A time for contemplating eternity

D.L. Sayers, as she probably looks today.

It's November, so it's time to pray for the dead and contemplate the coming of Christ, not just by remembering/celebrating Christmas, but also by looking forward to his Second Advent. 

Sorry for recycling old goods, but perhaps few have read this column. I published it in The Record, the newspaper of the archdiocese of Perth, Australia, once upon a time. (I would link the page, but alas, they seem to have removed all but six of my columns from their archive.)

I had meant to post this on Monday

But... procrastination. I wonder if I'll ever overcome it? Maybe someday...

As I had mentioned last Friday, I attended the St. Therese Institute  Lenten conference in Bruno, SK. It was a fantastic and grace-filled weekend--all the more so because I was able to experience it with three of my daughters and several other good friends. And, as always, I made some new ones (friends, that is).

Home stretch of Lent: Peace be with you

In an effort to share some inspiration (hopefully), but without too much effort on my part (cuz I have school to catch up on, and so forth), I offer you my column on "peace", which was published in The Record, in May, 2012. As is entirely their prerogative, they declined to post it in the online archive of my columns. And so I offer it here, slightly edited.

There's hardly any point in having a blog

If you don't promote your work. I published this piece twice before, in slightly different incarnations: about a hundred years ago in the Catholic Family Ministries newsletter, and also in the Australian Catholic newspaper, The Record (back in April of 2012, when it was still a real pulp and print newspaper. It is entirely online now). 

Today's Gospel reading was about the Transfiguration, which reminded me of this column. If you choose to read it (thank you), I hope it blesses you in some way. 

Overcoming the Post-Transfiguration Blues

The theology of Yesterday

No, it's not really about the Beatles at all. My latest article at The Record.
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The Record columns update... updated

The web edition of The Record does not presently provide access to the entire list of columns that I've published with them. They've recently revamped the entire site, so this may change. Stay tuned. The column below does not appear on my Record web page, so here it is.

From April 18,
Overcoming the Post-Transfiguration Blues

I have sort of given up

...waiting for my web page at The Record to be updated. Perhaps it's their policy not to post all the columns from the paper version, for which I write, on the internet (fair enough), or perhaps their web elves may be struggling with issues beyond my comprehension. So for the time being, I will be posting my columns here rather than links. 


Here's one that appeared in the April 18 issue of the paper, originally titled: 

Overcoming the Post-Transfiguration Blues*

Will and Grace

...was the original title of this column, my latest at The Record, a Catholic paper in Perth, W. Australia.

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My March columns in The Record

Can both be found here.

Have a Blessed Holy Week.

Update: thanks to Deborah Gyapong for the link. 

The most eloquent job offer

I have ever received. This is part of an email I received last month from the editor of The Record, a Catholic newspaper published in Perth, Western Australia.

One of our regular columnists... has recently asked to take a break from writing for us for a while, perhaps some months. [...] Would you be interested in coming on board for a while?

I have always tried to maintain the presence of an at-home mother columnist for a number of reasons, one of them being that it is one way of reaffirming the importance of mothers and motherhood in the face of a culture that regards this role as being a second or third-best option compared to other, perhaps more glamorous but ultimately less fulfilling roles, in the workforce.

The general brief is to to write pretty much on anything from the perspective of a mother who is a believing and practising Catholic. The Record is a big fan of Benedict XVI and his predecessors. We think the sometimes-difficult nature of the Church's teachings are there for good reasons and we're interested in writers who can be counter-cultural and help show that Catholic Christianity is not completely dumb. We're unashamedly pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-family among other things but whereas many people think the Church is irrelevant and out of date we very definitely take the opposite view.

Gosh, how can you say no to that? And why would you want to? I start this week. I know DOH doesn't have many Australian readers who are in a position to support the paper version of this publication (it's been printing since the mid 1800s! Kudos), but everyone can access the online version and give the editorial staff positive feedback for the work they do to advance the New Evangelization. 

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Just for The Record

And I mean that, literally. Here's a piece (pdf version) I published in The Record, "Australia's oldest weekly newspaper" (est. 1874). It presents "Catholic news and opinion from Perth, Australia, and the world." (I guess I qualify for that last one).

And so, for the droves of Record readers who come here as a result of the article, welcome to DOH!

UPDATE: it seems that despite the magic of computer wizardry, most of DOH's fans are having difficulty opening the pdf link. So here's the plain old text of the piece.

God is present in every moment of our time

December wasn’t long enough; it never is. How I wish I’d have done less rushing around, doing the necessary evils (shopping, office parties, meetings, recitals), and spent more time with loved ones: more time with aging parents, with the aunt in the senior’s home, with the friend who has cancer, with our daughter who has now travelled the 500 km back to university, not to be seen again for months—more ‘quality’ time with my husband and younger children, whom I see every day, but sometimes don’t “see” at all. More time in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

Having just rung out the old year and ushered in the new, “Time” may be on our minds these days. What did I accomplish last year? Did I meet all my goals? Did I meet any of them? What do I hope to achieve in the New Year? We make resolutions, surely one of which is better time management.

For some, especially those who are suffering, elderly, or lonely, time may drag interminably—it doesn’t need to be managed so much as endured. For others, time goes by all too quickly. Those of us who are living through the double-whammy of being middle-aged and far too busy with family life and community activism can sometimes get confused—as I remarked to my sister a month or so ago: “I can hardly believe 2010 is coming to a close.” There’s nothing like momentarily losing an entire year to make one sit up and take notice that perhaps things have gotten away from you.

We are (quite naturally, in a fast-paced world) obsessive about time: we wear watches, carry datebooks, calendars and schedules (if not the archaic paper variety, then in digital form: iPads and iPods and iPhones and iThings too numerous to name). I’ve even programmed my new laptop to tell me (out loud, in a semi-human voice) what time it is, on the hour, every hour, so that I don’t waste too much time on the computer. Since I have relatives, friends, and even editors (groups not mutually exclusive) living in various time zones all over the planet, my laptop also displays clocks telling me the time in the UK, Prague, Australia, New Zealand.

We follow friends and celebrities on Twitter and Facebook for minute-by-minute updates on their every thought (and bodily function). Constantly online, we don’t bother reading news that’s more than six hours old. We even like to remind God what time it is: bold reformers in the Church constantly tell the Holy Father that he should change Church teaching to ‘get with the times.’

I am grateful for the season of Advent, now past (and all too quickly, alas), which tells us, in the bustle and frenzy of Christmas preparations, that Christ is Lord of all eternity, and sooner or later, we will be joining Him there. That God exists outside of time, and therefore, at least on a certain level, so must we.

Time is on our side, because God created it; it is there to serve us, and in turn we must use it to serve Him. We shouldn’t seek to conquer it, slow it down, speed it up, pass it, waste it, much less kill it. In every moment, God is eternally present to us. Whether our lives consist of empty loneliness or harried activity, we must, mind and soul, be eternally present to him, because we know neither the day nor the hour when he will call us physically to Himself.

We don’t need New Year’s resolutions or the strength to carry them out, because inevitably they ask more of us than we seem to have (hence, the abandonment of such resolutions by the third week of January). What we need is to remember that God is in charge, and everything will unfold according to His plan. Mainly we need to repent of our stubbornness in cooperating with Him, and have a firm purpose of amendment to do a better job of knowing, loving and serving Him—not in the next decade, or year, or upcoming week, but during the next sixty minutes of our life. He’ll take care of the rest. 

 Happy New Year. 

Copyright 2012, The Record, Perth, Western Australia