Connie Rossini and St. Therese – CWG March Book Blast

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This month, the Catholic Writers’ Guild is touring Guildie Connie Rossini’s book, Trusting God with St. Therese. It’s an SOA winner as well as an award-winning novel, and an inspiration to anyone needing find inspiration in the face of difficult situations.

 

Summary: Are your fears, weaknesses, doubts, and anger keeping you from intimacy with Christ? Do you struggle with despair? Let St. Therese teach you perfect trust.  Learn how Therese of Lisieux trusted God through tragedy, scruples, spiritual darkness, and physical suffering. Connie Rossini pairs episodic stories from the saint’s life with memories of her own quest to trust. With Sacred Scripture, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and insights from psychology, Rossini leads readers to surrender their lives completely to Jesus. Practical and accessible, Trusting God with St. Therese includes questions for reflection that make it perfect for book clubs and faith-sharing groups.

Buy it on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LTATI6C

Excerpt

St. Therese’s trust in God is almost legendary—so much so that we might consider such trust beyond our reach. In her family and later in the Carmelite cloister, she was bathed in a culture focused on Christ. When she struggled at school, she came home to learn among those who understood her. When she wanted to give herself fully to God, she became a nun. When she began to speak about her little way of spiritual childhood, others encouraged her. We daily encounter challenges to trust that she never faced. The world around us—sometimes even including our dearest family members—meets our desire for God with indifference or hostility. In the Church, others think us presumptuous for even striving to follow God more faithfully. And an insistent voice inside us urges us at every step to abandon our course. “Why focus on trust?” we ask ourselves. There are so many pressing problems for Catholics in today’s world: battling the Culture of Death, bringing strays back to the faith, revamping catechesis, caring for the poor. Why not focus instead on one of these? When we ponder this question more deeply, the mistaken notion behind it reveals itself. We do not practice one virtue or join an apostolate in isolation from the rest of our Christian life. Focusing on trust does not take us away from these other important things. It helps us advance in them. Fighting the Culture of Death, for example, can be discouraging, heartbreaking, and personally risky. Trust gives us the strength to persevere. Likewise, we must trust God with the hearts of the lost, for ultimately only he can convert them. We must trust him to work through his Church, even when the humans who make up that Church fall short. And unless we can accept God’s providence, the trials of the poor will crush our spirits. Why should we focus on trust?

In a letter to Sr. Marie of the Sacred Heart, Therese put it concisely: “It is trust, and nothing but trust that must bring us to Love” (PST, 61). “Love,” of course, is God himself. In other words, we cannot grow close to him until we trust him.

 

 

Margaret Rose Realy and Lent – CWG February Book Blast

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Cultivating Gods Garden - Feb 2015

This month’s CWG Book Blast is to get you ready for Lent. We’re a little behind, but that doesn’t make Margaret Rose Realy’s book any less applicable. It’s a perfect springtime meditation as well. It has the CWG Seal of Approval and is published by Patheos Press.

Cultivating God’s Garden through Lent

Margaret Rose Realy, Obl. OSB

These daily reflections for Lent offer tranquility and simplicity by finding God through nature. Readers who love gardens and woods and find solace in experiencing the Creator through these environments will enjoy these prayerful reflections.

Excerpt:

Thursday after Ash Wednesday

 Fast from bitterness; turn to forgiveness

Fast from hatred; return good for evil

It was a relatively small patch that I had dug at the back end of the yard to the rental house where I planned a vegetable garden. As an undergraduate at MSU, and a decade older than my classmates, I knew that growing my own food was a necessity; I did not have parents supporting my education.

I dug a portion of the sod and broke up clumps, picked stones and broken glass from the soil, raked it smooth, and mounded the edges to help direct water. Purchasing seeds, I then planted the early season crops of peas, radishes, kales, and a few herbs. A few weeks later I would purchase starter plants for vegetables that took longer to mature such as eggplants, tomatoes, and peppers.

