Today is “Opening Day” in baseball. The boys of summer are back….even if summer is not quite here and the hockey season is just entering the playoffs. And even though the 2nd Sunday of Easter is still weeks away and with it the story of “doubting Thomas” I thought it good to merge baseball and “doubting Thomas” into a post. We actually, I will let Fr. Dan O’Reilly doing the talking, Enjoy.
The NCAA Men’s and Women’s “Final Four” is upon us. The men’s final is filled with teams that no one expected would reach this pinnacle of college sports. Well, I can’t say “no one.” Of the more than 20 million brackets that were filled in on the NCAA website, only six predicted the exact set of finalist. OK… so, almost no one – .00003 percent
Tonight, right after sunset, on the western horizon, we have an opportunity to see five planets align near the moon: Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Uranus, and Mars. The near alignment will stretch from the horizon to about halfway up the night sky, but it should be noted that Mercury and Jupiter will fairly quickly dip below the horizon and out of sight. Local sunset here in Northern Virginia near the Potomac River will be 7:29 pm (7:45 pm in Tampa).
Venus will be the brightest with Mars and its reddish glow located near the moon. Mercury and Uranus will be harder to spot depending on your local night sky and “city glow.” Binoculars might help. Uranus casts a bit of a green glow and will be just above Venus.
There was an interesting article that appeared in this past week’s news. It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Ben Barnes said his mentor, former Texas governor, John B. Connally, Jr was determined to prevent. Continue reading
Admittedly this is a post that might appeal to but a narrow slice of readership. It is all about NCAA Men’s swimming championships. Last night I was able to watch the first evening finals which consisted of the 200 yard medley relay and the 800 freestyle relay. I can babble about the amazing swims, but take my word for it…. amazing. For me the most amazing was the anchor leg of the Arizona State 800 relay: Leon Marchand. Marchand is from France and swims for Bob Bowman, Michael Phelp’s coach, and is the best swimmer in the world. In the Paris 2024 Olympics he will be the next multi-gold winner.
He anchored the 2nd place ASU relay (Texas was the winner with a new NCAA and American record). This might not mean a lot to the average reader of this blog, but his split for a 200 yard freestyle was 1:28.42…. holy guacamole. How fast is that? … it is fast. At the pool where I swim (and remain a legend in my own mind….) the average lap swimmer will cover 25 yards in about 30 seconds – and those are the better ones. That means they will have covered 75 yards in about the same amount of time as Marchand swam 200 yards.
At his Pac-12 conference championships he set an NCAA record in the 200 yard breaststroke and 400 individual medley and he wasn’t fully tapered and rested for that meet. Yikes!
The first reading today is a companion piece with yesterday’s first reading. The message of encouragement remains even as the prophet who speaks the word changes. A verse from the Gospel succinctly makes the point: “My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.” Continue reading
The previous post “What we know?” was part of my musings initiated by a video on YouTube. I was in the midst of preparing materials for our parish website, a feature called “Bible on the Back Porch.” The page tagline reads: “Reading, pondering and studying God’s Word is sometimes best done “on the back porch.” Each week we will try to offer something for you and your ‘back porch time.’” People are busy and in my area, have long commutes, families, and sometimes in-person bible studies are just not possible. But they can find 20 minutes at home if something is available online. Hence the back porch project. Continue reading
Whatever one thinks of the uses of digital media (or the misuses) it has lived up to the minimal promise of connecting the world. Each year internet access expands, devices to connect become more accessible – still lots of room to go to achieve the full possibilities of a connected world. Continue reading
In today’s first reading we hear from the Prophet Ezekiel. It is from the end of his prophetic writings and there is a lot of “water under bridge” that has led to this amazing vision of a new temple being the source of restorative and living water that is so inevitable, so powerful, that even the Dead Sea valley will be restored. The language used echoes that of the story of creation from the Book of Genesis. Continue reading
Here in the shadow of national Pi Day, it is a week in which to explore the world of numbers! What is your favorite number? What numbers are fascinating? What numbers are boring? You can’t tell me that the graphic above isn’t just as interesting as can be. Not only is it fascinating, I am equally intrigued by the person who spotted the sequence. Continue reading
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