A couple of book recommendations....

Becoming Who You Are by James Martin, SJ which deals with the work of Thomas Merton and the concept of the True Self; it's a short book, but a good one if you're into the more psychological side of spiritual growth....


....and The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning. I am enthralled, I am captivated----I am halfway through the book. I barely managed to put it down to come check something on the computer (and post this review). It's a glorious exposition of grace and the nature of a truly loving God.

Novena, part deux

Day Six: January 17
For all those who cover not only the inauguration but the government for radio, television, newspaper, blogs: may each media member strive to report fairly, to emphasize the positive while neither hiding the negative nor particularly seeking out the negative for sensationalism and scandalmongering. May they seek the truth, and to educate the people to the truth, while providing honest hope where it is to be found. May they take the time to find and to remind us about what is right in our country and among our people with even half the energy they expend to spread despair and panic with Chicken Little-ism. May they resist the corporate conglomerates' attempts to bias the news in any way; may they be open to God's call as a prophet to our society.

Lord, Hear Our Prayer.


Day Seven: January 18
For those who serve their country in the military: May they feel your presence, Lord, and receive strength from you to do what they have to do. May they also feel the loving arms of your Mother, Mary, and remember always that force is something thatshould be applied only in time of true need and no more than necessary. Let them be gentle when they can, and see you in the people they help.

For those who make the decisions about the military: Let them remember that our young men and young women are a precious resource, not to be squandered without need; let them remember also that the use of military force is meant to be a last resort, never a "just because we can." Let them see us as others see us occasionally, and remind them that what they hold is not just power, but vast responsibility. Let your hand be on their shoulders and your voice in their ears when they make such decisions.

Lord, Hear our Prayer.


Day Eight: January 19
For the family of our new president:

All the assorted relatives by blood and by marriage. May they find it a blessing rather than a curse in their lives. May they find a ministry in being supportive of the First Family, and may they find you a source of all strength in resisting those who would nudge them into exploiting their connections. May they draw closer to each other in your love.

For Michelle, Malia and Sasha: give them the strength to deal with the restrictions on their lives, the regimentation, the mass of people who so often stand between them and the husband and father they love. Let them draw closer together and cherish the time that they are all together as a family. Let them find you in the dark moments and the bright moments, and know that their Heavenly Father holds them all in his hands.

Lord, Hear our Prayer.


Day Nine: January 20
For our new President, Barack:

Lord, be with him always. The weight on his shoulders is more than a man can take; he needs you to carry much of that burden.

Give him all the gifts of your Holy Spirit:

Knowledge: for the job that he has been given requires that he knows much and learns far more. He must also know what he does not know, that he may find advisors to help him.

Understanding: for to know is not enough; he must understand the meaning of what he knows. He must comprehend what his advisors tell him.

Judgment: for he must take all that he knows and all that he is given and discern what is true, what is good, what is valuable. And he must be able to judge who is the best advisor in any situation.

Wisdom: for everything above is meaningless without wisdom to pull it together; wisdom to find what out of an overwhelming flood of information is truly important.

Courage: not only physical courage, for the job is dangerous no matter how many try to protect him, but intellectual courage, to be able to reject the "nice-sounding" solution that does not stand up to logic, and even harder, moral courage, that rejects the easy or convenient and holds out for the right, though all around him fight against it.

Piety: let him return the thanks and obedience to you which is your due, and let him remember that you are always watching what he does, for good or ill.

Fear (Awe) of the Lord: let him realize that this is his Sanity Clause: for he will spend the next years surrounded by those who will flatter him that he is the most powerful man on earth, that he holds the power of a god, that he *is* a god. Let him remember always that you are to him as he is to a single ant. Sustain his understanding of his place in the universe and his sense of balance. Protect him from the terrible temptations of ego that go with this job.

Love him, Lord Jesus. He needs to feel your love.

Comfort him, Blessed Mother. He needs your consolation.

Strengthen him, Breath of God. For the strength that he needs far exceeds the strength of the natural man.

Lord, Hear our Prayer.

The Novena for the New President (part one)

Originally (and still) posted in my other blog, I'm copying it here as this seems the more appropriate site:

Day One: The Novena for the New President
Today, January 12, Day One.

