How to save a life

I really need to fire up this blog again. I've got SO many things I want to post about I think I've got a kind of "bloggers block". I just don't know where to begin.

This great initiative is probably a good place to start

YOU can help save lives!
From September 22 - October 31, our community will be one of many cities joining together for the largest and longest coordinated pro-life mobilization in history -- the 40 Days for Life campaign.
40 Days for Life is a focused pro-life effort that consists of:

• 
  
  40 days of prayer and fasting
• 
  
  40 days of peaceful vigil
• 
  
  40 days of community outreach

We are praying that, with God's help, this groundbreaking effort will mark the beginning of the end of abortion in our city -- and throughout the UK.

Take a stand for life

While all aspects of 40 Days for Life are crucial in our effort to end abortion, the most visible component is the peaceful prayer vigil outside the local abortion facility.
You can help make a life-saving impact by joining our local vigil at:
108 Whitfield Street, Marelybone, London, W1T 5EA. Nearest tube station: Warren Street.


BE BOLD!
Go over to the website and sign up for the vigil!
 



I was planning to go tomorrow, but all my plans are still a little up in the air, so I haven't signed up for Friday yet. But I've put myself down on the rota to be there on Sunday evening after mass. Why don't you  join me?

It can be a little daunting doing something like this for the first time. It's such a sad and painful matter and I know that sometimes well intentioned people stay away from it because they don't want to hurt people who are already hurting.
But this is a very quiet and loving vigil. And you'll be in good company, all the nicest people will be there! ( I met Rosamundi at a pre launch event in Farm Street)

 

I'm so pleased that this unique initiative is coming to my city. Big props to Robert Colquhoun of Love Undefiled, a dedicated champion of the gospel of life, who has been working his socks off to bring this to London.

Please pray for the success of this initiative, and for all those whose lives will be touched in the coming weeks.

As the holidays draw to a close

Normal service will be resuming shortly. Owing to all the summer comings and goings I've only just managed to get my holiday  pictures uploaded ( or rather I've had a little difficulty in  pinning down my junior technical dogsbodies to do said uploading for me. )


But no matter! Here's a couple of nice snaps of the President of the USA (PBUH)  and Russia's Pres Putin ( grrrr!) enjoying a little respite from pursuing Global Domination.
I spotted it  on this blog.

 Crap. 
We surrender.



 Too funny!

Please note he's wearing his safety helmet boys and girls. The presidential nugget is well protected should he take a tumble. Unlike Londons own cuddly mayor Boris who got an awful telling off from matron when she

 saw him out and about like this

:

He was made to take his semolina pudding in the nursery. That taught him a lesson.

There. That's better Boris.

Gone fishing

Oh my word.
Leila and her family won a raffle prize, a trip to Ireland and a stay in a "country home".
You have to go read it, but suffice to say it didn't exactly live up to Leila's romantic imaginings.

I have to be honest and say I did laugh out loud when I was reading it, but that's because she did make it funny for us and she seemed pretty good humoured about the whole experience.

I read it aloud to my husband, which is not my habit, but this post just struck a chord.

We both went 'home' to Ireland every year growing up, but it was only when we were married that we started venturing further afield and renting a holiday home in unexplored parts. Before that we always stayed with family ( husbands in Offaly and mine in Meath, pretty enough but lacking the dramatic beauty of the coast)

Leila's post reminds me of the time we stayed in Dingle.

The house was 'good value' for a reason. It was dank and musty and cold, even though it was August. There was a pervading misty fog everywhere that looked eerily attractive and made the lanscape look like a painting, but it seemed to seep into the house and even into our bedsheets which never felt quite dry.
The bathroom was yucky. There was carpet on the floor which was so bleached around the base of the toilet I imagined it had been fairly pee sodden over the years.  And there was a toilet brush that looked like it must have been 10 years old.  And the bath was so squashed  up close to the toilet that it was hard not to let your towel fall against it and...oh I won't go on, but you get the picture.

It helped that my mum and dad were with us, and my auntie Kathleen, and we had a really lovely time when we were out of the house.
We tramped up hill and down dale with the children on foot and in backpacks. We went out on a boat and cheered when Funghi the celebrity dolphin made his appearance, bobbing up at intervals through the briney foam to our shouts and claps.

