Little prayer for today

All for Thee, Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

From A Lenten Calendar 2010

Second Sunday of Lent

Nachos for dinner while we watch Jesus of Nazareth. Daddy is TDY for a few days, so things are a little more relaxed around dinner time.

We enjoy watching this movie together during Lent. It gives much food for thought on the life of Christ.

40 bags - Day 10

Meghan is feeling better (finally!) after a five-day bout with a stomach virus. She's still a little whiny, but at least she isn't clinging to me. Back to work!

Laundry room shelf cleaned off. Cleared out a few things including light bulbs that haven't fit in a light fixture since two houses ago. Really, why do I keep these things that I might need someday and could easily replace someday for a couple of dollars?

Finished going through Joseph's dresser. He moved up a size, so we got rid of all the faded, holey outgrown shirts and pants, which filled a trash bag and left us with 1/2 a bag to donate. After the laundry is done, there will still be plenty of hand-me-downs in the box for Matthew. That's what happens when you have hand-me-downs from three older brothers.

Little prayer for today

My God, I give thee thanks for what thou dost give and for what thou dost take away; Thy will be done.

From A Lenten Calendar 2010

40 bags - Day 9

I had a major slowdown this week. With Meghan sick and clinging to my lap, I had to sit back, slow down, and let go of my plans for the laundry room and Patrick's bedroom and bathroom.

Sometimes God's plan for me isn't what I think it is. Sometimes He reminds me that I need to rest with the baby, to stop and spend long hours on the couch reading books to everyone who wants to listen. To reconnect with the little ones who won't be little for very much longer. When Meghan is well, she is a very busy toddler and doesn't often slow down to cuddle. And that is when I will get back to bagging.

Little prayer for today

O Lord, throughout this day, keep me free from sin.

From A Lenten Calendar 2010

Medals

During Lent, I try not to shop much. It's part of my plan to simplify my life and to give myself more quiet time for prayer and reflection, and maybe in some sense to give up a pleasure. Although I don't particularly enjoy online shopping, shopping with friends is a pleasure for me. Sometimes Katie and I shop online together, which is a lot of fun. (As long as it doesn't get out of hand, shopping is an allowable pleasure--one I can "take back" after Lent.)

But I do allow myself a little shopping time for Easter gifts. So that was why I was over at the Catholic Child website this morning. A couple of weeks ago, I realized that Meghan doesn't have a patron Saint medal. This is strange to me. I'm not sure how it happened because all of our other children received medals as infants and wore them pinned to the backs of their shoulders to Mass and at other times. So how I missed this with Meghan and didn't even notice for 20 months is a mystery to me. One reason may be that we don't have a Catholic gift shop or bookstore here, so I don't have occasion to see this type of item unless I go looking for it on the internet. Another may be that my focus has been spread a bit thinly among the needs of our oldest two children, Matthew struggling with asthma, that little thing we call home school, and baby Meghan for awhile now. I have been putting out fires, as they say, but not much else.

No matter the reason, I resolved to rectify the situation and find a St. Margaret Mary or St. Therese medal for Easter. And I was very excited to see the Saints Alive sterling silver medals. These look like they are good quality medals. Even better, they offer more than 120 Saint names. I was delighted to see some hard-to-find ones like St. Thomas More and Old Testament Saints like Benjamin and Daniel. I do wish the St. Margaret medal said "St. Margaret Mary" instead, but I suppose not every Margaret, Meghan, or Maggie is a Margaret Mary. :)

If you are looking for a medal for an Easter or First Communion gift, you might like to take a look. They also have around 50 different patron Saint statues and rosaries (the rosaries are more expensive). Nice to find so many in one place.

Little prayer for today

Teach me, O Lord to do Thy will, for Thou art my God.

From A Lenten Calendar 2010

40 Bags - Day 6

Meghan was sick today, so I did a lot of baby holding, but not much clearing out. The baby holding was a precious gift from my oh-so-active toddler, but I do hope she will be more herself by morning. It's hard to see her so limp and tired.

