40 Days for the Poor - Day 16 - Maryknoll Lesson Plans

I wish I had done more with this and maybe I'll get my act together and try again, but I used to subscribe to Maryknoll Magazine.  Along with the magazine would come some simple lessons plans and a poster.  I think the magazine comes every two months (my brain is foggy right now.  Looks like we've been struck down again by some bug).  Anyway, I used to strew the magazine by putting it out on the coffee table or sometimes if there was a particular article I thought would interest the kids, I'd read it aloud over breakfast.  But the best thing was I'd put the poster up on the door from our family room into the mud room.  In fact there is one still up there.  I think it's been there for a year now!  Here it is:

The story was about an American woman who coached soccer for very poor children in Namibia.

Anyway, now Maryknoll is publishing the lesson plans on line so even if you don't get the magazine you can still access the lessons.  Its a good thing to learn about these brave missionaries who have such a heart for the poor.  I know Maryknoll is seen as very 'liberal' by some Catholics, but I really hate using the terms liberal and conservative when it comes to dividing Catholics.  I see much that is admirable in their work and I choose to emphasize that!

Anyway, go to the website and learn about the history and work of the Maryknoll missionaries.  It will be good for you!

Week in Review - 11/30/12

Today I thought I'd do something really different and actually post about homeschooling! This blog is supposed to be about that, isn't it???

We were chugging along just fine with our Aquinas Learning curriculum and weekly routine and then we got hit by a nasty flu. Basically November was spent dealing with this in one way or another. Poor Seano got his version of the flu twice (lucky guy!) and he still has the stuffy nose from hell as a result. We managed to let him slip a lot in keeping up with his academic work. So this past week was a very hard week for him. He had lots and lots of work to get done and he couldn't quite accomplish it all. So he went into his Aquinas Learning Day yesterday feeling not quite prepared enough and he finished the day feeling like he didn't do so well. We can't slack off today or this weekend. Not that he'll be overloaded or anything, but we do need to keep on catching up so that next week doesn't feel so very heavy with sooo much work to be done. Before we got behind, it felt like such a good balance. He had hours each day where he had to work fairly intensely (more so than he's done before, in our loosey-goosey unschooling days) but then he would also have enough free time to pursue his own interests. He really does thrive on structure as long as it isn't too overbearing. And he enjoys the academic challenges. But it does take discipline and it is hard work.

Becky - worked on math, both geometry and fractions in her Key To books and we are still trying to get those times tables down.

Becky's Aquinas Learning Wall for the week.

Becky also worked on her AL worksheets on grammar, catechism, Latin, and science. Today she's got to work on Geography and history. During her AL day she did hands on things with plants including examining parts under a microscope. She especially enjoyed the philosophy part of the day. They are using Philosophy for Children Kio and Gus. They learned about impossible questions or 'stupid' questions as they called them in class. She was proud of the one she thought up: What is the pattern of green?

She's been doing her IEW work on Sunday afternoons. She hates it, but really it is so simple and easy for her, once she settles down and does it, it really is no problem. This week's assignment is using 'because' clauses.

She's listening to The Odyssey as retold by Mary Pope Osborne on audio.

We need to get back to doing copy work. We've fallen away from that.

I have been reading history (All Ye Lands) out loud to both Sean and Becky. I am also reading an old Vision book on St. Philip Neri to both kids.

Seano's Algebra

Sean - worked on Algebra (he's up to about Chapter 26 in Saxon), Lost Tools of Writing (using the ANI chart and the 5 Topics of Invention to analyze Hittite Warrior), Catechism, Wheelock's (he's up to chapter 7 now), and Art of Argument (just finished up chronological snobbery and started Red Herrings), plus he had to prepare a short oral presentation this week. He did it on whether the Trojan War really happened. I finished reading Hittite Warrior out loud to him. Now he's supposed to be reading Black Ships Before Troy. I read this aloud to him back when he was 9 or so. He wants to try to read this one on his own. He's got 2 weeks to finish it. That'll be tough for him.

Again, we've stopped with the copy work. So I do want to add that in next week.

The other thing we've really neglected after being sick so long is any physical activity. So I am determined that we get out more and really get some exercise. He so needs it. We all do!

Josh - still need to sign him up for Chemistry next semester at the CC. The hold up has been getting his SAT scores to the CC campus. Today we go in and try to tackle this little snafu.

Josh is working on Saxon's Advanced Math Test 7 currently. He is preparing for a cumulative exam next Thursday in his Physics class. He's reading Grapes of Wrath. He's supposed to be reading 67 pages a day in order to be finished by the arbitrary deadline I set for him a while ago. I noticed that the book was just gathering dust after the first couple of chapters so I got strict with him. I've been taking his ipod away every day and then giving it back when he's done with his work. The poor guy just has no will power! His government class has gotten all messed up. Between Josh being sick, Rick having to travel and the other student who joins them also winding up with the flu, they have hardly met at all recently. But Josh did complete his exam for that class. He also worked on memorizing the Preamble and the first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. We've also been watching The American Identity lecture series. We watched Eli Witney earlier this week and are about to watch the lecture on Lewis and Clark.

