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Thanks for Calling

>> Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Today's guest post is written by Holly from FALLING UPWARD.
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My daughter is 21 months old now and is developing a particular attachment to all the “tools” I use in my day-to-day life. It’s interesting to see how her little eyes perceive what things define a person.  My keys, shoes, purse and sunglasses spend more time donning her little mop-top self than my own. 
 
I’m somewhat ashamed to confess this next little slice of our life.  She thinks my phone is actually called a “Holly” and not a “Phone.”  I gather this comes from the fact that I work from home and during business hours am answering the phone, “Hello, this is Holly.”  Either way, she picks it up and carries it around, calling it her “Holly.”  When the phone rings, her eyes light up,  her mouth falls open and she starts running in circles with excitement screaming, “Holly, Holly, Holly!!!”  I’ve tried replacing my phone with her Elmo phone, but after one or two conversations with Elmo, she’s back to wanting the real deal.
 
In some ways, it’s flattering to see her put on my sunglasses, my shoes and pick up the keys while she’s tossing the diaper bag across her body and saying, “Ok, bye bye, see you.”  She always does so with a smile and then puckers up for a goodbye kiss.  I’m not sure if I should be proud of the fact I must always leave the house with a kiss and hug, or if I should feel shame over appearing so very happy while I am LEAVING my home!
 

Like so many things do, witnessing this everyday brings me to a spiritual reflection.  Is this how I appear in the eyes of God?  Trying so very hard to impress him with my faith and knowledge as I stumble around, trying my very best to imitate the example He gave me as the perfect mother: Mary? 
 
The thought that the amusement I get from the sight of my daughter doing these things could be similar to how God views my attempts at faith, piety and prayer makes me blush.  It also humbles me, and warms my heart.  Child-like joy in beautiful.  I guess it isn’t so bad to entertain the possibility I could still possess it.
 
However, I look in the eyes of God, I will continue to “put on” Christ, because that is what I believe He calls me to do.  The way in which I so seriously do it may be a bit off the mark, but just like my daughter, I will do it with the best of intentions – and a smile.
 
I must always answer the call.  Oftentimes, it’s Elmo, but sometimes, it’s God. 
 
Have you ever thought about how you look in the eyes of God?

Holly can be found blogging at FALLING UPWARD.

photo by LuRoGo ®

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New Blog Roll Members: December 21, 2009

>> Monday, December 21, 2009

Welcome to our newest blog roll members!

The Magnolia Cul-de-Sac

Laborare Est Orare

Lest I Forget

I hope that all of our members have a very Merry Christmas! 

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Catholic Media Group

>> Thursday, December 10, 2009

I have recently heard about Catholic Media Group, and thought I would pass the information along, since many of our readers are bloggers, and some businesses.

Here is what Mark (the founder of Catholic Media Group) has to say about Catholic Media Group
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Our ad network is similar to how other ad networks work, but with some differences in the sense that we're really trying to make this a *Catholic* ad network -- and not just in the sense that Catholics our niche market.

We want to focus on giving a voice to groups with a mission of evangelizing the teachings of the Catholic Church and focus on sharing our earnings with faithful Catholic groups (we consider it a Catholic kind of profit sharing!).

For publishers like yourself we will be featuring the following:

- 50% earnings -- you get 50% of what advertisers are paying for the ads that appear on your website. The remaining 50% that we take in goes to cover our costs such as servers, network bandwidth, recruiting new advertisers, and most importantly, charity. At least 10% of our profits will be given away to faithful Catholic groups. So if an advertiser pays $2 for an ad and it runs on your website, you get $1 in earnings. That's more competitive than many ad networks out there. We want to make this worth it for our website publishers. Our goal is not to maximize our own revenue (which is every other ad network's mission), but instead to create a Catholic alternative to traditional online advertising networks. And being Catholic means creating a community that is fair to all involved.

- Payments to website publishers made monthly via PayPal (we're considering other payment options, but to start with will be PayPal only)

- Minimum of 10% of our profits donated to faithful Catholic groups. Your running of ads on your website using our ad network contributes to charitable giving to Catholic groups! How great is that?!

- We take the hassle away from you for finding advertisers that appeal to your audience (faithful Catholics). That's our niche!

- Website publishers who join early on will get a free ad to go into rotation on our ad network.

- Multiple ad varieties. You can choose what size ad to display and where it gets placed on your own site. It's as easy as copying and pasting a snippet of HTML for each type of ad you want placed on your website.

- No commitment. Stop running ads at any time.

- Advertisers and each ad go through a review process to ensure the advertiser and the ad/product/service being advertised are morally and ethically acceptable from the perspective of teachings of the Catholic Church. Our website publishers need not be concerned that ads they are displaying could be questionable. If there is any doubt, we choose not to run the ad or at the first sign something is morally or ethically unacceptable we immediately stop running an ad. This is an area we consider a competitive advantage over other online advertising networks.

- Each website that wants to run ads goes through a review process to ensure it appeals to our core audience of faithful Catholics. Our publishing network is very important to us to keep focused on our intended audience of faithful Catholics.

- Our initial launch will allow your web site to display a random selection of ads from our ad inventory.

- After the initial launch we are also planning on adding email newsletter advertising options and allowing advertisers to buy dedicated ad spaces on specific web sites.

Hopefully this sounds like something you might be interested in. Feel free to reply to me directly at with any questions as they come up.

I'll continue to post updates to our blog -- so keep an eye on that.

Have a blessed Advent season,

-Mark

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