St. Monica

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Exemplary Mother of the Great Augustine,

You perseveringly pursued your wayward son

Not with wild threats 

But with prayerful cries to heaven. 

Intercede for all mothers in our day 

So that they may learn 

To draw their children to God. 

Teach them how to remain

Close to their children, 

Even the prodigal sons and daughters 

Who have sadly gone astray. 

Dear St Monica, troubled wife and mother, 

Many sorrows pierced your heart

During your lifetime. 

Yet you never despaired or lost faith. 

With confidence, persistence and profound faith, 

You prayed daily for the conversion

Of your beloved husband, Patricius 

And your beloved son, Augustine. 

Grant me that same fortitude, 

Patience and trust in the Lord. 

Intercede for me, dear St. Monica, 

That God may favorably hear my plea 

For 

(mention your petition here) 

And grant me the grace 

To accept his will in all things, 

Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, 

In the unity of the Holy Spirit, 

One God forever and ever. Amen.

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From the Confessions of Saint Augustine, bishop
Let us gain eternal wisdom

The day was now approaching when my mother Monica would depart from this life; you knew that day, Lord, though we did not. She and I happened to be standing by ourselves at a window that overlooked the garden in the courtyard of the house. At the time we were in Ostia on the Tiber. We had gone there after a long and wearisome journey to get away from the noisy crowd, and to rest and prepare for our sea voyage. I believe that you, Lord, caused all this to happen in your own mysterious ways. And so the two of us, all alone, were enjoying a very pleasant conversation, forgetting the past and pushing on to what is ahead. We were asking one another in the presence of the Truth–for you are the Truth–what it would be like to share the eternal life enjoyed by the saints, which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, which has not even entered into the heart of man. We desired with all our hearts to drink from the streams of your heavenly fountain, the fountain of life.

That was the substance of our talk, though not the exact words. But you know, O Lord, that in the course of our conversation that day, the world and its pleasures lost all their attraction for us. My mother said: “Son, as far as I am concerned, nothing in this life now gives me any pleasure. I do not know why I am still here, since I have no further hopes in this world. I did have one reason for wanting to live a little longer: to see you become a Catholic Christian before I died. God has lavished his gifts on me in that respect, for I know that you have even renounced earthly happiness to be his servant. So what am I doing here?”

I do not really remember how I answered her. Shortly, within five days or thereabouts, she fell sick with a fever. Then one day during the course of her illness she became unconscious and for a while she was unaware of her surroundings. My brother and I rushed to her side but she regained consciousness quickly. She looked at us as we stood there and asked in a puzzled voice: “Where was I?”

We were overwhelmed with grief, but she held her gaze steadily upon us and spoke further: “Here you shall bury your mother.” I remained silent as I held back my tears. However, my brother haltingly expressed his hope that she might not die in a strange country but in her own land, since her end would be happier there. When she heard this, her face was filled with anxiety, and she reproached him with a glance because he had entertained such earthly thoughts. Then she looked at me and spoke: “Look what he is saying.” Thereupon she said to both of us: “Bury my body wherever you will; let not care of it cause you any concern. One thing only I ask you, that you remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be.” Once our mother had expressed this desire as best she could, she fell silent as the pain of her illness increased.

~St. Augustine, from today's Office of Readings

Five Minute Friday: Older

I breezed by the hospital today for routine bloodwork. I parked just beyond the Birthing Inn, and I was flooded with memories: the sight of Mike's tennis shoes just beneath the curtain signaling that I could indeed birth that baby because dad had arrived; Nicholas bursting on the scene on that magical night just a tick or two before midnight; Katie and the unexpected c-section and the long hospital stay; Karoline and the absolute perfection of that October; the days spent anxiously in the triage room and then the awful, wrenching feeling of walking through the Birthing Inn doors and away from the building when I left sweet Sarah Annie in the NICU. I was transported back by that place, back as far as thirteen years -- to a younger me. I did not walk through those doors today.

I walked instead through medical office building doors. Just routine bloodwork. I sat in the waiting room, foregoing the ubiquitous copies Fit Pregnancy for my knitting bag. There I sat, peering beneath my glasses, because to look through the lenses makes everything close up appear blurry. 

Yep.

Older.

{Wow. That wasn't  very cheerful was it? According to Lisa-Jo, the deal is only five minutes, so I will not have time to elaborate upon the good in older. Besides Sarah has come to climb all over me. It's time to snap things shut here. But hey, I have kids climbing all over me, so it's good, right?. Visit Lisa-Jo for more Five Minute Friday fun.}

And hey, happy weekend! Stay dry, be safe and thanks so much for stopping by.

Hurricanes to think about

Below is a repost from several years ago. I confess that I have not tried all the links. My hope is that there is still plenty of good stuff to think about as we seize a very real opportunity to discuss hurricanes.

Hurricane Reading

Peter Spier's Rain

Galveston's Summer of the Storm

Isaac's Storm

Hurricane

Magic School Bus inside a Hurricane

Rain Makes Applesauce

Come on, Rain!

