needle & thREAD

Hello, sewing friends!

I welcome you to needle and thREAD. What have you been sewing lately? Or are you embroidering? Pulling a needle with thread through lovely fabric to make life more beautiful somehow? Would you share with us just a single photo (or more) and a brief description of what you're up to? Will you tell us about what you're reading, also? Would you talk sewing and books with us? I'd love that so much.

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I don't have much to report this week. I finished that hand sewing on the Painted Portrait Blouse and Mary Beth clicked this very squinty picture. When I saw how squinty I was, I thought about a re-do. But I am reminded that I squint all. the. time.  why even waste another minute trying?

My Kindle coordinates nicely with the blouse, I think.  I told you earlier about one of my reads this week. (Go back and be sure you're entered in the giveaway.) The other was The Enchanted Barn by Grace Livingston Hill. As I mentioned, Kim enthusiastically endorsed these books ages ago. I'm definitely late to the party. This one lived up to her general summation of GHL books. It is a very nice, story, if a wee bit farfetched. Especially appealing is the attention to domestic details. For me, the biggest criticism of this volume was the baby talk of the youngest child. She is a four-year-old little girl and all her dialgue is in tedious, overly-sweet baby talk. Throughout my reading, I kept reminding myself that I was so enjoying the story that the baby talk could be overlooked. But the last lines of the story were spoken by the four-year-old. Huge bummer. 

There are lots of Grace Livingston Hill books in the Kindle store. I'm definitely going to read another.

So, what about you? What have you been up to this week? Reading, sewing, embroidering? Do share.

Let the Recovery Begin

Thank you all so much for your prayers and your kind notes. 

A few seconds after this photo was taken, Patrick tore his MCL. He was very, very fortunate to come away with his meniscus and his ACL intact. He asks me to point out how well muscled and fit that leg is;-).

Thankfully, he does not appear to require surgery. He is looking with hope towards a summer of healing and plans to be back on the pitch before the fall.

We are all so appreciative of your kindness and concern. 

to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God

{Note: This piece originally ran in the Arlington Catholic Herald. I rarely re-print columns in their entirety here, but I'm especially fond of this one and I wanted to be sure it's tucked into my archives here.}

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God”

(Mi 6:8).

What does the Lord require of you?

I love this verse. Love it. To commit it to memory is to have a life’s mission statement always before you. God shows us what is good. And then, He tells what He requires of us to act in His image. Because He is the teacher, He gives us a concise instruction in how to live. What do we know about what He requires?

He demands we act justly, with mercy. St. Therese also writes about justice and mercy together. Mercy is the lens through which she views justice and mercy is the perfection that graces her contemplation of all other virtues.

“To me (God) has granted His infinite Mercy, and through it I contemplate and adore the other divine perfections! All of these perfections appear to be resplendent with love; even His Justice (and perhaps this even more so than the others) seems to me clothed in love. What a sweet joy it is to think that God is Just, i.e., that He takes into account our weakness, that He is perfectly aware of our fragile nature. What should I fear then?” (Story of a Soul)

Is this how we live justice? Are we just in such a way that the people to whom we dispense justice have nothing to fear? When we point out another’s shortcomings do we do it in a way that takes into account her weaknesses and is aware of her frailties? This is the justice that we are called to live. Not an iron fist of fear, but a level-headed, even kindhearted, mercy.

Speaking of kindhearted mercy, this verse also is translated, “to act justly and to love kindness” (Revised Standard Version of the Bible) and “to act justly and love goodness” (New American Bible). Which is it: mercy, kindness or goodness? It’s all of them, rolled together. To be merciful is to be kind and to act with genuine goodness.

It’s an emotional response, to be sure, a sense of empathy, but we are required to offer so much more than empathy. We are required to make a decision to care, to be compassionate, to love with self-sacrifice. Then we are required to do something. We must act on that compassion. We have to respond with genuine effort. It’s a simple thing to call a wrong a wrong. It’s a simple thing to point out someone’s faults or failings. We are a people who have been shown God’s goodness; we are required to do more. We are called to act justly and love mercy.

Remember: Every person’s shortcoming causes her suffering. It is a wound. Jesus came to tenderly dress the wounds and to heal the suffering of the sinner.

“Mercy is love when it encounters suffering. More specifically, it is two movements that take place within us when we see someone (or something) suffer. The first is an emotional movement, a movement of compassion that we feel in our hearts or even, when the suffering is particularly intense, deep in our guts. The second is a movement of action. In other words, as we see someone suffering and feel compassion for him, we soon find ourselves reaching out to alleviate his suffering. In sum: Mercy is love that feels compassion for those who suffer (heart) and reaches to help them (arm)” (Consoling the Heart of Jesus, by Father Michael Gaitley).

