The  new guidebook by Ronda Chervin charting  
The Journey from Grief to Hope  
​is now available.

​



I might need to let God turn me around and change my way of doing things not conquest and moving forward which has lots of pride and ego in it but, instead -
Humility: not trying to control everyone. Become smaller…retreat into the Lord who is God ALONE.  Let the Lord build the house, like God telling David that David would not build the house of God but God would…as in 2 Samuel 7 verses 8-17. 
​He shakes us up….

I can prepare for the future in the interior, not exterior and God will protect me! 
​St. Alphonsus and St. Faustina taught that the more we trust in the Lord, the more He does for us.
How can He reach us if we are all stuffed with plans and schemes?  

2 AM text message from United Airlines telling me my connecting flight was delayed in such a way I wouldn’t make it to the 2nd connecting flight.
​I couldn’t fall back to sleep so just prayed quietly and worked.

6:30 AM leave for Hartford airport.  The wheel chair man takes me through security.
​He grabs the lap-top I point at and sticks it in my little suitcase. He leaves me at Dunkin Donuts for my ritual cappuchino. 

Announcement:  “Ronda, come back to security…you took the wrong lap-top.” 
On the way back to security I meet a frantic young couple yelling “Are you Ronda?  You have our lap-top!”
There’s was black and mine is dark blue but I never noticed that my 3 year old lap top was dark blue since I am Mrs. Magoo!
I felt like an idiot.

What if I had gotten onto the plane with the wrong lap-top?
​
​The flight from Hartford to Chicago is uneventful.

12:30 in plane from Chicago to Houston:  plane is turned around on the runway due to some mechanical problem. “Stick around near the gate to see what is happening, but you have ½ hour to grab a bite.”

I’m am getting upset but then I see a Mexican teen with a fat rosary around his neck. I pull out mine and chat with him. He smiles.
I meet later sitting around waiting a non-Catholic Christian home-schooler who is working on self-sustaining living. We talk for ½ hour with profit. A Pope Francis moment, I think. (That is, moving out of my comfort zone to talk to non-Catholics).
3:30 another plane goes on the run-way, but doesn’t leave until 4:30 because it takes a whole hour to load the baggage from the defunct plane to this one.

I’m am getting upset, but then I see a Mexican teen with a fat rosary around his neck. I pull out mine and chat with him. He smiles.
I meet later sitting around waiting a non-Catholic Christian home-schooler who is working on self-sustaining living. We talk for ½ hour with profit. A Pope Francis moment, I think. (That is, moving out of my comfort zone to talk to non-Catholics).
3:30 another plane goes on the run-way, but doesn’t leave until 4:30 because it takes a whole hour to load the baggage from the defunct plane to this one.
I realize I will miss my flight from Houston to Corpus Christi. 

A good conversation with a young adult who is studying to be a United attendant. I tell him I am never flying United again.  He calms me down by helping me in many ways. He leave his seat next to me and persuades the attendant serving boxed superior snacks not to charge me even though he took my debit card.
Due to Sister Act  I actually enjoy  watching players throwing basketballs into a hoop on the TV that automatically turned on to this.  I got a sense that all this kind of thing is good and loved by God that humans do, as long as we don’t make them into idols – I mean sports.
The attendant assures me that my troubles are over because when I get to Houston I will have the wheel-chair I requested and they will take me to customer service where they will arrange a motel for the night and a voucher for dinner.

Now, I walk fine and can even run. I need the wheel chair because I can’t stand for long periods of time. With the wheel-chair I don’t have to stand at the long security lines or the long line for customer service.
Now is when “all hell breaks loose” sigh!  I get off the plane and there is no wheel chair. I wait 15 minutes and one comes but an old gent who looks like 90 to my mere 79 is put in the chair instead of me even though he came out of the plane later. I accept that because he is so old looking. The airport person at that gate tells me a cart can take me. 