I was able to donate two pairs of old eyeglasses at the hospital when we went to base this afternoon, so we still got rid of something, even if it wasn't a full bag.

Hoping and praying for healthy children tomorrow.

Little prayer for today

O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

From A Lenten Calendar 2010

Photos from the infirmary

Still under the weather

Books make me feel better, though.

40 bags - Day 5

One bag of trash and half a bag to donate all from the shoe cabinet, game cupboard, and Joseph's dresser drawers yesterday. We're catching up from our missed day on Saturday.

*cleaned the front hall, too, vacuumed away yucky dust and cobwebs from the top of the closet and under the game cupboard. Joseph even cleaned the mirror and front window. Now if we can just get the front door clean, the front hall will be finished. :)

The list is up

And Patrick's name is in the top 15. So he is off to Nagoya this weekend with the soccer team.

Congratulations, Patrick!

Go Eagles!

Update on Feb. 24, 2010: At last night's parents' meeting, we found out that the Nagoya tournament was cancelled, so it's another week before the soccer team will travel. Patrick was really looking forward to the trip, the game, and visiting a new city, so he is understandably disappointed. He'll just have to keep working hard at practice and make the list for the next trip. I know he can do it. :)

Sick day

Say a prayer for Meghan today. She caught Matthew's stomach bug.

While you're praying, please pray that the rest of us are spared.

Chuckle of the day

Link sent to me this morning by fellow homeschool mom, Therese. :)

40 bags - Days 4 & 5

Not a single bag out of here this weekend. Sigh. We had plans to go through the shoe cabinet, Joseph's dresser, and the board games. I thought we would have more time for this on the weekends, but it seems we had less. Maybe because the days are less structured?

Or maybe because they are more crowded with activities, chores, and craziness, like losing John's van key at the commissary somewhere. I realized it as I finished shopping and needed to be at the movie theater in 15 minutes to pick Katie up from the movie she went to see with a friend and take her and the groceries home so that I could go to a Pampered Chef party at my friend, Virginia's house. (Katie saw Alvin and the Chipmunks. She now knows what I mean when I say that movies can make you dumber.) Thankfully, Patrick was on base with my van and picked up Katie and then took us and our groceries home. I got John's key and Patrick took me back to base where I left my name and phone number at the commissary office and went late to my party in John's van. Phew!

On the bright side, Katie went to a movie with a friend on Saturday afternoon, and I went to a Pampered Chef party with my friends Saturday evening. And by the time I got home from the party, the lost van key was on the windowsill where it belongs. The commissary had called to say the key was turned in and Patrick rescued me again by picking it up before he came home from the base.

And yes, the party is related to the topic of this post because now I know I need to clean out my kitchen cabinets to make room for some stoneware. (It's on sale this month!)

Hah! I CAN rationalize anything. ;)

Old habits die hard.

Update on Monday morning: Just remembered that Sundays don't count in the 40 days. So we're not as far behind as I thought. Yay!

40 bags - Day 3

Today I took on the cabinet below our home altar first. I cleaned out several packages of candles that we have aquired from people who were moving away, which made room to reorganize the cabinet. It will be much more user-friendly now.

A few candles didn't fill the tall kitchen garbage bag I was working on, so I decided to be a little more systematic about this. With Katie along to keep me motivated, I moved into the front hall and took a look around. Front hall closet!

Filled a bag with coats, snow pants, hats, scarves, and so many things that were going unused, even by our crew of active snow-players. Filled half another bag in the kitchen with things to throw out. Katie did a lot of the actual work. I consulted while I made the soup for tonight's soup supper at church.

When she got to the top shelf she turned it over to me. It's full of mailing envelopes, packing material, etc. Not for the faint of heart. I threw out a few unusable envelopes and decided that what this shelf really needed was to be reorganized. These are things we use frequently to mail packages home, so they need to be handy and easy to find. So I was off to the 100 Yen store for a few things. I love the 100 Yen. I should take photos sometime. It is like a dollar store, only sooooooo much better.