I made Josh pose for this, but he really is reading The Grapes of Wrath (he just wasn't at this particular moment)!

Update:  Holy cow!  Becky woke up with a fever.  For almost every day in November someone in our family has been running a fever!  I thought we were over it, but no, it looks like we are in for another round!  Wah!

40 Days for the Poor - Day 15 - Helping the Formerly Persecuted

I keep talking about my particular parish, but I guess that is a major way that I personally connect with opportunities to serve others. I don't take advantage of the opportunities it provides nearly enough. One thing my parish does is give annually to the Latvian Catholic mission. We have a special connection to that country. One of our former pastors was from Latvia. He and his family escaped when he was a little boy because the Soviet Union was about to deport his family to Siberia. They fled and eventually wound up in the United States. Anton Justs became a priest in Richmond Virginia. At that time there was no Arlington Diocese, everyone was under the auspices of the Richmond Diocese. When the Arlington Diocese formed, he became a priest of that diocese. He served at several parishes in the Northern VA area, and he was pastor at St. Mark. When the Soviet Union crumbled and Latvia was opened to allowing freedom of religion again, Father Justs was sent by John Paul II to go and start a seminary there so they could train priests. JPII then elevated Father Justs to Bishop. I think he was bishop of Latvia from 1995 to 2011. He just retired last year. Every year he comes back to St. Mark to visit and to ask for contributions to help his seminary, his orphanage and his Old Folks home. He is a wonderful, humorous, humble and sweet man. He's very popular around these parts! And I suppose in Latvia too.

The funny thing is my husband is Latvian, though Jewish, not Catholic. His family on his mother's side comes from Riga.

I noticed at the Aid to the Church in Need that there is a project dedicated to the building a new Church in an area of Latvia. These people suffered so under the harsh, communist regime of the Soviet Union. The Catholic church is really burgeoning again. There is hope!

Here's an article about Bishop Justs.

40 Days for the Poor - Day 14 - Helping the Persecuted

Did you know that 80% of all acts of religious persecution are directed against Christians? Did you know that this occurs in 133 countries around the world? This is a terrible crisis that is being largely ignored by our western media.

Watch this video to be more informed about this terrible problem in the world today:



To find out how you can help, go to Aid to the Church in Need.

Lord have mercy on us!

40 Days for the Poor - Day 13 - Soles4Souls

Toms is a shoe company that makes new shoes and for every pair you buy, they'll ship another to some person in need. But I have been hearing about a charity that takes used shoes and either ships them to those in need or repurposes them. I had never noticed Soles4Souls before but lately I've been seeing ads or references to them in various places. I hope some time this coming Advent, I'll get my act together and gather up the myriad of old shoes I've got tucked under beds and in the backs of closets and take them to one of the local Soles4Souls drop off points that are fairly near my house.

So please check out their website. Maybe you could unload our old shoes this way too?

40 Days for the Poor - Day 12 - Gap Year

Lately, I've been encouraging two of my kids to consider spending next year as a 'Gap Year.' My oldest is graduating from college and not really sure what she wants to do with her life. She had plans to go to law school but the fact that there is a real glut in law students and that many law students are finding it hard to get employed once they graduate, put the brakes on that idea. So now she's kind of floundering around trying to think of what to do next.

Then I have my 17 yo son who just doesn't really know what he wants to do at all. He's really a lost puppy right now. He doesn't think he wants to go right into the college. He is very introverted and I think a little bit afraid of taking the next step in life.

So to both of these children I've been pushing the idea of taking a gap year and spending it volunteering some where, some how!

I have no idea if either will actually do this, but it is something we've been throwing around lately.

One resource I've been looking at for ideas is the Catholic Volunteer Network which also works with Americorps.

It may turn out that the college graduate winds up with an internship somewhere in Washington D.C. That really is what she'd like to do - work at a Think Tank or with government in some way, shape or form. And my 12th grader is really too shy I think to leave home just yet. I think it looks like he wants to go to the local community college part time and work part time next year. I leave the final decision up to them both. But I do like the idea of a gap year where one gives back to the community in some way. I wish I had done something of this sort when I graduated. You never have as much freedom to just pick up and go do something like that, as you do when you are young and unencumbered!

40 Days for the Poor - Day 11 - Toms

I never did get around to posting this yesterday, which was Day 11 if my calculations are correct. Yesterday was a crazy day and today will be no less so!

My 11 year old told me about Toms. She heard it from her older, college student sister, who apparent bought some shoes from Toms. Toms is a shoe company. For every shoe you buy from them, they will donate a pair to someone who needs a pair of shoes.

I am also thinking of getting my oldest three kids (all drivers) sunglasses from Toms for their Christmas stockings. With every purchase of a pair of sunglasses, Toms gives money for eye care in poor regions around the world.

The whole ethos of Toms seems so good. I hope I don't start hearing about how it is a big scam or anything. That's the cynic in me. But it does seem like a really cool company, trying hard to be ethical, environmentally and globally.

Plus my Toms shoes are really comfortable! I love them!

