My Mother's Day and a Special Memento

Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son." Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his home. (John 19:25-27)

This past Sunday was Mother's Day as well as the day after my sister-in-law got married. So we were in Bardstown for the entire weekend. Sunday morning as we were packing up to leave the hotel I went to pick up the Mother's Day card for his mother that I had left on a table and I noticed two cards. The top one had my name on it! But I wasn't surprised, because I know I have a wonderful and sweet husband.

The card was so nice. The message of the card (with an annotation from Chris) was: To my wife ... you fill our home (and heaven) with love. I wanted to cry, well, I did get a little weepy, but that's not a surprise to anyone who knows me. I'll cherish this card forever.

After breakfast at my in-laws house we headed off to church. During the Prayers of the Faithful, there were prayers for all mothers, for all children, and for all those mothers who have lost children. I felt especially blessed by the last prayer. Following the prayers the priest then asked all mothers to kneel, that's when I hesitated. I just wasn't comfortable kneeling for that last blessing.

This morning during my Adoration hour I thought a lot about Mary. I once again asked for her intercessory prayers and prayed that my little Casey and all those who have passed on were safe in heaven with our Lord and her, His Mother. As I have said in recent posts, I know my baby Casey Marie is with our Heavenly Mother. As the passage from John above illustrates, Mary was given to all of humanity as our mother and I take comfort in knowing that the best mother in all of God's Creation is watching after my child.

To top off my Mother's Day I received a special item in the mail today. I ordered a special memento to remember my baby, and I was surprised at how quickly it was made and arrived. Shortly after the miscarriage I was looking everywhere on the Internet for help and support. I happened to run across a website for bereaved mothers and on the site was a link for Memory Bracelets. You can check out the site here: http://www.geocities.com/bmskeepsakes/. Chris and I talked about it, and decided to order a bracelet for me. It didn't occur to me at the time that Mother's Day was right around the corner. The bracelet came today. I was so excited!! Here is a picture of it:


This was the end of my first Mother's Day. It was a sad day, but it was a happy day too. It's hard to be too sad when the promise of heaven is so amazing! The bracelet I now have is a wonderful memento to the baby that I never got to hold. My baby will be remembered publicly in July. If you're around, we'll be having a Mass said at our church for Casey at 8am on Saturday July 12. I'm looking forward to having the public acknowledgement and be able to celebrate our child's short life with our community.

Happy Mother's Day to all mothers!!

Weddings, Moms, and Life

Friday afternoon we are leaving town and driving to Bardstown, Ky for a family wedding. Weddings are such wonderful times! The beginning of a new chapter in two people's lives and the coming together of two families. So we will be joining my husband's family and watching his oldest younger sister get married. Does that make sense? Probably not, but that's okay. I don't have time to explain, it's already late.

I'm actually very interested in seeing what happens at this wedding. My sister-in-law told us that their priest convinced them to do some parts of the ceremony according to the old marriage rite. I'm not sure what this means, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it differs from our wedding. It should be interesting.

So, yes another wedding in our lives. It'll be nice to spend an entire weekend with family. We decided not to bother driving back and forth all weekend, so we'll be staying out there. It's kind of like a mini-vacation for us too. I'm looking forward to being away from home for a little while and in a different environment. It'll be nice to be away for a few days.

And Sunday is Mother's Day! Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there! We'll see my mother-in-law on Mother's Day since we'll be there for the wedding. But we won't get to see my mom. :( We'll see her in a few weeks, though!

I received a "Happy (God) Mother's Day" card in the mail today from my Goddaughter! It was such a pleasant surprise!! It was home made too, the best kind!

I got another special surprise for Mother's Day. Something I initiated, but didn't expect to come to fruition so quickly. I found a woman online who makes bracelets for moms, specifically as mementos for the loss of a child or children. Apparently her business started with bracelets for moms who experienced miscarriage or other pregnancy loss, but has now expanded to all sorts of bereaved moms and other areas. Anyway, I placed an order with her just last night to have a bracelet made for our baby and already I've communicated with her several times today and the bracelet is almost done and might be shipped tomorrow!! I'm stunned at how fast this has been. She told me she's very busy with Mother's Day so close and I kind of feel bad that she felt the need to rush on mine. I didn't need it now, but I'm so grateful that she takes such joy in making these. I can tell by her wonderful emails. The picture I saw of the bracelet looks amazing and I can't wait to see the real thing!! It might be very soon!!

So that's our weekend!! A wedding, celebrating moms, and just enjoying life. Next week will be a little stressful, but I'll get into that later. For now, I'm trying not to think too far ahead! Enjoy your weekend!!

Catholic Carnival #170 is up!

The next edition of the Catholic Carnival is up!! After many months of reading the Carnival I finally decided to participate. Go check out all the wonderful posts from Catholic bloggers from all over the Blogosphere here:

Catholic Carnival 170

Happy reading!

A Name, An Identity

In my previous post, A Loss and Our Faith, I talked about how our faith has helped us to accept the death of our child. We never got to see or hold our baby and we'll never know if it was a boy or a girl. But despite all the questions, the occasional anger, grief, and sadness, and the loss of life at such an early stage, we know that this was a child of God who was sent to us as a gift, even if it was just for a short time. We'll never know why God chose to end this child's life so soon, but I trust His will and know that my baby is in heaven with Him. In my previous post I listed several items that have been on my mind since our loss. The first was about giving our child a name. Some may find this a strange thing to do, but I couldn't imagine not doing it. Read on to find out why.

The first time I heard the idea of giving a name to a child who died in the womb was from a book by Kimberly Hahn called Life Giving Love. It is an amazing book and I highly recommend it (very faithful to the teachings of the Church, including discussions on NFP, which was really my first intro to that topic). In part of the book she discusses miscarriage, she had two herself plus has six living children. It has been a few years since I read the book and I don't currently have it handy, but I remember reading that section on miscarriage and pregnancy loss and being blown away by all her insights and everything she went through. She named both her babies in heaven and the family remembers them in their prayers regularly.

The Sunday after our miscarriage the spot in our church bulletin usually reserved for a letter from our parish rector contained instead an excerpt about Parents and Baptism from the book Together at Baptism by Robert M. Hamma. There was one paragraph that stuck out for me and I wanted to share it here:

There are few things that parents do that have a more lasting effect on a child than giving a name. There is a time-honored tradition among Christians of naming children after saints or other biblical figures. Although our culture has changed and many people no longer observe this tradition, we still recognize that a name gives a child a sense of identity. Perhaps it gives a child a role model or expresses something of value for the parents that they want to share with their child. Whatever the case, naming a child is an important responsibility and a privilege.

This paragraph really spoke to me and was there at the exact moment I needed it. Every child should have an identity and it has been important to me that my child always be remembered as a unique individual. I was also struck by the idea of it being "an important responsibility and a privilege" (my emphasis). Wow, it is a "privilege" for me to name my baby! Why would I reject that privilege that God has given me? Although I can't hold or see my baby, I know he was a gift from God and God is giving me this chance to name my child. What an amazing thought!

We talked a long time about what name to give our child. I wanted something that would work for either a boy or a girl, since we didn't really know what we were having and I didn't want to make any declarations one way or the other. So we did some searching and the one name we really liked of all those we found was Casey. It isn't biblical and it isn't the name of any known saint, but we liked it. So it stuck. The middle name was a little harder. I came up with several suggestions and Chris finally picked out the one that I was most hesitant about, but I like it now. We decided on Marie for a variety of reasons. First, it is gender neutral! Marie, Maria, Mary, etc. are all used for men just as much for women in a variety of cultures (Carl Maria von Weber, anyone!). Chris has some French heritage, so Marie was an appropriate middle name for a boy, and of course, it is most commonly associated in our culture with girls. The other great part of Marie is that it is a name for Mary. The above quote mentions a name being a role model for the child. What better role model could there be than the Blessed Virgin Mary!! And what about the name expressing the parents values; well, Mary is very important to us both as a role model and as our heavenly Mother. I find myself thinking about Our Mother Mary a lot these days. I wonder if as a mother she has a special fondness for all the small children in heaven who died due to miscarriage or stillbirth, and especially for those who were victims of abortion. I need to start including prayers asking for Mary's intersession more often in my prayer life.

Casey Marie is a wonderful name and I love saying it to myself. I pray for Casey by name now. It brings tears to my eyes during certain parts of the Eucharistic prayers at Mass when I think of Casey. I just love knowing that my child will always have a unique identity and will always be remembered in my prayers and in our family prayers.

I welcome comments on this topic and would especially love to know what names others have chosen for children they have lost. Oh, and I haven't done it yet, but I am thinking of adding Casey Marie's name to the Book of Life at the Shrine for the Unborn at the Church of the Holy Innocents in New York City. The church prays for all the families and children in the Book of Life at the 12:15pm Mass on the first Monday of every month. What a beautiful thing! I love knowing that my baby is being prayed for regularly. If you want to help them out, they do accept donations to help with upkeep of the Shrine and all that it entails. We plan on making a donation and I may even make it an annual thing in rememberance of Casey.

Thanks for reading and listening to the ramblings of a still-grieving mother. May God bless all of you!