We went to Brandon point and photographed our Brendan looking out over the Atlantic at the place where his patron saint had set off in his little currach with the Holy Spirit for a compass.

It was a lovely holiday. But it made me very cautious about renting holiday homes.

At least when you're camping you know what you're getting. Which is what we are doing this year.
We're going "glamping" to be more precise. Posh camping. Staying in a large 12 person tipi with afghan rugs on the floor and hung with lanterns. There is a lake stocked with trout which we may catch and eat ( although we're not a fishing family and gutting a fish is not something I'm planning to do on holiday, so we'll see about that, though the effort may be fun. ) And they have little rowing boats and canoes that we can take out on the lake because, as Ratty famously said 
"There's nothing . . . absolutely nothing . . . half so much worth doing as simply messing around in boats."

I'm hoping that will keep the children amused and that we can keep car trips to a minimum. It should be a thouroughly switched off week. I'm looking forward to days enjoying the children and  evenings under the stars with an enamel mug of wine and the company of my husband.
But now I have to get packing.

Prayer meme

What a lame and unreliable blogger I am.
Over a week ago, Mac at Mulier Fortis tagged me on the meme that she started. Then, about a week later, Epsilon tagged me on the same meme.
Now Mac has been tagged back on the same meme.
I think it's time I got cracking at this now or I'll have forgotten how to put up a post. I'm blaming the sudden gear change that comes with the summer holidays. That always throws me.

OK. The meme rules, as set by Mac are as follows:

"The rules, which need to be posted: Name your three most favourite prayers, and explain why they're your favourites. Then tag five bloggers - give them a link, and then go and tell them they have been tagged. Finally, tell the person who tagged you that you've completed the meme... The Liturgy and the Sacraments are off limits here. I'm more interested in people's favourite devotional prayers.

Righty Ho then.
First up:

1

Hail Mary,
Full of Grace,
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit
of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary,
Mother of God,
pray for us sinners now,
and at the hour of death. Amen.

I think, for sheer  frequency of repetition, The Hail Mary has to be in my top three. These days it's often on my lips and in my heart.
During the years I spent outside the church I stopped saying the Hail Mary because I had become confused about praying in that way ( just in case it came under the category of "heaping up meaningless phrases") And also of course, the role of Mary is very much diminished in most protestant circles, and those I moved in were no exception. Saying a Hail Mary in my home group would have been a big no-no.
In fact, the only acceptable prayers, apart from the Lords prayer, were the extemporaneous ones that you made up yourself ( albeit usually according to something of an unwritten formula which one quickly adopts largely by imitation)

Sometimes, like for example when an ambulance siren went off nearby, or I passed an accident scene, I remembered, almost wistfully, that as a child I had a habit of saying a Hail Mary at those moments.
When I was ill and pregnant with the twins I had a new insight into the consolation of having favourite prayers stored in ones memory bank. It's hard to be good with words when we are frightened or depressed. Traditional prayers of the church are worded with great care and are very theologically sound, unlike some of my own homespun prayers which I suspect included some heretical notions here and there despite my best intentions.

2
"O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer You my prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day for all the intentions of Your Sacred Heart, in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world, in reparation for my sins and  for the intentions of  our Holy Father."

Although there are lots of lovely devotions and prayers, if I have to pick just three I have to include our daily morning offering. I pray this every morning with the children and even though sometimes it can be a bit mechanical and rushed, it often isn't. We try to light a candle and kneel together before the crucifix when we pray this. Often we will add our own litany of the saints at the end, naming our own patron saints, the saint of the day and any other saints whose names my children happen to call out.

3

"O God, who gave us our children to raise for your honour and glory
Help us to teach them to know, love and serve you
Help us to be gentle yet firm in correcting their faults
Help us to be an example to them in following the way of your Commandments
And in the daily acceptance of your cross.
And, if it is your will,  grant to at least one of them the great privilege of a religious or a priestly vocation
That our family may share more fully in the spreading of your kingdom on earth"

A friend of mine shared this prayer with me.
Many years ago, I think when she was first married, she and her husband picked this up somewhere and it became their habit to pray it together at bedtime.
I thought it was so beautiful, and so perfectly expressed the virtues that we want to be at the heart of our family that my husband and I are trying to commit to praying this together daily.