Down Comes The Rain

One Morning in Maine

Websites Worth Exploring

FEMA for Kids

National Hurricane Center

Hurricanes: How they Work and What they Do

Alphabetical Order Each year, hurricane names are assigned in alphabetical order. The list of names is recycled every six years. The names of this year's hurricanes can be found at here. List the names out of sequence and let the children put the names in alphabetical order. Ask them to notice a pattern in the names once they are in order. 

Make “lightning”. Static electricity is stored in rain clouds. When a cloud is so full of static electricity that there's no room for any more, a spark might leap from the cloud. That spark is called "lightning"! (Note: This experiment works best when the weather is dry.)

1. Tear up a sheet of tissue paper into tiny little pieces.

2. Hold a comb over the confetti.  Nothing happens.

3. Use a comb to comb the children’s hair. Or rub the comb on a piece of wool or fur.

4. Then hold the comb over the tiny tissue paper pieces.

5. What happens? Why does it happen?

The Water Cycle in a Jar. Discuss the steps of the water cycle:

(1.) Energy from the sun changes water to water vapor.

(2.) Water vapor rises. It cools and condenses to form clouds.

(3.) Winds blow the clouds over land.

(4.) Clouds meet cool air, and rain or snow falls to the ground.

(5.) Most of the water returns to large lakes and oceans.

Draw the steps for nature journals.

Now, re-create the water cycle:

1. Fill a large, glass bottle or jar half full of water .

2. Cover the jar with plastic wrap and secure the plastic wrap in place with an elastic.

3. Place the jar in a sunny window.

4. Observe for a few hours. What happens? Why did it happen?

Create a cyclone in a bottle.

Graphing. Make a bar graph of the number of hurricanes by month.

June

19 hurricanes

July

25 hurricanes

August

77 hurricanes

September

107 hurricanes

October

53 hurricanes

November

5 hurricanes

(Data shows totals for US Landfalls from1851-2015.)

And/or

Hurricanes cause millions of dollars in damages each year. Create a bar or picture graph to show the costs of Atlantic hurricane damage over the decades.

1920s

$2 billion

1930s

$6 billion

1940s

$6 billion

1950s

$13 billion

1960s

$23 billion

1970s

$21 billion

1980s

$21 billion

1990s

$78 billion

Make a weather station. Go to Making a Weather Station and follow the directions to create a weather station at home.

Geography -- track a hurricane. Print off a Tracking Map and track the path of a current storm.

Download the Hurricane Kit Checklist and create one for your own home. This is a good basic disaster kit even if you don’t live in a hurricane region.

Use watercolors to paint hurricane scenes.

Curriculum Looking for a unit study on emergency preparedness? Youth Emergency Preparedness Curriculum. 

Games  Create your own hurricane and explore the relationship between sea surface temperatures and hurricane strength.

Research

1. What's the difference between a hurricane, a cyclone, and a typhoon?

2. What is the origin of the word "hurricane"?

3. Pick a hurricane whose name has been retired.  Research the storm and find out why the name was retired. Choose from the list a hurricane a US hurricane, research the hurricane, and then create a brochure or lapbook about it. Include such things as the hurricane's path, the costs according to the actual year in which the hurricane occurred, the loss of life, loss of property (particularly notable property and landmarks), rebuilding efforts.

4.  Research relief efforts.  Which organizations rush to offer relief?  How do they operate? 

Geography. Visit Earth Science for Kids and look at the geographic areas to find current tropical storms. Locate the seven areas where tropical storms occur on a world map identify countries that might be affected by storms in each of those areas. Are storms there called typhoons, cyclones, or hurricanes?

August Transition

This one is for my sister as she leaves her beautiful daughter at Tulane Univeresity, far, far from home.

Krysti, I remember well how hard it was for me to leave you to go to college. And I still sting with the pain of learning how angry you were with me for abandoning you. And, oh, how I remember the raw grief of a child leaving the home and the heart into which I invested so much. I pray you south and I pray you home again, the seat beside you painfully empty. And I pray the autumn, though certainly tinged with browns, will be richly hued with the joys of a new season.

August. It hangs in the air, doesn’t it? A long month — hot, heavy, humid. Summer is well-established, but the threat of fall lurks in the shortening evening shadows. For right now, it’s still summertime. We hang on to these last golden days of closely knit family time. Still, with every day, the change of autumn grows ever closer.

Perhaps this is the fall when your baby first gets on a bus to go to kindergarten. Maybe you are shopping for the perfect outfit to wear for the first day of middle school. (Is there such a thing as a perfect anything in middle school?) Is it the adventure of high school that is this year’s first? Or, are you swallowing hard against the lump that keeps rising as you gather all the necessities for a college dorm?

Much more than January, it is September that is most likely to bring change to the composition and the rhythm of a family. August is replete with drawing every last little bit out of the family as it is this summer, before running headlong into the family as it will be this fall. August is for counting blessings, taking stock and looking forward. August is all about laboring toward transition.