A Loss and Our Faith

A few weeks ago my husband and I experienced a loss in our lives. Most of our family and friends that may read this blog already know what happened and I do not plan on going into much detail here. But I am finding that as I learn to get through my feelings of grief, I want to write more. So that's what I'm doing.

On March 31, I experienced a miscarriage. The baby we lost was 8 and a half weeks old in the womb and was already becoming a big part of our lives. The loss was very hard to take; many dreams were dashed, many happy occasions were already being imagined and those are all gone as well. But slowly we are starting to see the positive sides and we're moving back into our lives, although differently since our lives have changed now in many ways. Though I still have days when I am angry or sad and I want to step away from my normal every day activities, I have more good days than bad and I believe that a lot of that has to do with the faith that my husband and I share. Without it I don't know how we would have survived this experience.

Over the last few weeks I have had so many different thoughts, most related to how I have used my faith to overcome my grief, how my faith influences how I think of this baby, and so many more things!! I could go on and on about so many different topics that this has inspired in me. And eventually I may touch on them -- in future posts!

For now, a preview of some of my thoughts, which may become future posts:

• Naming our baby and why every child should have an identity
  
• The church's teaching/understanding of baptism for children who die before they are born
  
• Using NFP after miscarriage
  
• Striving to be a saint!!
  
• Suffering as part of our Christian faith
  
• Why supporting the right to life is so important not only for the average person, but for our politicians as well (those who, supposedly, make and uphold our laws and all our rights as citizens)
  
• And, maybe I'll go a little deeper on Faith and how it has helped me so much during this trying time
  

I could probably go on, but I think this list will do for now. In regard to the first bullet above (a topic I plan on addressing very soon), for those who are curious, we named our baby Casey Marie.

Please say a prayer for our little Casey Marie, that Our Lord and Our God will protect him and keep him safe and that Our Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, will care for him until I can one day hold him in my arms myself. We are blessed to have a child in heaven, our little saint to pray for us and be our heavenly advocate.

Today's Mass at Yankee Stadium

No, I did not get to attend the Mass, though what an awesome experience that could have been. We did, however, watch it on TV. Those who were able to attend had been sitting in the stadium since 10am this morning. The "popemobile" came in a little after 2pm and the Mass started around 2:30.

Even watching it on TV was an awesome experience! To see the Holy Father enter Yankee Stadium and wave at all the people and to see the thousands of people there all excited to be celebrating Mass with the Pope was astounding. It was so moving watching the people's reactions as the Pope made his way around the stadium and to the sacristy (which I think was one of the dug outs).

At this Mass they also commemorated the 200th anniversary of the Diocese of Baltimore's elevation to an Archdiocese. In addition the 200th anniversary of four other Dioceses in the U.S.: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Bardstown (now Louisville); all four were under the metropolitan of Baltimore at the time, although now all four are archdioceses themselves.

Anyway, During the liturgy of the Word the first reading (from Acts) was in English, the second (from the first letter of Peter) in Spanish, and they chanted the Gospel reading in English. During the Psalm I wasn't paying attention but I think they sung it in a combination of English and Spanish. Later during the Prayers of the Faithful, they had a variety of people come up to give each one and they each read the intention in their own language. I heard English, Spanish, and French for certain. I think there was an African language, some southeast Asian language (I think), and possibly a few others. Again, I think I was not totally paying attention at that point either. Oh, and the Creed was sung in Latin, the universal language of the church.

His Homily was very good. Benedict has addressed the sex scandal in the church from the past few years several times since arriving in the U.S. last week. Actually, he first addressed it enroute to the U.S. He also met with several victims of the scandal while he was here. During his homily he did not bring it up explicitely but he did mention working against scandals in the church, in a general sense. Other than that, one of the first big topics he addressed was protecting the unborn!! He got immediate and enthusiastic applause for that one (presidential candidates take note!). Other than that, he talked a lot about hope, which of course was the main theme of his whole trip: Christ our Hope. Not only that, but as Chris pointed out when the commentor on TV was talking about how much he addresses the issue of Hope ("he's definitely making himself out to be the Pope of Hope"), his most recent encyclical is also on hope. We also laughed at calling Benedict the "Hope Pope!" He addressed young people specifically at one point, talked about vocations to the priesthood and religious life, and about raising children in the faith and parents as strong role models. He also addressed the crowd in Spanish (for which he got more enthusiastic applause). Apparently the Pope is actually more comfortable in Spanish than he is English, which did seem to be the case when he first started speaking in Spanish. I'd like to go find the homily somewhere and read it again, since I'm sure I missed something. I'll be checking the uspapalvisit.com website soon to see if all his talks from this past week are there.

The Eucharistic celebration was very cool. It was so moving to see several couples come forward to present the gifts of bread and wine to the Pope. You could tell that they were overwhelmed by the opportunity they had to be in Pope Benedict's presence. During the actual distribution of communion, the camera focused on the Pope occasionally as he was distributing communion to the faithful and it was so moving. The commentators on the TV even were talking about how at this particular point the Pope is like every other priest, and it was a very humbling experience watching him give the Eucharist to the faithful. Maybe humbling isn't the right word, but hopefully you know what I mean. Oh, and they managed to get communion to all 57,000 people and did it all in about 15-20 minutes!! There were priests everywhere!! Apparently they had done several dress rehearsals for this to make sure they could do it quickly and efficiently while still maintaining the reverence damanded of the Eucharistic celebration.

Although I couldn't be at the Mass in person, it was wonderful to be able to watch it on TV. I was so moved by the whole thing and I started thinking about how cool it would be to attend mass sometime where the Pope was presiding. What an awesome experience it would be. Don't know if I'll ever get that opportunity in my lifetime, but it would be worth it.

Way too long!

It has been way too long since I have posted anything. I have had tons of stuff going on in my life, but I also have been wanted to talk here about so many things as well. So much to talk about, but so little time. Now that Blue 2.0 is over, I hope to get back to my usual types of posts.

At the moment, the biggest Christian event in the US is happening this week. The Pope is visiting!! Find out more about his itinerary here: www.uspapalvisit.com. I believe you can get live streaming of the events on that site. I think I also heard that the speeches and such are archived so those can be accessed as well if you're unable to watch them live (like me). I did find an excuse to go to the Main Library on Tuesday and see the Pope land at Andrew's Air Force Base and President Bush meet him there. The Library has a TV in the basement that's always on CNN. It was cool to watch that live!

I promise that more will be coming soon!! Keep checking back!!

Blue 2.0: Other Social Networkign sites

Finally, the last Blue 2.0 activity!! Finishing up the Social Networking Activities, I am to also look at some other sites besides MySpace and Facebook. I have actually been a member of LinkedIn for a long time now, but never realized it was a social networking site. The only reason I am a member is because I got sent a message from someone else who joined asking me to join. This was probably 4-5 years ago. I had actually forgotten that I even had a profile up there until about a year or so ago when I got a message from a librarian in Missouri. Since then I have had several other music librarians add me to their list of contacts and people in UK Libraries have found me as well. LinkedIn is supposed to be a way for professionals to get linked together and advertise jobs, share professional info, and so forth. Although I have a profile there, I've never really used it a whole lot.

I also recently set up a profile on a social networking site called 4marks. This is a social networking place for Catholics. I had been a part of another Catholic site years ago but ended my membership sometime in 2006. I then got an email months later from 4marks inviting me to join; turns out this was a sort-of spin-off site from the previous site I had been a part of. I never bothered looking into 4marks until this exercise came up. So I have set up a profile there, but haven't really had time to explore much of it. I notice that they have an online magazine with lots of articles on Catholic life, they have events around the country, and they have educational classes offered through the site. Looks interesting and I may check it out occasionally, but I probably won't be spending a lot of time there.

Blue 2.0: Facebook

The second social networking site I had to look at is Facebook. Comparing this one to MySpace I have to say that this is a much more user friendly site. I used my personal email address rather than my UK address so I was not automatically added to the UK Community. I tried to find it but kept getting the message "Search is not currently available." I also went looking for the "Blue 2.0 at UK Libraries" group and for the same "Search is not currently available" note. So far, looking for any groups or communities are not working for me. Someone said this was fun to use???

I did find my sister and now have three friends: her, her boyfriend, and someone I know from High School. Otherwise, I haven't really gone looking for anyone else. I've been busy with a lot of things lately and spending time adding friends to a web page seems like a bit of a waste of my time. Maybe when I have more time later I'll see if looking up long lost friends is worth it. As long as the search function works!!

I did join a group. It's called "My name is Scannell (like flannel)." Several of my cousins are also members as well as a few people I don't know from Ireland and other parts of the US. That was kind of cool to see that site.

That's all I've done so far. I think once this Blue 2.0 stuff is over I'll definitely be deleting the MySpace profile, but I'm willing to leave Facebook up for now.

Blue 2.0: MySpace

This last part of Blue 2.0 has to do with Social Networking. So we've been asked to look at a number of social networking sites. The first is MySpace. I have to admit that I did not find this site very user friendly. It took my a long time to figure out how to change my profile look and how to search for friends. I did manage to add a picture of my husband and I taken this Christmas on our front porch. There is still a lot that I guess I could do, but it seems a little too difficult for me to bother with. There are way too many options and links all over the page.

