Among Women Podcast #142 The Ministry of Christian Counseling

This week, Among Women 142 delves into the mission of Christian counseling, and offers tips on finding it when you need it. My guest is Dr. Jean Lee, CEO and founder of Gabriel Outreach in Arizona. Together we explore how the spiritual life impacts healing in the mental health field. Also profiled in this episode is the life of St. Mary of Edessa, a fourth century saint, and former prostitute, whose heart is rescued and transformed by the love and forgiveness extended to her by a loving uncle, and ultimately, by Christ. Listen to  this week's Among Women podcast here.

Technical note: I almost didn't post this podcast because of some random static that attacked the recording and could not be erased or diminished without erasing the entire program. So rather than canceling the show, I chose to post it anyway, hoping you would overlook the flaw and still enjoy the content. 

The F.U.N. Quotient... an Ode to Joy

I'm over at Catholic Mom, talking about fostering spiritual growth in the family...

My latest at Catholic Mom is somewhat a retrospective look back on 25 years of parenting. Spiritual Growth Within a Catholic Family, Part One gives the context for Catholic family life in the Gohn home. Part Two, coming next month, will talk about some of the family practices and attitudes that have worked to build up the spiritual life in each of our children.

Here's a snippet from the current article:

The spiritual milestones of our children’s lives began with their baptism. It slowly advanced with each of the sacraments that they made. In between those sacramental milestones, there’s a world of spiritual territory that we’ve traversed. And while we don’t make pencil marks on a door, or keep report cards, my husband and I were privileged to watch souls take shape and grow in our home. As parents, we spent a lot of time doing what we could to influence that growth both directly and indirectly. 

But every now and then, we see a shining moment -- a defining moment – when one of our children chooses Christ – growing as Catholic Christians – by yielding more and more to Him. These are the moments you pray for. Very few can be scheduled. Most are unpredictable, surprising, and happen as the Holy Spirit wills. But almost all of them can be prepared for. 

We’ve prepared our children as best as we can for such times, often deliberately. Just as we’ve been called to be role models for them, we’re called to educate them in three areas: daily life, academic life, and spiritual life. We often know what to do with the first two areas, but the spiritual life sometimes seems a little harder to articulate. This is the life of grace, of sanctity, of holiness. It is training a child not only in the basic knowledge of the faith, but calling them toward an interior life with Christ.

The rest is here. 

This makes me think.... about how far I need to go, but not being intimidated by that.

We need the living Christ, whom we can know only through our encounter with him. But encounter presumes actual presence -- the Real Presence, which in turn, requires the Sacrament and the Church that alone is authorized to give us the Sacrament, the church that Christ himself willed into existence and continues to support. The Eucharist, at each new celebration, must be recognized anew as the cord of our Christian life. But we cannot celebrate the Eucharist adequately if we are content to reduce it to a ritual of -- more or less -- a half-hour's duration. To receive Christ means to worship him. We welcome him properly and worthily at the solemn moment of receiving him, come to understand his nature, and in worshipping him learn to know him, come to understand his nature, and follow him. We need to learn once more how to rest peacefully in his gentle presence in our churches, where the Eucharist is likewise always present because Christ intercedes for us before the Father, because he always awaits us and speaks to us. We must learn again how to draw inwardly close to him, for it is only thus that we become worthy of the Eucharist. We cannot prepare ourselves to receive the Eucharist simply by thinking about how it should be done. We can prepare for it only when we try to comprehend the depths of its demands on us, of its greatness; when we do not reduce it to our level, but let ourselves be raised to its exalted level; when we become aware of the accumulated sound of the prayers offered during all the centuries in which generations of men have advanced and are still advancing toward Christ.

--Pope Benedict XVI, writing as Cardinal Ratzinger in Co-Workers of the Truth, p. 81-82.

Among Women ReadHER 8.4.12

Among Women ReadHER

8.4.12

The Dark Knight Rises

By Peggy Noonan from her column, Declarations, at the Wall Street Journal

Lots to think about on the state of culture, as it pertains to violence, entertainment, and parenting.

50 Encouraging Tweets for Women from (in)courage
Posted by (in)courage
A fun Christian site for women with some cool quotes from Twitterers.


How Children Evangelize Us
By Gretchen Filz at CatholicMom
A great article on how "a little child shall lead them."


5 Steps to Embracing NFP
By Renee McGuire at The Practicing Catholic
Good stuff here.


A Jury of My Peers
By Jaymie Stuart Wolfe at The Boston Pilot
Jaymie talks about her months seated on a grand jury. 