There is a moment or two (though for some it seems more like an eternity) just before a baby is born that is intense and painful. For many women, it’s the hardest thing they’ve ever done. Very often, in the moment, a laboring mother will tell you that she can’t possibly do this task before her. A good midwife will remind the mother at that point that she is very close, indeed, to holding her baby. And so she is. The stage is called “transition” and it is marked most often by intensity and pain. It is followed by the sweetest joy a woman can know. And the pain? Remarkably, it disappears.

What the new mother doesn’t know is that “transition” will repeat itself throughout her baby’s childhood. There will be intensity and pain and then she will most definitely push her dear child into another world. What she doesn’t know is that, unlike that first transition, the ones that follow don’t end with a baby safely snuggled at her breast. With every subsequent transition in their life together, that baby will move further from her. That’s what is meant to be.

His world will expand to include new people, new places, new relationships. She wants those things for him. She wants him to reach and to grow, to learn and to love. Still, it hurts. And in the quiet of an August night, she acknowledges in a whispered prayer that she wishes it didn’t have to be. She wishes they could just breathe together in the warm quiet after the hard work of birth. She wishes she could hold his hand as he walks on tentative, toddling feet, both of them secure in her ability to keep him from falling. She wishes to soak up the pure delight of his being just a little longer. She has loved all the springs and all the summers with a joyful gratitude.

It’s August though, and nearly September. With a sigh and a prayer destined to be oft-repeated, she turns resolutely toward the autumn sun.

--reviving this one from the archives at the Catholic Herald today (they've reformatted the site there:-) as we work at home. I hope this message finds you well as I endeavor to take a little computer break and focus intentaly on home. It's Boot Camp week before our autumn rhythm moves into full swing. I'm posting this as a genuine reminder to myself.  We're working hard to prepare the environment for our studies and to establish excellent habits so that each member of this family can serve the others well in the coming term. 

Choose Joy

As I was reading online the other day, a quote by Sally Clarkson, author of numerous excellent books for mothers, caught my eye. She wrote, “Loving one another, as adults find out in marriage quickly enough, is a choice, not a feeling.” There was really nothing earth-shattering there. I think we can all agree that over the life of a marriage, spouses are presented, time and time again, with opportunities to choose to act with love, even when they don’t especially feel a surge of romantic emotion. Sally goes on to write, “Honor given to another is an attitude of humility and respect that is trained into a young child and practiced over many years. So, those who cultivate love and respect find it blooming more than those who leave it unattended.” Her point is that children need to be taught intentionally to behave charitably and to respond to their fellow man with the virtue of love. When they are deliberately taught to love, they do love.

As I thought about her wisdom, I thought about the other virtues. Don’t they all require a choice? Can we not choose to act in virtue, despite our feelings, time and time again? And can we not intentionally teach our children to choose virtue. Lately, my family has been looking at the virtue of joy. Specifically, we’ve looked at the outward sign of Christian joy: cheerfulness.

This morning, I breezed by the Facebook page of an old friend to wish her a happy birthday. And I smiled to see her recent pictures. We’ve lost touch over the years, but she still looks very much like I remember her. Her smile beams exuberantly from shot after shot. I noticed someone wished, “Happy Birthday to one of the happiest people I know!” Someone else said, “I don’t need to tell you to enjoy the day; you enjoy every day.”

That’s the person I remember so well, the person who saw more sorrow before she was 25 than most of us have seen by 50, yet who was known then and is still known now for her predictable, perpetual cheerfulness. I remember loving being a guest in her home during our high school days. Her parents were kind and gracious and some of the happiest people I’d ever met. Joy lived in that marriage and when those dear people named their only daughter, her middle name, literally, was Joy. Did she inherit their joy or was it taught?

A little of both, perhaps.

We all have days when cheerfulness seems elusive, just like we all have days when we don’t feel particularly loving towards the people God has given us to love. Spiritual maturity demands us to be cheerful anyway, to smile warmly, genuinely, and with joy. In order to love when we don’t feel loving, we call upon the grace of the sacrament of marriage and, truly, the other graces of the Church. That grace is available to us as we strive to live all the virtues.

St. Josemaria Escriva writes, “A piece of advice I have insisted on repeatedly: be cheerful, always cheerful. Sadness is for those who do not consider themselves to be children of God.” I think my friend’s joy bubbled up from the inheritance given by her parents and then was fostered by their example. She was born into joy. If we are children of God, we are all born into joy, aren’t we? Sometimes, we need to reminded of that; we need to be reminded to be always cheerful. Truly, we need to live it for our children so often that it is instilled into their very beings. We need to smile.

We need to choose joy.

--reviving this one from the archives at the Catholic Herald today (they've reformatted the site there:-) as we work at home. It's Boot Camp week before our autumn rhythm moves into full swing. I'm posting this as a genuine reminder to myself.  We're working hard to prepare the environment for our studies and to establish excellent habits so that each member of this family can serve the others well in the coming term.