Favorite Prayer Meme

I did say August, right? Technically, it's not August so my blog break isn't fully in effect, right? I have started organizing school stuff but have a little time on my hands right now as I wait to consult with Husband on a few issues.

I usually don't do memes because, like Karen, I suffer from Meme Paralysis, but this one looks too good to pass up. I love being introduced to new prayers. The St. Thomas prayers that Lisa shares are just gorgeous! So, I'm going to pay forward that inspiration and share three of my favorite prayers... but I still don't think I'll tag anyone specific. Feel free to play if you want to!

1. I'm going to cheat like Lisa and include two short prayers that we always say together after our mealtime prayer. We began praying these years ago when Pope John Paul II asked for specific prayers for an increase in vocations:

Send forth, O Lord, laborers into Thy harvest. Lord, grant unto Thy Church, saintly priests and fervent religious.

They are such quick little requests that just roll off the tongue and can be found along with some other really wonderful prayers in a little booklet called Prayers for Priests compiled by St. John Bosco Books.

2. The Anima Christi. This prayer says it all!

Soul of Christ, sanctify me.

Body of Christ, save me.

Blood of Christ, inebriate me.

Water from the side of Christ, wash me.

Passion of Christ, strengthen me.

O good Jesus, hear me.

Within Thy wounds hide me.

Suffer me not to be separated from Thee.

From the malignant enemy, defend me.

In the hour of my death, call me.

And bid me come to Thee.

That with Thy saints I may praise Thee.

Forever and ever. Amen.

3. The last one is a new prayer that I've discovered recently that can be found in Treasures Old and New: Traditional Prayers for Today's Catholics. Maybe it's my affinity for alliteration, but this prayer captured my attention at Mass one day. Since then, pondering over these words has really provided an excellent little examination of conscience. Take a look at some of them, really contemplate areas where you might find them in your life and then, start rooting them out. Fr. Philip granted me permission to post the prayer here:

The ABC Prayer of Conversion

O Lord, to come to you is to turn from sin. In answer to the persistent urging of your Holy Spirit, I come to you, confessing my sins and asking your forgiveness. Turn me, O Lord, away from my offenses and renew in me a clean heart.

Turn me, O Lord, away from...

Acquisitiveness, anxiety, apostasy, avarice;

Blasphemy, belittlements, berating, brooding;

Calumny, covetousness, cruelty, and cursing.

Turn me, O Lord, away from...

Death, debt, despair, and distraction;

Egotism, envy, error, and evil;

Falsity, fatalism, fear and fraud.

Turn me, O Lord, away from...

Glamour, gluttony, grandiosity, and greed;

Hatred, heckling, hopelessness, and hurt;

Indecency, ignorance, infidelity, and injustice.

Turn me, O Lord, away from...

Jealousy, jeering, jocularity, and judgment;

Lawlessness, libel, lust, and lying;

Materialism, meddling, mocking, and murder.

Turn me, O Lord, away from...

Nagging, narcissism, negligence, and nihilism;

Obstinacy, occultism, omission, ostentatious display;

Pessimism, presumption, pride, and privilege.

Turn me, O Lord, away from...

Qualms in faith, quarreling, quick-temperedness, quietism,

Rage, rancor, rashness, and relativism;

Sadness, sarcasm, subversion, and sullenness.

Turn me, O Lord, away from...

Temptation, tawdriness, timidity, treachery;

Uncleanliness, unctuousness, usury, usurpation;

Vainglory, vengeance, violence, and vexation.

Turn me, O Lord, to You in zealous faith. 

Amen.

St. Sophia Coloring Page

This Sunday is the feast of St. Sophia. This is for all the sweet little Sophies and Sophias out there, especially my little niece!

St. Sophia Coloring Page

I'm trying to get back into making coloring pages. The first few are always a little rough while I work out the kinks. Thanks for your patience.

 

Three days

Remembering Matthew...
July 27, 2009 - July 29, 2009

Please let Emily and John know you remember, too.

Thank you , Deirdre...