Just as I am about the call out: “I am suing United Airlines,” I notice a managerial looking type man at the counter.
​I walk up through the line and start my spiel. 
He walked out the back door and around out to me and gestures me far away from the line. 
The upshot of my expostulations is that he somehow gets me onto the 9 PM flight that was presumably totally booked with standby’s waiting.
“But, I don’t want to take some other person’s place who was on stand-by for hours, Sir?”
“Look lady, you are now confirmed.”
He sends for a cart which takes me to the foot of the escalator to the mono-rail to the next part of the airport. 
I run up the escalator to the mono-rail. Just as the door is about to close the cart drive runs in. I had left my suitcase on the cart!
I feel as if senility has totally won and my life is over.
I get to the gate for the flight from Houston to Corpus Christi.
“Where is your boarding pass?”
I pull out the one for the 5 PM flight.
I see the other stand-by’s are going through the gate.
5 minutes before they close, they shove me through!
I spend my time wondering if it qualifies as confessional matter that I made this scene with my large cross so visible so that people could think that Catholics are hysterics?

This summer, starting June 21, I will be for a whole month in Corpus Christi Texas very near the goodbooksmedia.com web-site family, the Ridley’s! 

 I am already imagining a photo of some of us together who are regularly on the web-site, maybe invisibly, and authors of goodbooksmedia publications that all you dear readers will get to see at least on a photo.

However, there may be a little hiatus on RondaView while I travel and set up my lap-top there.

I like to make a sort of score-card in my head of the favorite word or phrase people use such as: “I’m worried,” or “It’s gonna be fine!”   My favorite word is “old” as in “I’m too old to carry that – you carry it for me.” 

I also obsess about perfect futures on earth, especially in the form of ideal retirement colonies I might one day live in where everyone prefers Bach to Lawrence Welk. 

Of course, I don’t mean that I can’t wish to be in my ideal retirement home, but I need not be scheming about it all the time and trying to force others to devise it for me!

From Treasure in Clay, the autobiography of Fulton Sheen:
 About missionaries in Africa:  “I went to a leper colony in Africa where there were 500 lepers. I brought with me 500 silver crucifixes, intending to give on to each of the lepers…The first one who came to meet me had his left arm eaten off at the elbow by the disease. He put out his right hand and it was the most foul mass of corruption I ever saw. I held the silver crucifix above it and dropped it. It was swallowed up in that volcano of leprosy.  All of a sudden there were 501 lepers in that camp; I was the 501st because I had taken that symbol of God’s identification with mean and refused to identify myself with someone who was a thousand times better on the inside than I.  Then it came over me the awful thing I had done. I dug my fingers into his leprosy, took out the crucifix and pressed it into his hand. And so on, for all the other 499 lepers. From that moment on I learned to love them.”

A cute phrase from an author I was reading, Susan Hicks Beach. She describes certain friendships as embodying “sardonic intimacy.”   I have quite a few like that!  Thanks be to God!

Maybe so, in some cases, but this biography comes right out of the letters of De Las Casas to the King and Queen in Spain, and it is hair-raising in the descriptions of the lust for gold that blinded so many Catholic colonialists to the evils of enslaving the natives to get them to do the mining for the gold.

I was reluctant because I only breathe through the mouth and also because I associate this kind of thing with New Age. But I tried it and a knot of tension in the middle of my body that has been there since teen years melted and I started to feel good inside my body.
The book says this is also good for hyper-tension of any kind caused, for example, by the pace of contemporary life, or for addictions of any kind.
I have been doing this for two weeks now with amazing results.

On Mother’s Day I wrote my daughter Carla, suffering with post-chemo and other painful ills: “I thought I could never love you more, but this year has brought a totally greater intensity and depth as I am with you every time I think of you in empathy and prayer and admiration, since in willingness to bear suffering you are holier than moi!!!!

A priest said that when I have anxiety about my future I could think of Abraham telling Isaac as they go up the mountain “I am here.” As in "The Father is here!”  
The rector of the seminary in Los Angeles where I taught, Msgr. Niederauer, later bishop in Salt Lake City and then Archbishop of San Francisco, used to say  “all roads lead to Calvary.”

​A delightful experience.
A priest who is about 70 years old was celebrating Mass in a small chapel of his religious community. At the end of the Mass one of his brothers in the community mentioned that it was his birthday.  A sister in the chapel started singing Happy Birthday and we all joined in.  

I was at the Hartford Cathedral for an ordination to the priesthood. Many came ¾ of an hour early to be sure to get seats and the noise of happily chatting family and friends was high in volume.  But then the organist started practicing the opening Bach organ music. It felt as if the beauty of music galloped over the cacophony of human voices.

I am always obsessing over the issue of what to do with my time of even older age.  One morning I woke up with the thought: To prepare for heaven you must change from “do and push” to “receive and respond.”  Very Marian!