Call the Midwife - Book 51

Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth is subtitled "A Memoir of Birth, Joy and Hard Times." In it the author recounts her years spent as a midwife in the EastEnd of London during the 1950s. That area of London is by the docks and most of the people who live there are very poor dockworkers who speak the cockney dialect. They live in old, very inadequate tenements but have grown up in this world within the great city of London, so that they seldom go out of it but have developed their own culture and way of life.

I found this book on the rack at my local drugstore. It has been reissued because the BBC has come out with a very popular TV series based on the book. The series must be very different though, because in reading about the show. I discovered the most popular story line seems to be about the love interest between Chummy, one of the other midwives and a police officer she bumps into when trying to learn to ride a bike. This love interest is never ever mentioned in the book. The bike accident did happen however. The way the midwives get around to visit their patients is by bike. Chummy, who has come to study midwifery, never learned to ride a bike as a youth, so she has to learn as an adult. It is a very funny episode and very sweet too.

Most of the stories recounted have to do with the author's various patients and births of their children. The book is pretty graphic about childbirth but all the different situations and characters make for engrossing reading. I couldn't put the book down! Some of the stories are happy, some funny, but some of them are terribly tragic. Poverty is a terribly dehumanizing thing. Throughout the book, though, there is a sweetness in Worth's recollection. She really loved the Cockney Eastenders, her job, and most of all the nuns she lived with.

In this whole book I never figured out who Worth actually worked for. Who paid her for her work? I must have missed this. But anyway, at the time there was an order of Anglican nuns who devoted themselves to being midwives to the poor. There was a very great need for this in the 19th century and well into the 20th century. There were many, many poor women who had terrible health crises and many maternal and infant deaths because of poor health care and no trained help when it came to delivering the babies. Thus this order of nuns started up to fill this need. They became expert midwives. So the practice was established that those who wanted to become midwives (often, like the author, women who were already nurses) would apprentice with the nuns and learn their craft on the job. The midwives lived in the convent with the nuns.

It was fascinating to learn about the state of medicine in the bombed out, post-war London of the 1950s. Worth is very good at explaining the details to the reader. The women she cares for, the babies, the husbands, the extended families, are all well drawn. Worth seems very honest in her portrayal of what went on. She doesn't seem to draw strong judgements but just states the facts honestly but with great compassion and respect.

Worth grew to love the nuns she lived with. She entered the midwife profession as an agnostic who really felt nothing but coldness towards religion. But living with these wonderful, dedicated, selfless nuns who so obviously were intelligent, admirable women with a deep relationship with God, influenced her deeply. The memoir ends with the author beginning to study the Gospels, having discovered a sense of God's love via her work and her friendship with the nuns.

Very highly recommended! For more book reviews, visit 52 Books.

My Sisters, the Saints - Book 50

My Sisters, The Saints by Colleen Carroll Campbell is a lovely book that I found both intelligent and inspirational. Campbell was familiar to me because of her show on EWTN which I've seen maybe a total of 5 times but it impressed me mightily each time. It is called Faith and Culture and she interviews someone, usually in academia or from a think tank, on pressing ethical issues of the day, all from a Catholic perspective. I was always impressed by her poise and knowledge. She is a cut above your usual news interviewer! Her interviews are archived at her website here.

This book is a memoir of Campbell's life from college where she was losing her religion (as that pop song puts it) to the birth of her twins. She faces many issues that contemporary women face, dealing with the secular culture and the sexual revolution, dealing with feminism and ambition for a fulfilling career versus marriage and children, dealing with infertility and trying to accept the crosses we must bear, dealing with the problems of watching and caring for beloved parents who face health crisis after crisis.

Along this way, she finds solace and inspiration from certain saints, namely, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Faustina, Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta), Blessed Mother Teresa and finally, Mary, the Blessed Virgin.

This is a very feminine book. It reminded me of Father James Martin's My Life with the Saints, only told from a very female point of view. I thought it was a lovely, lovely read. I read this book on my kindle.

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books.

40 Days for the Poor - Day 10 - Thanksgiving Clothing Drive

I am finding it ironic that here I am writing about ways to help the less fortunate and yet due to the flu two things we were planning to do, Becky's canned food drive and now Sean's helping with our parish's annual Thanksgiving Clothing Drive, didn't happen. He was supposed to help out this weekend as part of his Confirmation spirit team. However, he suddenly started running a fever again. Right now he's seems fine though (well except for the sore throat and stuffy head cold bit.)

I wanted to have a nice shot of Sean helping sort through the mounds of clothes that get collected for our Thanksgiving Clothing Drive. It is the brainchild of one of our parishioners who has been doing it for 20 years or so. He organizes the whole thing and it has become an annual event not only in our parish but in the community as well.

People can't deliver the clothing until Friday morning. Volunteers at the church set up tables all up and down the huge activity center. The tables in the center are the sorting tables; the long row of tables to the left and right are all labeled with types and sizes of clothing. One table will be infant - 3 clothing; another Mens winter clothing; another Women's summer clothing, etc. The job of the volunteers is to receive the clothing dropped off, dump the bags on to the sorting tables and then work through the clothes placing them on the proper tables. When the table is full to overflowing the sorted garments get put into big green industrial strength/size plastic bags which are labeled with the content. This goes on all Friday and Saturday and Sunday morning until 12:00 p.m. At 12:00 on the dot the doors close and no more donations will be accepted. The guy who runs things is very strict about this bit because in the past people would show up late or even the next day with donations and expect him to handle it. But he's already delivered the donations via the trucks he rents. He spends the rest of the day making sure the donations get to the right places and that's quite a bit of driving to do all over the metropolitan area on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. So if you are late, you have to take it to Good Will yourself. He rents a couple of those big Penske trucks and they get all filled up too.