For reminding me that I wanted to link to this super easy red and green treat for St. Anne's (and St. Joachim's) feast day today! Jessica found it last year and saved the idea for today. Check out her amazing watermelon pie over at Catholic Cuisine! She doesn't even have a kitchen right now and she whipped this up! If you are looking for something even easier, how about what Deirdre suggested in the combox below... pizza with green peppers! Great idea! Or hey, slice into a big juicy watermelon and offer a prayer to St. Anne as the sweetness drips down your chin!

Sts. Anne and Joachim, pray for us!

Crazy Busy

As some of you have been able to tell, July has been crazy busy and it's not over yet. I just wanted to pop in and say that I will be taking a blog break in August as I get our school year organized and my kitchen cleaned and restocked. I see I am in excellent company. Unfortunately, I don't have a handsome little toddler to blame the kitchen mess on, only myself! :(

I can't say that I will be completely silent, because whenever I've said that before something always comes up that just has to be recorded and shared, but it will be noticeably quieter around here. Hopefully just a few weeks will do it.

See you soon!

Oh, and as a reminder, St. Anne's feast day is coming up tomorrow... there's a coloring page for that! We will be celebrating Sean's birthday and I will be thanking Sts. Anne and Joachim for being such wonderful patrons to my truly amazing husband!

Dragon: Hound of Honor

When Shortcake saw that Julie Andrews Edwards and Emma Walton Hamilton had written a book about a wolfhound named Dragon: Hound of Honor, she asked to read it. I read the synopsis and decided to read it first. Good thing! While this is a captivating take on a legendary tale involving jealousy, murder, knights and intrigue, I knew it wasn't the fuzzy puppy story that she was hoping for. The Professor, on the other hand, very much enjoyed it as I expect most boys would.

As I mentioned, this is a retelling of the legend of the Dog of Martargis and is very well done. There are quite a few examples of Catholicism in the Middle Ages to discuss with your child not to mention, information on what life was like in France in the 1300's. All in all, very well done historical fiction.

Down by the bay

We went somewhere last weekend.  A place I used to think of as a second summer home. Some place where a Golden Anniversary is cause for celebration and joy, always beginning first with Mass and then... dancing! This place where a crimson church steeple rises tall out of the dusty cotton fields surrounding it. A place where well worn cowboy hats line the back of the church, waiting to be retrieved by their owners who humbly bow their bared heads in the presence of the Lord of the Churning Seas and Scorching Skies. Where everyone knows who your mother is because you look "just like Margie" and everyone knows (and loves) Margie!

This place is a special place.

Grownup cousins can reconnect here and young cousins can make new connections; nobody cares how many times removed they are. Leave that to the genealogists to figure out. The most important family tree is the one with the tire swing!

In this place, a liberated donkey and a miniature horse can race alongside your car, even daring to dart out in front of you and nobody bats an eye including the owner who watches from the opened gate, waiting patiently for their return.

This is a place where a dream house and a long pier are the reward for the patient man who spent his working years building up a hardware store and a restaurant to serve his neighbors and his family in this tiny little town with one stop light. We passed by those empty buildings sighing to be remembered. Their spirit is gone, but his lives on. His weathered skin crinkles around his sparkling eyes as he shows us the projects of his retirement years. Gorgeous bird houses, tile mosaics, sculpted arches, hand hewn benches... a working man never really stops working.

I don't have pictures to share because I was too busy reabsorbing this place; taking it in and committing it to non-digital memory. It might be a while before we make it back.

Please don't mistake my unusually flowery language for treacly sweet romanticism... there was plenty of frustration involved in a long road trip of this kind. I am choosing to focus the lens of my mind on the beautiful.

Watching my children dance a *Grand March, skip rocks on the bay, collect seashells (that had been secretly scattered by the doting great aunt and uncle who live on this stretch of beach) and play with the children of the children I played with as a child did my heart good. The heat, the car sickness, the invasion of giant green grasshoppers and the exhaustion can take a back seat for right now. : )

Blessings,
 



*If you have never experienced a Grand March, then you have missed out on one of life's joys! It is a truly celebratory experience! Everyone lines up with a partner and you promenade around the dance floor in varying patterns until eventually everyone spirals in, drops off the bride and groom in the center and then spirals back out surrounding the happy couple as they dance their first dance. You can see one version of a Grand March here or here but in our family, it's significantly less stuffy and a whole lot more country!

