I am trying to find a prayer to the Holy Spirit like the "Come Holy Spirit" prayer, but for personal illumination before meditation.

Come Holy Spirit fill my thoughts with your wisdom and kindle in me the light of your truth.

The past two days I have been reflecting on the scripture readings this week. Each day they have started with a reading from the creation myth describing how God created everything. Then they have followed with Gospel readings in which Jesus performed healings. They seem to me to be leading to reliance upon God as the source of healing any malady including physical and mental disorders. The creation readings seem to be there for the purpose of supporting this trust and reliance by showing that God is powerful enough to create all things therefore powerful enough to heal.

I was particularly moved by Thursday's Gospel in which a woman asks for healing and Jesus at first declines because she was not Jewish and worse yet she was from a very marginalized class of people. And then worse yet he declines in a very disparaging way saying that it is not right to give the food of the children (israel) to the dogs (her people). But she has so much faith that she retorts that she is willing to take the scraps that fall from the table.

This was pretty shocking, I didn't get it, was Jesus really calling her people dogs?!

I had to look up some teaching on the reading and I instantly got it. This was a test of faith or a demonstration of real faith. His statement was meant to mimic the cruelty of the world. Jesus was using this hyperbole as a tool to give the woman the opportunity to show real, humble, pervasive, unshakable, faith in the face of grave difficulty and obstacles.

This morning we made it to mass although we were a little late. This kids behaved much better and best of all they were cognizant of doing better. During communion I could swear that i felt the presence of many angels around me as I sat in meditation. I remembered my experience of last week and realized that i had forgotten it all week. I realized that is one reason why I need to be at mass every week because I will forget.

We read about the leper that Jesus healed. I thought about how Leprosy was the most incurable, frightening, and marginalized disease of it's time. I thought of how diseases like cancer and AIDS are the incurable and frightening diseases today. I thought about how AIDS patients are very marginalized today so it fits that description. But I thought about how belief in God has the power to guide the diseased through the grave difficulties and obstacles that they face. I thought of God's power to heal even these most incurable and frightening diseases. I might be one of those healings; I should have HIV and I should have Hep B.

I also thought of how God's power can heal the fear and disordered judgmental ism of those who would ostracize the diseased.

I thought of how addiction and alcoholism fit the description of the leprosy of today also.

After mass i got to go to the treatment center for the H&I 12 step meeting. On the way I couldn't settle on a topic. As I drove down the long country roads I asked the Holy Spirit for guidance and resolved to clear my mind for a bit and let Go show me. I saw some birds ahead, they were big black buzzards all feeding on a carcass. Then I saw a bird of prey swooping down in a field for a fresh kill. Then I saw a beautiful, dignified hawk soaring above.

The meeting went well but at the end a couple of guys spoke up at the end as I was trying to close. One tried to address what another had previously asked about fear of having money and relapsing. I had already answered how i handle it but this guy told him his experience of giving his money to his sponsor who controlled a bank account for him among other things. I found myself mincing words to be brief and in the interest of closing the meeting. But I wish that I had been more resolute in stating that I don't believe in that practice because I believe that undermines reliance upon God.

Another thing happened when a couple of guys thanked me profusely and then went on to specify that it was because i had said that it was ok to get sober for you kids or your wife. They said that they had argued with others in sessions who said that they had to want it for themselves. Again I hesitated to be clear about this and to say that those who say you have to want it for yourself are not wrong but that those who are doing it for their family members are not necessarily wrong either. And also that doing it for them is possibly a form of doing it for themselves if we believe ourselves to be one with them and the disease concept describes that it engulfs the lives of those close to the sufferers.

The main thing that I needed to clarify is that my experience was that a large part of the time I wasn't doing it for me I was doing it for them but I was doing it and it work as long as I kept doing it. And in a short time I wanted it for me.

Today I noticed that my wife and I are less hesitant to disagree and argue lately. I realized that I believe that we now trust that we will not remain angry with each other. I should consider that I am slipping back into the idea that anger is a luxury that I can afford, I cannot.

Thanks be to God for a great day and a great weekend.