In other years when we've volunteered, sometimes people will wander in. I don't know how because the church is located in the middle of suburbia and there isn't even a bus that runs close to it. But the word must spread and someone must give these folks a lift. Anyway, occasionally you'll see a shy Hispanic family or maybe some other people come in and they are in need of clothing. So sometimes the middle man, meaning the particular homeless shelter or community clothes closet, is bypassed and we can give the things needed directly to those in need.

Usually, this is when I do a huge closet purge of outgrown clothing, clothing that nobody really wears and that sort of thing. This year though I didn't do a very good job at it. We only had three smallish bags of things to contribute. I am sure I could have come up with more but frankly I'm recovering from the flu too and don't have too much energy. Also, the other things had pretty much already been collected before we got sick. I don't really want to breathe on the clothing and then hand it over to others to contaminate!

40 Days for the Poor - Day 9 - Disaster Relief (Fail)

We didn't do anything to help out the victims of Hurricane Sandy. I am not sure why. We were not hit nearly as hard as those in New Jersey and New York. We did lose power for about 16 hours and that was it. The lights went out around dinner time. We spent the evening listening to the terrific winds wuthering loudly around the corners of the house. The morning was chilly and dark, but then around 11:00 a.m. the lights suddenly came back on. So it was basically one slightly uncomfortable night. I kept reading about how terrible things were in Hoboken and Staten Island and other places, but for some reason I never gave anything. We did pray for the victims a few nights right after the crisis. There were a couple of local efforts to gather clothing and furniture to drive up to the effected areas, but both of these were a bit of a distance away and at the time, for some reason which I can't even remember, it just seemed impossible to participate. Why didn't we at least donate a couple of bucks to the American Red Cross or something? I think for me praying a little bit when I thought of it and watching the news seemed to automatically transmit psychologically into feeling like I had done something, when really I or my husband had not.

So I am not proud of myself at all. At the time I was too self-absorbed and it seemed like others were doing enough. No need for me to step in and make the slightest effort or sacrifice.

FAIL!

Other people pitched and helped out, thank God! You can read about it here.

40 Days for the Poor - Day 8 -Thanksgiving, Scripture and the News

Happy Thanksgiving!

Poor Will came home from Boston already sick with the same thing we all have: fever, sore throat, cough. So we are going to have a low key Thanksgiving this year. My husband is going to roast a turkey on the outdoor BBQ (if he feels up for it). I might try to cook up some potatoes and cranberry sauce.

Here is a beautiful Thanksgiving prayer I found on this blog:

“O God, when I have food,
help me to remember the hungry;
When I have work,
help me to remember the jobless;
When I have a home,
help me to remember those who have no home at all;
When I am without pain,
help me to remember those who suffer,
And remembering,
help me to destroy my complacency;
bestir my compassion,
and be concerned enough to help;
By word and deed,
those who cry out for what we take for granted.
Amen.”

Lately I've been pondering this from 1 John 17-18:

If someone who has worldly means sees a brother in need and refuses him compassion, how can the love of God remain in him? Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.

And finally, the Washington Post ran a story/photo essay about how food pantries are seeing a rise in need because of soaring food prices. Here's a link.
This little Pentecostal church is doing its best to live the gospel. Hallelujah!

40 Days for the Poor - Day 7 - Cooking for the Homeless

When I was a teen-ager/college student, my friend who lived next door to my parents' home had begun this Thanksgiving tradition. You see she and my group of friends from high school were enamored of the nightlife in Georgetown, a very old and posh section of Washington D.C. where there are many nightclubs and restaurants. The group liked to hang out there, and I being a follower rather than a leader, would sometimes do that too. I didn't do it as often because my parents were old fashioned and had strict curfews, whereas their parents were much more lenient.

Anyway, hanging out in Georgetown, we got to know the homeless who lived there. They sheltered under the bridge at night and during the day and evenings begged for money and food from the crowds of partiers that flooded the area on weekends. So my friend started doing this thing where the day after Thanksgiving, she'd take all the extra turkey from her family's Thanksgiving bird and make lots of turkey sandwiches. Her father died when she was young, so it was just she, her brother and her mother usually. Their relatives lived in Ireland and Pakistan. They visited them over Christmas and during the summer but Thanksgiving was a quiet affair for them. They always roasted a great big turkey though. So she'd buy a loaf of sandwich bread, gets lots of meat off of the bones, spread a little leftover cranberry sauce on to moisten the meat up a bit, and then she'd go down to Georgetown and hand out turkey sandwiches to all the homeless she knew there. I thought that was pretty neat.

