Friday Focus 🔎 care | begin | darkness

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Welcome to Friday Focus!

Welcome to Friday Focus, my weekly letter from PAX Renewal Center. I’m glad you’re here, whether you’ve been reading for years or just found your way to this little corner of your inbox.

This Sunday is All Saints Day, with All Souls Day close behind, and this week’s letter offers a quiet invitation: to care for our souls in the middle of ordinary life, and to keep beginning again. As November turns us toward Advent, I’m rereading an old friend, Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul. St. Paul reminds us that God’s kingdom looks like justice, peace, and joy, and that we help build it by strengthening one another. And St. Francis, even near the end of his life, kept saying to his brothers, “Let us begin.” For couples, you’ll find one last invitation to this month’s free conversation prompts and a reflection on what my old guitar keeps teaching me about the grace of beginning again. And we’ll close by looking up, where Venus returns as the Morning Star and Sister Moon pays a visit to Mars and Jupiter before dawn.

As always, I hope something here brings you a little more peace to carry into the weekend.

Dan Jurek contributed to this week’s newsletter

What I’m Reading

Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life by Thomas Moore

Over the last few years, I’ve found myself circling back to my bookshelves to reread books that spoke to me deeply in an earlier season of my life. Each one was exactly what I needed then. I’ve learned that a good book meets you differently each time you return to it. This is one of those books.

Thomas Moore, a psychotherapist who once lived as a Catholic monk, writes about living the spiritual life right in the middle of everyday life: caring for our souls by paying attention to meaning, connection, and purpose, and finding a more peaceful way of living along the way. As I move into November, the last month before Advent and a new liturgical year, I see these days as a time to prepare for something new, meaningful, peaceful, and purposeful.

A Free Resource for Couples

October Conversation Prompts

October is almost gone, but there’s still time to enjoy this month’s conversation prompts if you haven’t tried them yet. This month’s prompts are about choosing courage: staying present when a conversation gets a little harder, instead of drifting away from it. Here’s a simple idea. When the clocks fall back early Sunday morning, give that extra hour to each other. Pour the coffee, sit somewhere comfortable, and choose just one question. Take turns, listen with your whole heart, and let that be enough.

Download your free October Conversation Prompts here.

A Passage From Sacred Scripture

“The kingdom of God is not a matter of eating or drinking, but of justice, peace, and the joy that is given by the Holy Spirit. Whoever serves Christ in this way pleases God and wins the esteem of men. Let us, then, make it our aim to work for peace and to strengthen one another.”

~ Romans 14:17-19

For reflection: St. Paul says God’s kingdom shows up in justice, peace, and joy, and that we help build it by strengthening one another. Who in your home could use a little strengthening this week? What is one small word or act that might give it?

In This Year of St. Francis:

Let Us Begin

Near the end of his life, worn down by illness, Francis could no longer keep the rigorous pace of his early years. Yet his heart never stopped beginning again. He would say to his brothers:

“Let us begin, brothers, to serve the Lord God, for up till now we have done little or nothing.”

~ Celano, First Life, 103

A Quote Worth Reflecting On

“It is precisely because we resist the darkness in ourselves that we miss the depths of the loveliness, beauty, brilliance, creativity, and joy that lie at our core.”

~ Thomas Moore, Dark Nights of the Soul

A Heartfelt Message For Couples

A 2-Day Marriage Intensive with Dan 

Back in Tune

Every time I pick up my guitar, the first thing I do is tune it, even if I played it the night before. Strings stretch, the weather shifts, the wood breathes a little, and the notes quietly slip out of tune. In more than fifty years of playing, I’ve never once taken that personally. I just listen, turn the peg a little, and begin again.

Marriage works the same way.

Every couple drifts. A sharp word at the end of a long day. A plan one of you forgot. A silence that lasts a little longer than it should. Drifting out of tune isn’t a sign that something is broken. It’s simply what happens when two people share a life. What matters most is what we do next.

Dr. John Gottman calls those moments of reaching back “repair attempts.” His research found that how well a couple repairs is one of the main reasons a marriage flourishes or flounders. Not whether they ever disagree, but whether they find their way back to each other.

Repair rarely looks impressive. It might be a simple “I’m sorry, that came out wrong.” A hand on the shoulder. A little shared laughter that softens the moment. And it takes two: one person reaching out, and the other willing to reach back.

This Sunday we celebrate All Saints’ Day. It’s tempting to imagine the saints as people who never fell out of tune. But the saints I’ve come to love are the ones who kept beginning again. Even near the end of his life, St. Francis was still saying, “Let us begin.” That grace isn’t reserved for saints. It’s offered to every marriage, every single day.

One Step for This Week

Sit down together while things are calm and choose a simple phrase that means “let’s start over,” something like “Can we begin again?” The next time a conversation goes sideways, one of you says it, and the other’s job is to say yes, even if you both need a few minutes to breathe before you try again. You don’t have to settle everything in that moment. You’re just tuning the strings so you can play together again. Where focus goes, energy flows.

A Final Thought

Sometimes a guitar sits in its case so long that a quick tune won’t do. It needs new strings, patient hands, and a little time. Marriages can be like that, too. If reaching back toward each other feels almost impossible right now, please don’t lose heart. It may simply mean your marriage needs more care than an ordinary week can give.