I did send an email to have the UK Libraries page be a friend. Otherwise, I haven't bothered doing anything else. I don't even know how to point anyone to my myspace page. Oh wait, just figured it out! Wow, that was not very obvious. Here it is if anyone wants to check it out: http://www.myspace.com/kasclar.

Blue 2.0: Podcasting

In my last Blue 2.0 post, located here, I blogged about photo sites and video sites. I skipped talking about podcasting at that time. So, that's what I'm doing now.

I have never made a podcast and have no plans on ever doing one. I don't like my recorded voice, plus I don't know that I have much I would want to say that I couldn't just write about. I have heard of podcasting for a long time, but my experience is actually kind of limited.

For those who don't know what podcasting is it is very much like radio. However, instead of being on the radio you are broadcasting over the Internet. You can listen to podcasts over the Internet, or download them to an iPod so you can listen to them whenever you want.

The first time I heard the word "podcast" it was from some of my blog reading and it was from the Catholic blogs that I first heard the term. I saw mention of a podcast from Cardinal Arinze. I'm not sure who Cardinal Arinze is exactly but several people were talking about how wonderful his podcasts were. So for this assignment I decided to try and go find them. Unfortunately I couldn't get them to play. I don't have an iPod or an iTunes subscription, so I have to listen to them through the Internet. However, I wasn't able to get the files to work. But I saw the list of recent podcasts (and video-casts) that he's done. He's spoken about JPII's Theology of the Body, Pope Benedict's encyclical Deus Caritas est (which I'm currently reading), and many other topics, from Catholic apologetics to faith questions and answers. I wish I could listen to them! I've heard that they are wonderful!

It's not exactly a podcast, but I listen to the radio itself frequently through the Internet. I especially enjoy Relevant Radio. I listen to it locally in my car on AM1380 or online when I'm at work. Up until now, this is probably the closest I have come to listening to a podcast. And actually, the local station has to power down some between sunset and sunrise, so the station is difficult to hear at night. Thus, if I want to hear something and the station has powered down, I can still pull it up online and listen to it clearly there. That's definitely a nice benefit of the Internet and radio, especially when you want to listen to a station that has FCC limitations put on it.

Today, once my searching for the Cardinal Arinze podcasts failed, I decided to just do a search for Catholic Podcasts. I ran into one called CatholicInsider.com. I found the archive of podcasts here. It didn't look like I could listen to many of the older broadcasts, but the 3-4 more recent ones were available. I'm listening to one now in which the priest doing the podcast is in Winnipeg and he's taking a tour of an old cathedral in that area. He's obviously used to doing podcasts, because he's being careful to describe what he sees and where they are and everything. So it's easy to listen and not be able to see where he is and see what he sees. I don't really care for the website itself. It isn't very intuitive (at least not for me) and I don't like that I can't listen to previous podcasts without subscribing through iTunes, which I don't plan on doing. Actually, many of the sites I visited were confusing. I either couldn't listen to the downloads because I didn't have iTunes or the file was not recognized on my machine or the links just weren't there. I found this exercise a little frustrating.

Podcasts are interesting, but I'm not sure I could get into listening to them on a regular basis. I'm also not sure what the benefits would be to libraries. I still think video tutorials would be much better for students. Personally, I don't think I'll become I regular user of podcasts. At least not while I'm in the dark ages of preferring live radio.

But before I write it off entirely, I will say one positive thing I discovered recently about podcasts. My husband and I support an organization called the Couple to Couple League. This organization teaches and promotes Natural Family Planning. Recently they have gone through a major overhaul of all their teaching materials, methods, charting materials, and website. Everything was in dire need of updating and the new stuff looks great (we especially love the new charts they made, much easier to use!!). They are also moving to more online stuff than they have had in the past. And one of their online things to be coming soon (according to the recent magazine we got) is podcasts about NFP. I don't think anything is up yet, but I do think this is a good idea. It's a great way for NFP to be promoted and to provide discussions on different aspects of this method. Now that I've experimented some with using podcasts, I am curious to see how easy or difficult CCLI's podcasts will be once they put them online.

Easter Season

The blog has been a bit neglected lately. I've been posting occasionally for the Blue 2.0 stuff at work, but I'm getting behind on that too. Things here have been pretty busy lately: work is crazy, I'm trying to tie up loose ends from a responsibility that I just handed over, and I hired two new people at the same time so I'm occupied with lots of training.

Anyway, just wanted to take a moment to talk about our Easter. For the first time I attended an Easter vigil service. Usually I attend Easter Mass on Easter morning. That mass is a typical mass, just more celebratory because it's Easter. The gospel reading on Sunday morning is usually one of the stories of Peter and the beloved disciple running to find the empty tomb. But the Easter vigil is very different.

Easter vigil mass must start after sunset and it must be over before sunrise on Easter Sunday. I heard someone standing near me right before the vigil started tell someone else that in her parish in Missouri they start the vigil at 4:00am on Sunday morning! Ours started at 8:40pm Saturday night. This Mass begins outside where they light a liturgical fire and the Bishop blesses the Easter candle. It was very cold, but a very neat way to begin. Once the Easter candle was blessed and we started processing behind it into the church we started lighting the candles we all had from the Easter candle. All the lights in the church had been turned off, so our only light was from the candles, it was very cool.

Once everyone was inside and back in their seats the service started. The lights were finally put on again and the readings started. Unlike a typical mass which consists of an Old Testament reading, a Psalm, a New Testament Reading, and a Gospel reading, during the vigil mass we hear seven Old Testament readings! They started in Genesis and moved through Exodus, Isaiah, and Baruch (and something else too, probably). In between each Old Testament reading there was either a sung Psalm or a moment of quiet reflection. After either the Psalm or the reflection there was a prayer and then they went to the next reading. The neat thing was that we read through a huge chunk of salvation history by reading so much of the Old Testament. You really can't fully understand the New Testament and the Gospels without reading the Old Testament.

Once the Old Testament readings were done the Bishop stood and we sang the Gloria. This was a little different. At most masses the Gloria is done at the beginning of Mass (for those who remember this from music history class: it followed the Kyrie in the Ordinary). The weird placement of it in this Mass was because we don't do the Gloria during Lent. Because the Gloria is the praising of the risen Lord, it is skipped during that period of 40 days of solemnity of Lent and brought back joyfully when we celebrate the risen Lord. So, it makes sense at the Vigil Mass to read through the Old Testament and Psalms, and then sing the Gloria before we read from the New Testament. Following the singing of the Gloria we had a reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans and finally the Gospel reading, from Luke I believe, though I can't remember exactly at the moment.

The Gospel reading was interesting to me. After years of only attending Easter Mass on Sunday I hadn't realized that there was a different Gospel reading at the Vigil. We read in the Gospel of the two women going to the tomb, finding it open and the angel tells them to go tell the disciples and tell them that the Risen Christ will see them in Galilee. Then as they are going back to the disciples, they run into Jesus on the road and he speaks to them. I guess I had never read this part of the Gospel before! I didn't think that anyone saw Jesus after he had risen until later. The reading just really struck me a lot more than it usually does.

The Bishop's homily was great too! I don't remember all the details but I do remember this one thing clearly. He spoke about how Easter is the beginning of the 50days of the Easter season leading to Pentecost. Pentecost is considered the birthday of the church. Thus, said the Bishop, if Pentecost is the birthday of the church, then Easter can be considered the conception and the 50 days leading to Pentecost is the gestation! Such a powerful imagine!!

Once the Liturgy of the Word was over we moved into the baptism of new members into the church. It was so cool to be there to see 7 new people enter into the church. The Bishop baptised all of them and then he administered the Sacrament of Confirmation as well. The entire congregation renewed our baptismal vows also. Again we passed around the flame from the Easter candle and renewed our vows holding the light of Christ. This Vigil mass is so beautiful and wonderful in so many ways. The entire life of the church is on display in so many ways!

After that ceremony we moved into the Liturgy of the Eucharist. The seven people who were just received into the church were now able to also receive the Eucharist for the first time! I can't even imagine how powerful and amazing it was for these people to be baptised into the Church, receive the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament of Confirmation, and receive Christ himself in their first Eucharist all in one day!! How incredible!

The Vigil Mass ended about 10 after midnight. Chris and I went home but weren't ready for bed right away. So we had some ice cream together and finally got to bed around 1 or 1:30am. Sunday we slept in and then went to Bardstown for Easter dinner. That was our whole Easter Sunday.

I hope everyone had a blessed Easter!

More Blue 2.0: Week 7 & 8

This next session of Blue 2.0 involves three activities. There are only two I will address in this particular post. The third is something I'm not really looking forward to doing and really have no idea if I can do it. But I'll save that for another time.

