How Can I Lift Thee, Let Me Count The Ways

The Cuba Study Group is a

These are actual headlines:

• 10/14/10 - Twitter’s Glitch: An Opportunity for Cuba and the U.S.
• 10/04/10 - A New Release of Political Prisoners in Cuba
• 09/28/10 - Ease travel to Cuba, help spur reform
• 
  

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A Long Life?

We all want a long life right? I'm torn between the views of Woody Allen and Thomas à Kempis:

• Allen: ... life is full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, ... and it's all over much too quickly.
• Kempis: What good is it to live a long life when we amend that life so little? Indeed, a long life does not always benefit us, but on the contrary, frequently adds to our guilt. Would that in this world we had lived well throughout one single day. Many count up the years they have spent in religion but find their lives made little holier. If it is so terrifying to die, it is nevertheless possible that to live longer is more dangerous. Blessed is he who keeps the moment of death ever before his eyes and prepares for it every day.

The Nobel Prize awarded in Literature to Mario Vargas Llosa.

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Short Story

He'd always admired logical people. We tend to admire that which we lack. Logical was good, logical should have meant no regrets. So being logical about his faith had brought him to this point.

The point of life was to love and serve God. God is best served through service to our fellow man, the least among us the better. We know from experience that we as humans will sin despite our best intentions. God gives us the sacrament of reconciliation so that we can achieve or return to a state of grace.

But that always struck him as a bizarrely unsatisfactory arrangement. Let me get this straight, he thought, we basically play musical chairs with our eternal salvation. Knowing that we will sin and knowing that death comes like a thief in the night, how do we sleep at night? Most of us sleep just fine. The next thought hit him hard. Those who sleep well at night do so because they don't really believe. They don't really believe in Hell. They have soft thoughts becasue they don't have the heart to see how badly they fail god on a daily basis. they avert their eyes from the truth of depth of their unbelief and then hope that god will have mercy upon their soles

Man that's not good enough. I mean seriously, if there's a God, a Heaven and Hell and the Bible is meant to be read, studied, meditated upon and mostly prayed over, - then 99% of the Catholics he knew, including himself were engaged in wishful, and frankly irresponsible and or negligent wishful thinking. he was on that road to. but something happened - he had a moement of, cant really call it grace - more like a clarity about a dream, which like remembering dreams he expected to fade away but it didn't - it came more and more into into focus as time passed

not to put to fine a point on it - but basically he needed to achieve a state of grace and hope to die - not suicide of course - but there are plenty of dangerous jobs out there

i mean to the extent we want to live, isnt t hat hedging our bets that the life we know here is it?

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