De La Mennais Brothers: Making Jesus Christ better known and loved by young people

A lovely prayer for happiness I found here whilst preparing resources for our form teachers: Father, Please help me to rest in your happiness, To allow a smile to linger on my lips, To dwell within a wonderful memory, To walk back through sunlit places. Please help me to awake with hope, To engage with life in all its variety, To take in the beauty of others joys, To touch the souls of those I meet with thankfulness. Please help me to sing with faith, To carry the truth close in my heart always, To rejoice at new life and To have peace as I age. Please help me to indulge in love To breathe in the sweetness of intimacy, To taste the kindness of friendship, To feel the warmth of embrace. Please help me not to miss A single drop of heaven, To catch each moment And drink in the great joy of life. Amen.

An intesting article from Mike Donehey, lead singer/songwriter with Tenth Avenue North (used as part of a devotional Bible reading plan at YouVersion.com - check out their free Bible app). What Donehey says reminds me of the words of French philosopher Maurice Blondel when he talks about all our human desires ultimately being imperfect, human expressions of the one desire: our desire for union with God, a desire w hose satisfaction is the only thing that can break the cycle of human desire and bring us deep happiness and fulfilment (my own emphases in bold ). Here's a fan video for the song that inspired Donehey's words. Shadows I grew up thinking Jesus wanted to ruin my good time. No seriously. Everything I wanted to do, it seemed like Jesus was always telling me I couldn't. My friends would get drunk and party; I wasn't allowed. All the other kids were sleeping around. Jesus said I had to flee sexual immorality. When people wronged me it felt so good to be...

Here's a very interesting article from the BBC about age-related happinees and unhappiness. Seems to make a lot of sense, especially the link to the "glass half full" attitude, being able to see the positive in things and ignore the negative. ***************** When it comes to happiness, it seems that the young and the old have the secret. And it turns out what's true for humans is also true for our primate cousins, explains neuroscientist Tali Sharot. How does happiness change with age? Most people assume that as children we live a carefree existence, then we go through the miserable confusion of teenage years ("Who am I?") but regain happiness once we figure it all out and settle down, only to then grow grumpy and lonely with every additional wrinkle and grey hair. Well, this is utterly wrong. It turns out that happiness is indeed high in youth, but declines steadily hitting rock bottom in our mid-40s - midlife crisis, anyone? Then, miraculous...