Today, I'm addressing Activity 1 and 3 of the Week 7 & 8 activites. Activity 1 is to create a photo page. Chris and I already have one of these. We use Picassa, mostly because I already have a google account and it's just easier to keep everything under one account rather than creating more accounts on more websites. I've used flickr to look at other people's photos and I personally find it very unfriendly, from at least the standpoint of looking at photos, not necessarily downloading, etc. When we started with Picassa we just had to download something to our computer, which we did at home. Chris actually handled it and he said it was very cool. Once the program was loaded it found all the pictures already on the computer and moved them into files. From there we just had to arrange everything how we wanted it and choose what to actually show to the public and what to keep private. Currently we have pictures from the wedding, our honeymoon, Halloween, my niece's 2nd birthday, and our first Chirstmas together. I also like that I can link to other people's Picassa accounts, have a map indicating locations of my pictures, and I can get alerts when someone I know adds or changes pictures on their Picassa account. It's also very easy to navigate using the links at the top. You can get in and out of albums easily and back to your own album quickly from anyone else's album. This is the complaints I have about Flickr, no easy navigation functions that I can tell.

Check out our Picassa site here. As for uses in the library, I guess I can see this as a way to display pictures of the various libraries or areas of the libraries. I'm not sure I see too many uses for it that would help patrons, except maybe as a visual aid. I can see someone checking out what the library looks like when they aren't here. But if they are in the library and looking for a particular area, aren't most people going to be looking at signage, not sitting down at a computer to find pictures? It may be a way to store pictures for use in tutorials. Otherwise it seems like more of a fun thing rather than a practical application.

The third activity is to look at YouTube and search the terms "libraries." Once we do this and find a video we like we are to comment about it. So I did the search and ran into some music library videos. I found one really cute one called DePauw Music Library: Move in a Minute. They apparently had to move their library collection (looks like within the same building) and they filmed the process. The cute part is that they did it with cute music in the style of the silent movie days with everything kind of fast-forwarded and the black screens occasionally with text to let you know what's happening. Also, the black screens even have the wavy, old look to them. Even though the film itself is in color, it still has that "older," less-refined, early movie days look. It's very cute! Check out the link to view the short film.

You Tube is great for a lot of things. I was pointed to a series of You Tube videos yesterday created by some seminarians for use in marriage-prep courses in Catholic Churches. They were all very cute and humorous, 6 short spots in all. They are done in the style of the PC vs. Mac commercials that I'm sure we've all seen on TV. Only the topic this time was Contraception vs. NFP. Chris and I watched them last night and had a great laugh.

I can see a lot of good uses for You Tube or other video sites (another one I know of is www.lovetobecatholic.com). I can see using video to record BI sessions and have them available for students who are working independently. You could have a whole series on searching various databases, basic and advanced videos, what librarians do (ALL librarians), and more. This would be a great medium for promoting librarianship!

Next is podcasting, which I have absolutely no desire to do! I'll see about posting something about this later, if at all.

Catholics Come Home!!

There is a wonderful campaign starting and it looks awesome!! I have seen so much recently about evangelization and it just keeps growing!!

First: my church started a program several years ago called Catholics Returning Home. In the program they take six weeks and discuss various aspects of the church. Unlike RCIA (Rite of Christian Initation for Adults), which is a program for people interested in Catholicism and guides them toward baptism and/or confirmation in the Church, Catholics Returning Home (CRH) is for former Catholics who are interested in taking a second look at the church. Over the six weeks they discuss: stories of faith, Vatican II changes, the Mass and Eucharist, Reconciliation and Sin, and finally, beliefs and "now what?". I have not been involved at all and have no idea what the success rate of the program is. But I would think it would be a success just to get one person back to the Church. It's a great step in the right direction.

Second: a new national campaign!! This is Catholics Come Home. I have seen it mentioned in my church bulletin and monthly newsletter and I recently saw it come up in discussion on a Catholic wedding site I still participate in. Check out the website, it is very cool!! Also, there is a TV campaign. They are piloting the TV commercials in Phoenix, AZ and Lexington, KY. I caught one of the commercials tonight for the first time and it was a great TV spot. Really emphasized the good that the church has done throughout the world for centuries: largest social programs in the world, creation of the written Bible, hospitals, education, the college system. The list goes on and on. The program looks great and I highly encourage everyone to go check it out. If you're a proud Catholic, there is a way to donate to the program, if you have any interest in the Church at all, check out the various stories and information on this site.

I have more on this topic, but I'm going to wait and do a new post. I think my further thoughts warrant a post all their own.

Play Week with Blue 2.0, Part 2

I kind of ran out of time during this last 2-week session to complete two activities. Part of that was that the week started just as I returned from a conference and I'm still trying to wrap things up from that. Anyway, I scanned through the remaining optional activities just now and noticed that one was on Advanced Blogging (or "bling" your blog).

I did add something new to my blog last week. I finally played around with LibraryThing and made a widget to put on my blog. So now instead of juts a list of some of the books I'm currently reading, I have a list of some of the books in my personal library with pictures of the book covers! Very cool. Other things I have done in the past to add some spunk to my blog include:

1. A ticker at the top (currently a count down to my first wedding anniversary, but previously it was a ticker to the wedding day). You can get your own ticker for all sorts of things (birthdays, baby due dates, how long you've been married, etc. at Daisy Path.
   
2. On the side bar, I have a picture of my patron saint of the year. For more information on the Patron Saint of the Year Ministry check out this link.
   
3. I also have a little box to the daily readings for each day of the Catholic Church calendar. It's very cool for those days when I may be going to a daily mass, I can read the readings ahead of time through that link and get more out of the mass when I attend. And If I'm not attending I can still read the readings that I know will be used in every Catholic Church around the world that day. I got the widget for the readings from a website called CatholicContent.com which provides all sorts of widgets for your blogs.
   
4. I also joined a webring several months ago. It's called St. Blog's Parish and under the Daily Mass readings you can see a link to the Webring. You'll notice that each word or character is an individual link. Some will take you to another random blog in the ring and others take you to more information about the webring itself. Webrings link together blogs that all have a common theme of some kind. The St. Blog's Parish Webring is currently closed (I believe). It seems that it can be time consuming to try and maintain.
   
5. Lastly is the LibraryThing widget I added. And I already talked about that.
   

That's most of the "bling" I've added to my blog over time. Besides the things mentioned above, I've added other lists to blogs I like, websites of the various groups I'm involved in, and there are links to all my posts through the archive.

One last thing, I noticed that Encore was on the list of Blue 2.0 things to explore. I just wanted to comment that I have tried using Encore and I don't find it very easy. I don't like that it takes a very broad approach to everything. There are a few nice features, but the things I like are the things that will be incorporated into the next release of the Voyager software we use. If we can get all the same functionality in Voyager, why do we have Encore?

Play Week with Blue 2.0, Part 1

This two week session in Blue 2.0 is called "Play week." We were given a number of different activities we could participate in and we have to blog about our experiences.

So one of the activities is to set up a personal portal. The recommended place to do this is Pageflakes. However, I didn't use this one. They also recommended using iGoogle. I already have an iGoogle page and I use it as my homepage on my home computer. I love having a personalized homepage that I've designed.

On my iGoogle page I have a cute scene on the top half that I chose. It has a little pond in the middle, a small Japanese-style hut on the right with a little dock into the water, and some orange trees on the right side of the pond. There is a little fox who occupies the house and te surrounding areas. When I chose the scene I put in my time zone and the scene changes with the time of day in my time zone. Right now the fox is sitting on the dock playing a ukelele for the ducks in the pond. At other times he's having lunch, picking oranges, looking at the stars, or other things.

Under my cute little scene, I have several little gadgets. I have a Saint of the Day (today is St. Colette), the How to of the Day, a date and time clock, Quotes of the Day, Lexington weather, and my Google calendar. And because I'm a librarian I also have a search box for WorldCat.org.

Like I said above, I love having my own personalized homepage. It's very cool. Okay, now on to part two of Play Week.

Still around

It's been forever since I lasted posted to this blog. So I thought I would put up a quick post to let everyone know I'm still here but have been unable to get to the blog for a while. This is actually the first time I've looked at it in over two weeks.

I recently got back from a trip to Newport, RI. I was there for a Music OCLC Users Group meeting and a Music Library Association meeting. Both were great conferences and I had a wonderful time while I was there. It was very cold and windy, but still beautiful. Next year: Chicago!!

Now I'm back and trying to catch up at work. At home too! We need to sit down and put together our wedding album with the photographer and we still have a few things we want to do around the house. But we're slowly getting into a routine and I'm starting to feel more at home. Also, we got my house up for sale just before I left town. You can see it on this website: www.lbar.com. You can search by the address: 2563 Crusaders Way.

A lot is happening these days!! Stay tuned, I'm sure there will be more again soon!!

Blue 2.0: Google docs

Setting up my del.icio.us account was not hard. It was very easy actually. I've heard about it for a long time, but never took the time to find out more about it. Now that's I've used it some, I'm still not sure I would use it regularly. Some of my reasons are described below.

I'm not really sure what the benefit of this is. I already have a lot of sites bookmarked on both my PC at work and my laptop at home. I rarely find myself in dire need of a particular link when I'm at some other computer, which is pretty rare itself. So I'm not sure I'll use this much.

I added the Blue 2.0 page to my "network" on del.icio.us as the assignment required. But when I went to look at my network I see a huge list of all the links they have on their del.icio.us site. So does that mean that if I add more people's del.icio.us account to my network that list of links will get even longer? It seems a little weird to me to have this huge list of ever growing links with the only organization on them being these random tags. The fact that tags can be chosen in any way each user wants doesn't seem like it would be very helpful.