What Guys Need to Know About Women
By Marge Fenelon at CatholicMom
An excellent explanation of the gifts femininity can bring to the workplace. My book, due out in 2013, talks about a women's gifts, among other themes.


Lou Xiaoying: Story of Chinese Woman Who Saved and Raised 30 Abandoned Babies in China
As Reported in The Daily Mail, London
This might just be woman of the year, or of the decade -- if they were voting in China.


Athletes Astound But "Fairness" Rule Leaves Us Dismayed
By Mary Beth Hicks at Family Events
Some folks think a US gymnast -- the reigning world champion -- ought to have been able to compete for an individual medal.

Regis Jesuit student and Olympian Missy Franklin, a gold medalist swimmer, backed by her fellow classmates.  


Not an article, but an announcement of a free online course called "Pillars of Catholicism" being offered beginnning Aug 20 from John Paul University. You might wish to check it out.

The F.U.N. Quotient... country music edition meets the classical edition

Being a life-long guitarist, especially a fan of the rich dreadnaught sounds of Martin guitars, I've always had a fondness for country music... and this one's been a earworm of late... no Martins in this one, but a great Guild...


And when I'm writing, or needing inspiration of any kind... I hit the classical playlist. One of my favs that I just found on YouTube:


And finally, a kind of cross-over hit that, well, is just beautiful if you haven't heard it in a while:

Among Women Podcast #141: Assumptions, Adversity and Grace

Among Women 141 recaps my recent trip to France, as I attempted to discover some of my family's roots in the little village of Lembeye. Also, as we enter the month of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer some perspectives on Our Lady's Assumption into heaven, a feast day we celebrate on August 15. 


Joining me in conversation is author and blogger, Woodeene Koenig-Bricker. Together we examine the themes in her latest book, Facing Adversity with Grace: Lessons from the Saints

You might enjoy my blog post with photos of Lembeye, France. But find the podcast and all the pertinent links here. 

   

From Lourdes to Lembeye to Paris... more photos from my trip to France

If you've been keeping track, I never got to post photos from the rest of my trip to France. But if you missed the earlier post on my pilgrimages to Rue de Bac and to Lourdes, you can go here. On the podcast this week, I described a little bit about my journey to the homeland village of my paternal grandmother, Henrietta (ne Pelay) Wilhelm, and what it was like to be in Lembeye.

I also talked about Lembeye and the gift of a faith legacy in my recent column at Patheos.

After the pilgrimage to Lourdes, (podcast on Lourdes) we rented a car and decided to drive back to Paris over a period of days to see more of the countryside. What we did not know, until shortly before our trip is that my father's mother, who came immigrated to the United States as a girl, came from a small village, Lembeye, just about 20 miles from the mountainous Lourdes. So after we rented the car, Lembeye became our first stop.

The first sighting that we were getting close...

Lembeye is located in the south of France, in the rolling hills before you get to the Pyrannees.

The outskirts of town

We did not have anyone to visit in Lembeye. So we programmed the GPS to take us to the Catholic Church in the town... that we had researched online before the trip.

So we rolled right up to the Church's front door.

Our Lady of the Assumption built in the 1800's...

... and currently undergoing restoration, even though the congregation is still meeting there for Sunday Masses.

We heard the echos of lots of pigeons living in that bell tower. I'm sure that's on the restoration "to do" list. 

In the right foreground, you see the town veterans memorial with names from the first and second world wars.

Sadly, the poor weather gave us a poor exposure of this soldier on the monument.

On the sides of the monument are the names of the native sons who were lost.

And we found one that we believe may be a relative: "Victor Pelay".

Here I am before I go in to the church (It was raining so I'm dressed for the weather.) Note the very old statue of Our Lady above the threshold, welcoming guests.

She need some restoration too. I wonder how long she has stood there?

The church door was locked until a workman came by, so we got a peek inside. Sadly, a photo of the stained glass did not come out, plus it was very dark inside and no lights were on. But we were happy to say a little prayer there.

A mission statue from the late 1800's. We did see many crosses like these on the roads in and out to many villages and small towns in France.

Here are some more views of Lembeye...

The tower

LOVED that the local pub was called CENTRAL PARK! 

(being native NYer's we got a kick out of that!)

Yes, there was a chain on the gate of the cemetery. Yes it was not locked so we went in to see if we "knew" anybody. Crazy? Maybe. But since this was an impromptu "family tree" expedition, we had no  other ideas as to how to explore for family. (Next time, we'll try to meet the living locals.)

And yes, we did find one tombstone that seemed to resemble a family name. We're still researching.

Moving on from Lembeye, we also enjoyed Bourdeaux, (and its wines!)  

Plus a trip through the Loire Valley, is not complete without visiting some of its many Chateaux...