Found the items I needed and was home in 30 minutes. Kids were still playing happily, Katie had transferred the magazines and catalogs to a Chinese basket that had been gathering dust on top of the closet and was preparing to throw out the old magazine basket. But Meghan took it over and started carting her dolls around in it. Very cute. Not sure which day it will be before we get that basket thrown out now.

Closet is cleaned and reorganized. Katie even labeled our baskets and the new storage bins for bubble wrap and torn books waiting to be taped. I have a great feeling of accomplishment, and it really didn't hurt to throw away irreparably torn and broken things or to give away good ones that we aren't using. This may be easier than I think. Having Katie along for support definitely makes the whole thing more fun.

Devotion

Yesterday after swim lessons.

Me: Okay time to scrub the ashes off your forehead.

Matthew: No! Mommy! I want to keep it. For all of Lent.

I washed around the ashes. They're pretty sticky, as it turns out. They've survived two showers and the swimming pool now.

40 bags - Day 2

Katie's turn. She filled a grocery bag. She's pretty good about cleaning out, so I'm not pushing for a larger bag from her.

The best thing was that she inspired Joseph, who came to me and said, "Mom, I have so many sweatshirts in my drawer that I can't close it all the way. Do you think I could get rid of some of those?"

Now I just have to keep myself from interfering too much with his discarding. His turn will come on Saturday, Day 4.

40 Bags in 40 Days

The tradition of spring cleaning likely comes from the Christian practice of Lent. We clean our souls by going to confession. Then we draw closer to God, responding to His love with our love, with works of fasting, penance, and almsgiving. By the end of Lent, if we have worked hard, we will have eliminated habits of sin. Our souls will have become more fitting temples for the Holy Spirit.

Catherine Fournier, in her Domestic Church. com essay on Shrove Tuesday, explains the origin of spring cleaning similarly when she says that

"Lent is a time for cleaning, in preparation for Easter and spring. First your soul, then your kitchen, then the rest of the house was cleansed and purified of the past year's accumulations. Old clothes are mended and new clothes purchased at this time of year. In the Ukraine, houses were whitewashed inside and out during Lent. In this way, everything was made ready to face the season of Salvation and Rebirth. Traditions of 'spring cleaning' stem from this religious observance."

The idea of a spiritual element of housecleaning intrigues me. It may be easier to focus on God in our daily lives if our homes are simpler, less cluttered, less distracting. For me, anyway, all that visual noise prevents focusing as I should on loving and caring for my family and our homeschool. To say nothing of what it does to my prayer time, and thus, my relationship with God. Medieval families had a winter's worth of spills, mud, and muck on the floor by this time of year, and they needed to put down new rushes. They cleaned out during Lent in preparation for the great feast of Easter. Our homes are full of the excesses our greatly blessed culture allows us to bring in. We often acquire things without really realizing how much we are accumulating. So we clean our homes as well at this time of year, both for the physical and the spiritual benefit.

That's why I was inspired by the idea of discarding/donating/redistributing 40 bags of stuff during Lent when I read about it on Faith and Family Live. Their site is full of encouragement, support for growing in faith, and tangible ideas for living the faith. It is a place I regularly visit when I have a little time to spend reading blogs. I'm hoping that this idea will draw our whole family into the house cleaning and, if we work hard, result in a less-cluttered, more spiritually inspiring home in time for Easter.

The 40 Bags challenge inspires me, but it also strikes a tiny bit of fear into my heart. For me, detachment is a struggle. I like to hold on to things. I think my German great-grandmother would sympathize. :) Inspired, however, by reading the life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, who practiced detachment almost to the extreme (but whose actual needs were always met by God), I'm beginning this with some trepidation. I'll keep some notes on the blog about our progress, and mine, as I learn to let go of things we don't need.

Day 1: Mom's dresser drawers. (Do I really need to keep clothing that I have owned since 1995 and haven't worn since 2005? Why am I so attached to these things?) Dad's shoe shelf. (Not a whole lot here: he's better at this discarding process than I am.) Filled a bag!

