RBWords - Volume 27 - Number 1: January 2014
Something to Think About
The “kaleidoscope” of life keeps turning and I keep writing RBWORDS. This issue marks the 27th year of this newsletter. Prior to 1996, I sent it all by first class postage to a small group of friends. Now, oddly enough, a very small group still gets it by regular mail and more than 400 receive it by e-mail! And from 2006 on, RBWORDS has been posted at a personal website given to me by my “webmaster,” Craig Baker and his wife, Christina. The website address is www.rbwords.com. I also post my daily preaching, THE WORD TO THE WISE, at that website and it is visited from all over the English-speaking world! If you’re like me, you may be tired of hearing the word, “globalization,” but I guess I’ve become a tiny part of that!
In 1988, I had just moved from a great campus ministry at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, LA, to Columbia, SC [formation work], to San Antonio, TX [1990 – formation] to New Orleans, LA [1992 – provincial leadership], to San Antonio, TX [1993 – preaching and parish ministry] to New Orleans, LA [1998-2003 campus ministry], to San Antonio, TX [2003-2005 – formation and preaching] to St. Catharine, KY [campus ministry, chaplaincy, preaching 2005-2009], to Austin, TX [2009-2011 full-time itinerant preaching] to Houston, TX [2011 to present – itinerant preaching and also Prior of the Dominican community at Holy Rosary Priory]. Before 1988, I had been 17 straight years in campus ministry, but after that time one may see my gradual shift to itinerant preaching part time and then full time in 2009. As much as I loved (and still do) campus ministry, I also love itinerant preaching. But I could not have done (or continue to do) any of this, let alone write this newsletter at the end of every month, without your love, support and prayers. The Holy Spirit works through friendship. IT’S SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT!
It Has Been Said
Lord, what I once had done with youthful might,/ Had I been first true to the truth,/ Grant me, now old, to do – with better sight, / And humbler heart, if not the brain of youth; / So wilt thou, in thy gentleness and ruth, /Lead back thy old soul, by the path of pain,/ Round to his best – young eyes and heart and brain.
From THE DIARY OF AN OLD SOUL by George Herbert MacDonald