GOOD MORNING

Officially it isn't morning any more but that is just a technicality.  It is 12:07 and it still feels like 6 AM so to me it is still morning.
Today is the first Friday of the month. That only means something if you are Catholic and over the age of 55. Because it is the first Friday of September Ger and I decided to get our lazy bones out of bed and get to the 8:30 AM mass. That means getting up at 7:45 at the latest and hustling our bones out the door by 8:15. First Friday mass is when our church has Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. In other words, it is a chance to sit and visit with God in the form of the Eucharist, or host. (Or for all you non Catholics, the piece of bread, that we believe has been transformed into the body, blood, soul and divinity of God, is put on display for all to visit.)
It is no easy task for Ger or I to get our butts out of bed before 9:00 these days.  I often have trouble making it up before 10 so 7:45 is off the charts for me. A few years ago H and I had been going to mass each day. Then we got lazier and lazier and now are just starting to try to get ourselves back to mass at least one day during the week. I do love daily mass and I do miss it but that old Devil loves to whisper in my ear that I am soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo  tired, I need to go back to sleep. What 's one more day of not going to mass?  But this morning we moaned and groaned and off we went. Father Paul said the mass today and that alone is an adventure. Father Paul is Vietnamese and although he is supposedly in his late 40's early 50's you would think he was about 16 years old. There are bits of stories we have heard about this priest's life in Vietnam and his escape to Hong Kong. He was jailed for years before he was able to come to the US. He will often talk, (in his very very broken English) about how Jesus was ALWAYS with him during his earlier years and how he never felt alone when in prison. It sort of makes you stop and wonder about all we take for granted in our lives. We Americans are just so spoiled that we don't even see all the blessings we have. Just the fact that we have 3 pharmacies and 4 grocery stores within 2 miles of our house is something that we don't even think twice about. It isn't until a hurricane or some such natural disaster hits us that we even think about our electric and water, the 2 cars in our drive way and the house with a pool that we just accept as part of our lives.
I think that once a day we should all stop for a second and think about how Blessed we are. And don't forget to say THANK YOU for those blessings. Your thank you can be in any form you want . . . Just the thought that you ARE blessed is a start.