Update: Here's a link this year's post in the place where (I think) this idea got started last year: the Shower of Roses blog.

Ash Wednesday

Lent begins today with Joseph serving Ash Wednesday Mass. Because Japanese class followed Mass, we had an opportunity to witness to our teacher, who had never heard of Ash Wednesday before. I think she thought it was a little strange, but who knows. We're just planting seeds.

Black beans and rice for dinner, in a recipe from Lent and Easter in the Christian Kitchen, a small, but very useful Catholic cookbook by Laurie N. Gill and Teresa Zepeda.

Our home altar is almost bare, with only a purple cloth, a bottle of holy water, and a picture of Jesus at the last supper with the words Lent 2010 on it. The seasonal table in the front hall has Rembrandt's Return of the Prodigal Son and 14 candles, one for each station of the cross, which we will light when we do family stations on Wednesday evenings.

After the littlest ones are in bed, we will gather for family prayer. John is going to introduce us to lectio divina. If we learn to meditate on scripture as a family, it will help all of us grow closer to God, to hear God speaking to us through our family life. I am looking forward to learning this truly Catholic method of meditation and to .

*working on photos

If you have a minute, please say a little prayer that our Lent calendars arrive soon. I ordered them a bit too late, I guess, as they are not here yet. The kids use them to put stickers on for each day's sacrifice or act of love. It helps them so much. Especially Matthew who still thinks that a sacrifice is not eating what you didn't really want to eat today anyway.

Pancake day

Pancakes for dinner?



Oh, yes!


According to my research here, here, and here, the celebration comes from the time when all the fats, meats, and sweets had to be out of the house before Lent. Roman Catholics don't fast as austerely anymore, but our family has embraced the tradition of an especially sweet dinner just before Lent.



We usually give up after-dinner desserts during Lent, which gives us more time after dinner for family prayer. Tonight, in addition to the pancakes, sausage, and fruit salad, we needed to finish some cheesecake left from St. Valentine's Day, so we added it to the celebration. I think my mother would call that "guilding the lily."

chocolate mustache--we think he looks a bit like Clark Gable here

We sacrifice something that isn't necessarily bad in order to help us keep our focus more directly on Christ during Lent. I give up chocolate; John gives up beer. The children choose their own sacrifices according to their age and understanding. Matthew does something different each day. These are small things, but when united with the sacrifice of Christ, they become something much larger. "Little things for love of Jesus," we say with St. Therese.

Back in Yakima, John sometimes went out for a beer with a friend on Shrove Tuesday; tonight he had to settle for one last beer with his dinner. I had one, too. There were two cans of Guiness left in the garage (our winter cold storage), so I thought I would be gracious and help him out. ;)

Daddy's last beer before Lent.

More in the coming days on the things we do besides giving something up for Lent.

Happy Pancake Day!

Somebody

found Matthew's cherry Chapstick.

Lent Resources

A few things I don't want to lose track of...

A great post about Lent from Aggie Catholics--rules, reasons, suggestions for prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

Ash Wednesday background from The Catholic Encyclopedia.

An online Ignatian retreat. Spiritual exercises posted daily for all of Lent.

A modern Screwtape Letters from Fr. Longenecker: The Gargoyle Code.

Lent isn't about selfish desires, like weight loss, but you can improve your health, both spiritually and physically with the Rosary Workout.

Our Lady of Lourdes

Thinking aloud, so to speak, about how to honor this day. It came up quickly. On Sunday, I thought, oh, I have almost all week to figure it out. Now it's Thursday already, so I'd better just pick something and do it. I always want to be more intentional about these things, and sometimes it goes really well, but other times.... Well, we'll see how the day goes. :)

So far, I'm thinking:
Mass at 11:30 on base, hopefully. Lately, every time we've gone over, the Mass has been cancelled for one reason or another. Hopefully, it will happen today. If not, we'll do what we always do and make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament and maybe pray a decade of the rosary if I can get Matthew and Meghan to settle down enough for it. The new Blessed Sacrament chapel is roomier than the old one, so we can all have a kneeler now if we want.

