The Third Sorrowful Mystery of Our Lady: The Losing of Jesus for Three Days
The irony that this mystery immediately precedes the Joyful Mystery of Finding Jesus in the Temple puts something of a twist on the word - Joyful. Perhaps immense relief works as well.
As a parent who lost track of a child for a relatively short period of time, it is almost impossible to grasp the stress of the three days. And yet, I know of parents whose child has never been found. The deep wound has marked their entire life and been a major element in their relationship with God.
In the spiritual tradition there is the dark night of the soul. For Mary, this had to be one of the darkest moments when – the One she knows to be God – is gone and she does not know where, when or how to find Him.
That God knows how such a wound can feel, that He allows it in some people’s lives is indeed mysterious. But it is also for us to know that our great intercessor – Our Blessed Mother – understands as well and can ask for the grace necessary to restore the relationship to God that might be lost by such an event.
Mary Immaculate, pray for us.
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Why Most CIOs Are Quietly Praying for Retirement — And the Few Who Aren’t Are About to Get Very Rich
I had a moment this week where I was sitting across from a Director of IT and it hit me — this poor bastard has the toughest job in the entire company. The business folks get to be full-time dreamers: “Hey, can we automate this? Can the AI just know what to do? Can it walk my dog while I’m in this meeting?”
Meanwhile he’s over there thinking about data security, system reliability, whether some employee is gonna click on an email that says “You’ve won a $1,000 Walmart gift card!”, whether Ukrainian hackers are going to steal their customer data at 2 a.m., and whether his entire team is about to get replaced by three interns and ChatGPT — all while knowing none of this stuff actually works the way the brochures promised.
And here’s the part that makes me feel for the guy — for his entire career he’s been rewarded for keeping the machines running and not getting fired. Now we’re asking him to suddenly become a profit center, to be out over his skis with AI initiatives. It’s like telling the hall monitor he’s now responsible for running the company’s underground poker game. Did I just compare our AI software to an underground poker game? Yeah, probably not the best analogy, but hang with me here, I’m rolling.
Meanwhile the C-suite is over there wondering why nothing’s happened yet, completely oblivious to the fact that they’ve spent twenty years brutally punishing IT for not playing defense. Hell, I know CIOs who got fired because Windows 95 sucked.
The real kicker is how to even get started. Our philosophy has always been to start small — automate one workflow, prove it works, and then compound fast. Smart in theory. In practice, with a big organization, that feels like bringing a birthday candle to a forest fire.
The C-suite doesn’t get excited about incremental. They want to see something that actually moves the needle. So you’re stuck trying to thread this ridiculous gap: build something small enough to actually work, get real user adoption, and make sure the vendor isn’t full of shit.
Honestly, I don’t envy that seat one bit. At Collide, we’re committed to being real partners with the folks actually doing the building. I’ve got serious scar tissue from getting fired for not being “openly collaborative” with other oil and gas companies on well spacing back in the shale days, and I’m never making that mistake again. We’re gonna share what we learn, educate when we can, and actually listen — God knows we have a lot to learn too.
Truth is, my tech guys are dying to find some partners in crime — and I really gotta stop with the crime analogies, I swear that’s not what we’re doing here — because they get all excited explaining the latest and greatest AI breakthrough and I respond with the technical sophistication of a man asking if his rotary phone has Bluetooth.
Sip slowly, my friends.
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