This morning we had a good start and got to mass on time despite waking up later than I would have liked.

Today my wife and I noticed a behavioral issue with my autistic son.  Even thought this is a regression it made me grateful for the progress he has made.  I see this as a temporary condition.

In the afternoon I did some speech reading and received some very valuable insights into personal interaction and communication that have a great deal of value in the spiritual life.  I learned about the ladder of abstraction, the self-serving bias, the schema of attribution, personal constructs, and more.

In the evening I got to go to a meeting.  Afterward, I got to have a great talk with a good friend about our experiences in the spiritual life.  There was a point when I perceived a difference of faith principles.  This got me thinking and helped resolve a spiritual matter that had eluded me in the recent past.  It is a problem of attitude in talking to non-believers about Jesus Christ.  I have had an intuition that it is counter productive to use Jesus name to someone who bristles with antagonism. Instead I should speak of God in terms the person is open to hear.  I should seek and find unity of Truth with the person's faith or reason.  This might still cause them dissonance but it will be a productive small step towards Him.  I believe to preach the name of Jesus to the non-receptive person is to use the Lord's name in vain.  Both in the sense of futility and in self-serving motive.

I believe where we religious people go wrong is attaching conversion to our own ambitions.  When we need to be right so much that we demand it from others in the name of our religion we actually drive the potential convert away and we separate ourselves from God. 

Thanks be to God.