HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

    Today is the First Sunday in Advent, which means that it is the beginning of the Church year - not the Hallmark year.  The Priest's Chasuble is purple, all of the plants were gone from the Altar and there is an Advent Wreath in front of the Altar with one candle.  Very austere, very solemn.  Today was a little more arresting than usual because for the first time in about fifty years there are minute changes in the Mass for the congregation but quite a bit of change in the words of the Priest.    And it's not really change but back to the words we said during Mass before Vatican II.  
     Change is good.  It shakes us up.  Sometimes we get pretty complacent in our lives but a new job, a new teacher, a new grocery store moves into the neighborhood and our routine can get altered.
     Today  we start a new season, and most of us  will be spending the next few weeks altering our lives by decorating the house, preparing special foods and let's not forget going crazy choosing, buying and wrapping all those presents.  My hope is that you will take the time to change someone Else's life by having a good word for that annoying grocery clerk,  a small gift for someone who might not be getting one from anyone else and most of all, quiet time with the Lord   - rest in the quiet of the Person that all this is really about.
       This is a little story I read long ago that I love and it's a good lesson for this first week of Advent.
                                                       THE ELEVATOR RIDE
   A mother spent hours Christmas shopping with her three children.  They looked at numerous toys in several stores, and, of course, the children wanted everything they saw.
   She was already exhausted from putting up the Christmas decorations, going to numerous Christmas parties, picking out gifts for her family and friends, making sure she didn't forget anyone on her card list, planning church activities and the Christmas dinner.
    In one department store, the mother - carrying all her bags and dragging her three kids - pushed her way into a crowded elevator.
    When the doors closed, she blurted out loud, "This is too much! Whoever started this whole Christmas thing should be strung up!"
     From the back of the elevator, a calm voice responded, "Not to worry, ma'am.  We already crucified Him." 

    In Advent we await the Beginning, in a couple of months, during Lent, we remember the End.  The cycle of life. 

Native American Prayer

Hold on to what is good even if it is a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe even if it is a tree, which stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do even if it is a long way from here.
Hold on to life even when it is easier letting go.
Hold on to my hand even when I have gone away from you.

Anniversary Memories

      One day in the early 1930s, Bernadine Burrell was driving her dad's car down Second St. in Peoria.  Her new friend, Wanda Hartman was in the passenger seat.  Wanda had recently moved to town from the Arcola area to live with her sister, Laura and her family.  Bernadine spotted her boy friend, Russ Scovil  walking down the street carrying a sack of groceries, and rolled down the window and asked if he would like a ride.  He said yes, crawled in the back seat and Bernadine introduced her two friends.  A couple of weeks later, Russ asked his good friend, Ralph Dixon if he would take Wanda out and double date with he and Bernadine.  Ralph,  who was extremely shy  and not the fastest thinker in the group - gave this classic answer: "I can't take her out, I have a sore finger".  (He was teased about this comment the rest of his life and said one time, it was just the first thing that popped into his head, as he was just to shy to go out with girls),
       .....And now the rest of the story:  The rest of the story, I suppose,  is that Russ and Wanda eventually became a couple, got married, and had eight children of which I am the oldest.  But there is more to Ralph's story as well.  During WW2, he was stationed in Italy and sent my parents a post card from there.  Dad's cousin, Nadine, was visiting at our house and the parents suggested she write to him.  Nadine was one of the most loved of my Dad's family and had a great sense of humor.  Her first letter to Ralph started:  I am Mae West in Kate Smith's body - if you are too young to know who Mae West and Kate Smith are, ask someone.  They corresponded until the end of the War.  It was love at first write!   I'm not sure but I think he came home on leave once during this time.  He was not Catholic and while he was in the Army he took instructions in the Faith and was Baptized, made his First Communion and Confirmed all in one day at the Vatican and about a week after he got back to Peoria, he and Nadine got married and lived truly happily ever after. Wonderful, wonderful people.
     I'm telling these stories today because November 23 is my parents 76th wedding anniversary.  My sister, Suzanne and her husband, Jim Godfrey chose this day to get married as well.  I'm thinking it's 28 years.  Happy Anniversary to Suzi and Jim.   And some people said it wouldn't last!!

