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Imparting a parting prayer

12/19/2015

I loved the graphics our Jim Ridley put on the last blog with the contrast between the luminous peace of the nativity picture after the cartoon of wild crammed house guests!

May you, dear readers of my blog, have that luminous peace in contemplating the Word made Flesh no matter how much chaos is around you. Of course, there can be lots of love and joy with the family even amidst the chaos! Praise the Lord!

"Love and joy... even amidst the chaos."

When we leave places where we have a good “support system” even for a week on vacation, we sometimes feel anxious. I sometimes get the image that instead of going off alone, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, my guardian angel and all my favorite saints will be dancing me into the airport and in the place I am visiting!!!

Nativity by Brian Kershisnik

I happened to hear a eulogy where the priest talked about how this man had realized that it is not the destination but the journey that counts.

I was enraged. I thought, sarcastically, as if an Olympic star would be practicing in the local gym and then be told he/she wouldn't go to the Olympics because it was the journey not the destination that counted; as if a fiance would be told it would fine to just be engaged but never married!

I thought a more effective way of getting across to someone who was at the funeral and loved the eulogy would be to just say what I would like to have differently for my eulogy.

Here were my suggestions, for what it’s worth:

The priest would say:
“We all knew her egregious faults of which we were the daily victims, but we loved her anyhow because we saw how she struggled with them out of love for God and out of wanting to love us the way Jesus does.

“I know Ronda wouldn't want you to think that she went straight to heaven, but that, instead, she would want to hear that you prayed for her soul whenever you thought of her, that she would be purified in purgatory of her over-attachment to her own ways, fit to have a heart large enough to be ready for a heaven of beauty, truth, goodness and love with her Saviour.

Pondering the Year of mercy, I thought for mercy could be seeing not the bathos, but the pathos, in the hearts of others?

Some time back I told you about Ever Green a great novel by a friend of mine, Sandy Anderson, in Arizona. The book made Book Salon. Now I just finished reading her second novel The Last Hound which is a fictional application of how strong Catholics might try to evangelize lapsed Catholic sinners, in this case a same-sex attraction man.

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off on an ADVENT-ure

12/17/2015

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From book about William Pardow S.J. by Justine Ward:

"The complete singleness of outlook that is stamped by God in the eyes of the child as it comes straight from His hand, and gazes with fresh, unspoiled vision at a world which has not yet ruffled its still surface."

St. Therese of the Child Jesus

My daughter, Carla, who is suffering such pain probably from after-effects of heavy chemo therapy said when told that suffering is a mystery.
“No, suffering is not a mystery at all.
Due to original sin we ruined everything and what is a mystery is all the joy.”

Bl. Alexandrina da Costa

Ven. Marthe Robin

Bl. Chiara Badano

Chiara Corbella

St. Terese of the Child Jesus

Carla’s twin, Diana, gave me for Christmas Michael O’Brien’s Fr. Elijah in Jerusalem –What an antidote to our skittishness about the future of the world is his perpetual theme that we must just suffer in the heart of Jesus for the world and the Church.

I am off to visit Carla for Christmas for a week starting Dec. 19, and there will be 10 plus people in a small house, so I may not blog. If you are reading this now please pray that it may be a holy Christmas for all in every way.

And don't spend Christmas without Fr. Eckley Macklin's beautiful new book,
The Christmas Loaf.

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Old Dinosaur

12/9/2015

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Old Dinosaur moment: I hear that now in public schools they are no longer giving out books but only note pads with digital stuff on that the kid reads and then hands back! Grief! Hard and soft-cover books – my precious! Actually my first shock along these lines was going into some people’s houses in Los Angeles and finding no bookcases, only large screen TV.

Another old dinosaur moment was when someone convinced me I needed a Master credit card, not just a debit card. I balked when I found out that this requires an additional portion of the on-line bank statement vs. just one screen with debits deducted every time I used the card. I explained my chagrin this way:
10 year old little Ronda used to walk 4 blocks to the bank in NYC and deposit $5 which the cashier entered into a little book in pencil!
So I adapted to bank statements, then to long lines at the bank in LA during lunch hours, then to credit cards, then to ATM's, then to on-line records but with the money coming off the debit card automatically...
the idea at 78 years old of a new, slightly different system for Master Card where it comes up on a different icon on the web, still one more, concerning my precious little dollars ....oy veh!

However, I succumbed because this way my assistant can have a companion credit card and get stuff for me without my having to dole out cash. Since I don’t drive any more this is convenient.

Every Saturday morning I am driven by a pro-life priest to pray in front of the abortion clinic. On the way I was talking about my long search for utopian Catholic communities that take mavericks like me. The priest mentioned Madonna House in Canada as just the ticket.

We got to the clinic and there was a maverick student from our college singing in an operatic voice loudly at the end of each decade of the rosary, meanwhile holding 2 umbrellas over my head the head of another prayer warrior. The priest, who is 76 years old, refused the umbrella because he thinks of getting his head wet as a good penance. I suddenly said to the priest: "This is Madonna House! I don't need a de jure community at all!

The loving friends all around me, mostly mavericks, are the de facto community God has given me. Jesus seemed to smile and say "Did you think I was a square???"

Years ago I got a "locution" from Jesus seeming to say "I don't want you in a community. I want you to be free to go anywhere in the Church..."

Be sure to read the Cardinal Sarah of Africa book God or Nothing. It will give you great hope. He mentions that one of the Popes consider that God’s home is now Africa. I felt when I finished as if I had been wrapped into a cacoon called the heart of God in Africa.

True story I always think of on Thanksgiving Day: A man whose wife divorced him felt sad that he was alone on Thanksgiving so he fried a hamburger and molded into the shape of a turkey so he could say, when others asked what he did on Thanksgiving, that he had a nice turkey dinner. Sad!!!!

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Imparting a parting prayer

off on an ADVENT-ure

Old Dinosaur

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