And the kids are watching "Bernadette, Princess of Lourdes" this morning. I like "Song of Bernadette" better, but we just watched it on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

And I think I will pull out the photos of our visit to Lourdes when Joseph was a baby.

The Lourdes water and candles that my friend, Patty, sent us after her visit will make a good centerpiece at dinner time.

What do you suppose would make a good dessert? I'll have to check out A Continual Feast and The Year and Our Children for that. Katie can probably give me a hand there.


Update: There was Mass! Hooray! But we didn't have time for photos. It was swim lesson day and John and I had scheduled a dinner out for date night tonight, which was also a very nice way to celebrate. We waited until we got home to have dessert: ice cream sandwiches made with vanilla ice cream (white for purity and the Immaculate Conception) between two cookies. We did okay with this celebration, but next year I will definitely plan this day sooner.

Matthew-isms

Breakfast = Brek-a-day (this is old, but he still says it sometimes. Meghan calls breakfast "bek-kee-ka")

Yesterday = Last morning

Smock (as in painting smock) = mosque

The price of freedom

A few days ago, we received the following email from our former pastor, who is deployed with the U.S. military.

Tonight, the bodies of the soldiers arrived on C-130 in the metal caskets, iced down, draped with the US Flag. I entered the aircraft with another chaplain along with several young military troops to show honor to the fallen warriors. Prayer was offered and a priestly blessing bestowed upon the bodies. Afterward, the caskets were carried by the pall bearers in formation to a holding area until they are transferred to another aircraft for the final flight/travel home to Dover AFB, Delaware and to their families. There will be many more soldiers to come who will pass before my eyes with priestly blessings bestowed upon their bodies during my military tour of duty in the Middle East . Pray that my spiritual strength be strong.

In sorrow,

Fr. Christopher

Please keep all of our military chaplains and deployed military members and their families in your prayers.

Religion lesson

Joseph discovered that we have an old altar-server alb and cinctures and was inspired to get out the miniature Mass set to play Mass the other day.

It was the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, so they wore red. I really need to make him a stole and chasuble.

Now that he is serving, he is much more aware of what Father does, so this little mass was much more true to the real Mass than in times past.


He borrowed my Magnificat, practiced the whole thing with his altar server, Matthew, and then invited us all to participate.

He did this so prayerfully, and Matthew served so reverently.


One of those things a mother ponders in her heart.

Thinking

I might read this during Lent.

Any other suggestions? What will you be reading?

Candlemas

It's the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, the traditional end of the Christmas season and the day that the Church traditionally blesses the candles for use on the altar throughout the year. There's an exercise on base, so no Mass or candle blessing happened there. But we kept the feast as much as we could ourselves.

We put away the creche set and changed the home altar cloth to green for Ordinary Time. Christmas has ended.

At dinner, we prayed with Simeon:

Lord, now you let your servant go in peace;
your word has been fulfilled:
my own eyes have seen the salvation
which you have prepared in the sight of every people:
a light to reveal you to the nations
and the glory of your people Israel.

And I filled the center of the table with candles. Christ is our light!

Now we will have a few weeks of quiet before Lent begins: Ordinary Time, ordinary days, our usual routine. I'm ready for that; ready to embrace the ordinary for a little while, to rest in the rhythm of the usual.

Here's one last photo of our Jesse Tree. Every year, I take pictures long before Christmas when the tree is empty and forget to photograph it when the ornaments have all been placed on the tree.
It has all been put away now until next year, and the front hall table, our seasonal table, will be bare for a couple of weeks: resting and waiting for the beginning of Lent.

Happy Baptism Day

To Patrick Michael

On this day the Christian community welcomed you with great joy.
You were baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
You put on the Lord Jesus.
Today we sign you again with the cross by which you were claimed for Christ, and we pray that God's blessing be upon you.
Blessed be God who chose you in Christ!

-Catholic Household Blessings and Prayers, USCCB, 1999