St. Therese Thanksgiving Novena starts today!

Good morning friends! Our community-wide St. Therese Thanksgiving Novena begins TODAY! If you'd like to join along with us, all of the information that you need is below! I won't be posting the prayers to the blog daily, but today's post serves as a reminder to begin praying, and to pray each day through Thursday, November 28th.

Here is the link to the pdf of the prayers that you need! :-)

I am including day 1 below, but you can take it from here. If you would keep the intentions of the entire community in prayer during this novena, we would be most grateful. Know that we are all praying for you as well! You are welcome to join us in our Facebook group if you like, where we host weekly prayer threads, and where the novena prayers will also be posted daily for ease.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I'll be back after the holiday with more lifey merriment, dance posts, novenas and more. :-)

First of our seasonal novenas set to begin next week!

TGIF everyone! The first of our planned community novenas is scheduled to start Wednesday, November 20th. And our gal up on deck is one of my very favorites, St. Therese!

We'll be praying the St. Therese Thanksgiving Novena, which is ever so lovely, and I had not heard of until my good friend Tracy directed me to it!

Link to Thanksgiving Novena prayers

Here's how this will work: I'll be posting a thread on Monday in our community Facebook group wherein people can add their intentions for the duration of this novena. If you're not on Facebook, you are welcome to leave your intention(s) in a comment to this post, and I can pop them in the thread over there so that everyone sees it. And of course, feel free to post "for a personal intention" if you do not feel comfortable revealing specifics.

On Wednesday, November 20th, I'll begin posting the daily prayers in the Facebook. I'll also put up a blog post on that particular Wednesday with the prayer for day 1 and also a link to the full pdf with all 9 days. After day 1, I'll only be posting the daily prayers in Facebook, it would be too tedious to do daily blog posts. But you'll have the link, so I would just keep that as an open tab on your browser or phone so that you can refer to it each day through Thanksgiving!

I think it is so lovely to pray together as a community, and to focus on the needs of others, especially at this time of year. I know that when my own intentions are clouding up my mind, my prayer time tends to get anxious (yikes!), but when I'm praying for the intentions of others, everything is all serenity and light. Win/win!

I hope that you will join us! *virtual hug*

Let's blearily pray the St. Therese novena together, shall we?

Last night, when I tucked Anne in bed, I had that Knowing Mother Moment, kwim? She had had a sore throat earlier in the day that I attributed to seasonal allergies. She perked up as the day wore on, and had normal energy and appetite levels, but by bedtime was looking worse for the wear. She complained about her nose, and started coughing. Ugh. I gave her a dose of her prescribed allergy medication, had her blow her nose, and got her a cup of water. I got her all soothed and tucked in, but I Knew.

Later, I went upstairs slightly ahead of Mike to prepare for bed, happily listening to a podcast with my earbuds in. When Mike came up 10 minutes later, I could see that he was trying to talk to me, so I took a bud out:

"What's up?"

"Anne's crying."

"She is?"

See? Once again, when you no longer have infants in your house, you totally turn off that Will I Ever Sleep Again?! frenzied mode, and go back to Normal Sleep, Thank You Jesus, mode. I did suspect that we would hear from Anne in the night, but my traumatized mind was still repressing that possibility.

So, we banded together for a soothe session, figuring we could get her cleaned up and comforted and back to sleep in no time. Isn't it funny that even after 10 years of parenting, we are still so naive?

"Sweetheart! We're here, what's wrong?"

*intensified crying*

"Does your head hurt, Honey? Why don't we get a tissue so you can blow your nose."

*dramatic shake of head indicating "NO"*

"How about some more water? It'll soothe your throat."

*More head shakes* Rinse And Repeat.

She refused to talk to us, yet managed to reject every single offer of comfort we suggested. It's a skill, that is.

We did what we could, and left her bedroom. 20 minutes later, we hear crying again. I go in, and we have a repeat of our earlier interaction, complete with dramatic thrashing of blanket. She still wouldn't really let me help her, but I got her to stop crying, and went back to bed. Unsurprisingly (since Anne has *always* had this skill, from the moment she was born), the INSTANT I became completely exhausted and drifted off...

