Credit Stuff

So I've been out having my mini-dark night of the soul and now it sorta feels like the night is giving way to the pre-dawn light. In the meantime, many thanks for your patience and continued perseverance as I gather my thoughts for a real post. Also in the meantime, some good websites that may help your credit and/or sanity:

Get a free annual credit report from all three credit reporting agencies here: www.annualcreditreport.com.

Choose to opt out (forever if you'd like!) from prescreened junk mail here: www.optoutprescreen.com.

And if you haven't already done so, register your phone numbers on the FTC's Do Not Call list here: www.donotcall.gov.

Enjoy! :-)

Blessings & Peace,
Hugo

Dark Night of the Soul

So I received a gentle prompt from kc, on my previous post, so here comes a more personal post then I may have posted before:

I received a request from a parish in my area to do a confirmation retreat for them.

[Theological note - feel free to skip: Confirmation is one of the sacraments Catholics celebrate - it is the continuation & fulfillment of Baptism and it "confirms" a person's choice to live a Catholic-Christian life. Along with baptism and Eucharist it serves as one of the sacraments of initiation into the Catholic faith. In other words, you're not quite fully Catholic [and that's not quite fully accurate but it'll serve for the purposes of this post] until you've celebrated these three sacraments. In my diocese Confirmation is celebrated usually in a person's sophomore year in high school.]

I've done several confirmation retreats over the course of the last several years. I tend to focus on similar areas: the connection between baptism and confirmation; the responsibility to know about your faith (orthodoxy); the responsibility to practice your faith (orthopraxis); the importance of a regular prayer life, regular time with Scripture, and regular service to others; community building (via games, icebreakers, challenge-course like activities, etc.); and times of prayer, introspection and reflection, either in small groups, alone, or as a large group. I've done confirmation retreats that lasted four hours and some that have lasted a weekend.

Here is an edited reproduction of what I wrote back:

(-- Begin email reproduction --)
Even more than that, though, I'm not sure if I feel up to doing youth retreats anymore . . . I'm not sure why, but the last several ones I've done I haven't felt as if I'm up to the task. Let me explain - I think technically I'm up to it - I have the knowledge, I have the skills, I've got some good tricks up my sleeve . . . but I don't know if I have the passion to do them that I once did. Even more then that, though, I don't know if I have the zeal to do them anymore . . . I sometimes feel that my practice of Catholicism has lost it's soul, like I'm only going through the motions . . . like I *know* what to do, but that's where it ends- I only do it because I know how to, but not because I really want to.

The other part of it is that I want more time @ home . . . the more I feel adrift in my faith at times, the more I want to stay @ home, spend time with my family, read, work in the yard, etc. I feel like I need to be more grounded in my life (my home life, my domestic parish) and in my Christianity (both in my own knowledge and in my practice of my prayer life/spirituality) so that I can be more grounded in my faith, if that makes sense.

Please keep me in your prayers as I traverse this mini-dark night of my soul.
(-- End email reproduction --)

Blessings & Peace,
Hugo