For example, I added links to my three main professional organization's websites to my account. I tagged them "professional." The Music Library Association was saved by 67 other people, so I went to look at who those people were and noticed that several of them didn't use "professional" as a tag, but instead used "association." Not exactly the best system; but I'm a cataloger, so I prefer some kind of controlled vocabulary. A controlled vocabulary has so many more benefits than random tagging.

Overall, I did learn finally what del.icio.us is (and how hard it is to type that when you're trying to talk aout it). I don't know that I can see using this very often. So this was probably just an exercise in discovery and nothing more for me.

On the other hand, I am creating this document using Google Docs. It looks like you can use Google to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Since these documents can then be shared and edited by a group of people it seems like this would be great for when you have a professional committee or task force who all have to work on something together. It beats sending attachments back and forth, trying to keep track of the changes, and saving upteen versions of the same thing on everyone's machine.

Okay, now that I'm done writing, I just have to figure out what to do next. That is, where does this get "saved"? Hmm ...

Blue 2.0: del.icio.us

I've been hearing about del.icio.us for a long time and was never exactly sure what it was. So this week in Blue 2.0 we had to set up an account and learn how to use it. Setting up an account was easy and it didn't take much to figure out how to add links to the site. My account can be viewed at: http://del.icio.us/Kasclar.

More on this in a future post.

My week

I was supposed to be in Indiana yesterday and today. But I had to cancel that trip. I came home from work on Tuesday after only being there an hour feeling as sick as a dog. I've been home ever since.

Yesterday I thought I was feeling better. My temps were down for the first time all week and I was feeling somewhat better. I was supposed to leave around 1pm for Indiana, but decided that going would just be pushing myself more than I needed to. Good thing too!! By 4pm or so I started going downhill again. Last night was horrible. Chris asked me how I was doing when he came to bed (I had been there since 8:30) and I started crying. I was miserable.

This morning I was starting to feel better and have slowly been feeling a bit more energetic. I'm not ready to say that I'm 100%, not after my experience yesterday.

Chris made me breakfast this morning before he left for work and then he cut up an orange for me to have sometime later today. So sweet of him!! Reminds me of the question on the USCCB website that was set up in support of marriage: What have you done for your marriage today? Check out the website here. Chris could be on one of those videos today: "I cut up an orange for my sick wife". It's truly the little things that make a big difference.

I am getting a little stir crazy. I hate being stuck in the house so much, but I have no energy to go anywhere. We did manage to go to Mass on Ash Wednesday, but I was miserable that whole time. Been watching a lot of TV, something I usually never do. I can't wait to start feeling better and actually get back into my routine.

New England in KY

It's almost Super Bowl time!! We decided to stay at home this year and watch the Superbowl here. No parties, just us. But we're doing it right.

Chris is preparing New England Clam Chowder for dinner and we'll finish it off with a Boston Creme Pie that he started making yesterday and finished up today.

Guess who we're rooting for??

Enjoy the game!!

Blue 2.0: wiki work

Part of Blue 2.0 this week is to create a wiki. We were asked to use PBWiki as our platform.

So tonight I started playing with it. I had a hard time coming up with something to use a wiki for. Some of my thoughts were to use a wiki as a place to store and easily revise cataloging procedures. I could also make a page of Music Subject Headings, but I don't know enough about subject headings to do it justice. Finally, I decided that a wiki would be a great way to keep track of a family tree. So that's what I did.

It's kind of small right now, only a few pages, but I hope to add more soon and let other family members add pages as well. You can check it out here: Kerri's Family Tree. I made this wiki private, I don't know if that restricts access or not even if you have the link. I may have to actually "invite" you to the page.

Setting up an account on pbwiki was pretty easy. Trying to figure out what to put on the pages was a little trickier. Also, I decided to delete a page that I created and it took me a while to figure out how to do that. But I think I got it now.

I can see that using a wiki would be beneficial for collaborative work. I know that the music librarians in the Chicago area set up a wiki for themselves for planning the national Music Library Association meeting to be held there in 2009. I don't know how that is working for them, but it seems like a good way to facilitate communication between a group of people. Probably better than a blog. However, I do kind of wonder if a forum would be a better way to conduct discussions than on a wiki. I'm much less familiar with wikis than I am with blogs and forums. So I will investigate some of the others and play with mine and see how I like them.

Next session: Tagging and online applications.

Blue 2.0: RSS Feeds

This is another post on the Blue 2.0 program I am participating in at work.

One of our topics for this two-week session is RSS feeds. I have been using Bloglines for RSS feeds for a while now. I forget when I first set it up, but I believe I've had it for at least a year if not longer.

The best part about using Bloglines is that I can keep up with news and weather plus my favorite blogs all in one place. And I can organize the various fields in folders by topic. I have four folders: Catholic blogs, Friends blogs, Library blogs, and News.

One of my favorite feeds is my CNN.com feed to the top headlines. Although the entertainment headlines are annoying, so I've been toying with the idea of deleting that feed and subscribing to the international headlines and national headlines feeds only. With this feed I did change the order they show up in. Rather than the newest one on top I reversed it so that I can scroll down the headlines in the order in which they appear. I also like the feed I have set up for the Weather Channel, I check it regularly to see the temps at any time.

My Library feeds include: Inquiring Librarian, The FRBR blog (a great place to go to get regular updates in the world of FRBR), Catalogablog (a great cataloging blog), and, of course, the Blue 2.0 Blog!!

I have several other blogs that I subscribe to through Bloglines, mostly Catholic ones. Of all of those, I have one that a seminarian from the Diocese of Lexington keeps as well as many others from around the nation. It's a fun way to meet other people from around the country (and abroad) who have similar values as you.

That's about all I have on this topic. I'll get to the wiki topic later!

The March for Life, other Links, and a New Project

Today in Washington, D.C. was the March for Life. The reason for the March is because of the anniversary of Roe v Wade, 35 years ago today. This March has taken place every year on the anniversary of the decision that has allowed an entire generation of children to be killed. The first March for Life was on the first anniversary in 1974. I was born in 1974 and the more I learn about the pro-life movement the more I realize that there is a huge number of unborn children who would be about my age now if it were not for abortion being made legal in this country.

I was not always pro-life. It took me a long time to come to understand how wrong abortion is. This was one issue that, as I came back more fully into the Catholic church about 7 years ago, I really had to work hard to understand. Now I can't imagine that difficulty, it is just so obvious. To think that somewhere around 50 million children who would all be around 35 years old and younger now never got a chance to experience life is just sad. Being pro-life is speaking up for those who are unable to speak for themselves.

That hundreds of thousands of people, many of them young people, would gather yearly to peacefully protest this decision is remarkable. It speaks very highly of the fact that many more Americans are pro-life than our politicians realize. And do you know what happened to "Roe," the woman who was the main part of the Supreme Court case in 1973. She has since regretted what she did, converted to the Catholic faith, and become a leader in the pro-life movement. What an amazing story!

Life begins at the moment of conception. There is no disputing that. Abortion kills a life already formed, regardless of how old the child is. This is also why my husband and I have chosen to follow the church teaching regarding contraception. This seems very radical to some, but when you look into all the whys, it makes perfect sense and we can't imagine doing anything different.

I wanted to also use this post to provide some links to some other resources. There are tons of websites on pro-life issues on the Internet. Here are some worth checking out:

First, this is a commentary on today's March for Life at Catholic.org: http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=26523. It's kind of long, but go read the whole thing!!

Also, Priests for Life is an organization that promotes life for all people. There website has a ton of other links on it. Scroll down to the list of links on the left side of the main page and find the link "Links to other Sites" for a huge list!!

Another site worth pointing to is the 40 Days for Life site. This is an awesome campaign of forty days of prayer nationwide in support of life. A very cool thing to check out.

And most importantly, in 1968 Pope Paul VI wrote a papal encyclical that now looks prophetic. His Humanae Vitae is so very important for understanding the Church's pro-life stance on all life issues form conception to natural death. Read it!!

Finally, in my post yesterday, I alluded to a project I have been thinking about taking on. It has been on my mind for some time that I want to do something to help people who choose not to have an abortion when faced with a crisis pregnancy. For these brave people who choose to give life to another human created by God and either keep the baby or give the baby up for adoption, there are crisis pregnancy centers out there who help these girls/women/couples. One of them is Birthrite and we have an office here in Lexington. At the beginning of December, Chris and I were out at a church dinner. The dinner always has a "split the pot" lottery (you put in a dollar and get a ticket and if your ticket wins you get half the money and the other half goes to help continue funding the dinner). Well, at the last one of these I actually won!! I got $98 and I haven't used any of it for anything yet. Do you see where this is going?

Birthrite of Lexington (as well as other chapters around the country) is in need of donations. I went looking on their website to see what donations they needed specifically. So, specifically, they need donations of maternity and baby clothes as well as monetary donations. I plan on calling them and finding out if they have other particular needs, such as other baby items (bottles, diapers, etc.). I plan on using the $98 I won in December to buy some things they need. I also want to collect donations of items or money from anyone else interested in helping with this. I need to call them first, but I wanted to let everyone know what I am planning on. If you're in the area (or even if you're not) and want to help, let me know. Email me or leave a note in the "comments" link below.

Thanks for reading!!