Fast forward about ten years when Rick and I were newly married. I read somewhere that you could make Thanksgiving dinners for the homeless shelter named S.O.M.E. (So Others May Eat). There was this really cool priest named Father John who ran things and was well known the in local area as someone who really cared about the poor. So I started a tradition, that really only lasted about four or five years, where on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I'd cook up a whole Thanksgiving meal and Rick and I would take it down to the shelter on Thanksgiving morning. The tradition didn't last too long because I found it hard to do once I had more than one baby! So that fizzled out.

However, after a few years, I got involved in a little ministry my old parish did. It was run by this lovely lady whose son actually is now a priest in our diocese. (She passed away a couple years ago and I went to her funeral and it was so crowded! This lady had touched so many lives.) Anyway, once a month our parish was responsible for providing breakfast to this same homeless shelter. They divided up the breakfast though and you could sign up for certain items. I got hardboiled eggs. Six dozen of them. I became really good at making huge quantities of hard boiled eggs because once a month for about eight years that's what I did! I had to make them a day or two before they were due because I couldn't put hot or still warm eggs in the coolers. You see one parishioner let us use his driveway as a drop off place. He'd put out tons of coolers and people would come by and drop their food off. Orange juice, milk, fruit, donuts, eggs, coffee, and I'm not sure what else. When the lady passed away, they stopped calling me, so I guess the ministry petered out. I didn't follow up because by that time we had actually switched to another parish. I don't know why that made a difference, but maybe my name got taken off the list or something?

Anyway, for a couple years again, we didn't do cooking for the homeless but eventually I signed up again for something. My current parish works with few other churches (not Catholic, so it is an ecumenical effort) to provide what they call a hypothermia shelter. Somehow the word is out there that if the homeless can get to the last metro stop on the line that ends in our town, at 5:00 p.m. during the winter months, a big van will be waiting there for them. Someone from one of the churches volunteers to pick them up and take them back to the Unitarian Universalist Church. This is the church that actually lets them sleep in their heated building for the night. They also will get a hot dinner! The UU church doesn't provide the meals though, that's the job of the other churches including my own. Tons and tons of people take turns cooking dinner so that during the long winter months I usually am only called on to help with one meal. I have made huge vats of chili; some enormous meatloaves and sometimes I'm just asked to buy 6 buckets of KFC Chicken. The fact that I only do something once a year now when I used to do something once a month makes me feel very lazy. And somehow that one dinner always seems to come at an inopportune time and actually feels more disruptive than when I was cooking eggs all the time.

I keep wanting to do more. And I know that my church also makes sandwiches once a month for another homeless shelter, but I never seem to be able to attend. I know a lot of people do this with their kids and they've made it a family tradition, but alas, I have never gotten into the groove. Maybe I should try harder. I really should.

I am so glad, though, I am involved with parish life as it does make it so much easier to reach out and help, in varying degrees, those who are less fortunate. I think if I didn't have constant reminders in front of me, I would go into my shell and never really think about getting involved. When my friend way back in my teenage years started making those turkey sandwiches I realized with some guilt that that sort of thing would never have occurred to me. She had a naturally generous spirit whereas I have to cultivate the same in myself.

40 Days for the Poor - Day 6 - CRS Fair Trade

I was going to talk about something completely different today, but I have been felled by the same flu that has taken everyone else. Thanksgiving has been cancelled. Poor Josh has it worse than me though. He's been running a high fever all day. He may be 17, but he still likes his mama around when he's sick. I only seem to have a killer sore throat and a lot of fatigue. My chest hurts too even though I am not really coughing that much.

I'm about to curl up with a bowl of soup and a catalog that just came in today's mail, the Catholic Relief Services Fair Trade Fall/Winter 2012 Catalog. I am going to try to buy Christmas gifts from this organization. Check out the website!

40 Days for the Poor - Day 5 - St. Vincent de Paul Society

We have been fighting a nasty flu that is slowly burning through our family. Yesterday, we couldn't quite make it to Mass at our regular parish which only has them in the morning. We decided to go to another parish which recently started a 5:30 Sunday evening Mass. It was quite crowded. It was a 'guitar' mass, but their folk group was a bit better than our parish's. Or maybe they were just different.

Anyway, after the Mass, someone representing the parish's chapter of St. Vincent de Paul Society got up to speak about the work they do for the poor. Click on the link to their website to find out more. The parish is going to have a Christmas Fair on the first weekend of Advent (Dec. 1 and 2). At this 'fair' people from the parish and local vendors will sell their goods. Listed in the bulletin were things like 'Amy's Rubs and Spices," 'Angela's Hand Crocheted Items.' Some people make jewelry, some others carve wood. They had one fairly famous Catholic artist who happens to live around here, who will be selling his works. Becky and I noticed that one of the vendors makes American Girl accessories and clothing. That caught her eye. Part of the proceeds these local artisans and crafters earn will go to the parish's St. Vincent de Paul Society chapter.

So Becky and I have a date to go shopping at the Christmas Fair there on the first weekend of Advent.

I'd write more but I am out of time!

40 Days for the Poor - Day 4 - Tithing

We as a family do not tithe. I wish we did, except I think it sounds scary. I've never had a conversation about this with my husband, the one who brings home the bacon, so I don't even know what he thinks about it. He does give very generously to various causes, but I don't think he thinks it through in terms of tithing, more like what you can claim for tax deductions. Maybe these posts will inspire me to talk to him about it. This is definitely an issue that needs to be explored.

