Keep Praying...

Prayer for Religious Liberty
Almighty God, Father of all nations,
for freedom you have set us free in Christ Jesus (Gal 5:1).

We praise and bless you for the gift of religious liberty,
the foundation of human rights, justice and the common good.

Grant to our leaders the wisdom to protect
and promote our liberties.

By your grace may we have the courage to defend them,
for ourselves and for all those who live in this blessed land.

We ask this through the intercession of Mary Immaculate, our patroness,
and in the name of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, with whom you live and reign,
one God, for ever and ever.

Amen.

St. Thomas More, pray for us
St. John Fisher, pray for us
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, pray for us
Bl. Miguel Pro, pray for us

Civility Week 26 June 25, 2012

Remaining calm when all hell is breaking loose would be a sign of civility. Lisa

I am still working on that, remaining calm when all hell is breaking loose thing. Today has not been a calm day, nor has this week been calm…not like hell breaking loose or anything. But there’s just been a lot packed into my day that I think I’m loosing my mind and my civility.

What can we do when we are loosing all sense of calm and civility? Try this, take a breath…stop whatever you are doing…back away…or if you are stuck in your car…relax your foot on the accelerator so you are not speeding or put on the brake if you are at a light and breathe in and out.

Look at the world around you.  Lower your shoulders…smile.

Laugh at the puppy in the yard…at the kid on the swings…at your office neighbor walking by your office.

Remind yourself that whatever you are working on will not cause someone to die or bring them back to life. So relax…

Tell someone a funny story, a joke, about the beautiful rainbow you saw the other day.

This is practicing for civility and peace…

Calm…

Breathe…

Peace…

Happy Anniversary, YFC Blog!

   Okay, so this whole blog thing began two years ago this month, June 28, 2010 was my first blog on Young, Fun and Catholic. Wow, two years how did that happen? It was my wish to reach out to those older teens, twenty and thirty somethings that didn't receive my Straight Talk newsletter mailed to our parish 13-21 year olds explaining faith aspects with fun.

   The blog began to be able to say older faith things, yet still say them with fun and adventure. I personally consider being a Catholic Christian to be an adventure! Truly!  I was born into the Catholic faith making me a "cradle Catholic" as it's sometimes known. I was the daughter of a cradle and convert, and my husband is a convert. Quite honestly I've always enjoyed being Catholic.

   I truly never felt my faith was boring. I always wanted to be involved in it one way or another so I went on retreats in high school, began leading singing at Mass while in high school and playing for "guitar Masses" with my not so great strumming. I've taught Religion classes, run our PSR/CCD program, enjoyed teaching my kids about Mass and donuts, the rosary, seeing God in everything in creation and much much more and now sharing it with more teens and internet followers.

   I loved living my faith to get to be with Jesus every day. I feel very blessed that my faith always felt "comfortable".

   So there you have it, Happy Anniversary Dear Blog! I love writing about the Catholic faith. Our faith should be an adventure with the goal being Heaven. And to try to bring as many people as possible to Heaven with us!

I May Be Simple, But...

Your faith life should activate you in whatever you do in life!

 It should spice it up, make it like a seasoning, it is the base of life’s soup, the rope of adventure, the anchor on your boat, the sunshine of your day, the twinkling shooting star of your nights. Your faith should be the water in your garden, the caffeine in your tea.

Faith to me IS the adventure! Why would you look at it like an interruption, a “have-to” when you can reap so much joy from it? It helps you when you’re down, excites you when you’re up.

It’s just darn good stuff!

Civility Week 25, June 18, 2012

"Civility is not something that automatically happens. Civil societies come about because people want them to." - Jimmy Bise Jr, Us and Them: A Blog conversation Survival Guide, SXSW 2006

    Ain’t that the truth? There probably isn’t a good manner, good virtue or trait that happens automatically. Just like maintaining a good weight and eating well, it takes work and constant vigilance.

   I think that’s why our civility has been going down the tubes in our country, because it takes work and constant vigilance.In other words, we’re just too tired to be civil!