Photo credit:  The church as seen from the cotton field by John Troesser, July 2001

LEGO exhibit

The Mayborn Museum Complex in Waco is hosting a LEGO Castle exhibit over the summer. A sweet friend suggested we meet there and my boys threatened to disown me if I said no.

A castle siege. I love the orange boiling oil being poured down the wall onto the attackers.

This was a scene designed and built by a thirteen year old boy. Can you see the admiration in The Professor's eyes?

LEGO Neuschwanstein Castle

LEGO Stained Glass made with translucent pieces           A LEGO portrait made with flat pieces.

There were areas to learn about real knights and castles and even a jousting arena. Cool doesn't even begin to describe it!

Mercy

As Christians, we are called to be charitable towards all, not just the people we love best, but that is easier said than done. One of the marks of a Christian is how they treat those who they believe have been uncharitable to them or others. We have all been uncharitable at times, none of us here is sinless enough to cast the first stone, and have probably all suffered from lack of charity from others. When we feel we have been wronged, do we pout, do we reveal the sins of others either in general or specifically, in private or in public, do we use our injuries to curry favor or gain sympathy? That temptation is particularly great to our delicate egos. We are all "works in progress" are we not?

Or do we use that perceived lack of charity as an opportunity to self exam our own consciences, and find those areas were our own charity has been lacking, seek forgiveness and make amends? We have the choice of holding onto resentments or forgiving 70 x 7 times realizing that in order to be able to forgive, we must accept that we will be injured first. As Fr. P. said at Mass last Sunday, after having dealt with the ugliness of an extremely personal attack, the Good Samaritan offered more than charity, he offered mercy.

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, pray for us!

Blessings on this glorious feast day!

 

Julie and Julia

Still talking about Julie Andrews here. Did you know her real name was Julia?

I just finished reading her auto-biography Home: A Memoir of My Early Years and I can't tell you how enlightening it was. She did not grow up in the best of situations; at one point in time her young career was making the family mortgage payment. She had horrible separation anxiety when she first left her home to come to the states and suffered through terrible vocal strain all throughout her run of My Fair Lady. But Julie Andrews doesn't just write about the struggle and the pain, she writes about the joy. I read some of her recollections of WWII out loud to the Professor lest he start to romanticize the era too much but also to show how these people survived something we can only imagine. I read to them about Helen Keller and John Glenn coming to see a performance of My Fair Lady so that they could have a better frame of reference for the time period. OK, I also read to them about Rex Harrison's "windy stomach" just to make them giggle, and it worked!

Not every moment stirred up laughter. I wanted to cry with her when she talked about her mother leaving. I was heartbroken for her when her father's offer to adopt the illegitimate child of adultery was refused by her mother. And I was terrified for her when confronted with the ugliness of abuse.

This story covers Julie's life from before the beginning up to the point that she started working on Mary Poppins. I don't know if she has plans to ever chronicle the years after that, but I hope so.

Just so you know, while I read certain sections to the children, this is not a book for children to read.

Julie, Again!

The next book we enjoyed in the Julie Andrews Collection was The Great American Mousical co-written by Julie and her daughter! There is something for everyone in this book. A little romance, a little slapstick, and a whole lot of spoofing going on. There is a glossary in back with stage terminology if you want to learn a little something and plenty of quotes and references sprinkled throughout the text to keep you thinking. See if you can pick them all out! One character spouts off so many Shakespearean quotes you could turn identifying them into a game! Maybe the ending is a bit "cheesy", if you will pardon the pun, but this isn't supposed to be classic literature here. The ending was sweet and though the theater is saved from demolition by the deus ex machina baseball, you knew that was going to happen from the start. The fun is found in the parody.