I returned home rather late after classes one day about a week later and again headed to the back of the yard to water the seedlings before sunset. A few feet away I stopped dead in my tracks, saddened by the state of my garden patch. The mounded edges had been kicked into the lawn. Two-thirds of the patch had been covered over with pieces of hand-dug sod, while the remaining third was trampled. Apparently I had unknowingly encroached into the neighbor’s property.

Disheartened, I cleaned up what remained but knew I did not have enough time in my schedule to expand the now even smaller patch.

Soon afterwards, as weather permitted, I planted starters of tomatoes and eggplants in the remaining section of garden. In another garden area bordering the house I tucked in some bush zucchini seeds.

Throughout the summer when I was studying in my room, I would often hear the neighbor mowing his yard and anxiously hoped my plants were safe. They were often coated with grass clippings but never really damaged.

It wasn’t long until the fruits of my labor ripened and canning and freezing commenced. There is something about tomato and zucchini plants in that I always underestimate their production. Even with the smaller plot I had an overabundance.

While washing the vegetables I looked out the window over the kitchen sink. Sitting in the shade of a large sycamore tree was the woman who lived with the man who mowed the lawn that covered my plants with debris. What I saw was just another woman on a hot August day trying to find a cool place to sit. I had lived next to her for almost a year and never knew her name. After all, I was just another student in the rental house next door.

I carefully laid newspapers in the bottom and up the sides of a small cardboard box. I placed a few small zucchini to one side and then piled several large tomatoes on the other. I took a deep breath and headed out the screened side door.

As I approached the woman I introduced myself and held out the box of vegetables. I could tell by the look on her face she was surprised to see me. I think she realized for the first time that I, the student next door, was close to her own age and not a teenager.

As she accepted my gift she seemed dumbfounded by my presence. She never rose from the lawn chair or told me her name. Avoiding eye contact, she spoke a barely audible “Thanks.”

Feeling rejected, but without bitterness, I turned away and went back to my kitchen to continue putting food by. Looking again through the window I noticed that my neighbor had left her shady area and taken with her my gift.

That September I found a room in a house closer to campus. Before I moved away I kicked the mounded edges of dirt into the little patch that had been my garden, smoothed it over, and dusted it with seeds for new lawn. I patted down my pant legs and “shook the dust from my sandals,” knowing I had already moved on.

____________________________

Heavenly Father,

Guide me to always reflect you to those around me. Spare me the shame of reciprocal behaviors rooted in personal pride and let me not limit your love to human love. Grant me to be charitable and forgiving in the face of apathy or anger, so that those whom I meet will know it is you that I serve.

Amen.

Available online at:

Amazon, http://bit.ly/1Ms4EPF

Patheos Press, http://bit.ly/1iBPxTm

Barnes & Noble, http://bit.ly/17J9Fn2

Website: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/prayergardens

Author Central: http://amzn.to/1AKPvUS

Still not sure? Check out this review:

Cultivating God’s Garden through Lent offers daily reflections for each of the days of Lent. These reflections come from the writer’s experience bringing order to gardens both real and spiritual. At every turn of the trowel, every sprinkle of seed, every tug of a weed, Margaret points out to us the rich, loamy meaning that God has for us, just waiting there quietly, if only we will make ourselves still and small enough to see. Margaret does this, shares the fruits of her contemplation with us, and in doing so, invites us to examine our own gardens, wild and weed-ridden they may be. If we stop and look with her, we will see the kind of quiet, luscious adventure that only a gardener can find. This is the first book to ever make me wish Lent could be longer than it already is. The meditations in Cultivating are just the right length to slow you down without dragging it out, and the messages are presented so clearly… I cannot wait to see what sorts of seeds come forth from the read during that time of cold, silent, invisible growth [of Lent]. ~ Mrs. Erin McCole Cupp, OP

Celebrating Our First Christmas with Alzheimer’s Disease: Laughter Allowed

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IT MAKES SENSE TO ME

by Larry Peterson

I guess the first time I realized that something was really wrong was about a year and a half ago. I have a bedroom I turned into an office, and I was sitting at the keyboard clicking away. I sensed someone behind me and turned to see my wife, Marty, standing there. She had a strange look on her face. I remember the moment because fear was etched across her face. “Hey,” I said. “What’s the matter?”

