Reading Catholic

Reading Catholic and catholic

Lent Book Series

“Less Right, More Love” {Lent Book Series}

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Today the Lent Book Series features guest writer Melissa Bland.

Ok, I have an admission to make. Although I love books, and am married to a terrific bibliophile, I rarely take the time in this season of life to read actual grown-up, enrich-my-life, discussion-worthy books. With homeschooling three, and chasing a fourth away from stairs and electrical cords, reading Farmer Boy with my seven-year-old is the closest I’ve gotten to literature lately.

Lent is upon us, however, and each year I like to choose book to guide my school-aged young ones through Lent in a joyous, thoughtful manner. This year, I’m pulling Bringing Lent Home with Mother Teresa by EWTN host Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle down from my shelves.

Bringing Lent Home with Mother Teresa is organized by day with each day providing a quote from Blessed Mother Teresa, reflections for parents, family prayer, a brief story from Mother Teresa’s life, suggestions for fasting and almsgiving that day, and a closing prayer.

Suggestions for fasting and almsgiving are not necessarily your typical “giving up sweets” ideas…One day you are advised to give up worry, another to abstain from grumbling. (I can’t wait to get to that day!)

I liked using this book quite a lot—it requires no prep and can be pulled out at breakfast to start the day right or at lunch for a midday focus on spiritual things.

Normally, I shy away from the “Spiritual Stuff Every Day” books that fill the shelves of Catholic bookstores—just not enough depth and context to be meaningful for me. But during Lent, I think it’s appropriate to use a guide for the day-by-day journey through the desert to Easter.

Because O’Boyle is writing in such little bits, however, I have to be careful how I use this guide, lest it become a daily finger-wagging from Mommy. “See, Blessed Mother Teresa says you shouldn’t grumble.” This is especially true in this year when I’ve resolved to be less “right” and more “Love.”

Although each member of our household (minus baby) has his or her own individual Lenten promises to keep, having a tool like this book to join us together on the journey is a real blessing that I look forward to using again this year. And, I can’t think of a better guide than Mother Teresa to reflecting on Pope Francis’ theme for Lent this year: “He became poor, so that by his poverty, you might become rich.”

Melissa Bland is wife to Andrew (physician/teacher working at OSF for the U Of I College of Medicine at Peoria) and mother to Emily (12), Alayna (10), Kayla (7) and Nathaniel (8 mos.)  She left Speech Pathology in 2001 to raise, and then homeschool her babies, and prays that she always loves her calling so much.  

She is a cradle Catholic whose faith was re-energized when her husband joined the church in 2005. She is a member of St. Anthony Parish in Bartonville where she is a catechist, lector, and gopher.

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A Beginning of Sorts {Lent Book Series}

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imageToday starts the Lent Book Series. As I’ve mentioned before, this is something of an experiment. But as e-mails from local writers have come in, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how varied and interesting are the submissions.  Plan on this being an annual feature here.

I’ve struggled with how to start off this series for Lent, what book to choose—it seemed a big burden for any one book. So how to start?

Initially, I wanted to feature a book  that I plan to use in my April column as a mid-Lent pick-me-up, I’m enjoying it so much. But when one of my guest writers here chose that as her book to feature, I thought it best to hold off (though I told her I will likely still put it in my April column).

I’m starting with the Holy Father’s theme for Lent 2014:

“He became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” from 2 Cor 8:9.

(Each year, the Holy Father releases a letter in advance of Lent that features a Scripture verse and a short message about living the season.)

Consider this an invitation to the Holy Father’s message for Lent. Here’s a link and it’s well-worth reading.

Reading through this message has me pondering— what does it mean to be poor? What does it mean to be rich? How does Lent help to focus on what’s really important us during this season?

One idea that’s been really sticking with me, but I’m not ready to commit to this year, is a compelling idea from Susan Vogt’s new book Blessed by Less: Clearing Your Life of Clutter by Living Lightly. One Lent, Susan and her husband in 2012 did the Food Stamp Challenge—living on the daily amount of about $4.50 a day, for the course of Lent. She blogged about it beginning here. I wonder how that would work with a family of five—we’d have $22.50 a day. Her blog posts reference how long it took to shop and how hard it was to eat healthfully.

