Some web browsing..........

A roundup of some online articles that caught our eye during the last while:

• Tim Muldoon reflects how after 18 years of marrige he is still surprised by joy  - "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction." It's a sentiment that helps me understand why the Church came to see marriage as a sacrament, for it points to a God whose love is a constant refreshment of the daily life that has sustained our marriage over the years".
• Continuing the marrige related articles, Simcha Fisher has a few thoughts on how Sometimes a Candle is just a candle.
• Deacon Greg reflects on 25 years of marrige - "In forgetting that a marriage creates "one flesh," we may weaken our ability to weather storms. "When you're walking down that aisle on your wedding day, you don't see the Stations of the Cross." - What does the marrige want?
• Over at PrayTell they pull together a summary of a number of recent articles about the proper interpretation of the Second Vatican Council.
• Anthony Lilles over at Beginning to Pray has a thought provoking reflection on the need to Make time to be alone with the Alone.
• Continuing the theme of silence and the need to make "space" for the Divine in our lives, Carl McColman reflects on Simplicity, Silence, Stillness, Solitude.
• Scott Cairns has a short piece over at the Huffington Post about The Unceasing Prayer of Mount Athos: A short trip to the edge. 
• The World Community for Christian Mediatation have a series of podcasts from Sarah Bachelard reflecting on Experiencing God in a Time of Crisis.
• The Anchoress reflects on the Ego V Meatless Fridays.
• Pat Gohn reflects on the Fullness of Easter, Faces of Grace - The graces given in baptism change us and give a new identity, and successive sacraments later in life confirm and strengthen it. All these sacraments echo again and again: we are children of God. We are loved!
• Whispers in the Loggia reports on the Pope of the Moon: In historic linkup Benedict XVI talks to space.
• Archbishop Martin says that Catholics not passing on faith to young people.
• Gobekli Tepe - We used to think agriculture gave rise to cities and later to writing, art, and religion. Now the world’s oldest temple suggests the urge to worship sparked civilization.
• Mark O'Shea notes that some people become Catholic because the Church is a communion of sinners and slobs who are losers, oddballs, factory rejects, and broken dunderheads who can’t tell their butt from a hole in the ground and who have messed up their lives so badly that they know only God can save them. They don’t know from nothing about liturgical fussbudgetry, high theology, ecclesial politics, or all the obsessions that preoccupy us here in the hothouse of Catholic cyberspace - There ain't no pure church.
• Ron Rolheiser reflects on how there are more ways than one in which our belief system can be unbalanced so as to do harm to God and to the church.