Then I noticed she was trembling. I stood up and went over to her and put my hands on her shoulders. She stammered and sort of whispered, “I don’t know. I think I need your help.”

“Okay, what is it?”

Marty turned and headed down the hall past the living room and into the kitchen. I followed and noticed that she had her “cookie” stuff out.  As she had done so many times in the past, she was about to make the best old fashioned, home-made, chocolate-chip cookies I have ever had. Like a child, I said, “Oh, awesome, you’re making cookies. So, how can I help?”

She sighed and shook her head.  She began to cry and, looking at me, said, ” What is all this? I don’t know what it is for?”

The woman who had made thousands upon thousands of these cookies over the years had no memory of previously doing what she had done so many times before. She had placed the needed supplies on the counter and went to use the bathroom. When she returned a few minutes later, what had been virtually second nature to her had been erased from her mind. It was all gone.

She had come back to me for help because she KNEW something was terribly wrong inside her head, and this time the sudden, specific memory loss was scaring the hell out of her. She sobbed, “What is happening to me?”

She had been sick with Lymphoma since 2011. She had endured numerous cycles of chemotherapy to fight the disease. Anesthesia, required because of surgery in August (needed to repair a broken ankle), and an attack of A-Fib (Atrial Fibrillation) in September exacerbated the cognitive dysfunction. She was officially diagnosed as having Alzheimer’s Disease* on September 28.  And now we are approaching our first Christmas together with Alzheimer’s as our unwanted Christmas guest.

Guess what? It is OK. He will not ruin our Christmas. He is welcome to join us. That is because we have started to laugh again, more and more. And we are laughing at the insanity of living in Alzheimerville. And trust me, it can get quite wacky.

I have always had a bit of a flip attitude. It probably has helped me get through some tough times. So when Marty goes to the cardiologist and goes to sign in and cannot remember her name she looks at me for help. I smile and say, “Who cares Lucy, they know who you are. Just put down Lucille Ball.” She starts to laugh and I laugh and I write her name down for her. Not an issue.

The past ten years of her life seem to have literally vanished from her brain. She does not remember us getting married. (We were both widowed and married eight years ago. She has no clue.) So she asks me if we are really married. I show her our marriage license and pictures from our wedding. She is shocked. “I can’t believe it, ” she says. We really ARE married.”

Now, every night I say to her, “Okay, we can sleep together tonight. It’s not a sin.” She always laughs at that.

There are so many little, extraordinary things that happen every day. Being asked the same question over and over can become unnerving. I have turned it around to where I start by giving her the answer. For example, she asks me ten times a day, “How do you feel today?” After a few times I answer, “Today I feel like seeing you and that makes my day shiny.” It is a ridiculous answer but she likes it and I like it too.

I cannot count the things that have been moved to the strangest places. I have found the Parmesan cheese in the towel closet, unwashed clothes in the dryer. She makes coffee and tells me it is the worst coffee she ever had and I should let her make it. She has hair curlers that keep vanishing. I have found them in the garage, in the refrigerator, and under the kitchen sink. We had been searching for them and when I found them in the refrigerator I said loudly, “Here they are.”

She was standing nearby and turned to see me lifting the bag from next to the milk. I quickly asked, “Can I use these for curly fries?” I began to laugh and she shook her head and smiled. I gave her a hug, opened the freezer door and tossed the curlers in. “They are not frozen enough,” I said.  She began to laugh and so did I and, although shrouded in a dark moment, we laughed our way into the brightness of a new moment.

