disclosure and discovery

Since the Fast has begun I am finding myself awake- before the sun has made its way to my side of the world- and watching much too much television while I wait for the rest of the town to drink their first cup of coffee and catch up on the morning.
It is a little bit disconcerting that during this month of spiritual renewal, with the physical sacrifices of food and sleep that I am happily making, I find myself filling such a large part of my time with bad MTV reality television.
The time of fasting is a time to refocus our spiritual selves, and reconsecrate our physical and spiritual beings. So here I am writing, in an effort to harness my focus and draw myself away from the frighteningly addicting world of tasteless television- and because of a convincing post my friend recently made in his inspiring blog.
I have chosen two tools to help me thwart MTV and make my life my own again.
Tool one is blogging; tool two is a book called Sacred Moments by Linda Kavelin Popov.
This book has faithfully followed me-or been dragged along- to various countries and cities throughout the world; but in half the places I hardly open it. It is a book of virtues. It contains fifty-two virtues, one for each week of the year, so each day has a couple of inspiring quotes or insightful thoughts on a specific virtue.
So I am going to use the book to focus on a virtue and then blog about the way that it has affected me and then because I will feel obligated to blog about it I will actually do it and not just sit on this ridiculously soft and kooshy and comfortable sofa and watch channel 100 (yeah thats MTVcanada).
Todays virtue is compassion. And um, I guess that I don't really have anything to say about that yet because, all I have done today is eaten some food, done the dishes and watched a few episodes of the Real World- busted. Although I could without a doubt comment on the lack of compassion that the individuals in the Real World house have for each other. Is that backbiting?
Hm.
Well so instead of that, in striving to live my day with more compassion I will keep the following quote in mind:

"To "listen" another's soul into a condition of disclosure and discovery may be almost the greatest service that any human being performs for another." - Douglas V. Steere