   Think about it. We have jobs that have become not just 9-5 but 8, 10, 12 hour jobs that come home with us even if we don’t want them to. Then if we are parents we need to feed our kids, spend good parenting time with them. If we are single or married without kids yet, we have household chores to do, mow the lawn, take care of a dog or cat, family member and/or a spouse.  Then you have your community, your church, your friends asking for help for this project or meeting.

   Where do you find the time to practice civility in all this, much less help teach it to your kids, siblings, spouse or co-workers and friends? There’s only so much a body can do.

   Do I excuse you from doing it or myself from practicing civility? Not a chance! Our lives today are no more complicated than any of our ancestors, yet they were able to practice civility.

   One person I could always count on to be civil out in public was my dad. As an old Navy man, my dad knew a lot of things, especially words I wasn’t supposed to hear unless I had a career in the Navy, but that aside, there were lots of other things he taught me and one of the greatest things was civility.
For most of my dad’s career he was a mediator. Not officially mind you, but in his work with the Chamber of Commerce in 4 different areas of the state, it was his job to bring jobs to town. That meant working with business people, laborers, management, workers and everyone in-between, inside, outside and all around.

   As a kid growing up I thought it was natural that my dad could just get along with most anybody. His smile and laughter were always genuine with whomever he was with. He shook hands with all people and meant it. He was not a backstabber, if he promised to do something he got it done come hell or high water. He didn’t make promises he knew he couldn’t keep because it meant either someone not getting a job or a business failing if he did. His word was as good as a contract.

   He spent hours and hours not just in an office, but on the road trying to bring new business to town because that meant jobs for people. The only thing I remember my dad not liking was people not working even if that meant he had to work harder to help them have a place to work. He worked with educators, teachers, presidents of corporations, managers, union laborers and leaders, farmers, people with ideas, people who wanted to start a new businesses, young kids looking for job advice, old people switching careers. He worked in an industry that demanded a lot of his time at meetings, conferences and workshops. Although he never finished college he would spend summers taking classes on business ethics, business speaking, how to mediate between businesses, city management, big industry, colleges. And he could do all of that.

   As an adult I began to see just how complicated life was and that it wasn’t easy to maintain civility among friends sometimes, much less between management and labor or education verses big business. I remember other people being upset with my dad if they weren’t getting their way. We had our family cars tires slashed, gun shots in the back car door, battery acid poured over the hood of our car and ugly things written in the newspaper. While at home sometimes I would see my dad upset about these things, he never displayed anything but civility in public. And I still marvel at that.

   In an age when everyone whines about being “persecuted” my dad had every right to up and quit what he was doing or sue someone or get angry, yet he did none of those things. He had a family to take care of and all he cared about was protecting us and teaching us the right way to do things.

   Our society could learn a lot from my dad, who even while dying two years ago still only looked out for his family during his illness. It was never about him but how it affected my mom and my siblings and I.
He was always reaching for better things in life and didn’t have time to sit around and grouse about how tough things were. His advice to us was “get up, get out and do something about it”. Make your life and everyone else’s lives better. Make the world a better place and don’t be afraid of what might happen.

   I want to teach my own kids the same thing. If you don’t like what’s going on in your life, “Get up, get out and do something about it!

Thanks, Dad!

Luck Doesn't Jump, Pray or Fall and Get Back Up!

You can't follow your star unless you reach for it. And that means to stop being afraid of what happens when you catch it!

In other words, your life won't grow beyond your four walls if you are afraid of taking chances, chances on who you are, who you will be and what you will make of yourself!  In 52 years I've taken chances, fallen down a lot, gotten back up because I wanted to fall in love, wanted to have a family, wanted to buy a home, wanted to try living an adventure. I've done all those things and maybe someone looking from the outside in might say, "wow, you've been really lucky!"

But it wasn't luck that got me those things, it was risk taking and above all else praying about it. Sometimes we forget the power of prayer. Pray for yourself to take the risk, pray for yourself to know when to jump, pray for Divine Intervention to tell you when NOT to jump.