Preparing the townhouse

Wow! What a busy weekend. For me, it is still the weekend, for a few more hours anyway. We spent a lot of time at the townhouse Saturday preparing it to put on the market. I cleaned and Chris painted. The walls look sooooo much better than before!!!

Sunday we took a break: went to Mass, had a nice breakfast, read the paper, did the grocery shopping, and relaxed.

I was off from work today for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, but Chris had to go to work. I had my adoration hour this morning at 6am and then came home to have breakfast with my husband before he went off to work. Then, I started my very busy day.

I actually cooked dinner for us tonight!! I ran to the store and grabbed a pork loin which I then prepared for the crock pot. So while that was cooking I headed over to the townhouse to begin the major cleaning. I was there for 5 hours and did not get everything done I needed to get done. But, what I did do looks great!! I spent most of my time on the kitchen and the rest of the main floor. I dusted light fixtures and fans, cleaned the tops of cabinets and other high areas, and washed down the entire kitchen. I also managed to clean the kitchen window and the sliding glass doors and vacuum the living room. Oh, and I cleaned, dusted and washed, alll the baseboards!!! Not a whole lot left now: bathrooms and bedrooms mostly. We should be able to get those done in a few hours.

I got home tonight after doing all of that and I was exhuasted. Dinner was great and we're going to use the leftover pork for another recipe later in the week. I love this cookbook!! It's all slow coker recipes, except for the leftover recipes. Some of the really large recipes tell you how to store the leftovers and then use them in other (quicker) recipes. Very cool!! I think this is going to be my new favorite cookbook.

Regarding the townhouse: it's going to look great once we finish the cleaning, get the carpets cleaned, and I add a few little touches to make it look pretty. Know anyone looking for a house? It's a perfect first house! Especially if you don't like doing yard work!! Let me know!!

Tuesday is the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. There is a huge pro-life march in Washington, D.C. tomorrow, but you probably won't see it on the news or anything. It happens every year and it is always really big, but it doesn't get much press. I'll try to post something here tomorrow about the march as well as some links to pro-life sites. Tomorrow might also be a goood time for me to start a little project I have been thinking about lately. I'll save more info on that until tomorrow.

Yes! I am Catholic!: Session 2

Tuesday night we went out to the second session of Theology on Tap. I've mentioned before that this is a young adult ministry based on a book of that title by Beth Dotson Brown. I looked up the book tonight on Amazon and it is a series of interviews geared toward teens. She interviews several famous and not so famous people. One person on the list I recognized was Catherine Hicks from the TV show "7th Heaven." I read an interview once with her in a magazine I get and she's a very devout Catholic. Anyway, the book looks like it'd be good for anyone interested in the Catholic Church, anyone trying to rediscover their Catholic roots, and for teens who need good Catholic role models.

Tuesday's guest speaker at ToT was Bob "Righteous B" Lesnefsky. He is a Christian rapper and he performed some of his songs throughout the night. I'm not a fan of rap, but I was surprised at how some of these songs had some melodical parts to them and even the more "rap" like parts were interesting music. He did his songs with guitar and he obviously has had some good training or at least has a great ear. His lyrics were good and very honest.

He was also very honest about everything he talked about. He talked about his wife and his four kids, how when he met her she had plans to be a nun, and, most importantly, how he found his Catholic roots again after falling far away from the Church. Now he not only performs as a rapper, mostly doing teen retreats and talks like ours around the country, but he also runs an inner city youth ministry. Because most inner city churches are very poor and can't afford to hire a youth ministry this group provides that kind of ministry, working as a non-profit. They currently have one Catholic Youth ministry set up in Steubenville, OH and are planning on opening two others in the next year (in Queens, NYC, NY and Rochester, NY). You can find out more at their blog called Dirty Vagabond Ministries.

Next week's session will have two speakers: the youth minister from my parish and the director of the youth and young adult ministries for our diocese. Hope you can come out if you're in the area!

Theology on Tap: Tonight!!

Come out to Theology on Tap tonight for a very interesting talk. We'll be at O'Neill's Irish Pub on Richmond Road in the Idle Hour shops from 7-9pm. Get their early to get a seat.

Tonight's speaker is Christian rapper Bob "Righteous B" Lesnefsky, who was also interviewed for the book "Yes! I am Catholic." Theology on Tap is sponsored by the Diocese's Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministries and by Real Life Radio 1380 AM.

For more info about this ministry, click here: Theology on Tap.

An End, A Beginning, and a New Patron Saint

This past Saturday we finally took down our Christmas decorations. I know some are amazed that this late into January we still had our Christmas decorations up. But we had a very good reason.

Chris likes putting the Christmas decorations up as soon as Thanksgiving is over. I was totally against this, but I also knew that I couldn't make him wait until 2 weeks into December. So I told him he could start putting things up once Advent started. So everything went up the first weekend of Advent.

The only thing that was not complete was the nativity scene. We have a very large nativity set and we put it on the top of the entertainment center in the family room. When we first set it up we left the manger empty and the wise men were placed in a cabinet. The baby Jesus was placed in the manger on Christmas Day (although in our case, about 3 days after Christmas since we were in Atlanta). But the wise men weren't placed with everything else until Epiphany, January 6. Well, who wants to take everything down the same day that the wise men finally make an appearance?

So we left everything there another week. This past weekend was the Baptism of the Lord. The Gospel reading was from Matthew 3:13-17--in a nutshell: Jesus comes to the River Jordan and is baptized by John and the Holy Spirit descends upon Him. This past Sunday was considered part of the Christmas season. The Church still had all the wreaths and trees and lights up and they had the full nativity scene on the altar. So we were in good company.

Now that Christmas is over a new season starts, but only for a short time. We are now in Ordinary Time for a few short weeks. Ash Wednesday is on February 6 this year, so Lent starts very early. With the start of a new season is a good time to start reflecting on what we can do to improve our own lives.

This morning during my Adoration hour I spent time reading about prayer and I spent time praying about being a less judgemental and more accepting person. That's when I remembered the Patron Saint of the Year. I had recently seen someone refer to this on their blog and remembered seeing it last year. If this was something I needed to work on, maybe a saint would choose me this year who can help me work on this attribute! So when I had a free moment today I went looking for the recent post I saw to find the link I needed. Guess what! The Patron Saint of the Year Ministry has grown so much they created a blog devoted to it. I added the link to my sidebar so if you are interested in a patron saint go visit the blog and check it out.

By late this afternoon I found out which saint selected me and I was totally surprised. Not by who the saint was, but because I had never heard of him and it took me a while to find any info. St. Aelred is my patron saint for 2008. The Catholic Church has not named him a patron saint of anything in particular, but apparently he us "unofficially" the patron saint of friendship.

Over the course of the year I hope to learn a lot more about this saint nad I'll share what I learn here. I do hope and pray that this is the perfect saint to help me with those areas that I most want to work on in myself. From what I've read so far this seems to be the case.

Blue 2.0: IMing

Another Blue 2.0 post:

I reacquainted myself with my AIM screen name. I can't remember the last time I used it. I don't like using the AIM Express, thus I never do. AIM Express is very clunky. I prefer using AIM with the software I have downloaded on my laptop at home. It is much more friendly.

I do prefer the MSN Windows Messaging. I set up an account there a long time ago and use it at work often. I have used it to communicate with coworkers in our offices here are the Fine Arts Library. Even though we have an open office space here, it can get very noisy in here very quick with people on the phone, students and faculty coming in, and conversations between you and your neighbor. So using the chat MSN chat for quick questions helps keep the noise level from getting out of hand. And it is sometimes faster than email!

Blue 2.0

This post will be dedicated to some "Web 2.0" stuff I'm doing at work. To my family and friends who read this blog, you can safely ignore this post.

I set up my blog in August of 2006, so I've had it a while. It was easy to set up then and when Blogger updated their programs it was easy to convert over. I think at that time I also changed my background and when I did I lost all my little customizations (added links and so forth). Not sure why that happened, but it was easy enough to re-create them.

Hope everyone else enjoys creating their blogs. For all other Blue 2.0 stuff I will add a link to this post on the left side. From there the tag/label for "Blue 2.0" can be used to get to this and other future postings. (I don't currently use tags much, so haven't had a need to display a list of all my tags which may be up to 2 now!)

"Yes! I am Catholic" session 1

Tuesday evening we went to O'Neill's Pub for the first session of this winter's Theology on Tap series. This series is based on a book called Yes! I am Catholic by a local author. Tuesday night a seminarian for our diocese spoke about his journey toward entering the seminary and why he is a Catholic.

It was very interesting to hear from a young man who was open and honest about his life that led to Seminary. He surprised me and probably everyone else there by beginning with the subject of death. Sounds like kind of a strange way to begin a story about finding your faith and entering the seminary. But he explained how thinking about death gave him the focus he needed to change his life.

He talked about how he lost his faith in high school and then during his senior year he had an experience that made him realize how much God loved him. I believe that this is a common experience for young people. We grow up in the Catholic faith, believing what we are told to believe. But somewhere around high school we start thinking for ourselves more and start questioning these beliefs. We need something to make us "own" our religion ourselves. "Own" may not be the best word to describe it, but it's the only one I can think of right now.