With time, patience, and the right help, the music can come back.

A Season Set Apart for Your Marriage

November and December are a beautiful season to invest in your marriage. Advent invites us to prepare our hearts, and the holidays will soon gather us around crowded tables. If those gatherings already feel heavy, that’s worth listening to. The Covenant Repair Intensive™ offers you and your spouse two focused, unhurried days to see what keeps pulling you apart and start fresh, together. It may be the most meaningful gift you give each other this Christmas. Let’s talk. Schedule your free 20-minute consultation with Dan. No pressure. Just a first step.

Schedule your free 20-minute consultation

And as always, you can email me at dan@paxrenewalcenter.com. I read every message.

Brother Sun, Sister Moon

Night Sky for October 30 to November 5, 2026

Sister Moon wanes this week, from a bright gibbous moon to a slender crescent, and the best views come in the quiet hours before dawn as she walks right past Mars and Jupiter. Venus also returns this week as the Morning Star, rising out of the sun’s glare after weeks out of sight. It’s a fitting sight for the week of All Saints and All Souls: a light that seemed lost for a season, rising again to greet the morning.

Key Highlights (Central Time. Daylight Saving Time ends at 2:00 a.m. on Sunday, November 1, so set your clocks back an hour.)

Friday and Saturday, October 30 and 31 (before dawn): About an hour before sunrise, look high in the southeast for bright Jupiter, reddish Mars, and Regulus, the heart of Leo the Lion, lined up and nearly evenly spaced. On Halloween morning, the moon, about two-thirds lit, shines high in the southwest beside Pollux, one of the Gemini Twins.

All week (evening): Saturn is the brightest point of light in the east-southeast as darkness falls, and even a small telescope will show its rings. On Halloween night, the moon won’t rise until hours after the trick-or-treaters are home, so the early evening stays dark.

Sunday, November 1: All Saints’ Day. Last Quarter Moon (2:28 p.m. CST). Before dawn, binoculars will show the half-lit moon sharing the view with the Beehive, a soft little cluster of stars in Cancer.

Monday, November 2 (before dawn): All Souls Day, and the prettiest gathering of the week. The moon, just under half lit, sits high in the south-southeast with Mars just to its lower left and brilliant Jupiter a little farther in the same direction. It’s the first in a rare series of monthly meetings between the moon, these two planets, and Regulus that will continue into next year.

Tuesday, November 3 (before dawn): The moon has moved on, now a thick crescent with Regulus, Jupiter, and Mars stretched out in a line to its upper right. About 45 minutes before sunrise, look very low in the east-southeast for Venus, newly returned as the Morning Star. Binoculars will show Spica, Virgo’s brightest star, just beside it. You’ll need a clear view of the horizon.

Wednesday night into Thursday morning, November 4 to 5: The Southern Taurid meteor shower peaks. It’s a gentle shower, about five meteors an hour, but Taurids are slow and sometimes strikingly bright fireballs. With only a thin crescent moon rising in the early morning hours, the sky stays dark for much of the night. Taurus sits highest around midnight.

Thursday, November 5 (before dawn): A slender crescent moon hangs in the east-southeast, with Venus below and to its left. Look for earthshine, the soft glow on the moon’s darkened side. Higher up, Mars has crept within about four degrees of Jupiter. The two will finally pass each other on November 16.

Looking ahead: Before dawn on Saturday, November 7, Venus, a hair-thin crescent moon, and Spica gather in a rare, tight little group low in the east-southeast. The New Moon follows early Monday, November 9, bringing the darkest skies of the month.

“Glance at the sun. See the moon and the stars. Gaze at the beauty of Earth’s greenings. Now, think. What delight God gives to humankind with all these things. All nature is at the disposal of humankind. We are to work with it. For without, we cannot survive.”

~ Hildegard of Bingen

Clinician Spotlight

Dan Jurek

For more than four decades, Dan Jurek has walked with couples and individuals through every kind of season, from the bright and hopeful ones to the long, dark nights of the soul. Along the way, he has come to share Thomas Moore’s conviction that the soul is cared for in ordinary life, in the small, faithful moments we so easily overlook. He has also seen how often healing begins with the same humble courage St. Francis carried to the very end: the willingness to say, “Let us begin,” one more time. In Dan’s experience, it is rarely too late to begin again.

“We have been called to heal wounds, to unite what has fallen apart, and to bring home any who have lost their way.”

~ St. Francis of Assisi

These words are more than inspiration. They are the mission that shapes everything Dan does. Rooted in Catholic faith and grounded in decades of clinical practice, he brings warmth, wisdom, and professional depth to every encounter, meeting each person exactly where they are.

Daniel Jurek, M.Min., M.A., LPC-S, LMFT, AAMFT Clinical Fellow, and Certified Spiritual Director through the Archdiocese of New Orleans Spirituality Center, is trained in the Gottman Method, Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, Imago Relationship Therapy, and Attachment Theory. He serves couples, individuals, and fellow therapists through marriage intensives, retreats, clinical supervision, and continuing education.

Contact us today to make an appointment with Dan! 

Blessings,

Dan and the Clinical Team at PAX Renewal Center