"Be the Echo" - Abraham Alarcon's Blog

Its a busy time. The holidays evoke in me many feelings of nostalgia, joy, sadness, nervousness among others. Its also flu season and children and adults get sick and they pass it along. As an educator, I need to be wise, keep watch and stick to things that help me stay happy and healthy.  Here is my holiday plan: Mangu (Dominican breakfast) 1. Listen to my body . If I am hungry I will eat. If I am tired, I rest. If I am sick, I will take the day off to recover.  If I need to move, I will dance and/or exercise.  I must take care of myself so I can be effective everyday.  2. Watch what I watch . Along with "fake" news and silly distractions on social media, I need to be wise to monitor where and how I spend my time. With so many demands, I can't participate in every chat or click on every app and connect. I will make the time when I can but I watch what I watch. I am better because of it.  Looking up from my school. ...

Boys don’t cry. I was raised with this mindset. As a young boy, I always heard my mother tell a story of how my older brother was bullied in the third grade. She saw him cry and forced him to go back to the school and fight the bully. He did and he won. I never saw my brother cry while I was a kid or as a young man. By the way, my father wasn’t around long enough for me to see much of anything let alone him show this kind of emotion.  The only time I saw my brother cry was when I entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1998. Having made the decision to discern God’s calling, men who identify with the charism of St. Ignatius of Loyola , apply and get accepted into a two year, let’s call it, training period. Here they live, pray and serve while they see how God’s graces develop in their lives. Men enter a novitiate to see if this new lifestyle of serving God and others and living in community is for them. Men focus on things that bring them closer to God and   detach from worldl...