*crying*

*Tiffany assumes a position of denial*

*more crying!*

Sigh.

And I KNEW. When you're up with a newborn all the time, you pretty much can sleep anytime, anywhere, because you're so exhausted. All the time. For like, a YEAR. But when you're not in that mode anymore, you have that one perfect opportunity to fall asleep. Once that passes, it's allllllll over, friends. I was awake, and I knew I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep.

I went into Anne's room, and this time she did allow me to help her blow her nose and do other things to make her more comfortable. After that, I went back to bed beside a comfortably sleeping Mike. I didn't have the heart to wake him.

 I read for a bit, hoping to get re-tired, but all to no avail. During the next two hour stretch, one further intervention was required in Anne's room, but then I could tell she fell more deeply asleep, and she was fine for the rest of the night. Me, on the other hand, stayed awake for another hour before finally dozing off, and I really had to force it. Naturally, when 6 am rolled around, I was SOUND ASLEEP, totally incoherent, and could have slept for another five hours, easy.

*nostril flare*

That's just the way it is sometimes. But it was a long night. I suspect now that Anne has a cold and not seasonal allergy symptoms. Lots of snuggling will follow tonight.

So I was pretty bleary-eyed this morning as I got ready for work, but I'm persevering. Today is the first day of the St. Therese novena, and guess what? Pray More Novenas now has the prayers available as a podcast, so for those of you who wanted audio to keep up with the novena prayers themselves, this is a huge yay, right?! Here you are, have at it! Go forth and subscribe! If you'd like audio for St. Therese's chaplet, you can pray along with your host, little old me ;-) over here. Fun, yes?

All right, I need to plug along with my day. Mike and I are attending Henry's school open house tonight, and I have lots to do at work. I'll be talking to you again tomorrow or Thursday!

How are you all? How is the first day of the novena going for you?

Tea Time with Tiffany #16 - A few updates & St. Therese!

Happy Thursday everybody! Have your tea or coffee? I do, I do! Let's settle in for another installment of:

I've been keeping these shorter, have you noticed? ;-) Instead of 10 minutes, I've been in the 6-7 minute range the past few weeks. Once I get the podcast up and running, I'm hoping to whittle these videos back to about 5 minutes, so that they're quicker and easier for more people to watch. Working on it! At any rate, today's topic is twofold: a few updates on current life events, and my devotion to St. Therese, plus her upcoming novena!



Looks like I may be about the say the Pledge of Allegiance, but just deep in thought. ;-)

Items mentioned in this episode:

St. Therese Novena tab! Novena begins Sept. 22nd.
Pray More Novenas will send out the prayers to your email!
Archival photographs of St. Therese

Do you have a devotion to St. Therese? Are you planning to pray her novena? Leave us a comment and let us know!

Catholic Book Club: Trusting God with St. Therese

Happy Catholic Book Club Wednesday everyone! I'm a little tired following a long night with a coughing Anne (poor wee babe), but I'm in good spirits. Despite a cold sweeping through the household (Henry has it too), spring is here, the snow is melting, and I'm all atwitter about Holy Week and upcoming exciting summer plans.

*angels sing!*

And today is book club day, which is always fun. :) This month, I read Trusting God with St. Therese, by Connie Rossini. Have any of you read it? If you haven't, I absolutely recommend it, and it's only $4.99 for Kindle. Worth it! Let's describe, shall we?

What I really enjoyed about this book are two things: (1) the creative structure, which I'll describe in a moment, and (2) the personal nature of the narrative. The way that the author organizes the book is both chronological and thematic. All of the themes tie-in to trust in God's plan for our lives, but it's broken down a bit. For example, there's a chapter addressing anger and other negative emotions, and one that deals with spiritual dryness and darkness. We start with St. Therese's infancy and work our way through to her death at age 24. Each chapter begins with a scene from Therese's life, and it's written in a very down to earth, relatable style. I've read The Story of a Soul, but I still felt like I was getting an insider's view into St. Therese's life, along with new information, just based upon the way the author presented the material. Following that, the author discusses the theme for a bit, relating it to Scripture or other Church teaching, and then moves into an applicable anecdote from her own life. We also move chronologically with our author, so as the book progresses, we learn about her childhood charismatic Catholic faith, the early death of her own sister, her deep desire to be married and having a difficult time waiting to meet Mr. Right, her struggle with new parenthood, and a painful encounter with her local Secular Carmelite community. Each chapter ends with us going back to the life of St. Therese briefly, to wrap up the theme. As well, each chapter includes two reflection questions and a handful of practical suggestions to grow in your own spiritual life based upon the content.

