I like reading. I like books. I like traveling.
These all broaden the mind, open our awareness to things outside ourselves. I've been blessed with the opportunity to live and travel in so many places. I believe my life experience as a child helped me understand the dogmas and practices of life and the difference between them.
In the Catholic Church we have dogmas, those Truths given by God which we cannot change, and practices, those patterns established to help us in our journey with God, which can change. Jesus is God. This is a Truth the Church cannot change. Abstaining from meat on Friday is a practice the Church did change in view of our changing culture. The abstinence was meant to be a small, finite sacrifice in commemoration of and communion with the infinite sacrifice Jesus made for us. As many people are vegetarian or don't care for meat, and another large group would flock to fine seafood restaurants of a Friday evening, the Church shifted the letter of the law to match the spirit of the law. We are now asked to make meaningful sacrifice of our own choosing on Fridays.
In life we also have those dogmas and practices. No matter where the playground was, we were expected to take turns and play fair. No matter where we were, we were expected to be polite to the grown-ups. We did our homework, we respected other people's belongings, we apologized when we caused hurt, we made time for God and church.
But I also learned the flexibility of practices. At one school we all learned from the same page, at another we moved at our own pace. One scout group might be more experience oriented while another was more badge oriented. One church was modern, concrete, removable chairs while another had paintings, statuary, bas-relief, gold filigree to raise our spirits to the Good, the True and the Beautiful. None of these were right or wrong. They were different paths to a desired end.
And all of this reflection is because I like reading, I like books, I like travel. So when my husband and I built our house we included a library.
I couldn't find the book I wanted so I catalogued them on librarything.com and Dewey decimaled the spines. I wanted encouragement to read more of my books so I joined a few challenges on librarything. The 50 states challenge has this really cool map of the states where you can visually document which states you've "visited" through books. And I wanted some place to put the map of the states I have visited for real. So here is the cause of this post:
And after all that the code didn't work on this page to generate the map. 😥 So I found another site, let's see if this works:
YAY! It worked.
Unintentionally left blank
And after all that the code didn't work on this page to generate the map. 😥 So I found another site, let's see if this works:
YAY! It worked.
For the rest, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever honorable, whatever just, whatever holy, whatever lovable, whatever of good repute, if there be any virtue, if anything worthy of praise, think upon these things.
Phillipians 4:8
