth he wanted the birds to shut up during mass).

But I think that provides me with enough reflection this week. How am I becoming more of the person that God wants me to be? How am I sharing the Gospel? How am I living a Saintly life--that's often filled with adventure and hard choices?

This week's BustedHalo Cast features Paul Cammarata from The SaintCast who gives us a tour of Saintly Sights.

Thanks to all for an inspiring week.

Back to Home

Flying on Air Canada back home. ESPN picked up my Bob Sheppard piece which made me feel a lot better about not winning any awards at Catholic Press.

I was thinking more deeply about what the award would mean to me anyway. I won a CPA award in 2004 for an article that I had even forgotten I wrote. It's a good article but the book is something I'm much more proud of. So I'm feeling weird about the concept of awards.

I also didn't write the book to win awards but rather to serve others...I believe the book is doing that and the next one will do that as well.

Right now I'm mobile blogging an annoyed at the guy next to me who has an empty seat next to him on this plane that's open so we can both have more leg room. Ugh.

But back to being self reflective... I need to have more self-confidence about my work and know that it's all good stuff. Whether that gets recognized or not. God is the only one that I try to serve with what I do...and that is more than enough.

Today's prayer: "Give me only your love and your grace...that's enough for me."

ESPN's Rob Neyer Picks up my Interview with Bob Sheppard

Yankee Stadium's The Voice of God - Bob Sheppard

ESPN Insider

See the whole interview here on BustedHalo

Pastoral Ministry Award--good news and bad news

The bad news first: Googling God did not win EITHER award (First time author of a book or Best Book on Pastoral Ministry) it applied for at the Catholic Press Association Awards. We applied under our imprint BustedHalo Books--which is an imprint of Paulist Press.

The good news: Paulist Press won 2nd place in the Pastoral Ministry Category for Mexican American Catholics and then also took Honorable Mention in the same Category for The Practical Prophet and I Don't Want to Go To Church (which has a cool cover).

Other winners included:

Fr. Jim Martin, SJ who is a good friend won for his great book A Jesuit Off Broadway--which if you haven't read, is a wonderful book about his experience as a theological expert on the play "The Last Days of Judas Iscariot" which was directed by Phillp Seymour Hoffmann who is clearly a genius of an actor.

Ellie Hidalgo of Los Angeles' The Tidings Newspaper won two awards for her fine reporting. Bryan Cones, who used to blog for BustedHalo and is the managing editor of U.S. Catholic won for two of his pieces and Eileen Markey who is one of our BustedHalo Writers also won for a piece she did for the National Catholic Reporter.

So congrats to all! As for me, I will feel better once I curl up with my dog and wife tomorrow--for now I'm drowning my sorrows with bad Canadian pizza.

First Time Author of a Book

And the winner is ...NOT Hayes

Catholic Update

wins 2 awards right out of the gate. My buddy John Feaster is the editor!

Next Year's Convention

Is in Anaheim California right across the street from DisneyLand. It's a world of laughter....

Who owns the New Catholic Enclyclopedia?

Marc Lombard and I raced to try to find this answer. He ran around the room to find the US Bishop's librarian. I used my my treo to find the info on wikipedia. Marc had the info quickly and also that Thomson-Gale (the alleged company) also owns Scribner. He got sidetracked on his way back to the table and Wiki beat him by about a minute but without the Scribner info.
Our purpose was really to see why it's not available online and Thomson Gale is looking to become the next version of Microfilm but in online form. So they are just buying up everything.
Ah...the interesting things we muse about at the dinner. My steak is now cold BTW.

St Anthony Messenger Press

Surprisingly we have a number of younger people at our table...all who work for the Franciscan organization at St Anthony Messenger Press. Dinner is provided by the Knights of Columbus.

