Lots of Love, Links, and a Thought

The love:

I owe a lot of love, cheering, and a debt of gratitude for my nifty new web design to Dorian Speed of Convolare Design. She has spent more time than she should have dealing with my idiosyncracies, and here we are.

Isn’t that header pretty? And nice? And lovely? And…homey?

She used my actual window for that header. That’s what I see in my backyard. The plan is to update it with the seasons. And maybe I’ll find a way to insert a horse and some kids back there…

I do hope you’ll click through and see the whole new look. I’m still unpacking a few proverbial boxes, figuring out where things fit and all of that. She picked a theme that’s more mobile friendly, which I love.

I love Dorian, period. She was great to work with, did fabulous work, and I can’t recommend her highly enough. She also designed our parish website and does the full gamut of web design work.

You get her sense of humor for no extra charge. (I think it’s worth paying for, myself.)

The links:

Mary can be our Valentine, and that’s just what I consider in the latest Mary Moment on iPadre.

I’m app-happy, in case you hadn’t noticed, but I’m also fed up with ugly in apps. So I gave in to my desire and let loose on a call for beauty in apps in my Tech Talk column at CatholicMom.com.

I’ve asked myself for years if blogging has to lead to podcasting, and inspired by a conversation, I dive into that topic this week in my column at the Catholic Writers Guild blog.

There’s a great new prayer book for children available from the people who brought us our very tattered and loved-to-pieces Beginner’s Bible. My rave review is over at CatholicMom.com.

The folks at the Behold Conference (see you there?) invited me to guest post, and so there I am, talking about the importance of girlfriends.

Leaving you with this thought:

I found this in yesterday’s Magnificat (which I read through the app and which I so love), and I wanted to share it with you.

The danger of Catholicism is its power to help. It is a faith that even to those who do not believe seems to carry with it comfort and reality. Yet it is not wise to come to the Catholic Church because you need comfort. It is never wise to join any cause or any ideal for what one can make out of it or get out of it. We should come in for what we can give…

I think that the best thing of all is your devotion to our Lord. It is to give ourselves to him that we must come. It must be under the inspiration of his unselfishness, of his service to God in man and of man in God, that we seek to join ourselves to him: there were those who followed because they had been fed in the wilderness. This wasn’t enough. “Signs and wonders” are not good enough proofs; the only great proof is that people have followed him down narrow lanes and over uneven paths and wearing thorns and carrying their cross. It is along that line then that you must pray that he would help you to give yourself to him, patiently, indeed serenely. You won’t then bother about arguing or the need of it. You will just follow where he leads you, sure that all will be well: “Be not solicitous.” For the past, remember his injunction to let the dead bury their dead; for the future, remember that the morrow, so he said, would take care of itself. All that’s to be done is to hold oneself in the Everlasting Arms or rather be held by them. The rest is peace that comes of having nothing left.

- Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.