My parish does tithe however. But tithing does not mean giving 10% to the poor as it originally did. They call it tithing but they only give 5%. That means 5% of any money coming into the parish (mostly through collections from its members) immediately gets designated to charities that the parish council has voted to support.

This aspect of my parish, along with its very active lay participation and its very transparent handling of all financial issues, are some of the reasons why I like attending there so much. The parish was founded right after Vatican II and the founding pastor set it up so that it very much reflected the best of those changes that came with the second Vatican Council.

There's a lot to dislike about my parish too. A lot of the groovier, looser interpretations of Vatican II took hold in various ways. (Though they are slowly being moved away from. Our current pastor who is a lovely, lovely person looks like an aging hippy with his longish hair and beard, but he is actually quite faithful in his approach). We've had various lay staff and volunteers who definitely pushed dissident views on abortion, contraception, women priests, etc. Our Religious Education directors for a very long time, both nice people on a personal level (one a sister and the other lay) definitely were more of the Call to Action variety type Catholics. It could get very tiresome to those parishioners who were irked by the disobedience and moves away from orthodox practices. However, the pastors we've had, while being very sympathetic to the emphasis on corporal works of mercy advocated in the name of social justice, didn't go overboard in support of dissident ideas. Over the years that I have been familiar with this parish, first eight years of meeting there in our homeschool co-op, and then eleven years now of being actual parishioners, I have known families who have left because it wasn't 'conservative' enough for them and I've known families who've left because it wasn't 'liberal' enough. This told me that it was a pretty good parish! Because Catholics aren't supposed to be conservative or liberal. They are just supposed to be Catholics.

I really think all parishes should be run the way St. Mark's is. I know when we give our weekly contribution, that some of it will go to support the homeless, the sick, the imprisoned, the disabled, the poor. I also know the rest of the money goes to pay for things like electricity and heat and new roofing or new carpets or computers or other repairs. It goes to do a lot of outreach for their excellent youth groups and scripture study and other social/evangelizing efforts. It pays our staff. It goes for books and mission trips and playground equipment. It goes for the mortgage which the parish is desperately trying to pay down to reduce its debt load. I don't have any problems giving to my church. No one is getting rich off the parishioners' contributions, but a wonderful, lively parish, full of love for both the Lord and the least of His brothers is being supported in very small part by the money we give.

Sinner - Book 49

Sinner; The Catholic Guy's Funny, Feeble Attempts to be a Faithful Catholic by Lino Rulli is hysterically funny and rings so true as Rulli honestly recounts the situations, temptations and thoughts that a contemporary person, trying to be a good Catholic, encounters every day.

It's a quick read and Rulli doesn't really wax theological much, but he does really believe in the teachings of the Catholic church, however ruefully, and he does try to live his life according to those principles. But, like many of us, he fails a lot. And he manages to make these failures very, very funny.

I had never heard of Lino Rulli until last week! When we bought our new mini-van it came with this free three month subscription to XM radio. I tried to fool around with it when we first got the car, but frankly I couldn't quite figure it out and wasn't too impressed. Right after the elections however, I was feeling a bit down and sort of rejected by my own fellow countrymen and therefore in need of some Catholic comradeship. And I also happened to find myself driving around a lot one day. This spurred me to try the XM feature once again and I found The Catholic Channel. There was this hysterically funny guy named Lino Rulli and a priest named Father Rob who basically are just two buddies cracking each other up and doing really silly things on the air. They had me hooting with laughter. I was hooked. I have listened every day for the past week and have just renewed my XM subscription for a year. When I found out that Lino Rulli had written a book, I immediately downloaded it on my Kindle. I thoroughly enjoyed it. What a likable, honest, clever and funny guy.

Two thumbs up!

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

40 Days for the Poor - Day 3 - Canned Food Drives

This post was supposed to come with a photo of my daughter helping out with a local canned food drive with her American Heritage Girls Troop. She was supposed to go do this yesterday afternoon, but she is still recuperating from the doozy of a flu that has knocked her out for almost two weeks, so she didn't make it.

But anyway, canned food drives are an easy way to help out the local poor and homeless. And there are lots of opportunities.

Groups like American Heritage Girls, Boys Scouts, 4-H, etc often participate in these kinds of drives, so they make it fairly easy to remember to give to those less fortunate.

My parish actually does three things that involve collecting non-perishable food for community food banks. First of all, every Sunday they have a collection area in the narthex or lobby of our church. Every week in the bulletin, they publish what items the local community food bank, local homeless shelter or crisis pregnancy center needs. Then you are supposed to go out and pick up a couple of the items when shopping during the week, leave them in your car and then bring them in when you come for Sunday Mass. You'd think this would be as easy as pie. For years now, I've intended to make this a habit but I think I have only contributed to this once in the 10 years we've been attending this parish!!! Wait a minute, since I am thinking of this right now, I am going to go put some things in my car, so I can take them to Mass with me tomorrow.

Okay, I'm back.

