rosary

34/52 – October

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​October.

When the real fall begins.

The colors of the leaves are changed just enough to notice on every highway; every corner.

If you have kids they will bring home fall art of trees using “fall” colors in torn tissue papers, sponge prints, fingerprints with tiny thumbs red from pressing apples onto the trees.

Rows of pumpkins appear on every church lawn, primarily Methodist for some unknown reason (to me) reason.

Harvest festivals and school fundraisers as well as my local retreat center and interfaith council.

Apple, pumpkin, and sweet potato pies fit for space on supermarket shelves.

Trying to squeeze in family applepicking before the apples are gone, but scheduling around work schedules and birthday parties.

October is also the month of the rosary. This year is a special one as we celebrate the centennial of the Marian visitation to Fatima, Portugal. The process for Sister Lucia to join her cousins, Jacinta and Francisco in sainthood has begun. Will she be beatified on the centennial of the final visit (October 13th)?

This will be my second year participating in the Living Rosary at my church.

Jack O’Lanterns, spiders, and a row of little Batmans and Disney Princesses round out the moth and usher in the holiday season from Halloween until the New Year.

October has arrived.

Spiritual Sites

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What I call my “relics”. These are not historical or sacred in any way except to me. 1. (Top left): Dried flowers and rock along with holy water from St. Elen’s Well in Wales. 2. (Bottom left): The top and bottom of a rock from what is still standing of my mother-in-law’s uncle’s house in Northern Ireland. 3. (Top right): A shell and a rock (or a fossilized rock) from Ballintoy. 4. Middle right): Holy water and pebble from St. Olcan’s Holy Well and a rock from the Cranfield Church ruins as well as the top and bottom of the rocks from the site. 5. (Bottom right): The dried flowers and rock from St. Elen’s Well without the holy water pictured. (c)2017

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Glimpses through Instagram

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I had much less time than I originally thought I would have in order to share photos and happenings on social media and here while I was on holiday. 

These are some of the Instagram posts I managed to share during my two week holiday or upon my return. They are in no special order.

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4/8 – Making Time for G-d

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​Entrance Antiphon

To you I call; for you will surely heed me, O God; turn your ear to me; hear my words. Guard me as the apple of your eye; in the shadow of your wings protect me. Cf. Ps 17 (16):6, 8

Luke 18:1-8 

Jesus told his disciples a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary [1]. He said, “There was a judge in a certain town who neither feared God nor respected any human being. And a widow in that town used to come to him and say, ‘Render a just decision for me against my adversary.’ For a long time the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought, ‘While it is true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being, because this widow keeps bothering me I shall deliver a just decision for her lest she finally come and strike me.’” The Lord said, “Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says. Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

[1] Emphasis mine.
In my priest’s homily on this most recent Sunday, he asked for us to make time for G-d in our daily lives. Like the widow in going to the dishonest judge, we should go to G-d with a consistency and persistency that can’t be ignored, but more than that, our consistency and persistency isn’t only for G-d to hear, but for us to project.

Looking at our everyday lives, some weeks, and days, it’s easier to find time for G-d, but how often do we make time for G-d?

Some weeks have a built in time and space for G-d and for our prayer and meditation. For me, this week, I have three times already built in. Sunday’s weekly mass, Monday’s anointing or healing mass, and Tuesday night’s Living Rosary.

As I write this, it is after that night of the Living Rosary. I went last year as well, and it is a very beautiful event. It is 56 people holding candles in a circle reciting the rosary. I sat down, said hello to my Sunday seatmate who was also there when one of the choir came over and asked if I wanted to participate. Um…no. I blinked and turned around. “What exactly would. I need to do?” That is how I became a Hail Mary bead and part of the living rosary. I will probably volunteer next year.

It’s not just time for G-d, but keeping an open heart when He calls us to Him.

What other ways can I make the time to include G-d in my day?

One way is this piece of writing. I have four more after this post until we reach the end of the Extraordinary Jubilee Yea of Mercy. I will continue to think about mercy and meditate on the past year, but in these next five posts (including this one) I have a weekly session thinking about G-d’s mercy and love.

I can choose two days at home to pray the rosary. This month is the month of the rosary, a time that we can feel closer to Mary and consequently her son and His Father.

Looking out of the window at the brightness of the leaves, holding tight to the branches even in the breeze; the reds and oranges glowing like fire, the ones that have fallen spreading a carpet across the front yard. How can I not think of G-d in those simple moments?

He is all around me, and the more consistently that I think on Him, search for Him, and see Him in all the spaces that I inhabit, the more persistently He comes to me and spreads his mercy on my like a blanket of leaves, nature and warmth and His love.