Dinner partners

Marc Lombard and John Feaster are from American Catholic.org a Franciscan site and they will be my dinner partners. I'll weigh in on our other companions soon. Marc and I did a workshop on using new forms of media for Catholic Press Professionals (essentially editors of Catholic Newspapers). Fun time and I think it was useful for those who came.

Mobile Blogging from Catholic Press Awards

I'm going to let you know if Googling God is an award winning book instantly.

Catholic Press Awards Tonight

I'm up for TWO Catholic Press Awards tonight for Googling God--the book! One is for Best Book on Ministry and the other is for Best First Time Author. I hope I can at least place in both but I really want to win first place in at least one of them. We'll see. In the meantime, I am enjoying Toronto once again. I come here often and have Paulist priest friends who always let me crash at their place out of the kindness of their hearts.

I got Barenaked

Barenaked ladies--the band, that is showed up at Fr. Dave's show and since he knows I like those guys he invited me down to meet them. I was so excited and I even snagged a pic.

They have a cool new kids album out--called Snacktime--which is for both kids and adults. "This is just a cool kids album that parents won't want to shoot themselves to if their kids listen to it over and over and over."

Agreed. Get it here

Happy 60th Anniversary to Paulist Fr. Jim Lloyd

Fr. Jim Lloyd who is 60 years a priest today is spunky at the age of 87. Fr. Jim saved my mother's life by being her spiritual guide when she was recovering from surgery and lost the will to live--he surgery was fine but her mental state was less than solid until Fr. Jim began to speak with her.

Happy 60th.

NCCL Panel Audio

Here is the audio from my response to Fr. Gene Lauer's presentation on Common Ground Conversations.

NCCL Panel

Wednesday (today) at 3PM, I'm responding to a panel discussion at the Houston Hyatt. If you're around stop in and maybe you can sneak in. The topic is "Listening to different voices"

I'll try to record the panel discussion and play back later.

Pope Benedict Message

My cousin Peter

My cousin Peter died while I was away at a conference. Peter was only 35 and struggled with a lot of demons in his life: addiction, depression, anger.

I've been beating myself up for not being there for him, not doing enough for him. And then I heard this story.

Peter had been in a rehab center in Albany and was doing well there. He attended daily chapel and was really enjoying his time getting better. His mother and sister visited him the day before he died and they went away happy, rejoicing--at how good he looked. How he was finally going to beat addiction.

It reminds me a lot of the Emmaus story. My cousin Peter too, was able to meet Jesus
on his road to recovery--like those disciples who were leaving Jerusalem who didn't want to stay where their pain was--but retreated to an out of the way place.

Peter died from some kind of rupture--internal bleeding--which happens sometimes with addicts. But his toxicology report came back clean--amazing.

And while it seems cruel that Peter's life here has ended--he also met the Lord at the end and it seemed that his eyes too were opened and even for a short time he was converted by having that experience and meeting Jesus. And his life was never the same after that. His heart was burning in Albany as that bread that we share was broken. He had no need for drugs after that, no need for a drink. Jesus was the only thing that he needed because he recognized him!

Today let's pray that all our addictions--small and large ones---can be overcome by recognizing the Lord in our lives...by falling in love with our God and converting our hearts so that our lives may not ever be the same again. And let us take comfort in the fact that we need to recognize the Lord in our lives--how Jesus worked to save Peter and then called him home. We are sad today because we miss him--but we also know that we have need to recognize Jesus here as the one who heals not only Peter but ourselves. Let us recognize him in our lives as the one who can heal us from all that keeps us apart from him.

Amen.

If it's Sunday then I must be in Houston

Hey folks--

I will be in Houston all this week speaking at the NACMP and NCCL conference. I'm the keynote at NACMP and then doing two smaller workshop/panel thingies at NCCL.

I also get to see my former roommate, Paul Daly, a Houston native who know works behind the scenes at FOX Sports in the Big H.

Should be fun.

Later this month I'll also be at the National Ministry Summitt (APril 20 - 23)
And then in Toronto from the 23rd -28th.