That all those who participate in decisions about our economic future understand that at this time, even more than at other times, what counts is what is best for ALL of us----it is the common American who is far more vulnerable in tough times than the powerful, and it is the common American, not the wealthy lobbyist, that our representatives are elected to consider and protect. Let them be aware of the magnitude of their responsibility, and alive to it.

Lord, hear our prayer.



Day Two: January 13
That those whose mission it is to protect the President and his family may know God, and find strength in God. For the long hours and difficult assignments; for the strains that mission cause with friends and family; to face the dangers that they must face every day. May they know Your strength and support in their lives, and may they feel the loving arms of Mother Mary consoling them when the nights are especially long cold and dark.

Lord, Hear our Prayer.


Day Three: January 14
For the "keepers" and "minders" whose job it is to schedule the President and his family: may they find peace in the midst of chaos, serenity in the height of pressure. May they find time for God in their day, and may they be open to His direction in maintaining balance. May they feel called to make sure that the President hears always from more than the rich and the powerful, from more than the sycophant and supplicant. May they find the time and means to schedule the prophets and poets as well as the boon-seekers and the powerbrokers.

Lord, hear our Prayer.


Day Four: January 15
For all those who will be appointed to positions, whether in the Cabinet, or the Judiciary, or at lower levels in various agencies: may God's hand be in the choosing, and in the approving, and in the hearts of those appointed. May they understand well the arena in which they work; may they seek to understand it better; may their attention and intention be focused on the work that needs to be done rather than political expediency, favors, or building a lucrative personal future. May they attain wisdom and balance, and hear when God speaks to them.

Lord, Hear our Prayer.


Day Five: January 16
For all those whose work in government does not depend on who's in office, or on being appointed: May those who labor in the civil service never forget the meaning of the word service. Not that they should deal with individuals in a servile fashion, but that they remember that it is their country that they serve, and that to do so is a privilege which must not be abused. May they see Jesus in each of the citizens they interact with each day, and be moved to a gentle touch even when the message they must convey seems harsh.

Lord, Hear our Prayer.

In Da Zone

If you're enough of an old fart---and I guess I am---it seems kind of odd to contemplate something like a "Jesus'n'Mary Zone" in the sense of being able to be "in the zone."

But it certainly seems a real phenomenon, if not usually described that way. Where everything is flowing correctly, presumably (to a person of faith) because you've explained where your problems lie and turned over the solution to Our Lord and his Mom. Things start working out in what is clearly proper fashion, sometimes with very improbable solutions---stuff you couldn't get away with, if you were writing your life as fiction.

I've never managed to be there longer than about two days on a good run; I wonder if saints manage to stay there longer than that at a stretch?

I think maybe it's one of those things where you have to be absolutely in the moment, inside what's happening---and the minute you're aware enough of the situation to know you're there, you're not in the moment anymore, you've stepped outside and become an observer. Which is why you can't really sustain it.

Other opinions or observations cheerfully taken, though. I'd love to see these pages become a discussion forum.

Post-Baptismal Ponderings.....

I suppose there's always a let-down after that much anticipation.

Part of it was being dragged into the mundane almost immediately, with the discovery that someone had stolen my camera from my bag of clothes that I had to change into sometime during the service.

And part of it was just the sheer exhaustion of the Holy Week schedule, with school and work on top of everything that was happening at church.

People who don't know their history tend to refer to the US as a "Christian country" in the idea that the founding fathers meant this to be a specifically Christian setting. (In point of fact, a reading of colonial history in only moderate depth will show that to be patently untrue, almost a direct contradiction of their stated intent.)

But one of the things they note is that "back in the day", schools didn't have "spring break", they had "Easter vacation", and that's true, if "the day" is understood to be the 1950's, not the 1850's. The implication was that the vacation was for Religious Purposes.

But Protestant tradition barely observes Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The rest of Holy Week mostly goes begging for attention, and the idea that Easter is more than one church service and new clothes is long gone from most churches.