50-25 – Charm Bracelets

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Did you ever collect charm bracelets? Collect might be a bit strong of a description for mine. I’d get them at a variety of tourist spots on vacation, and then promptly lose them upon coming home. I remember looking at them in the gift shop, twirling them around my fingers, examing each charm. I’d wear it for a little while and then it would disappear into the netherworld of lost socks and board game pieces, never to be seen again.

I have vague memories of tricorn hats, moccasins, cactus, oranges, palm trees, revolvers, horses and buggies, Amish hats and other like trinkets in fake silver and gold.

After college, I made myself a charm necklace with pendant charms that I liked but no longer wore, strung onto a shoelace or a thick piece of twine, each separated by beads. It became too heavy to wear.

In recent years, I began collecting charms again; this time on a chain bracelet. I picked things out that were meaningful to my life now. I did lose one of a bow and arrow that I’d had since the SCA and archery practice in the ’90s, and that made me sad, but I substituted a bow and arrow that I found on a keychain of The Hunger Games.

Each one means something different and symbolizes some aspect of my life now.

The charm bracelet was the first place that I put a cross after I’d begun my RCIA studies.

The compass symbolizes the constant journey I’m on, and keeps me on the path and going in the right direction.

The salt vial keeps the demons away. Actually, it’s a symbol of Supernatural, a television show that is one of my coping mechanisms for depression (along with others). It reminds me that I’m part of the Supernatural familly and to always keep fighting.

The Tree of Life is nature, and life, and something that is bigger than me.

My griffin is from my original charm necklace. It is my favorite animal. Part lion and part eagle, they are both majestic and confident, and their golden feathers are gorgeous.

The feather is in place of a quill for all my writing.

Each one is special in its own way. It is like my secular rosary.

A newer charm bracelet that my family got me for Mother’s Day. It has only a few charms that werre important to me. (c)2016

The Living Rosary

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On Tuesday night, my church held a Living Rosary. There is music with our organ and the choir. There is a candlelit procession of all the beads on the rosary. There are prayers, and the benediction of the adoration that’s been in the church all day. It is a wonderful, faith filled, and beautiful tribute to Our Mother, Mary.
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There is so much beauty in candles being carried into a dark church. The organ playing, the choir and congregation singing. And then the rosary being spoken as I pray on my own beads.

The Glorious Mysteries were read and prayed on:

1. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ
2. The Ascension of Jesus to Heaven
3. The Descent of the Holy Spirit
4. The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven
5. The Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth

There is so much to admire about Mary. Her acceptance of G-d’s will, her bravery and determination to walk on a path that was so foreign to her and to the times in Ancient Israel. Often people look at her as a background figure. The Bible is filled with Jesus’s deeds and Words, but not so much of Mary’s. That’s fine, but we forget that his public ministry began when he was thirty. Prior to that, he was just a boy; a little Jewish boy growing up and doing the things a boy at that time and in that place would do.

He’d have friends. He’d play with them. He’d learn carpentry from Joseph, his father. He’d learn to worship and pray. He must have had chores. Did he make his bed or tend the sheep? How often did Mary have to remind him to wash his hands or shake the dust from his sandals. Did he have to prepare the table for eating or did he help with cooking. Or lighting the fire?

In the so many ways that He was different from us, he was also the same.

After the candlelit rosary, Father J talked about Mary. He began by mentioning Pope Francis’ devotion to Mary and how it began in Germany when he was a student. I began to smile. I couldn’t help it because I knew this story. This is my favorite devotion to Mary. Pope Francis grew attached to a stained glass and a painting in his church. Before I knew of his devotion, I had already formed my own to Mary, Untier (or Undoer) of Knots. I carry that particular prayer card in my purse daily, which I showed the father after the service.
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Mary, Untier of Knots speaks to me on so many levels. I do especially think of her when in the very tangible job of untangling my daughter’s necklaces, but also in the broader spirit of fixing things.

Everything can be fixed if we try at it long enough. We can pray on it; we can think on it; we can ponder and ask questions and sleep on it. We all have knots in our lives. How will we pay that bill? My son is sick, what can I do? I had a fight with my spouse or my child; or my parent.

The knots of our everyday need untying, and Mary can help us with that through her intercession.

Anything that can be done, can be undone.

There is nothing that can’t be forgiven.

Thursday Travels – Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs

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These grounds are a reliquary to the North American Martyrs, St. Isaac Jogues and his Companions, St. Rene Goupil and St. John LaLande. In 1642, the same year Rene Goupil was martyred, the first known recitation of the Rosary was prayed here. This was also the birthplace ten years later after St. Jogues and St. Lalande’s martyrdoms, of St. Kateri Tekakwitha.

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The view of the Mohawk Valley and River from the Shrine Grounds

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Three Crosses bearing the names of the North American Martyrs at the Entrance, at the edge of what was the Mohawk village.

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