Thoughts on The Eucharist

     Sometime in the late 1980s, I became an Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist at OSF St. Francis.  This means I brought Holy Communion to the patients in the hospital.  We Catholics believe that during the Celebration of the Mass, bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ.  And in the Tabernacle are kept, in the form of unleavened bread, the Body of Christ to be taken to those who are sick or dying.  This is called Viaticum - food for a journey.  So many times, instead of ministering to, I was the one who received a blessing.
      I continued doing this at OSF until a couple of years after Leah died and I was assigned to bring the Eucharist to a patient in the room where she had had her final stroke.  While saying the Our Father, tears welled up and I told Father Tom, the Chaplain, I just couldn't continue and he asked if I would consider doing the same at Methodist Medical Center.  I did until my knee surgery.  For a lot of years, I took Communion to shut-ins at St. Patricks Parish in Washington and recently began doing the same here in Peoria.  What a gift to be able to bring Our Lord to others.
      A few years back, while Vern and I were visiting our daughter, Lora in Wisconsin, she and her husband, Randy took us to the museum in Milwaukee to see items from the Vatican archives.  One display was of beautiful Chalices - the cup used by the priest during Mass that holds the wine.  Some of these were hundreds of years old and very beautiful with carvings and jewels.  The thought by many in the Church was that the more beautiful the cup, the more glory to God.
      In the center of a shelf, in the middle of all this magnificence, was a small stemmed glass and the lid from a tin can.  This was the Chalice and Paten - the plate used to hold the bread - of St. Maximillian Kolbe.  Maximillian Kolbe was a Polish priest who because he helped many Jewish people was sent to Auschwitz, where he was starved to death.  At the prison, the inmates were given unleavened bread to eat and some of the guards would clandestinely bring wine to him and he would say Mass and distribute Communion  to other Catholics imprisoned there.  Of all the Chalices I have seen, Maximillian Kolbe's simple glass and tin lid are what touched me the most.  It is not the vessel but what it contains.    And couldn't that be said of us:  it's not what we look like but what we are.
      By the way, the word Eucharist is from the Greek and means Thanksgiving

Remembering Thanksgiving

     There are really two wholly American holidays.  July Fourth and Thanksgiving.  We celebrate the Fourth with parades, flying flags and bratwurst, as we should.  These days it's not so much our declaration against the tyranny of taxes but our independence to speak our minds, worship as we please, and the freedoms from want and fear.  But as Father reminded us at Church this morning because we have a global media,we are more aware of the famine in Somalia and the strife in Equador as well as the persecution of Christians in Muslim countries.  The four Freedoms that we have taken for granted for so long are slowly eroding away.
      Last week our daughter, Maureen, was here to go with me to the Doctor - another good report  - and the next day,she and I went on a Field Trip.  As we traveled to Springfield we noticed a lot of houses already decorated for Christmas and we talked about how we seem to go from Halloween to Christmas bypassing the wonderful holiday, Thanksgiving.
      Later in the day, we were discussing our ancestors and talking about one of them, William Bradford, the Governor of the Plymouth Colony.  She printed out the following guote of his:
                     
                  "And afterwards the Lord sent them such seasonable showers, with
                  interchange of fair warm weather as, through His blessing, caused
                  a fruitful and liberal harvest, to their no small comfort and rejoicing.
                  For which mercy, in time convenient, they also set apart a day of
                  thanksgiving...By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine
                 now God gave them plenty...for which they blessed God". 


      Governor Bradford as the civil authority recognized Thanksgiving Day in 1623.  This date is almost 150 years previous to July 4th, 1776

      I propose that we do not decorate, do not buy or do not plan Christmas until we have taken time to give thanks.  Thanks for the fact that we are a country, for the most part, without strife, famine and persecution.  Thanks for the fact that we can get on a plane, train, a bus or get in the car to go over the river and through the woods to be with those we love or are related to -  and sometimes it's both.  Thanks for the fact that we can - or cannot - watch the Packers and Lions play football even if you are a Bears fan.  Thanks for good health enough to enjoy all of the above and enough wealth to live as we do.  So if it's turkey and all the trimmings or Smelt, because that's what you can afford, give Thanks.  Our God is good.

DESSERTS

Do you get the idea that if there is cooking to be done I want it to be as easy as possible?  You are so right. 