It might just be the theater geek in me, but I absolutely loved the story's final bow in the direction of Joseph Papp who was most famous for his free productions of Shakespeare's works in Central Park, an achievement which is carried on today in the form of the Delacorte Theater. Papp's idea has unknowingly inspired so many! Who doesn't love Shakespeare in the park?



We also picked up The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles. This book read a little dated to me, but was still a really cute adventure. It was originally published in 1974 and while it had the tendency to be a bit thick or preachy at times, a few sections provided an opportunity to discuss with the children what life was like in the early seventies and how science has progressed (good and bad) since then. I read a review which likened it to the Wizard of Oz to which I would add a dash of Dr. Seuss and maybe a pinch of C.S. Lewis.

From Amazon:

What on earth is a Whangdoodle? A "fanciful creature of undefined nature," it was also once the wisest, kindest, most fun-loving living thing in the world--until people stopped believing in it. When that lack of faith became widespread, the last of the really great Whangdoodles created a special land full of extraordinary creatures: furry Flukes, the sly High-Behind Splintercat, and the wonderful Whiffle Bird. But when an open-minded professor--the one adult who still believes in the Whangdoodle--joins forces with three children with active imaginations, they become an unstoppable team on a fantastic and sometimes terrifying journey to Whangdoodleland.  

The Professor, my 12 year old, has read it and says: It was good, had vivid descriptions and was kind of funny. It was an interesting adventure. It seemed like it was geared more towards younger children and reminded me of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 

The talk about genetics confused him a bit but provided an opportunity for us to discuss some weightier subjects such as cloning and the ramifications thereof.

Oooh, oooh, oooh...

Pick Dallas. Pick Dallas! Pleeeeeeeeeease, pick Dallas!  
(or somewhere close)

'Stomp' creators will tour new show 'Pandemonium'

By JOHN CARUCCI (AP) 

NEW YORK — The creators of the Broadway hit, "Stomp," take the concept to another level with their new show, "Pandemonium: The Lost and Found Orchestra."
Going beyond the rhythms "Stomp" created using everyday objects, "Pandemonium" expands the idea by recreating musical instruments. The chaotic tones of glass bottles, whirly toys, musical saws and other objects recreate a complex symphonic and choral sound....

..."Pandemonium" will begin a North American tour Sept. 26 in Miami. The show will make stops in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Hartford, Conn., Boston, Toronto, Chicago, and San Francisco, among other cities.

My Fair Lady...

... um, Dame, actually. Dame Julie Andrews, that's correct, I think. Although if you are trying to find her in your library, you might have to look under Julie Andrews Edwards.

Having thoroughly enjoyed Julie's acting career for many years, we have recently been exploring the fruits of her writing career. Here are some of our favorites:
 

Our library had a copy of Julie Andrews' Collection of Poems, Songs, and Lullabies and in true Julie fashion, it is practically perfect in every way. Obviously, not all of the selections are written by Julie Andrews. For Sunshine, it has sparked an interest in poetry that we just might have to explore further this coming school year.

The book came with a CD in the back that included the recitation of some of the poems by Ms. Andrews and her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton. Some of them are true story poems written by Julie and Emma themselves. I am sure you know this woman's voice so you can only imagine how enchanting it sounds reciting poetry. Absolutely loverly!

(For you non-theater buffs, Julie was the original Eliza in the Broadway version of My Fair Lady. Audrey Hepburn got the silver screen role when Jack Warner didn't think Julie would be photogenic enough. Hah!)


I wish this next book had come out when Sunshine was littler because it fits my Little Miss Sunshine perfectly. I might put a copy away for her in the event that she has her own fairy princess someday.  The Very Fairy Princess by Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton is about a little girl named Geraldine who just knows she's a fairy princess and can prove it! Which part reminded me the most of Sunshine, hmmmm...

The BIG decision is which dress to wear: pink and white, pink and purple, pink and red... or just PINK?

Oh, that's it!