After having this revelation, he said he got more involved in the Church and he became a youth minister. But he said he didn't really change his life. He realized after a while that he was a hypocrite. He taught one thing, but in his personal life he still wasn't following the kind of life that he should have been. Again I felt that I could relate to this. As he said, it's easy to say one thing but it's hard to change what you do.

As you can probably guess, he did finally change his ways. He then kind of explained what brought him to consider the priesthood and his first couple years of seminary. Most importantly it was contemplating death that brought him the most focus, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

The only sure thing in life is death. We all know that no matter what we do throughout our lives, we're all going to die. That's non-negotiable. So do we live our lives thinking about how we'll be remembered when we're gone? Or do we live our lives in such a way that we can get to heaven when our time comes? That's a good question. It reminds me that I need to go to confession more often, that I need to keep this kind of focus when I get frustrated or stressed, and that I need to keep the saints in mind as role models in my life because they are already in heaven.

A lot of food for thought. I'm sure the remaining 5 sessions of ToT will be just as interesting. Next week: Christian rapper Righteous B. If you're in Lexington, try to come out next Tuesday night for what should be a great session.

The Week Ahead

As the weekend comes to a close and the next week begins to loom I start to think about all the things I have to get done. Last week was a short work week, only three days. It was very nice and very quiet. Classes haven't started yet so campus is pretty deserted. Also Wednesday was a snow day for the public schools (we got less than an inch) so traffic was almost non-existant going to work that day.

This week things will pick up. The students will all start trickling back to campus in time for the first day of classes on Wednesday. They'll have the short week this week. I spent a good deal of my time last week just scheduling meetings. But that should mean that I'm ready for the next two weeks or so.

Work will be busy, but other things will also start picking up. Tuesday night will be the first of a six week series called Theology on Tap. This sessions looks very interesting, it is getting its inspiration froma book titled Yes! I am Catholic by Beth Dotson Brown. I haven't read the book, but it sounds intersting; I'll have to post about it more once I start attending. Wednesday evening we're hosting our Young Adult group at our house. We're having a movie night; we'll be watching The Third Miracle. Otherwise things are pretty normal around here.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Happy New Year!!

Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year!! I hope 2008 has many blessings and nice surprises for everyone!! We're looking forward to a year full of many new beginnings.

We celebrated New Years last night in Bardstown. We went to the 5pm vigil Mass at the Basilica of St. Joseph Proto-Cathedral for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. After Mass we headed to Chris' brother's house where we visited with family, had lots of snacks, and enjoyed a few drinks: Chris had several, so I drove home. He was very happy!

Tomorrow we both head back to work after a very long vacation. I'm sure there will be lots waiting for both of us when we get in.

Happy New Year!!!

The Immaculate Conception: More Information

On Dec. 8 I posted on this blog about that day's special feast day in the Catholic Church: The Feast of the Immaculate Conception (see post below). A wonderful friend of mine posted some comments and based on what she said, I thought a new post was warranted to give this topic the attention it deserves.

Mary is an important figure in Christianity. Catholics especially give her a place of honor that is often misunderstood by other Christians. For example, one misunderstanding is that Catholics pray to Mary. This isn't true, but we do ask for her intersession. After all, if you are seeking help from someone (God) why not ask his mother? Remember the wedding feast at Cana? Jesus wasn't ready to start His public ministry, but at his mother's insistence, He did. This is just one of many things that we could discuss, but moving back to the topic at hand ...

The Bible verses referred to in the comments from the post below are actually addressed in a tract (or article) I found (well, okay, Chris found it) on the Catholic Answers website. So for a much better overview of the Immaculate Conception than I could ever give, I point you to this wonderful page. This article goes into some detail on why we believe what we do about the Immaculate Conception and it also talks about the Assumption, which is another topic.

One thing I really like about this article is the analogy of the two people falling into the pit and being saved. One falls in and is pulled out, thus he is saved from further mudding up himself; the second is, at the very last moment, pulled away from the pit and is saved from even falling in and thus avoids all the mud completely. This is to illustrate Mary's need for a Savior (Luke 1:47). Yes, she needed a Savior, we all do. She was just blessed with his saving grace at the moment of conception. What a wonderful thing to do for your mother!! Also in the article, note the discussion of Luke 1:28 when the angel Gabriel addresses Mary. Very cool!

There is a lot more on the entire Catholic Answers website that may be of interest to anyone wanting to know why Catholics believe certain things. One thing that was also implied, though not explicitly stated, in the comments on the previous post was about Scripture being the only source we have. The Catholic Church teaches Scripture in everything we do and it informs all of our practices and doctrines. But we also rely on tradition and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Jesus sent out his disciples to teach the world under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (John 14:26 and 16:13). There are articles on this same website under the topic of Scripture and Tradition that may also be of interest to anyone wanting to know why Catholics not only use the Bible, but also have the Catechism and all these doctrines from the Popes, etc.

I'm sure this doesn't answer everything in regard to the topic of the Immaculate Conception, but I hope it's a good start. Another person to check our for more information on all sorts of topics is Scott Hahn. He was a minister of some kind and admits to once being anti-Catholic. He and his entire family converted to Catholicism years ago and now both he and his wife (who also trained in the Protestant seminary with her husband) write and speak about matters of Catholic faith and he teaches theology classes at a Catholic college in Ohio. In his conversion story he talks about how Mary was the last huge stumbling block before he could really accept the Catholic faith. Scott Hahn does such a great job explaining Catholic teachings! I suggest checking out his books for more information on Mary or any other Catholic teaching that seems strange to other Christians.

With that I will conclude this post. This reminds me that I need to start trying to do more of those "Catholic Topics of the Week" that I tried to start some time ago. I'll meditate on that a bit for the New Year. I hope everyone has a wonderful and joyful Christmas! Merry Christmas to all!!

The Immaculate Conception of Mary

Today in the church calendar we celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. This is the time when we remember Mary as one who was conceived without sin and who would become the Mother of God. Mary has a very important role in our faith and this is one of the many ways in which we remember her.

Chris and I attended the vigil Mass for this feast day. So we met at Church Friday night after work and then went out to eat after Mass. We also managed to do a little Christmas shopping last night too.

Today I had rehearsal for a concert I'm playing in tomorrow. Actually, this is the reason we went to a vigil mass rather than the 8am mass Saturday morning.

This evening after dinner we read part of a book we picked up at Church at the beginning of Advent. The book has readings and commentaries for each day from the First Sunday of Advent through Epiphany. So each night after dinner we read that days page. Today's, of course, talked about the Immaculate Conception. It made us both think a bit and it sparked a little bit of discussion. I suppose that is probably the intent of the book! :)

So the book asked if we thought Mary knew she was sinless. I said no, how could she know that. But Chris said that she probably knew something even if maybe she didn't know exactly what it was. And we were specifically thinking of Mary as a young girl, before the angel came to visit her. So we discussed this more and I think I do have to agree that she probably knew that she was different somehow. Chris pointed out that although she was conceived without sin she still had free will as we all do. Thus she always had to make the decision to not sin whenever she was faced with any kind of decision like that. But he also agrees that she probably wouldn't have been able to vocalize that she was sinless because she also had humility. Humility kind of goes hand in hand with the sinlessness. So, she might never have admitted she was sinless, she had free will, and she had to make decisions to always do right.

It was a really great discussion and I'm glad it made us think. I also feel that my respect for the person of Mary is so much greater now just thinking about what we talked about tonight. She is definitely a role model to always have in front of you.

Some thoughts on Advent

First, as I mentioned in my previous post, I added an Advent wreath to the blog in honor of the season. I failed, however, to mention where I got the wreath. Through another Catholic blog I was pointed to The Curt Jester who provided the Advent wreath for any blog. So thanks to the Curt Jester for the wonderful Advent wreath!!

Second, I have noticed a lot of talk this year about the importance of Advent. Along with this there is a lot of talk about how tired people are of the commercialization of Christmas and everyone's amazement of how early it starts. I saw Christmas stuff out along with the Halloween stuff during "Back to School" shopping. It is crazy!! I am hearing on the radio and reading on blogs about how people want to take back Christmas, away from the retailers, and bring it back to what it is really about--the birth of Jesus Christ, our Savior and our King.

Our Christmas stuff went up this past weekend. It still seems too early to me and I am considering some different things for next year. But convincing my husband will be interesting. This was a topic on many blogs who participated in this week's Catholic Carnival. Check it out here: Catholic Carnival 148: For Life.

Two of my favorite postings in this week's Carnival have to do exactly with the idea of recognizing the season of Advent, things to do during Advent, and placing Christmas properly where it belongs. These posts are great!! Go read them. The first is at the blog Catholic Fire called: Ten Tips to a Better Advent Season. The second is from A Catholic Mom Climbing the Pillars and she presents a beautiful view of the holidays from the end of Thanksgiving all the way to Epiphany in January. Check out her post What Would Celebrating Christmas correctly look like?. Her view is exactly what I have been looking for. So I'm getting ideas for next year and I love it!

Those are just two of my favorites from the Carnival. If you like those, go check out the others as well. I highly recommend them!

Happy 1st Sunday of Advent

Advent has begun. I have added an advent wreath to my blog. Isn't it cool!!