You all know how I sometimes struggle with non-fiction - I have a short attention span, and anything short of personal memoirs or biographies usually don't grab me. This book isn't a memoir per se, but it has a very personal style and includes many personal anecdotes from both St. Therese and the author. I found it very pleasing and engaging to read, and I truly enjoyed it. I looked forward to pulling out my Kindle each evening, which is always the sign of a book that I like. If something is taking me a long time to read because I don't excitedly bring out my Kindle out here and there, well...that's a bad sign. :) I read this book quickly due to my enjoyment of it.

If you've read this, please leave a comment with your thoughts! For the next few months we have some religious fiction on our list, which is always fun. April heralds Vow of Evil (A Sister Joan Mystery), by Veronica Black. I hope you'll read and join in!

The Catholic Nook: Chaplet of St. Therese and the "Little Way"

I've been thinking a lot about St. Therese lately. Part of it, I suppose is that my spiritual reading is currently focused on her in Shirt of Flame: A Year With St. Therese of Lisieux. When I do spiritual reading, I normally allot a specified time period in the evening to it. I'll devise a page quota so that I don't slack off. What I'm finding with this book, though, is that I'm so into it that I use it in the prime "reading as I lay happily in bed" time slot. That's pretty major for a non-fiction book, quite an achievement really. This is when I usually read a romance novel involving autumn weather, race car drivers, or cowboys.

And last night I pulled my Kindle out really hoping to see something from St. Therese that "spoke" to me. I had had, let's just say, a *challenging* day. As you can imagine, being a librarian means that I deal with people a lot. And sometimes, as we all know, people aren't so nice. I had a patron yesterday who was so rude I was forced to break out The Librarian Is Being Stern With You look. As a child, I used to be afraid of loud, obnoxious people. No longer. I don't cherish opportunities to deal with them, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. If you are going to march over and attempt to verbally abuse me, I am not going to stand for it, no sir. It only took 30+ years of life lessons to teach me that I don't have to allow anybody to treat me that way. It actually is a disservice to the abuser in question to not let them know that their behavior is out of line and unacceptable. How can they ever try to do better if nobody lets them know that they are acting like a jackass? Forgive my language, but sometimes you've got to call it like you see it. I'm not going to yell back or drop to their level by disrespecting them, but I *am* going to be firm in my response to them. And if they persist, I am going to ask them to leave.

And so yesterday morning, I had one of *those*. I'm actually quite proud of how I handled it, but the whole thing left me shaky and contemplative. This guy (who was very clearly an extreme case) aside, I've been dealing with a lot of students lately, some of them being wonderful experiences, others being quite challenging and annoying. It got me to thinking: am I doing all that I can to stay upbeat in my approach to interacting with them, to stay charitable at all times? On the latter, I can say "yes" without question. I am always charitable to people, even when they are unkind to me. But on the former, I know that I struggle. And not just with the students. I work for my state, and at times things get a bit...bureaucratic. This can lead to disillusionment and downright crotchedyness (new term: officially coined). It's easy to complain a lot about some of the things we deal with here at work, and I have become aware of the fact that the more I complain, the worse I feel about the situation.

Hence, yesterday was a good opportunity for self-reflection and it tied directly into St. Therese's Little Way. How can I do small things with great love and offer them up, the way that she did in the convent? I certainly did offer up my experience yesterday, but there are so many other small opportunities that I just internally whine about rather than try to be more spiritual in my approach. As I read Shirt of Flame, I came to this reflection of author Heather King in the chapter discussing Therese's handling of the painful physical and mental decline of Louis Martin, her father:

"I began to see the value of refraining from criticizing and complaining. The goal isn't to masochistically endure conditions that we could change, if we were willing to make the effort. The goal is to adopt a general policy of not complaining about things that can't be changed, not because we enjoy being rigidly ascetic but because complaining about our private sorrows - traffic, the cost of living, our health, our endless suffering - is not helpful. I began to notice how, when someone called me to 'vent,' I felt as if I myself needed an oxygen tank when I got off the phone."