Giving kids the day off for Good Friday I think wasn't about letting them go to church so much as letting the teachers go; back then it was a norm for many small businesses, retail businesses to close for some portion of Good Friday, whether the whole day, or closed at noon, or even closed for the classic three hour observance (noon-3pm). Even many larger businesses closed, and of the ones that did not, most would allow some of their workers who asked for it to take off to attend church services on that afternoon.

But at least as I remember it, that one was mostly a church service for grownups, not for children. Partly the length of it; partly the solemnity of it---it went beyond the patience of a child.

In a truly Christian world, seems to me an Easter vacation geared to Religious Purposes would actually start during Holy Week. Leastways that's my take.

Then again, I'm a historian. And in much of the United States, at least, the history of "Easter vacation in school" has far less to do with religious events (mostly focused on a non-school day, Sunday) and far more to do with "might as well cancel school for a couple of weeks since all the students will be staying home to help with the planting anyway."

Of course, part of the "let down" isn't really "let down", it's just change.

Change from being the "new kid", in some ways the center of attention, to "just one of the family." Just another parishioner.

Which is actually a quietly warm fuzzy feeling. :-)

To Pray Like a Child

So much for weekly posts, eh?

It seems that my life is a yo-yo: up, down, up, down. I have noticed that there's something of an inclination to try to avoid the downs by pushing to exhaustion; I've also noticed that that actually seems to hasten and deepen the down. Nothing seems to send me spiraling downward as fast as cumulative sleep deprivation.

Talking to my friends more often helps.
Talking to other people helps.

Accomplishing difficult tasks competently helps.

Helping other people helps.

And even having to think about what to write, having to write here, helps. I need to work on that weekly bit.

* k * k * k * k *

I find that learning prayers in other languages is a wondrous prayer device. To get them learned requires me to repeat them often, and to *think* about what I'm saying.

And the occasional phrase seems to just roll off the (mental or physical) tongue, and gets stuck in my head, just as phrases I was learning as a child used to do, whether normal "child" learning or absorbing repeated things other people were trying to learn.

[There may not be anyone still living besides me who vividly remembers me walking around all day, repeating endlessly, but I was mistress of both "LMNOP" from the alphabet song and "voolay voo, m' dear" (voulez-vous me dire) from my mother's "Learn French" records.] :)

These days, trying to learn the padre nuestro (our father), the stuck phrase seems to be sanctificado sea tu nombre.

It writes its own tunes that it plays in my head. It whispers. It orates in all the pomp of a 19th century politician.

sanc
ti
fi

CA
do

SE

a

tu

NOM

bre

!

Waves on the shore, there it is again.

But for a one line prayer, a perpetual prayer, you could do worse than "hallowed be thy name". Much worse.

Days of Strength

This last week I've been more conscious of being held in Mary's hand.

Not to say everything's gone smoothly: it hasn't. But that doesn't seem to be a factor, really.

Not only have I been more conscious of a sense of peace, of not being in control, of having surrendered control, but paradoxically that's put me more in control. It's made it easier to make choices that don't have to be dead right, don't have to be perfect. They just have to be the best choice for right now.

I've also been more aware that as I seek people, places and situations which are my answers, so may I be someone else's answer.

To have someone choose me---improbably, in context, someone they don't really know---to talk to about specific problems in their life, or places where they're feeling inadequate, when they had no way of knowing that their road is a road I've travelled, that I would be someone who might have a word or two that could help.

It's funny: we notice when other people seem to us to have been sent by God to be an angel in our pathway, expressly to help us out. But it's rare that we're given the gift to notice that we ourselves may have been sent to be standing in a particular place, at a particular time, because God knew someone was going to need us to be there. Not to do anything dramatic---not to put out a fire, rescue a baby, do CPR, but just to say the right words to ease someone else's mind, to feed someone else's spirit.

When you can feel God working in your life, that conveys a certain peace, a certain joy.

And like everything else in life, we tend to take it for granted when it happens, when things are going well. But like perfect spring days, a baby's laugh on a summer day, the rush of first falling in love, it's not a feeling that's going to be sustained. And it needs to be cherished when it happens.

Partly because we do---I do---far too little appreciating the good moments while they're happening, although I get better at it as I get older. But also because the memory of the warm moments feeds us when we're in the cold and dark..........