Get Ready!

Advent is coming….not for a while, though, right? I’m thinking that since Christmas is on a Monday, this – December 3 – is the latest possible start for Advent.

(And just for future reference – here are fun facts about what follows – Ash Wednesday 2018 is on Valentine’s Day and Easter Sunday is on April Fool’s Day. Teachable Moment Overload, I’d say…)

But it’s not too early to order resources for Advent, of course. Most of these can still be ordered in bulk for parish or school, or just in single copies.

(BTW – I don’t make any $$ from the sales of these booklets. The way it works is that these kinds of materials are, for the most part, written as works-for-hire. You write it, you get paid a flat fee, and that’s it. I just …think what I’ve written is not terrible and hope my words might be helpful to someone out there…so I continue to spread the word!)

A family devotional I wrote for Creative Communications is still available.

 

You can buy print copies here – including in bulk. Also at that page are links to Kindle and Nook (is that still a thing?) editions. 

 

That Kindle version is of course available on Amazon. Just .99!

 

 

Last year, Liguori published daily devotions I wrote for both Lent and Easter. They publish new booklets by different authors every year, but mine are still available, both through Liguori and Amazon.

Liguori – English

(pdf sample)

Liguori  – Spanish

(pdf sample)

Single copies also available through Amazon. No Kindle version. 

Nicholas of Myra

Samples of the St. Nicholas booklet here.

And then….Bambinelli Sunday!

(Also – if you would like to purchase books as Christmas gifts from me – here’s the link. I don’t have everything, but what I have…I have. The bookstore link is accurate and kept up to date.)

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Le Week-End

Ah…the weekend. What happened to it?

The younger son had an audition for the honors ensemble/scholarship at his music academy – and emerged victorious, we learned later in the afternoon. So that’s good.

Older son had a job interview in the afternoon, and will have a second when the store manager returns from vacation this week. So that’s very good.

There’s such a need for a change in our educational culture. Well, duh, that’s what I’ve been saying for years, sure, but the whole 16-year old job searching has set my wheels turning again. I really do think that American education is in need of a radical paradigm shift that would make it broadlly acceptable to reach an endpoint of mandatory education at the age of 15-16 again. If *I* were running a high school with a general focus (as opposed to a magnet type school focused on arts or Classics or such), I would design a program in which what we now call freshman and sophomore years would be focused on fundamental, mandatory coursework, and then make any further “secondary” education more like college.  The state says you need two more English classes and a government/econ credit? Okay – do that in a year, and then graduate. That’s fine. Get your classes done, then get off the property and go to your job. You want to be in classrooms all day five days a week for the next two years and stay after for athletic practices?  That’s fine, too. Here are the classes and teams:  go for it.

You find this here and there, and in greater numbers. My nephew is graduating from high school in Florida in June, but hasn’t actually been to a class on his high school campus in a year – he’s been taking community college classes and will have an AA degree as well as a high school diploma when he “finishes” high school  – as well as a lot of experience in his chosen field. It’s such a better model. Really.

Well, anyway.

The rest of the weekend was filled with a birthday party for one of the boys’ friends, and then one of them was invited to spend the day with friends at yesterday’s Indy race nearby, so he did that. 

Sunday afternoon, I walked by the glass patio door, and was startled to see:

I am not sure what drew them. They’re gathered around the top of a storage container that held water from an earlier rain shower – but that meant there was lots of water around, everywhere. I don’t know why this particular spot was so attractive. I’ve certainly seen flocks of birds around here, but I’ve never seen a small flock of a distinctive kind of bird like this just gathered a couple of feet from my house. It was a little strange. By the way, they are Cedar Waxwings. Not that I knew that off the top of my head, of course.

(It’s the kind of thing that I note – when I bother to – on Instagram Stories. Remember, you can only see Stories with the app on a phone.)

• Look for me in Living Faith later this week. 
• Thanks to Steven McEvoy for highlighting the final devotional in my Liguorian Lent/Easter Daybreaks. 

Currently reading the new Eamon Duffy book

Reformation Divided  is a collection of essays with my favorite subtext: You think you know this story? Well..you don’t. Try again, and maybe this time use sources more carefully and with less bias.  More when I finish reading.

 

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Ready for Advent?

No, not kidding…I mean…it’s August already!

Well, if you are involved in parish ministry, you just might be thinking a bit about Advent and Christmas, and I just went and saw that the devotional I wrote for Liguori is up on their website.

Go here to see:

 

It won’t be available until October, but as I said, if you are a part of a parish or school that usually provides Advent devotionals for individuals and families..file this away for future reference, and pass it along. It will also be available in Spanish as order time gets closer.

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