This recipe is from Sue Sepich.  I haven't tried it but she says its wonderful and her husband, Steve, said it was great.  I'm a "One piece of pumpkin pie a year is enough and make it a sliver" type person but I think I'll take it for Thanksgiving dinner at Angela's just to experiment. 
Easy Pumpkin Pie
16 oz can of Pumpkin
1 can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk
2 eggs
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp each of ginger, nutmeg and salt.
      Mix together, pour into prepared pie shell and bake at 425 for 15 minutes and then 350 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes or until knife in pie comes clean.


This recipe is from Beth Doolan.  For years, there were four couples of us who would meet on Sunday nights at our house for a Bible Study/Wine Tasting group....but that's another story.  Someone would always bring dessert. Beth brought this one time.  It is such a pretty presentation  and good too.

Chocolate Lasagna

Cool Whip
Ice Cream sandwiches (I prefer Kroger brand)2 boxes for a 9x13 pan
Chocolate Syrup
Caramel Syrup
Heath Bar Pieces
       Put a little whipped cream in the bottom of your pan.  Cover pan with a layer of ice cream sandwiches, Spritz caramel sauce over ice cream.  Cover with whipped cream.  Sprinkle half of a package of Heath Bar pieces.  Another layer of sandwiches, caramel sauce, whipped cream.  Sprinkle the top with the rest of the Heath bar pieces and drizzle chocolate syrup over top.  Refrigerate.  Can be frozen.


I have been making this dessert for me lately.  A  4 oz  pudding (they come in cups in the refrigerated case at the grocery store, six to a package).  I prefer vanilla or butterscotch.  A little Heath Bar Sundae Shell and Reddi Whip on top.  Looks pretty and tastes yummy.  The puddings come in chocolate flavor as well and I suppose you could use your pretty stemmed glasses, layer the pudding in the different flavors, cover with the shell and whipped cream and that might make an elegant looking dessert.  Just saying!

Finding Uncle Fred

     One of the stories that Vern's mother used to tell was about her brother, Fred.  Clara was the youngest in her family and very spoiled - ...but that's another story - and especially by  Fred.  She adored  him.  He was 17 years older than her.   There was a falling out  of some kind between Fred and Clara's oldest sister, Anna and Fred left home never to be heard from again.  Anna as the oldest,  and even though she had a beau, was told by the parents it was her responsibility not to marry but stay home and keep house for them.  Clara was devastated when Fred left and she often said she wished that she could find him.  Somehow they had gotten word that he had homesteaded in Billings, Montana.
  When Anna was older and came to live in southern Missouri in the early 1960s, Clara and another sister, Mamie were getting ready to sell the family home in Kansas City and came across two letters that Fred had written to Clara but Anna had hidden them from her.  Clara went ballistic - many times -  and poor Aunt Annie, slightly senile at this time, caught the brunt of her anger.
      A couple of months ago, I got rummaging around on Ancestry.com  and checking records that they had, located Alfred Julius Beeker - Uncle Fred.  From census records and his WW1 draft card, he had lived in Yellowstone, Seattle, Spokane and finally in Wenatchee Washington.  I got the following information from the Wenatchee Genealogical Society from the Wenatchee Daily World, February 16,1942:
                                                  :               ALFRED BEEKER
                              Mr. Alfred J. Beeker, 59, died at his home, 1102 So. Columbia St.
                              early this morning.   Mr. and Mrs. Beeker attended church services
                              Monday night and he apparently was in good health.  His sudden
                              death came as a shock to his family and friends.
                              Born in Kansas City, Mo., March 4,1882, he spent his early life
                              there and later learned the plumbing trade.  Later, he moved to the
                              Pacific coast and spent several years in Washington, Oregon and
                              California.  He has resided in Wenatchee since 1936.  On Dec. 20,
                              1941, he was married to Miss Ramoth Phipps in Wenatchee.  He
                              was a member of the Christian Missionary Alliance church.
                              Surviving is his widow of Wenatchee.  Services will be announced 
                              by the Hennesy mortuary.

      In another small blurb it says that services were held at his church and burial in the Wenatchee cemetery.
   
      My first thought when finding this information was how much Vern would have enjoyed  knowing about Uncle Fred and then I remembered that where he is, he probably already knows and has enjoyed a great reunion with this uncle so beloved by his mother.  Finding Uncle Fred makes me think of the broadcaster, Paul Harvey who always said: "and now for the rest of the story".  Getting married at age 59 and dying a little more that two months later?  I'd love to know "the rest of that story"!!