Merciful justice requires us to feel and to alleviate someone’s suffering. That’s a very different concept from the one of judging, scolding, punishing and humiliating. Finally, we are called to walk humbly with our God. In our humility, we are not quick to condemn our neighbor. We recognize our own sinfulness. We recognize that we are nothing without Him and that we are limited in our own capacity to understand another person. We respond with genuine humility when we are gentle, allow ourselves to be infused with the kindness, goodness and mercy of Our Lord, and become ministers of that mercy to everyone we meet.

Winner of Simplicities of Life Rosary

Simplicities of Life is offering readers here a chance to win A Natural Men's Rosary.Here's how it's described:

In a word: holy. This hardy, masculine rosary is one meant to be used in prayer for his family or the woman he loves. Its rich, deep 10mm Buri seed aves and 12mm Bone seed antique paters exude strength and power from above. It’s perfected by the solid bronze Holy Eucharist medal and the solid bronze Holy Family crucifix which amplify its clean and manly tone. This rosary would suit a grandfather, father, son, nephew, son-in-law, or any other special man in your life.

The Winner Is:

Barbara  who said...

I'd love to win a rosary for my soon to be son-in-law. The men's rosaries are beautiful and masculine. I especially like the Natural (I & II), Garden of Gethsemane, and (my favorite today) the brown/cream/tan one made with Tiger Jasper stone and buffalo bone.

Congratulations, Barbara, I'll send your email information along to Kessie:-).

Joy in the Ordinary

Yesterday, I mentioned that until very recently, I hadn't read a fiction-for-Mama book in over twenty years. I used to inhale fiction until, inexplicably, when I had cancer, I no longer had any inclination to crack a volume that wasn't a non-fiction book, unless I was previewing for or reading with a child.

Someone suggested yesterday that fiction requires an emotional investment. Indeed. And I'm just so emotionally invested so many places that investing in fictional books (or even movies, for that matter, much to my husband's chagrin) doesn't come easily for me. 

I sort of got hoodwinked into this one.

Theresa Fisher approached me and asked if she could run an ad for her new book. All of the sponsors on my blog offer something I think will benefit my readers. I don't offer sponsorship unless I think I'm passing along information you can use. In order to have Theresa as a sponsor, I had to read her book. The whole thing. No way around it. I was going to have to immerse myself in the lives of these characters until the very end. 

I read the introduction standing in my kitchen, stirring dinner. Without reading further, I emailed Theresa and told her I'd love to have her! Then, I got up early one morning and read the rest. Children awakened. I waved them in the direction of the kitchen. I may or may not have finally caved and let them watch Doc McStuffins. I finished before our 10:00 rosary walk. 

It was a sweet, gentle story of Joyce Barrett, who spends a year as a postulant, thinking that God was calling her to become a nun. When she discerns that she's not called to the convent, she leaves and goes back to the ordinary world. She is plunked down in rural Indiana in a big, Irish Catholic homeschooling family. I felt myself pulled into the comfortable familiarity of a wholesome Catholic story as her life was woven together with threads of parish life, family life, and life at the family-run pub. 

The book is lovely and easily one I can hand to my teenaged daughter. It's a simple story, but the themes resonated long after I finished it and the characters were ones I found myself caring to know. Honestly, I fought the urge to call Theresa and beg her to just tell me the story she's planning for a sequel. 

I know this book isn't destined to be the next great classic. I also know that it had all the elements of a lovely, Christian novel that I noted in the Grace Livingston Hill book I read next. For me, the fact that its characters are earnestly, wholeheartedly Catholic made it all the better. Furthermore, Joy in the Ordinary is a story that's entirely plausible. It didn't require the same stretch of willful suspension of disbelief that the GLH book required. And the children in Joy in the Ordinary were entirely believable. I felt like these were folks who could easily live next door.  I wish they did:-).

The paperback is available at Amazon. The Kindle version is a well-worth-it bargain. It's only 99 cents! For 99 cents, you can have a three -cups -of-tea-morning, where you let the children watch a cartoon or two, and click your Kindle closed with a happy sigh. Go ahead, do it!

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Theresa Fisher  is a happily married wife and homeschooling mother.  With six children at home, she and her husband enjoy an extraordinary ordinary life of lovable chaos.   Mrs. Fisher enjoys writing and knitting, keeping up with the family blog, and drinking coffee.  She dreams of owning a self-sustaining hobby farm someday.  Meanwhile, she's trying to keep a tomato plant alive.  Joy in the Ordinary is her first novel.

Go visit her blook blog or her family blog. Leave her a comment and let her know you were there. Come back here and let me know you "met" her. You'll be eligible to win an autographed copy of Joy in the Ordinary.