Peace and Good.

My name is Pat Groves.  Welcome to my web log.  Here you will find a few gifts that I have been meaning to share with you and the rest of the world before I lose them, or forget them or the house burns down.

Alberto Masferrer

Alberto Masferrer   (1868 – 1932)   is a writer from El Salvador whose works I began translating while living there for a year in 1988-89.  This tab offers samples of his wise writing, a chronology of his life and my appreciation of his lifeworks.      

Translations of six of his books are featured on my other web log:  Albertomasferrer.com.

The First Friends of God has chapters from my story of the origins of the Secular Franciscan Order, using both fact and fiction to envision the contributions of five actual lay friends of St. Francis to the creation of a Secular Rule of Life.

La Papessa is a summary of the first half of The Franciscan in the
Tarot:  La Papessa Re-Veiled. This is my reevaluation of the historical personage who inspired the first La Papessa Trump Card.  Because she wears the habit of a Poor Clare nun, and her order in the Tarochi series is that of Trump to the Emperor, I suggest she represents St. Agnes of Bohemia, who in 1234 refused the marriage offer of Frederick II, in order to become a Poor Lady.

There is a photo blog for my 90+ year old  MOM which has personal pictures for her to enjoy, including multiple shots of our new kittens Ted and Bill.  You are welcome to look in here, Pilgrim, but please remember you are on someone else’s sacred grounds, right Mom?

                 REST IN PEACE, MOM.  March 9, 2012.

The Songbook has some of my songs and psalms, with audio and lead sheets for piano, guitar and voice.

There is a reflection on music ministry in Music Within beginning with a song Prayer from our 1969 album, Sons of the Morning..

There is a gallery of Watercolors for your enjoyment as well as a second art gallery accompanying songs from our 1976 recording of  Before All Seasons at St. Elizabeth High School.

Ink Painting is a personal reflection on using painting in spirituality, East and West.

While this is admittedly an odd assortment of items, they are also unified in being gifts from one pilgrim soul to another.  And by soul I do not mean some ethereal, gauzy otherworldly entity inside us cracking the whip over our body like Ben-Hur cum chariot.

By soul I mean that barefoot pilgrim who walks hand in hand with the Self through every healing reverie and integrating dream we experience.

I learned about this kind of soul from Francis of Assisi who himself discovered it in the Gospel example of Jesus of Nazareth, that is to say, in Jesus as he was when he was alive:  the barefoot prophet, the non-judgmental teacher, the healing shaman, the inclusive layman, the son of man.

For the first 25 years of my adult life I was a Franciscan lay brother, who served as a Sacred Musician and Social Worker among the very poor.

On my silver anniversary as a Franciscan, I did not renew my monastic vows, but resolved instead to put into practice in the secular world all that I had been learning and teaching as a friar minor.

This decision was not based on dissatisfaction with the Friars but it was an acknowledgement that my Life Quest had arrived at a place neither Jesus nor Francis lived long enough to experience; a place of such radically revised self-estimation, that my Church still does not really understand it nor wholeheartedly support it.  I needed to accept myself as a Gay Catholic, moving out On Thin Ice with pride.  And at my age, no less!

So I did.   I became a Secular Franciscan and for the past 16 years I have been encouraging lay spiritual empowerment in both my Church and Queer Communities.

You can see how this is working out in the SAF VIDEO, and the  P*R*I*D*E tabs.  Still under construction are the Memoirs and Poems.tabs.

Alberto Masferrer once wrote:   My God I only ask You for this, increase in me Your own clarity; that moment by moment and hour by hour I may reflect Your holy power of love.”

I say, Amen.                                  –Pat Groves SFO

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P.S.  I’ve gotten several comments asking, “Where are your RSS feeds?   I don’t yet know what they are, where they are, or  why they aren’t working. My WP for Dummies says “The RSS feed for your WP bog posts is  autodiscoverable.” But I’m beginning to wonder.

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