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Pray this prayer as His children

A book called “Children’s book of Classic Catholic Prayers” edited by Robert F. Morneau includes the following prayer called “Act Of Love”:

“My God, I love you above all things because you are all good. I love you as the creator of life, I love you as the one who has forgiven our sins and opened the gates of heaven. I love you as the Spirit whom you have sent among us to guide us in this world. Because of my love for you, I love my neighbor as myself. Amen.”

We are children of God, therefore, this prayer is also for us. Pray this prayer and grow daily in faith, hope, and love.

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Hands

A talented Chinese Canadian poet, Kavan Yao wrote a poem called “hands” (from his bilingual book called “China Feeling” translated by his mom, Dr. Hongyun Chen) bringing me back to when I started to have a crush on my wife many years ago:

“I wish I could speak with my hands and let you touch this life I have wrapped in my feeling. Meaning, always, seems a struggle; all my sincerity gets lost in those centimeters between my mind and my tongue. Somewhere in all the heartache of language living between this misery and the next – there was someone I wanted, and to her, there was so much I would have said. When I look at my hands, shy and upspeaking, and I think about all the people who I never reach and have forgotten: I worry that one day after all these words my mouth could not create I might forget her as well.”

I do not know what happened to Kavan later, but I took the courage to tell her about my feeling & love for her.

My friends, do not wait for the touch of your life wrapped in your feeling. But speak and invite, let your feeling touch your lover’s life!

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You are not “Homeless”.

Once I read it from a book that I forgot its name: “You don’t have to run really far to be a long way from home when you’re looking for the wrong kind of stuff”.

Do you resonate with it? Where is your Home? Are you a long way from Home? What kinds of “wrong stuff” have they been occupying you? For you, what is a Home here?

Someone says that a Home is where we can find comfort, love, and peace and be ourselves. Furthermore, a Home is where our soul resides and we can find our true selves there. For me, a Home is where we can meet and listen to God’s voice.

Where is the Home and where can we find it? You and I do not need to go a long way to meet God who is “not far from any one of us”. You can meet him in your heart.

Friends, you are not “Homeless”. Come Home!

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A mindful way to deal with our perceptions in relationship

Perception refers to our sensory experience of the world. Through this experience, we gain information about the environment around us. Perception molds, shapes, and influences our experience of our personal reality. Dr. Linda Humphreys believes that “Perception is merely a lens or mindset from which we view people, events, and things.”

For Buddhism, we have the following six perceptions: sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, and mind. In her book “Small Bites: Mindfulness For Everyday Use”, she wrote:

“The Buddha points out that wherever there are perceptions, there will be deceptions, which will eventually lead to suffering. When you ask fifteen people the same question about the same situation, you’ll probably end up with fifteen different stories…So many arguments in relationships are caused by different perceptions. Instead of insisting on being right – an attitude that leads to suffering on both sides – you can simply smile at each other and say, ‘Oh we obviously have very different perceptions.’ Thich Nhat advises that you should always ask two questions about your perceptions: “Can I be sure that my perception is correct?’ and ‘Can I really be sure?’…Only mindfulness of your perceptions and an ongoing exchange with others will help you see how many different perceptions may actually exist in one situation.”

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The way to handle negative people

We may need to cope with negative people in our daily life. In his book “The Tao of Daily Life”, Derek Lin has offered us the way to handle negative people:

“Criticizing others while being unaware of their own faults is something that many people do. We can even say that it is something we all do from time to time…when people lash out at us with venomous criticism, we should not accept it passively. We should certainly protect ourselves by putting some distance between us and them if at all possible; protect ourselves in other ways if not. The crucial point is that we can do so without feeling offended or insulted because these people are simply being themselves. It is their nature to be critical and judgmental, so it would be absurd for us to take offense, It would be pointless to get angry.”

The question for you and I to ask ourselves at first is if we have recognized and accepted our negative nature. We have to keep ourselves away from being negative toward ourselves and others.