We also took out all the Christmas decorations this weekend and Chris finished putting all that stuff up. There isn't room for my tree, but we did get al my ornaments on his tree. His tree no longer looks so "designed"! I counted 9 wreathes around the house, inside and out! Quite amazing, I think.

Enjoy the countdown to Christmas!! Happy Advent season!

Finally: An Update

There has been so much going on since the wedding and time is just flying by. I will try to make things as brief as possible here.

The Honeymoon: We had so much fun. We went to the Pocono Mountains and stayed at an all-inclusive resort. That was definitely the way to go, no need to pay for your breakfast or dinner every day, it's all included. It rained a lot, but we did manage to go horseback riding one day and while at the resort we had lots of good food, a beautiful view of the lake, very tame deer always around, and we played indoor mini-golf, air hockey, indoor archery, and went ice skating!

The House: We've been very busy with the house. We decided to host Thanksgiving dinner at our house, so we've been busy trying to find a home for all my stuff and hanging up pictures and so forth. We're slowly making progress. As for the townhouse, it still has some things in it, but we hope to get rid of those things soon. We hope to fix it up some and rent it out by the new year. At this point that seems like an optimistic goal.

Changing my Name: Not a fun activity. Got my new Social Security card, got my new driver's license (but they didn't change the renewal so I need to still go again next year), and we ran a credit report so I can close some credit lines and change my name on the others. We also changed both our bank accounts to make them both joint and put my name on his and change my name on mine. I still have to deal with my credit cards, all the paperwork for the townhouse, my work stuff (benefits, etc.), another bank account, AAA, my Delta Skymiles card (have to do that soon so I can buy a plane ticket for February), and my stocks. There are probably other things as well, but I'll take it all one step at a time. It may be our first anniversary before I get everything squared away.

My Birthday!! My birthday was Sunday (yesterday). Chris took me to dinner Saturday night and while we were at dinner he suprised me with tickets to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra for that night! It was a great show. Lots of lights, strobes, and lasers; very loud music; and lots of fun!! As a classical musician I did find parts of the show amusing, but I eventually got into it and just enjoyed it. I've always wanted to see this show, so I'm glad I finally got to.

Go See this movie: Sunday we went to see Bella. It was an excellent movie with a great message. If you can find it playing in a theater near you, please go see it. Hollywood needs to know that we want more movies like this to watch, not the sex and violence most movies rely on to draw in an audience. Also, if you're anything like me, bring a box of kleenex!!

Work: Slowly getting back into the swing of things here. The good news is that my open position was approved and posted and closes today!! I can't believe how fast this was done; last time my position was open it was 9 months before I was able to fill the position, at this point it's only been two! It must be a record for a position in technical services; public services positions usually go this quickly, but not the tech services ones! I'm considering myself very lucky right now!! I hope to start interviewing next week. In the meantime, I continue to do my job and a good part of the other position's job as well. I can't keep up with my student assistants on my own, but I'm doing the best I can.

Thanksgiving: I mentioned above that we're hosting Thanksgiving. Our first holiday as a married couple and we're doing most of the cooking and having everyone to our house. The best part is that we couldn't procrastinate on getting the house in order, so that's almost done! Yeah!! I'm looking forward to a nice relaxing holiday and a chance to visit with family without much stress.

I think that is about all I have for the moment. I hope to get back to normal postings very soon. I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving. Take the time to think about all you are thankful for and to enjoy this wonderful American holiday. Don't let the way-too-early Christmas rush get to you, just enjoy this holiday. I'll rant more on starting Christmas too early in a later post. :)

The Wedding

Chris and I got married on October 20!! Most of you already knew that and many of you were probably there!! Thanks for coming if you came!!

If you weren't there, it was a wonderful day. We had been having rainy weather in Lexington during the week before the wedding, but the day of it cleared out and was clear and nice, not too hot, not too cold.

The ceremony was beautiful and Fr. Frank's homily was wonderful. It definitely makes a difference when you know the priest and he knows you. I think it is funny that the afternoon of the night Chris proposed he and I had had lunch with Fr. Frank. Then a year later he married us! Anyway, everything was lovely and it was such a joy to stand in front of everyone we love and profess our committment and love to each other for the rest of our lives.

Following the ceremony the guests enjoyed a cocktail hour at the reception site where we had a bluegrass band playing. We were taking pictures during that time, so we missed it, but I've seen some pictures and it looks like everyone was enjoying themselves. The reception itself started after that. The food was great, the company was great, and the music was great. Everything was so much fun. If you're a baseball fan you may know that that night was also game 6 of the Red Sox/Indians series for a trip to the World Series. Two of my aunts showed up late during the partying with Red Sox t-shirts on over their dresses and we had some fun on the dance floor with some favorite Boston songs (not the group, but songs Boston-related). One of the best parts was going around and visiting with everyone. My first chance to really see who was at the wedding was when we went visiting all the tables to say hello to our guests. That was great fun!!

That's all for now. I'll post more about the events of that weekend very soon. Eventually I'll also put up a link or two to some pictures. Check back here again soon!!

We're back!!

We're back from the honeymoon!! We had a great time; it was fun and relaxing.

The wedding was wonderful; everything went well and it was so much fun to see so many family and friends together!!

I still have lots of emails to respond to and thank you notes to write. Plus we're still moving things from my old house to Chris' house and trying to find a place for it all. This is all to say that I may be on a bit more of a break from the blog while I accomplish all of that.

I go back to work tomorrow and will start trying to catch up there as well. Now I have to remember to drive to the right part of town when I leave work tomorrow evening!!

I'll be in touch with everyone soon!!

Four Days!!

Only four days left until the wedding. Things are starting to get wrapped up and plans finalized. I'm happy to report that I have turned most everything over to my wedding coordinator and the contact person at the hotel and I can now just sit back and wait for things to happen.

Today is my last full day in the office. Tomorrow I'm coming in for a half day, but will be spending it in the main library's administration office reading contract renewal files. After that I'm gone for a while!! Yay!!

At the moment, Saturday is shaping up to be a beautiful day. High of 72, low of 53, mostly sunny, and only a 20% chance of rain. A little warm for this time of year, but it'll be beautiful!!

So far I've also thought of four games that guests at this wedding will be interested in scores for during the day. At least one of those might not happen, but if it does, I know a lot of people who are going to want to know the score. So far I have: Vandy vs. USC at 12:30, Florida vs. UK at 3:30, and UT vs. Alabama at 4:30. Then there is the Red Sox and the Indians. If that game happens, it'll be game 6 of the series and could be a very important one. I don't keep up with baseball so I actually have no idea how that series is currently going.

I think that covers everything for now! Wow, four days!! I can't believe it!!

Wow--One Week

Only one week left!!!

We met with the wedding coordinator today and squared away a lot of things with her. I also saw my photographer briefly and got my bridal portrait--it looks awesome!!

I have a meeting Tuesday at the Marriott to meet the banquet captain and after that there really isn't much to do.

My family gets to town on Thursday and extended family starts coming in that day and Friday. It's so exciting!

Everything we do these days is "the last time as single people"!! It's been fun!

Lots of Stuff--Briefly

It's been a very long time since I posted anything here. Hopefully I haven't lost my readers, however small a group you might be.

Last weekend we moved my furniture to Chris' house. There is now furniture in every room of the house, while my house just has the bare minimum for me for the next two weeks! Wow!! The wedding is sooooo close!!!!

This week I'm wrapping up plans on my end and by Saturday I should be able to turn everything over to the wedding coordinator. Looking forward to that.

Work is busy, nothing new there. I was asked today by our Library Faculty Council to chair a new working group on Faculty Mentoring. I'm a sucker for punishment ... I said yes. Luckily, they anticipate most of the work to be during the spring semester.

I have one last wedding question. For those of you familiar with Christ the King and have seen the church when we have the banners up over the altar (usually at Pentacost, red, or Easter, white I think, or other special occasions): should I call to have the white banners put up for the wedding or not? I was at the church yesterday afternoon and I don't think they necessarily add anything to the look of the church, but they might possibly add to the sense of celebration for the wedding. Any opinions? I probably need to call soon if I'm going to have them done. Chris likes the idea, so I may put him in charge of calling if he really wants them.

What does everyone else think? Post your opinion at the link below. Thanks!

Have a great week and I'll try to put more news up this weekend. After that this blog might be dry for a while. :)

Our Busy Weekend: Friends and Painting

Good morning to everyone!!

We had a great weekend and I hope you did too. First we drove over to Louisville on Saturday morning and met up with a friend of mine for breakfast. We drove over to an IHOP on the Indiana side of the river. It was so much fun to catch up with her and I can't believe that I get to see her three times in five months!! She was in Louisville for a conference and she'll be back in KY in three weeks for our wedding.

Once we got back to Lexington we started in on our painting project. We managed to paint the whole master bedroom in about 2 hours, 3 if you count prep and cleanup time. I love the color!! And I'm so glad we have some more color in that house!

Sunday we went to Mass, had breakfast at Chris' house, read the paper a bit, and then headed off to multiple stores to run some errands. It was a good productive day. We also heard from Chris' brother who told us that he proposed to his girlfriend on Saturday evening! We're very excited for them and looking forward to another wedding now, possibly next September.

Have a great week!!