And now I tag:

Lisa at Mama Says

The Bookworm

Thinking Love No Twaddle

Rosamundi

Elena at My Domestic Church

Detachment parenting, loving and letting go.

I like to imagine the wind that was blowing on that sparkling fall day, tousling my mom's strawberry-blonde hair. In the photograph, she's holding my older brother Jason, who was around 3 at the time. You can see he has his mother's eyes -- almond-shaped, dark brown eyes that are smiling. My mom's arms draw him in, and they're saying, "I love you and always will."

A mother's saving embrace.

I take the photograph off the shelf and examine it more closely, trying to see if I've missed something, if there are any clues, any hints to what lies ahead. But there's nothing in Jason's boyish grin that says anything about his future drug addiction, the lies, or the shame.

My mom has always kept that photograph prominently displayed in her kitchen. I once told her I loved the photograph's innocence and its glittery gold happiness; the way the camera captured the sunlight shining in her soft hair and the way her unconditional love for Jason is almost palpable.

"That's my favorite picture of us," she once told me. "It offers me hope."

Later, when I became a mother myself and had an innocent baby resting in my arms, a miraculous vessel of hopes and dreams, I winced at my mom's hope. I'd finger my own treasured photographs of me embracing my firstborn and worry that one day these snapshots might also convey only hope and serve as a reminder of when things were better, happier, and a mother's love was enough. I wanted my own old photographs to be what they were supposed to be: Merely nostalgic, sepia-toned glimpses into a happy past. I wanted more than hope for my own children. I wanted assurance that my love could and would save them.

A thoughtful and inspiring reflection by Kate Wicker. Read the rest here.

( Hat tip to Thinking Love No Twaddle)

Nora. This is your song.

The late Joe Dolan, the Legend from Mullingar, the Irish Tom Jones.
Laydeez, check out the moves.The yelps. The... scarf ?

The don't make them like this anymore.
"Yeow! you're such a Good Looking Woman!"

Joe Dolan - You're Such A Good Looking Woman (SUBTITRAT ROMANA)
- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

The view from the kitchen sink.

Bathtime tonight. First for the muddy veg, then for the pots and pans, and lastly Her Majesty the Baby.
Occasionally it's nice to be chained to the kitchen sink.

The Truth About Abortion

I'm not sure if it's a breach of blog etiquette to copy paste an piece from elsewhere in it's entirety. If it is, I hope I'll be forgiven and an honorable exception made for this post. For so long I've been frustrated by the apparent apathy towards the scourge of abortion in the UK.We pay for this barbarism to be delivered by the NHS. Why are we so quiet about that? Why are our church leaders so quiet?

Honestly, I can hardly bear to hear about another emetic bidding prayer about overfilling kettles or not switching off lights. Small people in our country are condemned to a grisly death on account of their parents "choice" and we are blethering on about being good stewards of the earth.

I'm sure I wouldn't retch and choke with indignation quite so much if the concern for being green was even matched just a bijou amount by concern for the smallest, most vulnerable and most utterly dependant whose lives have barely begun and who are talked about and regarded as just another right in our panoply of rights. A "choice" to be farmed, cloned or exterminated . Longed for, or discarded as an unwanted "consequence".

Listen. Abortion is wrong because it's a baby. And it is ALWAYS wrong to intentionally kill a baby. Always.

How did we get to this point in history where 1in 5 pregnancies are aborted? What kind of savages are we that we just live with this?

I think abortion is so deadly because no one likes to talk about it. So many people have had an abortion that we are afraid of dredging up some crippling guilt if we call abortion what it is. Murder.

And we can't see abortion. Even the doctor performing the abortion doesn't really see it. It's all hidden.. The dark sanctuary of the womb is invaded by blind tools guided by the unseeing hand. Aborting the baby is like an excision. It's merely a polyp to be whipped out and carried off in a clinical waste bag.

