Will you come and follow me, if I but call your name?

Hope this works!  A lovely rendition of one of my favorite hymns.

I live for those that love me

This is a poem of which I have known the last verse for a long time, but I never thought to look up the rest of it.  Now I wish I'd gone looking for it earlier.

What I live for - George Linnaeus Banks

I LIVE for those who love me,
Whose hearts are kind and true,
For heaven that smiles above me,
And waits my spirit, too;
For all the ties that bind me,
For all the tasks assigned me,
And bright hopes left behind me,
And good that I can do.
I live to learn their story
Who’ve suffered for my sake,
To emulate their glory,
And follow in their wake;
Bards, patriots, martyrs, sages,
The noble of all ages,
Whose deeds crown history’s pages,
And Time’s great volume make.
I live to hold communion
With all that is divine,
To feel there is a union
’Twixt Nature’s heart and mine;
To profit by affliction,
Reap truths from fields of fiction,
And, wiser from conviction,
Fulfil each grand design.
I live to hail that season,
By gifted minds foretold,
When men shall rule by reason,
And not alone by gold;
When man to man united,
And every wrong thing righted,
The whole world shall be lighted
As Eden was of old.
I live for those who love me,
Whose hearts are kind and true,
For heaven that smiles above me,
And waits my spirit too;
For the cause that lacks assistance,
For the wrong that needs resistance,
For the future in the distance,
And the good that I can do.

Conversation with eight year old son

This conversation took place today (this is a much shortened form) with eight year old son.  He made his First Communion this year, and clearly took away a lot to think about from it.

Him - So, why did God make all the Greek gods like Zeus if he's the only God.
Me - Well, you have to think of it like a big jigsaw puzzle.  At different times in history, people found bits of the jigsaw and thought they had the whole picture.  But they all saw it differently.  The Ancient Greeks saw God in a different way.
Him - But didn't they know what the picture was?
Me - No - the jigsaw puzzle hadn't got a picture on the box.  So people put bits together, and got an idea of part of the picture.
Him - So what happened then?
Me - They all started fighting about it.
Him - That's really, really stupid.
Me - Yes.  People are.

I've got an infant theologian here.  My PP is convinced small son is a Jesuit in the making :)

What is a "liberal"?

Credit to the artist Paul Kinsella for this one :)