Another thing my parish does, which is really moving, is at the end of Mass on Thanksgiving morning everyone is invited to drop food donations off on the altar. It is quite moving to see all these people, after participating in a Mass of thanksgiving, to bring their donations up to the altar and see the altar just covered with people's contributions. Children especially love to bring their offering up and I think it gives them a tiny sense of how beautiful giving can be.

My parish also does something each summer in conjunction with a couple of other parishes in our area. They have what they call a Junior High Work Camp. Kids who are rising 7th, 8th and 9th graders, participate in a 3.5 day 'workcamp.' Each child is assigned to a service team which has a specific service job to do. Some of the possible service jobs include helping the crisis pregnancy center clean out its garage which is chock full of donations; swimming with kids at a local program for the mentally disabled, weeding and lawn care for a nearby convent and also some of the elderly parishioners who need help, etc. It always includes a canned food drive. The kids go out and distribute flyers announcing their drive to the neighborhoods around the church building. Then two days later, they come around and collect. My son found it so gratifying to see how much people would give to strangers. I think that feeling of gratification helps children realize that there is joy in giving and that part of a Christian's life of faith is to always be mindful of and generous to those less fortunate. I think this forms a habit of charity.

Of course there are lots of food drives out there, in workplaces, schools or sponsored by various clubs. These are just the opportunities that play out in my particular family's life.

40 Days for the Poor - Day 2 - Free Rice

If you scroll down this blog a bit and look to the right side, you'll see the Free Rice icon there. Click on it and you can play the Free Rice game. This is a vocabulary/trivia game and every time you play free rice gets donated to hungry people around the planet. It is sponsored by the the World Food Programme. The money for the rice is donated by the different companies who get to display their ads at the bottom of the game page. Yesterday when I was last playing the game (studying up on my Latin vocabulary too!) I noticed ads from Cox, Gain detergent and American Girl Dolls.

I first saw this game several years ago on the Lapaz Home Learning blog that Theresa writes. I meant to get the icon and put it on my blog a long, long time ago but hesitated because I am horrible at navigating little things like that. Things that other people seem to do so easily on their blogs, stymies me to an embarrassing extent! However, just a couple of months ago I finally looked into it and it is so easy to participate in this Free Rice game that even I could figure it out. I checked out the World Food Programme and as far as I can tell it's legit. The World Food Programme is part of the United Nations and I know some of its policies are questionable, but this particular game looks like it is just about getting food to people, namely rice. It certainly is a very clever idea. Really, there is no reason why everyone can't be playing this Free Rice game, with as much time as we piddle away on the internet doing fairly mindless things, this not only feeds the hungry but sharpens up your own knowledge as well. It is ideal for unschoolers!

So try a little strewing and play Free Rice today!

40 Days for the Poor - Day 1 - Operation Christmas Child

Lately, I have been doing some soul searching (I told my husband this and he replied: Did you find anything? LOL). The soul searching stems from reading a couple of books about people working with the poor. I felt very small and selfish when I looked into my own very materially blessed life and saw what a sloppy, half-hearted Christian I am when it comes to serving the least of my brothers. This feeling was further intensified by the election. I am worried about the slow economy. But mostly it seems to me that the pro-life movement has done itself a disservice by aligning so closely with a party and worldview that has the reputation of not really caring for the poor, the middle class or the immigrant, except when it comes to abortion. This may not be true (I know many very compassionate and active conservatives) but this is the image that's out there in the electorate's mind. I think it comes down to not being better Christians. If pro-lifers reflected Christ's love better, people would know us by His love. That's the true way to evangelize. Not by politicizing everything or being insulting or demonizing the other side. We have to speak the Truth in love.

Anyway, this made me want to be more intentional in my own attitude toward those in need of help. So I decided to take the 40 days before Christmas, the 40 days leading up to the birth of the Prince of Peace, and try to list and examine a bit, ways that I and other ordinary people can make helping the poor part of our daily lives.

Many people, I am sure, are much more advanced than I in doing this already. This is really me thinking out loud. Anyone who wants to add to this or give me advice and share reflections on this are most welcomed to!

Day 1 - My daughter is involved in the American Heritage Girls. She loves it; it is a program similar to Girl Scouts but it doesn't have the pro-choice/feminist slant to it that Girl Scouts seems to have taken on. It is also, like Boy Scouts, openly religious. Anyway, our troop does this program sponsored by Samaritan's Purse every year. It's called Operation Christmas Child. This is the week to drop off your filled boxes. I believe Monday, 11/19, is the last day to get the boxes to the drop sites. But it is an easy project to do. You simply find an old shoebox, fairly intact (not a big boot box, just a regular size), you go to a drugstore or Target or some such place and you fill it up with things a child would appreciate. We just did this, this week. Becky, being 11 years old, picked the category girl, 10-14. We filled the box with: 2 little plastic eggs of silly putty, 2 sets of cute stickers, a pack of nice gel pens, a little notebook, some emery boards and a bottle of pink nail polish, some Burt's Bees lip gloss and hand salve, a small hairbrush and comb, some gum, some tic tacs, a Christmas container of m&ms, some cool duct tape that had peace signs on it, a little calculator, and some hair ties and some headbands. It was fun picking these things out. Becky carefully wrapped the box in Christmas paper. I also included a check for $7 which covers shipping. You can include a note or card, which we didn't do because at the last minute we were rushed to get it to the troop leader.