I wrote before about how I’m giving up my Fitbit for Lent. I know that sounds goofy, and it was funny the comments on Facebook, but I promise there is a meaning to it, and I hope to write about that in the next week or so.

Reading-wise, as I mentioned in my March column, I did pull off the shelf In Conversation with God Volume 2, and plan to read those reflections daily and encourage the teens here to do so as well.

We have also been trying to fit more silence in at home. I homeschool our two younger children, and we decided to make Friday lunches silent during Lent.

Today, Ash Wednesday was our a practice day, and it worked out pretty well. We set the timer for 20 minutes and ate silently.  We lit a candle, and agreed in advance that we wouldn’t take the time to read, either. It was interesting, all the sounds one notices!

During the time, I recalled several things we needed at the grocery store, and quickly added them to the grocery list on my iPhone. My 10-year-old wrote on a piece of paper about two-thirds of the way through, “This is hard.” We wondered later if those were not “in the spirit” of it. But we made it through.

So let me put those two simple questions out there:

What are you doing for Lent?

What are you reading for Lent?

Five Things … for Lent

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Lent begins a week from today,  and I wanted to share five things.

1.  I’m giving up my Fitbit for Lent.

Ack. Part of the reason I’m doing this is that I love it too much, and I’m afraid I won’t actually do it unless I announce in public that I’m giving it up.

I first joined the Fitbit world when my husband got one at a work gathering about two years ago. I said, “Let me get that set up for you” and never gave it back.  I did buy him another one after about six months of using it, but within a week I had lost mine, so I took that one.  He since decided to get a Fitbit Zip, but I think he should really upgrade to a Fitbit One since it tells the number of floors you climb.

It seems to me that you either get Fitbit or you’re not interested, and there’s no in-between.

Case in point: I have four sisters, and a sister-in-law, and we were all in Belgium and France last fall visiting one sister who lives in Europe, and doing the Paris-Versailles Grand Classique.   One sister and I were obsessed with our Fitbit numbers each day (the day of the Grand Classique I had almost 40,000 steps. 40,000!  We liked to say to each other, “It’s like it doesn’t count unless your Fitbit shows the numbers.” The other four just laughed at us for being so obsessive.

Anyway, if you are among the Fitbit faithful or have a similar device, you’ll know how hard this will be for me.  I also realized after I made  the decision that I’m signed up to do not one but two half-marathons during Lent.  Sob.

2.  Silence.

The younger kids and I were reading in our history earlier this week about monks in the Middle Ages having meals (and much of the rest of their lives) in silence.  Of course we knew this already, but hearing about it in that unusual context made it stand out.  So we’ve been batting around the idea of trying for some silence during our busy days.

We decided we would start with lunch in silence on Fridays.  We can always add on extra days, but it seemed prudent to start small.

3.   Lent Book Series.

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I’m trying a first-ever series at Reading Catholic.  I, and a fairly large group of guest authors, will be writing about books all Lent long.  I invited the bloggers listed on Local, Catholic and Online, as well as other local-ish people, to write about a book related to Lent in some ways. I hope you’ll follow along and share your favorite Lenten reads.

This year it’s a bit of an experiment, but with the positive response I am thinking of making it an annual series.

4.  Pondering . . .

“He became poor,  so that by his poverty you might become rich.”

The Holy Father’s theme for Lent 2014.  Did you know each year the Holy Father has a message for Lent, and picks a Scripture verse for meditation?

Here is a link to Pope Francis’ Message for Lent 2014.  I have skimmed it, but I will also print out and read during Lent.  I want to be rich;  how about you?

5.   Rich Mullins

I’ve loved Rich Mullins before he was cool, after he was cool,  and after he was dead.  He died in a car accident, actually pretty near where we live in Illinois, and I recall it vividly because I was very pregnant with my oldest child.    So when a friend shared on Facebook that she enjoyed this tribute special to him, I bookmarked it.   I’m sad I haven’t made time to listen to it yet.  His music and his writings (many of his columns and writings for various Christian magazines are still available on the Internet) are remarkable. In many ways, he was a modern-day St. Francis.

How is your preparation for Lent going? Are you ready for it to start?

Linking up with both Jen’s 7 Posts, 7 Days and Hallie’s Five Favorites.