Category Archives: Meanderings

Symbolism and Spirituality of Cleaning

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There is an inherent symbolic and spiritual aspect of cleaning.

Think about it.

Whether it’s dishes or laundry, you have a stack or pile of stuff that’s dirty. You submit them to a cleansing process and afterwards they are clean, free of anything and everything that soiled or dirtied them before.

Sort of like our souls before and after sacramental Confession. The graces of God that flow to us through the priest cleanse our souls, and make us as new as the day of our baptism.

There is also a therapeutic side to cleaning. You can mentally force a symbolism onto things laying about in a messy residence, weeds in a garden, or the pile of dirty clothes and stack of dishes. Each item that needs to be removed or cleaned off can represent a resentment, an envy or anger, or something bad that disconnects us from God and others. Imagine the resentment going away as things get more organized. As you forgive.

Thinking of cleaning in this manner is somewhat better than regarding it as a chore or drudgery.

Anyone that knows me is aware of a connection between my state of life and how well the apartment looks.

I’ve been doing a lot of cleaning and organizing lately.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

For your convenience

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I have added some tools to this blog make it more convenient to read and access.

If you scroll down the sidebar, you’ll notice that I’ve added links to enable you to add Sober Catholic to your customizable MyYahoo and Google pages. The same for a customizable MyCatholic.com page, but please bear in mind that MyCatholic.com doesn’t have a login service, so chances are you will not be using it from a public access computer. It remembers your settings by IP address and browser. Aside from that, it’s a great Catholic portal, enabling you to subscribe to up to 20 blog feeds, in addition to their own optional default feeds. You can also grab up to 20 links, great place to have all your morning daily perusal links.

You can also subscribe to sober Catholic via email, the link for that is in the Feedburner section of the sidebar. Whenever I add a post, you get an email.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Lent 2007

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I had a post marking the beginning of Lent, which starts tomorrow, but lost the whole thing during an edit. I took it calmly. Really. I shall attempt to re-write it tomorrow.

So instead, a small plea: If you are Catholic, please go to Mass tomorrow and receive the mark of ashes on your forehead. It is a wonderful sign of public witness to your Faith. It is a reminder to others that there are considerations besides the purely secular.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Mom

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Today, January 20, would have been my Mom’s 91st birthday. She died November 7th, 2005. Although she might have suspected that my Catholicism in the 1990’s was less than sincere, she never let on.

She watched EWTN a lot on TV. One thing she watched daily was the Divine Mercy Chaplet. (I’ve added a special collection of links in the sidebar so one can learn about Divine Mercy, in addition to a selection of EWTN links.)

She taught me to pray it and I believe that learning it was one of the crucial things that happened along the way in my return to the Catholic Church. This is in addition to the other things I told in my reversion story, but this was the single prayer I was proactive about and not just responding to any interior prompting of the Holy Spirit. This was when I engaged God and asked Him to help me, please.

I miss my Mom. I still use the rosaries she prayed the Chaplet on, and when I look at them I sense her. She told me numerous times that I was the primary reason she prayed the Chaplet.

Thanks Mom, Happy Birthday. It took many years, but you eventually saw me home.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)