But it's not luck...luck doesn't jump, pray or fall and get back up. People who want to grab life are the jumpers, prayers, fall down and get up again.

Civility Week 24, June 11, 2012

Rejoice always.   - 1 Thessalonians 5:16

   This is one of my fave Bible verses. Some days it’s all I can do to remember to follow Paul’s advice to the Thessalonians.  He sent this advice in a letter to them because they were being persecuted so much for their new Christian beliefs.

    I found it interesting that while Paul was encouraging them to remain faithful to what he had just taught them, he also wanted them to remain joyful.  It’s hard to remain joyful when you are being persecuted.

   It’s not like all those new Christians knew at the time that being persecuted was a good thing, that it would strengthen their faith and not tear it apart. It would take them some time to learn and figure that out.

    We have days when we feel we’re being persecuted too.  Especially when people come at us with all kinds of hateful remarks, words that hurt us or unkind actions.  Paul didn’t tell those new Christians to hate their persecutors. He just told them to stay faithful. AND to be joyful about it.

    How do you stay civil or joyful about life when it seems like you are getting attacked all the time? We see in everywhere, on the street, the news, even in our blogs when comments made by anonymous sources are spiteful or biting.

   As a writer of books, newspaper articles, blogs and newsletters for the last 30 years, I have found out it’s hard to put your name on a piece of work and put it out for the public to read.  While most people enjoy your work or at least continue to read it, there are those few who feel the need to criticize something you write for one reason or another. While I welcome constructive criticism, I abhor the anonymous critics.

   If I can take credit for the words I write and say, why shouldn’t they?

   Several years ago I received a piece of mail. It was signed from “An Anonymous Friend.” 

   First of all, I don’t think there is such a thing as an anonymous friend. How can you be a friend to someone and not let them know who you are? Friends aren’t anonymous. You call people friends because you know them, right?

    So this so called “friend” wrote me a letter which was full of criticisms about a member of my family’s driving skills or lack thereof.  In the interest of ‘being a friend” they wrote, they felt I should know just how badly this person was driving.

    Really? Huh… so now I was in possession of the knowledge that someone out there on the streets was critiquing how all of the members of my family drive.  I can’t begin to tell you how creepy that felt.  My family and I teach women’s self defense and of course one of the main tenets of keeping yourself safe is watching out for people stalking you.  This letter made me feel like that. Of course I know that’s not how the writer meant it, but it put me on edge, not only because I felt put on the defensive about my driving skills, but also why someone would take the time to critique our driving and then write a letter about it. Now, just so you know, we don’t drive for NASCAR or a trucking company. We don’t have the “Tell Me How I’m Driving “ phone number on our car. So we weren't advertising, “Rate Our Driving!”

    I feel the same away about those anonymous comments on blogs or the column in our local newspaper where you can just call in a comment and not post your name.

   Where is the sense in that? How can we seriously think we are helping another person when we won’t even state our name or show our face?

   As Christians, we are called to evangelize face to face, mostly by how we live our lives and also what we preach.  But you can hardly show someone an example of how to live if you have a mask on all the time. You have to show your face.  We all have good days and bad days when we aren’t being the kind of Christian we should.  But nonetheless, we show our faces to others, hopefully most days with plenty of joy.  If we see a speck in our neighbor’s eye, we are called to help them pluck it out. Kind of hard to do if you don’t see the other person’s face or eye don’t you think? Or how can you pluck the log out of their eye with your own mask on?

    For a long time, I went around feeling really rotten towards the person who wrote that letter. I certainly didn’t feel joyful. Why would someone write something like that and not have the decency to tell me who they were?  I was suspect of everyone in my outer circle of acquaintances, was it her? Maybe it was him?

    That’s no way to live your life and soon I realized that one stupid letter was making me paranoid and unhappy. I let some anonymous person, not a friend; make me feel withdrawn and angry.  But I let that happen, instead of remembering to live joyfully I was choosing to be mad and upset at everyone.

   I finally had to talk to someone about the letter and she helped me see how stupid it was to worry about someone who wouldn’t sign their name to something.  Why was I letting that one anonymous person ruin my good mood?

