Faith Formation Begins at Home

My whole family went to the adoration chapel this week to celebrate our friend's 60th birthday, and we had a beautiful time. While we all worshiped God in the ways we do best, my three-year-old brother looked at his Bible. He made many remarks about the things he saw and showed pictures in his bible to some of our friends in the chapel. As he started to get off topic, my mom left the chapel and returned with a bag of church books.  Eagerly he looked at those and I could hear him whisper "look, Jesus". My mom whispered to him that Jesus was in the tabernacle He asked my dad if he could lift him up so he could get to Jesus. He then asked my mom if she would. Since all else failed he insisted on climbing up so he could "get in" and be with Jesus.        It is sometimes surprising how much a little child can love Jesus even at three he would take the climb (a very hard one too for such a little fellow) just to be with Jesus. As I sat there, marveling at his

Just another fun tradition for our family is sending out shoes the night before Saint Nicholas' feast day. I usually find these chocolate coins somewhere, and then something simple and useful like a new pair of mittens. A friend reminded me that oranges are usually part of this tradition, so I grabbed some of those (and a Reese's Pieces-filled candy cane) for this year. Sometimes I add in a  real gold or silver coin if I'm prepared.  December truly is FULL of Holy Days. It's the reason I don't get hung up on "Happy Holidays" vs. Merry Christmas. Between St. Nicholas tomorrow, the Immaculate Conception 12/8, Our Lady of Guadalupe on the 12th and others, the preparation-purple Advent season is literally and liberally sprinkled with joy and celebration-white! All of these Holy Days are celebrating what Christmas brings: HOPE and JOY! I hope you are all enjoying this beautiful time of hopeful and joyful waiting!

Ever since Emma was a baby, I've been writing Catechesis of the Good Shepherd songs. The first one I ever wrote was a song about genuflection. It came to me in the middle of the night while walking her to sleep in her room when she was a teeny baby. Now she makes up piano accompaniments for me. This song was born from the request of a catechist last week for a way to help the children remember the three great moments of Salvation history (Creation, Redemption, and Parousia). People ask me why I love the Salvation History Chart in level 2 of CGS so much. This song is why! (When I got back from my afternoon walk today, we decided to get this knocked out before leaving for afternoon activities. So it's not the most professionally done music video, but maybe I'll do a Kickstarter someday and get a CD done. I do have about 17 songs, so no small project....) By the way, here's a link to the chords Emma worked up for piano. My friend, Brian, also put together

"Beauty will save the world." Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Four of my daughters sing in the Catholic Youth Choir in our city. The magician, I mean, director, has the uncanny ability to take my four older children (ages 10-15) and make them sound like angels. Having watched The Sound of Music at least 300 times in my childhood, plus spending years in choir and band, I always hoped my children would love music. I didn't realize they would all surpass my talents before they were ten years old. We may or may not have had to make rules about the nice way to tell Mom that she is flat, sharp, or inadvertently changed key again. Music education has so many benefits which include the development of discipline and teamwork, not to mention fine motor skills,  brain development , and even some seemingly unrelated skills. Until he heard my children hammering out a piece in the back room before performing for my parents, my husband commented that he had no idea that choral singing was a c

I'm not proud of it. At a Mother's Day event several years ago (but not enough years for me to not be completely humiliated by this story) I was jarred by the experience of watching several groups of women stand up and extol their mothers as the most wonderful, amazing, fabulous women in the entire world. A couple of my sisters and my mom were also at the event, but we did not (as I recall) stand up and similarly wax eloquently about our mom. I must have been in a major funk that day, because as I was driving home, I started having what my dad calls a POME  (loosely pronounced "Poor Me") Party, feeling sad that I couldn't say all of those nice things about my mom like all of those other women could. (Anyone who knows my mom is shaking his/her head in shock and dismay right now). It really was my most embarrassing moment. Sitting alone in the car that day, I knew I was missing something, but I honestly fit the part of "ungrateful child" pathetical

When I began this parenting journey, I was about as far from a "read aloud parent" that you could be. It wasn't really part of my upbringing, and since reading out loud is so much slower than reading silently, I was mostly frustrated with this supposedly blessed time with my children. What I've figured out over the past 15 years, however, is that reading books and even watching movies with   my children offers an awesome opportunity for formation and reflection that we wouldn't otherwise have.  The stories that we listen to and watch have a profound impact on us, and when we listen together with our children, I think that the impact is infinitely greater. I've been trying to figure out how to write about the movie, The Greatest Showman,  ever since we first watched it several weeks ago. Something in the movie resonated deeply with me, but whenever I try to talk about it, I end up babbling incoherently and finishing up with something like, "You should ju