Yes, more rain! But lovely gardens are still lovely in the rain!

Bob and me... somewhat waterlogged!

We had dinner in Orleans... where the battle of Orleans was fought under the leadership of St. Joan of Arc, who is honored behind me.

At night, many cities in France illuminate their cathedrals with lights... so those shapes are projected onto the Cathedral de la Croix (where St. Joan would pray before battle.)

Closer to Paris, we stayed in Chartres... a city I will gladly return to-- I just loved it! Maybe cuz it was a sunny day??  Chartres is one of the most beautiful cathedrals in France, so please see some great Google images elsewhere so you can really appreciate it. It is undergoing enormous restoration. Those white walls and columns show off the natural stone after centuries of candle soot and dirt and grime have been removed.

That's me, before the famous Lady of the Pillar, praying for all the intentions I brought with me.

In this shot, you can see "before" restoration on the left, and "after" restoration on the right. I'd like to return to Chartres in about 5 years. 

Exterior

One of the many magnificent doorways.

Chartres was build to house its most sacred relic -- the veil of Our Lady that allegedly was what she wore at the birth of the Christ. (Sadly, due to the major construction going on around the sanctuary area, we were not able to view the veil.) What Wikipedia can't tell you is that this Cathedral is known as Chartres because that is the city in which it is named... often nicknamed the Cathedral of Notre Dame of Chartres, or the cathedral of Our Lady... but its official name, that good Catholics would recognize is the Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady. So, just like Lembeye's little church built over a hundred years ago, Chartres, built over 800 years ago recognized Mary's Assumption into heaven, even before the doctrine was officially promulgated in 1950.

Leaving the pilgrimage-ish side of the tour... we leave you with these parting shots...

History buffs will recognize Versailles...

and its Hall of Mirrors...

and two suspicious looking tourists taking a self-portrait in its mirrored walls.

If you've been baptized, thank the Church... and other thoughts regarding my recent trip to France.

My column this week at Patheos is about the roots of faith, especially how I experience them in my own life. God loves us. Baptism confirms that love. Someone cared enough to have us baptized. And some of us have a legacy of faith that stretches back generations.

Here's an excerpt:

Jesus specifically asked his followers to make disciples of all the nations, to baptize the people they met “in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” To this day, we members of the church share in his mission, to reveal God to the very hearts that were made to receive him. Two thousand years later, that practice continues. 

I can trace my faith in Christ to the graces first imparted at my baptism. 

If you were baptized, you have someone to thank for bringing you, or leading you, to the font of life. Coming from a heritage of both French and Irish Catholic Immigrants, I have a lot of people to thank, stretching back generations. Their faith and love live on in me. 

On a recent pilgrimage to Lourdes, France, my husband and I found it marvelous to worship and pray with the international throngs of Catholic faithful at the Grotto -- where the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St Bernadette, and where so many healings have taken place -- and in the shrine’s three basilicas. But Catholicism isn’t just a global faith, it is a personal faith -- the same faith that my parents offered to me when I was baptized over a half century ago, and the same faith that I have brought my children up in. 

Prior to the trip to Lourdes, I learned that my paternal grandmother’s home village was located in the south of France. Intrigued, my husband and I rented a car and explored the little town of Lembeye, where my immigrant grandmother began her life. 

As beautiful as Lourdes was, (in terms of the grandeur of being a world famous sacred destination) Lembeye was, on a personal level, just as beautiful to me. There, I entered into the Eglise de l’Assomption à Lembeye, the Church of the Assumption at Lembeye, an old 19^th century church -- the only one in town – and likely the place where my grandmother was baptized and received her first sacraments. I could not be sure, since I do not have Nana’s baptismal certificate, but this little French church might very well have been the source of my faith origins. Today I continue to reap the benefits of the faith that has been handed on to me from earlier generations.

 Read the rest.

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This makes me think... it should make you think too.

In real life, democracy is built on two practical pillars: cooperation and conflict. It requires both.  Cooperation, because people have a natural hunger for solidarity that makes all community possible. And conflict, because people have competing visions of what is right and true. The more deeply they hold their convictions, the more naturally people seek to have those convictions shape society. 

What that means for Catholics is this: We have a duty to treat all persons with charity and justice. We have a duty to seek common ground where possible. But that’s never an excuse for compromising with grave evil. It’s never an excuse for being naive. And it’s never an excuse for standing idly by while our liberty to preach and serve God in the public square is whittled away.  We need to work vigorously in law and politics to form our culture in a Christian understanding of human dignity and the purpose of human freedom. Otherwise, we should stop trying to fool ourselves that we really believe what we claim to believe.