When Marie Stopes aired it's infamous abortion advert recently I wondered if this might in fact, perversely, be positive for the cause of Life. Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.
I'm an optimist and I do believe that the night is darkest just before the dawn.
For the first time, I am able to have proper conversations about the reality, especially with young people. The buzz that the advert created has created conversation fodder. Usually it's pretty hard to bring up the subject of abortion in polite company.
So thank you Marie Stopes, for providing the talking point.

Robert Colquhoun of Love Undefiled really has his finger on the pulse of the pro life issue.
This evening I noticed that he had put up a link to this new website. It's very slick and very contemporary and what makes this site really interesting to me is that it's British.

It is about time that we caught up with the much more active pro life movement in America. For too long the stalwart soldiers of the pro life movement here have been elderly women.
This is an issue that the younger generation should be profoundly galvanised by.
I have a feeling that their moment is arriving. This issue is the most pressing civil rights movement of our day.
The unborn need heroic men and women to champion their cause, to be a voice for the voiceless. There is a generation of young people who are ready to be stirred to speak out, to act and to challenge the cruel indifferent apathy of the last 42 years.
Abort67 is named for the year abortion was legalised in this country. It pulls no punches, and it's about time.

If you are fine with abortion,

if you think it's "complicated",

if you think you wouldn't have one, but you "wouldn't tell anyone else what to do",

if you think "it's ok in serious cases like rape" ( that is, if the father was a rapist then it's ok to give the child the death penalty)

then you need to know the truth about abortion.
Dare you?

The following is from here:

The day Marie Stopes International were planning to advertise their deadly services on Channel 4 we took four of our banners outside their Brixton clinic. We had asked them if they wanted our help in advertising their services as they had announced on their website that:

We believe that every woman has the right to accurate, unbiased information about all of her pregnancy choices, including abortion.

After telling us they would get their marketing department to contact us we heard no more from them. We can only assume they were too busy to get in contact so we went ahead anyway.

We were told over and over again by women who had experienced abortions that they were totally unaware and uninformed that abortion did what it did. After seeing our pictures they all agreed they would not have gone through with it. Wait a minute, perhaps that's why Marie Stopes never got back to us. Marie Stopes doesn't care about women's choices, only in promoting abortion.

What do you do if you don't like the answer to your question? Well if you are part of Marie Stopes, you stick your head in the sand and change the subject. Recently, Marie Stopes ran a poll to demonstrate the support for legalised abortion in Northern Ireland.

As the results were clearly showing that they were struggling to find this support we emailed Marie Stopes for a comment and of course we heard nothing. Bernadette Smyth from Precious Life, an anti abortion group in Northern Ireland managed to take them up on this.

On Tuesday 9th March, Director of Precious Life Bernadette Smyth went head to head with an agent of Marie Stopes on an Irish radio station. Bernadette let the Marie Stopes agent dig her own trap by allowing her to say their first poll result “..had to be taken seriously”; “..the government had to act on it”; “..87% of people couldn’t be ignored”; …etc, etc. But then Bernadette sprung the trap by asking “What about the 82% of people who are currently voting on your website poll saying NO, abortion should not be legalised in Ireland?” The hypocrisy of Marie Stopes was exposed live on air when their agent said that poll result could not be taken seriously. Bernadette retorted “Then why are you taking your first poll results seriously? Why are Marie Stopes not issuing press releases stating that that 82% of Irish people don’t want abortion legalised? Do Marie Stopes only issue poll results when it suits them?” The Marie Stopes agent was totally lost for words.

By the time Marie Stopes realised what was happening and pulled the plug on the on-line poll the "NO" vote had reached 94%. When we tried to find the poll on their website the page came back saying "OOPS - You have arrived at this page in error; it may be that the page you are looking for has been moved during recent improvements to our website." Oops indeed!

This isn't the first time Marie Stopes have struggled to gather support for killing unborn children. In 2007 they ran a petition for a year but only managed to get 498 signatures. 77 of which were Marie Stopes staff, 14 from IPAS and 3 from Abortion Rights.

Will Marie Stopes stop pushing their unwanted and deadly trade on the world? I doubt it. Not until there is enough resistance to what they are doing. Will you join us in standing against them?