Amazing grace.  I got a letter from a woman who was in the same High School as my son Charlie, who committed suicide at age 20. Even though I do believe his soul was saved by the mercy of Jesus, this letter was so consoling.   She found me on RondaView: this Blog!
“I want you to know that although I knew Charlie, I wasn't close with him.  I was a freshman when he was a senior.  He was always so kind to us little people though.  But I found that I did form a strong bond, as often musicians do, when you spend hour upon hour bringing music to life.  We shared laughter, tears, deep thoughts, and through our music.   And for that, I remember him, always.  He truly moved me and continues to do so.”

As we push out the bad, the gift of counsel can work more. …Since Jesus on earth had conversations with His mother, the disciples, so He can speak to us heart to heart also. God became man to have those conversations. Like putting my hand in His side.
I asked two of my favorite priests how come they had such joy even though I know they have had great trials in their lives and persecution also. They both said the same thing, that even in agony of any kind they can experience joy because they are in union with Jesus.  One advised that when in agony, take the focus off the agony onto to Him. I said “like in the Passion where Jesus says to Mary, “behold, I make all things new, even as he is falling under the cross.”

Dr. Chervin has of late been much involved in the graduation proceedings at Holy Apostles College and Seminary.
To those of you who have been punching into this website, counting on encountering another of Ronda's hard-hitting posts and are put off to find the box is empty, I have been prompted to announce that her dearth of output is only for the nonce. Be assured that she will be back in full swing ere long,  knuckling down to  knocking off her bodacious round of blog after blog.

Lots going on during the Triduum and Easter.
Here is an absolutely exquisite link from an American Friend of mine studying in Rome and singing in the famous St. Cecilia Choir.  They put together the choir singing with Fra Angelico paintings on a youtube. Enjoy. https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXOSTvgcDJQ1hSDK7pXimYFxL6EsMznW2

About 70 students from Holy Apostles went on Holy Saturday morning to pray the rosary in front of the abortion clinic.  This massive amount was quite a sight for the pro-choice escorts who stand in front to keep clients away from us!  This week they didn’t come. Maybe they got the grace to see this wasn’t such a good part-time job!   We think some may have been cradle Catholics….”Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” 
It’s a great thing to do Holy Saturday morning.

Good Friday we always watch the Passion at the Seminary. Since in our family someone suggested we all write little narratives and send them around, and since some in my family don’t believe in God or that Jesus is God, here the one I made up: 
 “At the funeral of Ronda Chervin there was a surprise! Well, really, it was quite in character!  Sean and Jenny handed out scrolls to each member of the family with this message:
March 25, 2016
Dear family,
I just saw for the 5th time the movie The Passion. And it gave me my legacy to my beloved family of all degrees of belief and unbelief.
Since this director meticulously researched what crucifixions were really like, I maintain that it provides us with the factual and logical proof of the Resurrection because
No disciple would ever have let themselves in for such a death unless they had seen the Resurrection!
Believe!  The truth shall set you free!  
Love, Ronda -   Hope to see you all in heaven!"

A whole bunch of my books have been transferred from CMJ to Enroute Books and they are cheaper. They include these:
Quotable Saints,
Seeking Christ in the Joys and Sufferings of Aging,
Fabric of our Lives,
Becoming a Handmaid of the Lord,
Feminine, Free and Faithful, and
Holding Hands with God in Tragic Sufferings. 
Also at Enroute is my husband’s wonderful novel about Christ and Satan in the Desert called Children of the Breath
Click on the link below to find wonderful descriptions of each of these books as well as descriptions of other very interesting books they have published.
http://enroutebooksandmedia.com/other-titles-by-chervin/

An on-line student was questioning whether the Church isn’t sexist after all.  Here is part of my response you might like reading:
Basically, ontological equality is not an opposite to difference of roles. I like to bring this out with pithy humor in talks I give on this subject by sentences such as the following:
Do we think of St. Joseph as a second class citizen because Mary had a higher role?

You might like to get hold of my book on this called Feminine, Free and Faithful, published by Ignatius Press and then reprinted by Franciscan University Press.  The basic thesis is that women do not have to choose between the best of the traditionally feminine or the worst of radical feminism. By being faithful to the Holy Spirit you can avoid the bad part of the traditionally feminine and adopt the good part of freedom.