There’s more. To work as it was intended, America needs a special kind of citizenry: a mature, well-informed electorate of persons able to reason clearly and rule themselves prudently. If that’s true — and it is — then the greatest danger to American liberty in our day is not religious extremism. It’s something very different. It’s a culture of narcissism that cocoons us in dumbed-down, bigoted news, vulgarity, distraction and noise, while methodically excluding God from the human imagination. Kierkegaard once wrote that “the introspection of silence is the condition of all educated intercourse” and that “talkativeness is afraid of the silence which reveals its emptiness.”  

Silence feeds the soul. Silence invites God to speak. And silence is exactly what American culture no longer allows. Securing the place of religious freedom in our society is therefore not just a matter of law and politics, but of prayer, interior renewal — and also education. 

What I mean is this: We need to re-examine the spirit that has ruled the Catholic approach to American life for the past 60 years. In forming our priests, deacons, teachers and catechists — and especially the young people in our schools and religious-education programs — we need to be much more penetrating and critical in our attitudes toward the culture around us. We need to recover our distinctive Catholic identity and history. Then we need to act on them. 

America is becoming a very different country, and as Ross Douthat argues so well in his excellent book Bad Religion, a renewed American Christianity needs to be ecumenical, but also confessional.  Why?  Because: “In an age of institutional weakness and doctrinal drift, American Christianity has much more to gain from a robust Catholicism and a robust Calvinism than it does from even the most fruitful Catholic-Calvinist theological dialogue.”

America is now mission territory. Our own failures helped to make it that way. We need to admit that. Then we need to re-engage the work of discipleship to change it.

--Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM Cap., Archbishop of Philadelphia, Address to the Napa Institute, given July 26, 2012

Read more.

Among Women ReadHER 7.28.12 Aurora, marriage, motherhood, and gutsy bishops

Among Women ReadHER 7.28.12

Some stories outside the headlines on the violent shootings in Aurora:

Learning Who We Lost: The Aurora Victims
Posted at Hot Air
Say a prayer.


Denver's Bishop Conley's Remarks and Invocation at the Prayer Vigil for the Victims in Aurora
Posted as a PDF from the Archdiocese of Denver
Worth reading and praying.


A Miracle Inside the Aurora Story
By Brad Strait at Celtic Straits
Lotsa folks praying for this woman's recovery, and thanking God, perhaps, for the "gift" of her curious medical malady.


The Dark Knight Before the Dawn
By Joseph Susanka at Patheos
Joseph is an insightful film buff and Catholic writer. His column this week reflects on the film The Dark Knight, and the shootings in Aurora. He says: "Heroism and the confrontation of evil—a confrontation most often achieved through suffering—is the only way to truly grapple with the problem. To paraphrase Alfred, we must learn to get back up; to rise again, and press ever forward towards the light."

Other interesting stuff: 

Women say "I Do" to Husband's names
By Carolyn Moynihan at Mercator.net
I always watch what Moynihan is writing about. This is interesting. It was more optimistic that I would have thought.

Before You Get Here
By Lauren Warner at Sipping Lemonade
A mom writers a touching note to her daughter in the womb.

The 'Busy' Trap
By Tim Krieder at the New York Times' Opinionator
A bit long, but worth the read. Insightful, challenging. H/T to Sarah Vabulas.


The Joys of a Wonderfully Imperfect Life
By Meg Meeker, MD from her blog
Very very good advice.


The War on (Little) Women and Other Insanities
By George Weigel at The Catholic Difference
Sex selection abortions, the Supreme Court, and more, in the US.


Chicken-Gate - An Exercise in Media-Induced Hysteria and Fascism...
By Katrina Fernandez at The Crescat
Simply the shortest and most succinct blog post I could find on this story that, I think, originated here in Boston area with it's mayor getting his knickers in a twist about Chick Fil-A's president expressing his personal philosophy. Which leads me to ask: Is Chick Fil-A not serving customers based on their sexual orientation, or firing their employees with same-sex attraction? That would be news. But its not. Instead we have a Christian business owner and his company being smeared because of comments he made to a church organization, a right he has in freedom of speech. Lord have mercy on business leaders everywhere. I'm suddenly in the mood for sweet tea.


And now this sad news about the death of the PR spokesperson at Chick-Fil-A.


Building a Culture of Religious Freedom
Address by Archbishop of Philadelphia, +Charles Chaput, OFM, Cap (as found in the National Catholic Register)
Read this one. Share it. Talk to your children about this. The new evangelization will fail if we fail to be distinctly Catholic and Christian in our thinking, discourse, and finally, love and example.

The F.U.N. Quotient... Where's Waldo edition