Yep. Spoke to me. I knew that St. Therese was looking out for me. :) It was nice to have something positive to take away from a very difficult day. Hopefully I won't have to deal with Rude Guy again anytime soon, but just in the students I see and chat with each day, and in the way I view the hoops we have to jump through here at work sometimes, I can do better in my attitude.

And so this got me to thinking about asking for St. Therese's intercession more often. Obviously, she is a woman who speaks my language. :) The photo at the top of this post is a gorgeous St. Therese chaplet designed by Carm at unbreakablerosaries. The chaplet has 24 beads, one for each year of St. Therese's short life. There is one additional bead on the "drop" near her medal, and on this you request: "St. Therese of the Child Jesus, Patroness of Missions, pray for us." A Glory Be is recited on each of the other 24 beads in thanksgiving for St. Therese. It is customary to pray this chaplet for a traditional nine day novena.

This is a chaplet that I do not own. Shocking. Clearly, I need to remedy this situation.

I'll be talking more about St. Therese on October 23rd, our Catholic Book Club day, when I review Shirt of Flame. If you'd like to join me in reading, please hop on the bandwagon now, I'd love to have you. :) Heather King mentions another book that has my curiosity piqued, The Hidden Face: A Study of St. Therese of Lisieux, by Ida Friederike Gorres. Yep, that may make it's way to my Kindle posthaste.

*Image from http://patroncatholicsaints.blogspot.com/2010_02_08_archive.html

A good day for St. Therese's charm and prayers...

Ugh. I don't know that today is the day for the humorous post I had planned. I'm going to save that one for a more appropriate occasion, I think. Today is the feast of St. Therese of Lisieux, so why don't we revel in her for a moment?

I *love* that we have photographs of St. Therese. She seems so real to me, and seriously, she's so adorable. I know that she was a nun, and that she felt called to the religious life from an age at which most of us were busy flirting with boys and not thinking about even attending Mass let along dedicating our lives to the Lord in such a radical way, but I relate to her very much. I've read her autobiography, The Story of a Soul (although it's been some time and I really need to re-read it, future Catholic Book Club book!) and her writing is so sweet and honest. One can't help but feel drawn to her and her struggles to find her way in her family, in the world, and in her vocation.

I think that her cause really caught fire precisely because of what I mentioned before: her relatability. She's very likeable, and the way that she struggled to find her way in the monastery is something we all understand in whatever vocation we are called to.

I love the anecdote in her memoir in which she discusses this one nun who really gets under her skin. This other nun's habits are so grating to her that Therese uses it as an opportunity to put this "Little Way" into full effect by curbing her reactions in a charitable fashion and offering up her interior annoyance. I mean, we all have these opportunities on a daily basis (and likely, provide them to others as well, ha!). Do we respond as St. Therese did, or do we give in to our baser instincts?

I'm going to dig into Shirt of Flame tonight in honor of St. Therese, and to read about another soul who is inspired by this small nun who died over a hundred years ago. Her legacy certainly lives on.

Magnificat magazine has a feature by Heather King (author of Shirt of Flame) about St. Therese this month, it was quite interesting. Heather talks about meeting a woman who is a member of the Order of Consecrated Virgins, one of the oldest forms of consecrated life in the Church, who she compares to St. Therese. This response to God's call to love in silence and contemplation is something I just can't read enough about, I find it so moving. *Really* quite fascinating. Mike tells me he's glad I decided not to :) but I did consider serving the Lord as a religious sister or consecrated layperson. It's a freeing feeling to not be afraid of such a radical response to God's love, and I have to admit it: I love silence. Having young children means that my house isn't silent, but I do what I can to maintain a domestic monastery. :)

So tonight I plan on my St. Therese reading, and I'm kind of hoping that someone sends me a rose. Any takers? :)

A mid-week contemplation

Well, this has been an exciting week. Lots of happy dancing and babies being born, my mind has been up in the clouds the past few days. Yesterday, I had 2 students drop into my office. I was nice to them, of course, but rushing them because I needed to get ready to go to a meeting shortly. I had given them the crux of the information that they needed, but I was right in the middle of elaborating on a point when my phone rang. Naturally, I was prepared to let my phone ring and have it go to voicemail since I had people right in front of me that needed my help, but when I glanced at the caller id I saw the Maine exchange. I cut myself off in the middle of a word.