There are delightful little messages throughout the book that remind other fairy princesses that life is not all about the sparkle, but the duties and responsibilities too! Being a good friend, solving problems, being helpful, and taking a bath are all part of being a fairy princess. I can think of quite a few friends out there with fairy princesses of their own who would love this book! You know who you are! : )


For fairy princesses who have grown up, (sniff, sniff) Sunshine recommends Mandy, the first book in the Julie Andrews Collection originally published in 1971. From Amazon:

For an orphan child whose life is filled with comfortable, predictable sameness, with no particular hardships, life is, well, all right. Really, what does Mandy have to worry about? So it comes as a surprise even to Mandy when a small restlessness begins to grow in her. This lonely ache sets her to wandering farther afield, and leads her to a startling and wonderful discovery over the orphanage wall--a very old, very small, seemingly abandoned cottage. Embarking on a clandestine domestic fantasy involving gardening tools and soap flakes, Mandy finds herself being less than honest about where and how she's spending her days. Holding her secret closer and closer to her heart, this imaginative dreamer inadvertently endangers her reputation--and her life.

Think Secret Garden meets A Little Princess. Sunshine wants me to point out just a few things for the more sensitive readers.

Mandy is a little mean to her best friend at times and even takes things without permission all because she is trying to keep the secret of the little cottage for herself. She definitely learns a lesson about that in the end! It was also a little scary when Mandy got sick but she is rescued, so don't worry!

I read this first before giving it to her to read and while I don't remember specifics, I remember that Mandy definitely struggles with her conscience. She knows she shouldn't steal or lie, but the longing to have a place to call her own is just too great for this little orphan girl bereft of family. She does try to make amends for her wrongs when she can. All in all, there was nothing I found objectionable.

We have a few more Julie Andrews Edwards books waiting on our shelf and I have made it over halfway through her auto-biography, which so far, is very interesting though definitely not for kids! I'll let you know how we like the others later!

Dog Books

Shortcake has enjoyed some books recently that I thought I would share with you, in case you have a dog lover in your midst, too.

Baby Shower by Jane Breskin Zalben is a really cute story about dogs and babies.  From a Booklist review:

Zoe wants a pet. More than anything. To get her mind off dogs on street corners and cats cuddled up in windows, Mama suggests that Zoe help with her aunt’s baby shower. That night in bed, Zoe hears the gently falling rain and soon she’s dreaming about a baby shower—of puppies, kittens, even piglets and ducklings. Weather reports note, “It’s really raining cats and dogs!” Turtles are tangling traffic, and lambs are lolling on lawns. On the day of the baby shower, Aunt Ellie gets the drawing Zoe has made of her dream, but Zoe gets something too. Sitting in a rain puddle is a warm and wet puppy that she names Baby. When her aunt has twins, all the babies get to meet.

Can you hear the collective "awwwwwwww"? It really is such a sweet story with illustrations that fascinated my kids, especially the little guy who likes to search a page for silliness: a pig faced lamp and kittens on a cloud, were some that he found, just to name a few.




Nothing But a Dog written by Bobbi Katz (I loved the irony of her last name) was beloved by my little creature cuddler. From Amazon:

“Once it starts—the longing for a dog—there is no cure for it.” Not checkers or kites or furry boots with zippers; not playing the trumpet or sharing movie popcorn with your friend; nothing can stop the longing for a dog. . . . Nothing—but a dog!

It was as if Ms. Katz looked right into Shortcake's heart and wrote it all down on paper. Jane Manning's colorful illustrations are a delight to look at. I can't tell you how much I love the colors in this book!

If you are like me and like to Google an unfamiliar author (please tell me I'm not the only one who does that) then you might be interested in Ms. Katz' bio. This section was particularly interesting:

Have you had other jobs beside writing for kids?
I've been an art historian, a fashion editor, a social worker, the host of "Art in Action", which was a radio talk show, the program director of a community arts council, a contributing author to the Cousteau Society's Environmental Almanac, and editor of educational books, and then, of course children's books. I've taught fiction at college and cleaned apartments in Manhattan. My most important job was being a Mom.

I like her already! What a fascinating life. I'll bet there are some interesting stories there.

Needless to say, this is going to be one book that will absolutely show up on Shortcake's birthday list, I can guarantee it!