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Christmas Greetings – 2009

Dear Family and Friends,
“As with all gratitude lists it is easy to fall into magical thinking at this time of year. It is sobering, hearing from you about spouses dying; children and friends falling heir to cancer; to promotions; finding jobs/businesses when one has disappeared; graduations to jobs; rescuing homes destined for foreclosure; pregnancy occurring when before not possible; continuing slowly when it hasn't been the style; getting the flu within a couple of weeks of receiving the flu shot; recovering from bouts of 'growing older'; slowly recovering from glaucoma implant surgery, depression and stroke; loving trips, especially to 'Blue Sky Montana'; enjoying the Vienna Boys Choir & other 50+ Club activities...the list doesn't end here but this adequately represents the way life has moved along in 2009.
The attached piece of prose speaks to life's process a little more completely.
I am reminded of my 'favorite activity', with the three or four pieces of clothing that speak to the color of the deck which received its first real, visible, coat of paint in September/October with the assistance of Bruce & Grace and our faithful neighbor, Marcus Weidenbenner, who gave valuable assistance in all phases of the project, Mark also does the garden tilling, lawn edging and fence trimming as well as shares garden produce with us. Hope he grows into a more gentle pace at 92!
Carroll lost in the semi-finals to Lindenwood of St. Louis who in turn lost to the University of Sioux Falls in Rome, GA December 19th in the NAIA Division II championship. Nebraska is back, Montana lost 23-25 in the finals of their NCAA Division I championship with Villanova, and 'Go Ducks!'. Vikings, Giants, Colts and Saints need prayer!!
On the political and economic scenes we are awash in the sand box with the lobbyists and Congress all trying to pull the strings ! Send them your vote each and every time the opportunity gives you a chance to express your input. There will be no last vote as it is a struggle and perseverance can best express "Hope".”
May you and yours share the peace of Christ and,
Enjoy the Spirit of New Life made possible in Jesus,
Merry Christmas and Best Wishes for a Happy 2010 New Year !
With love,
Paul and Jeanne

"Christmas"
The liturgies of Christmas as set out in the sacramentary and lectionary seek to express and shape the spirituality not of one person or of a single cultural community but of the entire ecclesial bodies of those baptized into the pasch of Jesus Christ. They set before us the powerful challenge of the Christmas child who is not our personal or communal past but the dawning future we share with all humanity. Advent has prepared us for the child of the Christmas texts. We have heard the prophets proclaim the One who is to come as child to lead us into the reign of God unfolding toward completion (Is 9:6). We recognize him in the infant sung by angelic hosts as the one in whom peace is made for all humankind. But in all the liturgies of this joyful season, the angelic melody is sung in counterpoint to all the other texts recalling that our peace is made not through his clinging to childhood but through his growing into that fully divinized human glory of which the child was only the promise. It is through dark passages of suffering and death that the Christmas child shall lead us, stripping us of every hindrance we have gathered over the years, until we are set free to join him in that mature wholeness, as yet beyond our imagining.
When we assemble for liturgy in the season of Christmas, then, we are a Church haunted by a child with many faces. Each of us brings to the assembly the image of the child within, whether that child be possibility or prison. Each of our local communities brings the images wrought by our devotional arts, whether those images be of past childishness or future maturity. Gathered as Church, within the living tradition of faith that spans centuries and continents, we proclaim the Child in whom meet the eternal paradoxes of divinity and humanity, birth and death, innocence and suffering, of which is wrought the shared adulthood of the one Body into which we are baptized. Our personal and communal imagery of childhood enables us to recognize in this Child not a dogmatic abstraction but the genuine fulfillment of our nameless yearning for some elusive land long promised. Yet the Christmas Child is also a gauntlet thrown down before the potential possessiveness of our personal and devotional spiritualities, unwilling to relinquish the pleasantly undemanding images of childishness to which we have grown accustomed for the radically demanding journey across desert and mountain and river to reach the place where the true Child is born. In the vulnerability of Christmas, the Child forever offers us Herod's choice. We can still our fear of the threat to our comfort by smothering the proclamation in the tight swaddling clothes of sentimental spiritualities. Or we can lay the gift of all our inadequate images beside the gold, the frankincense and myrrh, and bow the knee in worship. Then will the Child in whose image we are being made become our end...and our Beginning.”

–Taken from "What Child is This?"
‘Jennifer Glenn, CCVI, in Assembly, Volume 11:2. © Notre Dame Center for Liturgy, Notre Dame, IN. — ORDO, Paulist Press, pp.17-18” –

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Poem: The Road to Success

IMAGINE

Prayer For Peace
To Mary, The Light of Hope
Pope John Paul II

“Immaculate Heart of Mary, help us to conquer the menace of evil, which so easily takes root in the hearts of the people of today, and whose immeasurable effects already weigh down upon our modern world and seem to block the paths toward the future.
From famine and war, deliver us.
From nuclear war, from incalculable self-destruction, from every kind of war, deliver us.
From sins against human life from its very beginning, deliver us.
From hatred and from the demeaning of the dignity of the children of God, deliver us.
From every kind of injustice in the life of society, both national and international, deliver us.
From readiness to trample on the commandments of God, deliver us.
From attempts to stifle in human hearts the very truth of Cod, deliver us.
From the loss of awareness of good and evil, deliver us.
From sins against the Holy Spirit, deliver us.
Accept, 0 Mother of Christ,
this cry laden with the sufferings of all individual human beings, laden with the sufferings of whole societies.
Help us with the power of the Holy Spirit conquer all sin: individual sin and the "sin of the world," sin in all its manifestations.
Let there be revealed once more in the history of the world the infinite saving power of the redemption:
the power of merciful love.
May it put a stop to evil.
May it transform consciences.
May your Immaculate Heart reveal for all the light of hope. Amen.”

Muslim, Jewish, Christian Prayer for Peace

“O God, you are the Source of life and peace.
Praised be your name forever.
We know it is you who turn our minds to thoughts of peace.
Hear our grayer in this time of war.
Your power changes hearts.
Muslims, Christians, and Jews remember, and profoundly affirm,
that they are followers of the one God,
children of Abraham, brothers and sisters;
enemies begin to speak to one another;
those who were estranged join hands in friendship;
nations seek the way of peace together.
Strengthen our resolve to give witness to these truths
by the way we live. Give to us:
Understanding that puts an end to strife;
Mercy that quenches hatred, and
Forgiveness that overcomes vengeance.
Empower all people to live in your law of Love. Amen.”

Prayer to Christ the Healer

“In the comfort of your love,
I pour out to you, my Savior, The memories that haunt me,
The anxieties that perplex me, The fears that stifle me,
The sickness that prevails upon me,
And the frustration of all the pain that weaves about within me.
Lord, help me to see your peace in my turmoil,
your compassion in my sorrow,
your forgiveness in my weakness,
And, your love in my need.
Touch me, 0 Lord, with your healing power and strength.”

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