Marty has been captured and imprisoned by the most insidious of diseases. It is like a computer virus slowly deleting what is in memory. So far the last ten years are gone. That cursor is still clicking delete, delete, delete. The day will come when she will not even know who I am. I will do my best to keep her laughing and smiling as long as I can, and as long as she understands why we laugh.

As for me, I must admit, this entire situation has been wearing me down. There is a lot to do as a caregiver. I traveled a similar road with my first wife, Loretta, who died 12 years ago from cancer. She was sick a long time, but she never lost brain function. That is a very difficult thing to deal with 24/7. But you do what you have to do. If a man and a woman love each other that is the way it should be, HAPPY to be there for each other, no matter what. We both took vows before God and man to that effect and, for me, they remain in full force until death.

Our biggest friend in all of this is our Catholic faith. It is there for us through the Holy Mass, through Our Lord Jesus, through Our Blessed Mother and through the examples and intercessions of so many great saints, reinforced every day by prayers from our family and friends. In fact, I did attend Mass this morning and I had a bit of an epiphany. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself when I realized I had been given a Christmas gift from God Himself.

This gift is my ill wife afflicted with a disease that is unstoppable and incurable. She is foremost God’s child, and now she needs someone to take care of her just as she did years ago when she was a child. We met at church and were married in church. An unlikely couple, I know that God brought us together. Maybe this is why. Because during the Christmas season of 2014 I realized that besides a wife, HE has given me one of HIS children to care for. I will do my best to make Him proud. I will also do my best to keep us laughing. It is all GOOD.

MERRY CHRISTMAS
________________________________________________________________________

* In case you do not know this, Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia are NOT the same thing. Alzheimer’s is the number one cause of dementia but there are over 150 different causes.

 

Copyright Larry Peterson 2014

The Nativity of Our Lord

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NativityLuke 2: 1-20 The Infancy Narrative

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town. And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem , because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. While they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock. The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were struck with great fear. The angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying:

“Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

When the angels went away from them to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds. And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them.

We, too, keep all these things, reflecting on them in our hearts, and give glory and praise to God for all we have seen and heard, just as it has been told to us.

Merry Christmas ♥

Giving thanks

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UntitledIt’s a couple of days early, but the season is never wrong for giving thanks. I’ve seen a number of gratitude challenges online this year, and I think it’s a great trend.

Last year at this time, I had just returned from the CWG biennial writers retreat in DeWitt, Michigan. I am thankful that I’m still in touch with most of the people I met there. One has become a close friend in spite of the distance that separates us. Several have become my cheerleaders, and I hope my support buoys others from that special weekend. My life has been immeasurably enriched from that brief time and in getting to know my fellow retreatants/CWG members.

With the perspective of time, I am again reminded how powerful those few days were. I’ve attended other writing retreats along with numerous conferences, but putting our Lord and our Catholic faith at the center of the retreat was key to its uniqueness.

One of the themes that continues to come up in my monthly columns is that of connecting with other writers, whether it be critique based, genre based, special interest based, online, or in person. The Catholic Writers Guild is a great place for Catholic writers to connect. Opportunities abound. The Online Conference usually takes place in February; look for details as the time approaches. 2015’s Live Conference will be in Summit, New Jersey. Check out the website for critique groups. And if you’re not on the CWG Facebook page yet, email one of the officers for an invitation. While a writer’s life is solitary, find strength and encouragement in the fellowship of those who share the passion of the written word.

But most important, for us as Catholics, is the need to connect with God. Sometimes we need to take a step back from the pressures of writing and recall for Whom we write, and why we toil at this sometimes-thankless task. Enjoy your family this Thanksgiving. Work to alleviate hunger, poverty, and loneliness. Use your gifts for the glory of God. Avail yourself of the Sacraments. Spend time in prayer and Adoration.

May God bless the work of your hands, and may you enjoy the company of your fellow saints-in-making during this busy holiday season.

 

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