That was it! Check out the website listed above (Samaritan's Purse) if you are interested in participating in this project.

UPDATE: A reader (thank you!) has informed me this particular charity, Samaritan's Purse, seems to evangelize against Catholics. That is, it goes into poor Catholic countries and using charity as a carrot, tries to convert Catholics to their own brand of Christianity. I've asked the leaders of our AHG Troop to look into it. They had asked about it apparently and were told it was not a problem, but we'll do further digging. Apparently, secular groups have a problem with the Samaritan's Purse as well because its charity work always seems to come with a evangelization price tag. And apparently Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son who runs the organization, has spoken out about the evils of Islam, making enemies on that front. So! This just goes to show you that trying to be loving and charitable is fraught with complexities. I think, this is especially so for Catholics, as I am. On the one hand you don't want to give to Christian groups that are trying to lure Catholics away from the one true faith. On the other hand secular charities often tie you into giving support to abortion and contraception inadvertently. It's a minefield out there!

Zen in the Art of Writing - Book 48

Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury is a collection of essays and poems he wrote which reflect on the creativity and process of writing. The essays are collected from various sources and are presented in no particular order. There may be one from 1985 followed by another from 1961. They jump all over the place. Bradbury is wonderfully enthusiastic about the subject. He kind of figured out how to write at the age of 22 (after 10 years of practicing and dreaming of being a writer). There is also included an interview with Bradbury on how he converted one of his novels to a movie script.

Bradbury is an ebullient man, full of joy for love of the work he does. He is also disciplined. He liked to get up and first thing in the morning write at least 1000 words. That way, if he didn't do anything else that day he figured he was still ahead of his game. He also is fascinated by his own subconscious and the way the material for his stories take shape and borrow from innumerable little impressions or happenings that bubble up from his memory and flow down his fingers onto the typewriter keys. Writing is a mysterious, almost spiritual thing to him.

This book is fun to read if you are a fan of Bradbury's and have read his books. He reminisces a lot about how he was inspired to write particular stories or how they came together for him. The back of the book contains some poems that Bradbury wrote. I especially loved the one devoted to Gerard Manley Hopkins, who is one of Bradbury's favorites. Mine too!

I bought this book on impulse because I was getting ready to start NaNoWriMo (which is why this blog has gone radio silent as of late) and I wanted to be inspired. Someone, somewhere, mentioned it and though I am not a reader who often enjoys science fiction, I have always loved Bradbury. The book is inspiring for writers and it is perfect for someone who is very busy, as it is easy to pick up, read an essay, put it down again, later pick it up and read another essay or a poem, and each time get a real lift from Bradbury's experienced voice and generous encouragement.

Two thumbs up! For more reviews go here!

Manners in Modern Life - Book 47

This is a slim volume of only 85 pages but I figure it is a much more thoughtful and erudite read than say your basic pot boiler crime novel that people include in their 52 Books challenge, so I am going to go ahead and include it in mine.

The full title is Manners in Modern Life; The Poetry of Conduct; The Virtue of Civility. It is written by Mitchell Kalpakgian and published by The Neumann Press. I read this aloud to my 11 and 13 year olds a couple mornings a week over breakfast for the first several weeks of the academic year. It was slightly (or sometimes more than slightly) over their heads but they listened anyway because the ideas were thought-provoking.

Kalpakgian starts with the premise that one thing sorely lacking in modern life is a sense of civility. The old fashioned chivalrous noble kind that makes men magnanimous and gracious and puts them above the fray and partisan bickering. Kalpakgian is an elegant writer who packs a lot of thought and nuance into each sentence. He makes his point compellingly. I enjoyed this book a lot and the need for it is very apparent in this internet time of election strife. Dialogue is full of ugliness, coarseness, vitriol and insults. It's awful to read some of the terrible things people say to each other stuck in their self-righteous rage behind their computer screens. We need a new civility for the modern age for sure. Not too long ago I signed a petition put out by the Knights of Columbus on Civility in America. I have no idea what that might do, but at least someone is trying to promote decent discourse among fellow citizens.

Each chapter takes examples from literature to illustrate some aspect of good manners. For example, The Art of Good Living as illustrated in The Odyssey. Some of the other works of literature Kalpakgian draws from are Don Quixote (chivalry), Pride and Prejudice (false manners) and A Midsummer's Night's Dream (not taking oneself too seriously). The first chapter starts off with The Goops by Gelett Burgess. Becky had never heard of The Goops and she found this chapter funny. In fact she asked me to read it to her several times. Note to self - The three Goop books would make excellent Christmas presents for her!

Sean got a little tired of all the comparisons to literature and began to see them as unrealistic. I tend to get that way too if the comparisons go on too long. It begins to weaken the argument to me if one is always comparing reality to fiction and then finding it coming up short. But I didn't think Kalpakgian overplayed this, he simply uses the events in the different works of literature to parse what's wrong and right in manners and why.

This book comes nicely bound in hardback; a little book of wisdom to treasure.

For more 52 Books in 52 Weeks reviews go here.