How a Rabbi led me to Rome

I've written before about my interest in Judaism and how it led me to a new appreciation of the liturgy, the sacraments and eventually back to the church that I'd wandered away from some years before.
I appreciated the way the observance of the feasts and seasons strengthened the Jewish identity and acted as a teacher of eternal truths in every generation.
I recall reading about how, for Jewish people, celebrating the  Passover meal was seen as a way of being mystically present, across time, at the moment when the children of Israel escaped from their Egyptian pursuers across the Red sea..
In this way,  despite the accident of separation by time and space, each generation could, in a sense, "be there".
I couldn't help but be reminded that Catholics view the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in a similar way. That through it, the veil between time and space is lifted and we become mystically present at Calvary.
What hadn't made any sense to me at all as a cradle Catholic, suddenly fell into place as an Evangelical with an interest in the Jewish people.

The pennies, once they started to drop, all fell pretty quickly. And having meandered slowly and  carelessly away from the church, I sprinted back to it at quite a lick.
Having arrived, I was fascinated, and delighted to find that I was not alone. That others had found their way back through discovering the Jewishness of the Catholic church.
It really makes sense to me that what went before, while a shadow of what was to come, was not simply thrown overboard, but found it's fulfilment in the light of recognising Christ, his passion, death and resurrection.

Taylor Marshall is one of my favourite bloggers. He took the circuitous route to Rome and writes eloquently about the reasons why. Here is how his story starts:

"I was not always drawn to the Catholic Church. I once resisted it with great force. As a college student I believed that Pope John Paul II was the Antichrist, and boldly concluded that the Catholic Church was the Scarlet Whore of Babylon described by Saint John in the Apocalypse. I even handed out Jack Chick tracts and left them in the toilet stalls of the dormitory (looking back, a rather suitable place) for fellow students to read. Today my wife and I (and our five children) are Catholic, Roman Catholic..."

Read the rest here.

Today on his blog, he makes this announcement:

I'll be on Al Kresta's nationally syndicated radio show today (June 30, 2010) talking about "How a Rabbi led me to Rome," at 3:10 pm Central Time.
If your city doesn't have Catholic radio, you can listen live through the internet by clicking: here. 

I'm taking my laptop upstairs with me so I can listen to it while I'm giving Marie-Aibhlinn her last feed of the night.She gets kind of tetchy when I try and read a book and breast feed at the same time. She keeps reaching round and grabbing at the pages.
So I'm looking forward to just sitting back and listening to Taylor Marshall instead.
I just thought I'd share in case anyone else would find that as interesting as me.
Goodnight all!

That was their lucky day

Phew!
(HT MommyLife)

Come on!

Three lions on my shirt
Jules Rimet still gleaming
Thirty years of hurt
Never stopped me dreaming...

I'm not really all that into the beautiful game as it happens, but since I met Pat it's been a part of my life. Sometimes in the way that Camilla Parker Bowles was a part of Dianas life. But nonetheless, in between complaining I budged up and made room for it. At times I even took a secret grudging pleasure in it.

The snobby killjoy in me detested the football aesthetic ( the nylon!) and the fact that a big game always seemed to be the occasion of a rambunctious gathering in our sitting room. A football gathering  always necessitated the kind of  snacks that I disdain.
Post match clean up usually indicated the carefree strewing of something like tortilla chip confetti all over my soft furnishings, oh and the sticky drinks and the bottles of beer . Ew.
My doomed efforts to encourage crudites as a match snack caused the house to ring with snorts of derisory laughter. Celery and carrot sticks simply didn't cut the macho mustard on a big match afternoon. And so the crudites were repudiated.
Of course the children are accessorised as well. With squeaky polyester scarves and sweat bands and woolly hats. Oh and (sob) Arsenal pyjamas too ( *cough* thank you Noreen, mistress of the subversive gift!)

But I'm such a conflicted snob because, well, I like it too. I can't help myself.
All that laddish male bonding has an innocent sweetness about it that makes me smile. And there is something about hearing my family roaring together as they jump from the sofas in perfect unison, or even slumped  and groaning in misery together, that makes me grin inwardly.

Musuing about all this made me think about this terrific Baddiel/Skinner/Lightening Seeds anthem.
Can it really be 14 years ago?


I love Frank Skinner.
America, you can keep your Brad Pitt and your George Clooney.
Come on England!