  Like Paul told the Thessalonians when they were getting attacked and upset about all the criticism:  “Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophetic utterances. Test everything; retain what is good. Refrain from every kind of evil.”   1 Thessalonians 16-22

   When I started feeling joyful again, I could push those comments out of my heart and live joyfully again.  Being a joyful person truly helps you be civil towards others. If you can remember the joy in your heart, it can help you deal with unkind words, anonymous or otherwise and isn’t that what being civil is all about? Not reacting with anger toward people who upset you?

Let's Be Civil Here People!!

What is up with all of the hate comments on blogger sites, special interest sites like Pinterest and Facebook with snide or nasty comments.
Hey people, did your mother not tell you to talk and write nice things to other people? Shame on you!
One of the bloggers I follow had someone very unkindly post rude comments on her blog. Another person on Facebook had the same kind of comments.
What is wrong with you?
Unless someone is calling you names or picking on you, you should remember the #1 Rule of Talking:
"IF YOU CAN'T SAY ANYTHING NICE, DON'T SAY ANYTHING AT ALL!"
Play Nice!!!!
- signed,
Everybody's Mother!

Civility Week 23 June 3, 2012

“Sin speaks to the sinner in the depths of his hearts. There is no fear of God before his eyes. He so flatters himself in his mind that he knows not his guilt. In his mouth are mischief and deceit. All wisdom is gone. He plots the defeat of goodness as he lies on his bed. He has set his foot on evil ways; he clings to what is evil.

Psalm 36

    Wow, I totally had to change my topic this week. Of course it’s always on civility, but I just read one of my fave bloggers get reamed out by a reader because she wrote about  how she found another family to adopt her family’s puppy because having a pet just wasn’t working out for them.

   She found another loving home for the puppy.
   And she wrote about it.
    For this she was blasted by a reader who, in my estimation was not being very civil.
    So, now we aren’t allowed to say what we want on our own blogs?
   I don’t think so!

   Makes me kind of want to get up and scream, “Just what country do you think we are living in?” But then I remember how as Christians we are getting lambasted for not wanting to pay for abortions too.

     Anyone sick of this malarkey? You know our founding fathers were, enough to go to war.

   This is what happens when you don’t study history well enough in school or it gets “changed” so no one is a bad guy any more.

   Evil flourishes when the  good do nothing.

   Civility – to a point, then ya gotta stand up for something! 

This May Hurt...

Hi Friends,

On occasion, I feel the need to take off the kid gloves and get down and dirty because I hear about kids having sex before they get married, having abortions when they know it’s wrong to kill a baby, and living with their boyfriends/girlfriends.

I wonder, why are they doing this? Are they not getting the message that all this is wrong.

So I ask you dear reader. Do you know all that stuff is wrong? Sometimes, as adults, teachers, parents, we want to make kids happy. We tend to do or say whatever will keep the peace in our families because we love you.

But not insisting that you guys tow the moral line is not the way to get you to Heaven.

Sorry, I know it may sound mean, but you can’t get to Heaven when you are acting like pagans!  Pagans don’t believe in God, they don’t respect other people or the creation of God.

Pagans are selfish, self giving, don’t care about anything other than what makes them happy.

My little sheep, God loves you so very much, but you can’t feel the extent of His love if you turn away from Him and “do your own thing.”

I don’t care what you see on television, movies, Facebook or anywhere else:

It DOES matter if you wait to have sex until you are married.

It DOES matter if you treat your body with respect and not pour drugs and alcohol into it.

It DOES matter that you care about pre-born children and protect them and also protect any human being, unborn, young, old sick or handicapped.

You can’t get to Heaven without believing this and living it.

I Agree With the "Happy Catholic" - I Aim To MisBehave!

I am going to scream.
 I am not going to lapse into sermons or diatribes.
 I'm just going to stand my ground;
 Not give up the fight;
 Rail against the world!
Stop killing the babies!
Stop being so damn selfish!
Stop living like a bunch of zombies!