"Oh! I'm sorry! My sister had twins today. I HAVE TO TAKE THIS."

Obviously, this is not something I do everyday, but this was clearly an exception. It's not easy to make time for phone conversations when you've just had a c-section and are trying to nurse and take care of twins. No way was I missing her call.

They both widened their eyes and backed out of my office quickly, shutting the door behind them. I felt bad. But only for a second. :)

In dancing land, I've been listening to my music a lot but trying not to "overpractice." Is there such a thing as overpracticing, you may ask? Yes, there is, and I'm a master at it. Performing is mostly mental (for me at least) rather than physical. I can easily "psych myself out" and convince myself that I'm going to do something horribly wrong, I'm going to mangle my veil envelope, I'm going to drop my sword into somebody's falafel and crush one of their appendages, I'm going to have a horrifying costume malfunction after which I can never show my face in public again, and on and on. I've just been trying to put myself in a confident mental place, in which I feel all "Girl Power" and "You Can Do This, Sister!"

I have also been employing good old fashioned prayer. Prayer that I am able to feel calm and do my best. There's no time to start a novena to the patron saint of belly dance, whoever that lucky soul may be, but on Monday I was reading my Living Faith meditation for the feast of St. Therese. And the entry included an excerpt from St. Therese herself, in which she addresses prayer. She said that it was difficult for her to read prayers written by others sometimes because there are SO many beautiful ones out there that it gets overwhelming, and she felt like she couldn't "compete" (if you will) with those sentiments. She often liked to simply ask God to help her, or to say an Our Father or Hail Mary, and found that in these common prayers was a great deal of strength and solace.

That struck a chord with me because it brought a memory to the surface of my brain (no easy feat the older I get, I tell you). When I was in law school, I joined up with the Christian Legal Society. They were a really nice, warm group of people and got together every week or so to pray and study the Bible. This was right after my "reversion" back to my Catholic faith, and although I was attending daily Mass it didn't occur to me to seek out a Catholic Bible study, that there would be differences there. At any rate, nothing really objectionable came up, that I can recall at least. But at one get together we were talking about prayer. And one student there mentioned that he was raised Catholic. That's an interesting way to identify oneself, no? I've heard it many times now. "Raised Catholic." It usually means (in my experience) that the person (1) subsequently left their Catholic faith and now identifies with another faith, or is (2) technically still Catholic (never renounced their faith or officially joined up with another church) but does not actively practice their faith.

In this instance, I believe the student fell between the two categories. His relationship with God obviously meant a great deal to him, and by all accounts he was a Catholic, but he was sort of looking around for another church that he felt was a better "fit" for him. Anyway, he made the "raised Catholic" statement, and then said that prayer was one of the reasons he was uncertain about Catholicism. He said that he was taught that when one prays, you "just say a rote Our Father or Hail Mary" and he felt that this was wrong. That prayer is a more spontaneous conversation with God.

I wish I had thought to say this at the time, but prayer is of course both of those things. And you shouldn't neglect one in favor of the other. I often find that when I ask Henry to say a prayer he will recite a Haily Mary or Our Father, which is fine, but I make it a point to tell him that he can just "talk to God" for a minute instead. It is in fact very child-like to rely on the prayers that the Bible gives us, that we memorize at an early age. But is that "rote" or "not really praying, since it's not your own words?" Of course not. Simply because something is memorized does not automatically make it "rote" and by implication not meaningful. The Our Father and Hail Mary are quite meaningful when we contemplate each word as we recite them. And letting God take the lead by using the prayers from the scriptures is exemplifying the type of child-like faith Jesus was referring to, at least in my opinion.

I'm certain that on Saturday I'm going to be relying quite a bit on the old faithful Our Father and Hail Mary. I'm grateful to have these prayers and to have St. Therese as an inspiration.