Santa Matt's ramblings

Mom to Mom Sales! This morning my two daughters went to the Mom to Mom sale at our church. (Even though only one of them is a mom, they like to do things together. Sisters, go figure.) Anyway, Angela took 20 boxes of children clothes, most of it from preemie through 2T. She also had assorted baby furniture, cribs, high chairs that sort of thing, all of the stuff one gathers when one has twins. She also brought two little picnic tables her husband Ralph had made. Angela priced every article of clothing she had a 25 cents. She gave boxes of stuff to Heartbeat (who collects infant needs for mothers who need help and choose life over abortion). All of the big stuff was in a consignment area. The doors opened at 8:00AM and people were lined up to get the bargains. By 10:00AM all of Angela's furniture was sold. At one point a mom and her little girl were shopping and the little girl wanted some Elmo shoes sized for a preemie. Her mom told her, "They won't fit you." To which...

I got up at 6:30 am and if you know me, that is unheard of on the weekend. But I got up and went down to the First Presbyterian Church, met my daughter so we could help serve breakfast. I poured milk and juice into cups and lined them up on the serving line so the guests could pick one up as they went by. Besides hot food, cereal and an assortment of baked goods were also served. So when the guests arrived and passed through the line sometimes I would help them carry their breakfast to their table. I don't know what I expected as far as who would be there. I met obvious street people, those who have been homeless for an extended period of time. And I met the poor, people that had a place to stay some nicer clothes that maybe just needed a little help with their groceries. I met a group of what were obviously construction workers. They still wore parts of their work clothes, out of work and few prospects. And I met the lonely. Once the guests had gone through the line, the workers w...

So I'm sitting in church and I am thinking about Marie, a friend of mine. A couple of years ago I went to, for lack of a better term, a religious retreat called Cursillo. After I had made my Cursillo, I started attending prayer and sharing sessions with other cursillistas, among them was Marie. I knew Marie from around church but I wouldn't have called us friends. But over the course of many months we have become friends and for some reason, listening to her witness about her faith and her responses to my witness has become important to me. I can not fathom why what she shares should seem more important to me but it seems it is. So while I am sitting in church, pondering this realization, I begin to think of all of the people that have had a major influence on my spiritual life. At the age of 12 I would walk to the church down the road, there I met Richie Massey. His friendship was my first contact with the spiritual. My next spiritual guide was without a doubt the biggest infl...

So I'm reading this little meditation prayer book about the birth of Christ and today's message ended with look back on some of the times and ways God has blessed me. And as I thought about that for a minute I gave a little chuckle. Remember my blessings? Remember every meal I ever ate, every present I ever received? Remember every person I have ever met, whether I liked them or not? Remember every embrace of my wife? Everytime I held one of my children, my grandchildren or any child? Remember every time I was held as a child? Remember the people who have loved me and who I have loved? Remember the beauty and grandeur of the things I have seen as I travel the world, huge mountains, thunderous water falls, lushious forests, a perfect flower. Remember snow and rain and wind, the southern sky and the sweep of the Milky Way. These are just some of my blessing, blessings to many to count or remember all, in my limited humanity. No, my problem isn't in appreciating all of the thi...

Earlier this week, Mrs. Santa and I decided to have a day to ourselves. So we set up plans and started Saturday morning with the glorious task of mowing the lawn. Once that was done we hopped into our mini-van and headed for Frankenmuth Michigan. We had planned a day of geocaching, shopping and a nice dinner. For those that may not know, geocaching is using a GPS receiver to locate caches. They may be an actual cache like an old ammo can containing a logbook and trinkets or a virtual cache where you go and observe something and then log it on line. I have a Tom tom bluetooth GPS. This is a receiver only and talks to my Nokia internet tablet. I use Maemo Mapper to display maps controlled by the Tom tom. We used this to get close, to navigate the roads. I also have a Garmin ForeTrex 101 which we would use walking to actually locate the cache. We drove into Frankenmuth from the south end. We stopped at Bronner's for our first cache. Now Mrs. Claus and I had been talking about geocachi...

A friend of mine related this story to me. He doubted it was true, as do I but it is a good story none the less. There was a woman who was very active in her Catholic church. Her specialty was organizing meals. It didn't matter, funeral luncheon, pot luck or a fund raising dinner, she was there to make it happen. And after each meal she would announce to everyone, "Keep your fork for desert." as the dishes were cleaned away. Well she died and when she was layed out in her casket, instead of holding a rosary as is the Catholic custom, she was holding a fork. Everyone noticed this and some would smile remembering her announcing at each meal, "Save your fork for desert." Some people thought it was in bad taste. And a great many people were just puzzled. When the time for the sermon came at her Funeral Mass, Father commented, "Some of you may have noticed she was layed out with a fork rather than a rosary as is our custom. This was at her request in her final w...

Life is like a really good mystery movie. We start out with no clue as to what is going on. But little by little we learn things and the solution becomes clearer and clearer. As we progress through the movie and more of the plot is revealed we get excited, we want to know all of the answers to our questions. Was the butler really polishing the silver? Was that God that answered my prayers and helped me get that job? Was the poison really in his coffee? Is there a heaven and will I be welcome? Watching the movie we have our theories. We start to pick out suspects based on the revealed clues. In life we have our faith, our beliefs, based on what religion has revealed to us. But right up to the moment the clever hero or heroine gets the confession from the murderer, we are waiting for one more plot twist. And right up to the moment we die, we will have questions. Is there life after death? Did I pick the right church? What will happen to me? What did God mean by that revelation? As we wat...