Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who is nothing if not a family kinda guy.
1.
This weekend I met a couple of the ladies from the Society of Joyful Hope. I’d never heard of such a thing! A real-life support group for families that use NFP! A true support group, btw, not just your NFP instructor checking in to remind you what Acheiving-Related Behavior tends to achieve. The group prays together, and then kids do activities and the parents talk about parenting. Very cool.
1.A You can see their website here, and though the events page is a running behind on updates, they are an active organization. I’m in that blissful state where I am not the least bothered by people who are running a tiny bit behind on website maintenance. Ahem.
1.B The nice thing about openness-to-life is that eventually you don’t need to go visit the NFP instructor to be reminded what Achieving-Related Behavior acheives. Your children are there to remind you. All the time.
1.C I was showing around Sarah’s new pregnancy book, and the Joyful Hope lady exclaimed when she saw Hallie Lord’s endorsement on the cover. Solving the mystery of what it was that had caused Betty Beguiles to pick up and move south. Wow. I had no idea.
1.D More cool: Fr. Kirby at Charleston Vocations gave us a bunch of t-shirts to give away for prizes at our Family Life reception.
1.E Triple Cool: Eldest daughter has been reading assorted fiction and lives of saints from Pauline Media, causing her to ask all kinds of questions about the Daughters of St. Paul. Mostly: What do they wear? So it was neato to walk into the Doughnut Room and, surprise!, there was Sister Francis, whom I’d never met before, but it turns out is very good at chatting with girls interested in all things Nuns Who Publish Books. Less cool: I had no money with me for book-buying. Because of course the girls found something they liked.
2.
Coolness aside, here’s the real topic: How Good is Your Parish at Doing Family-Friendly Ministries?
I had a conversation with a young mom, not at my parish, who had moved up from Florida (St. Agnes’s in Naples, I think?), and she really missed the number of family events and activities at her former parish. I got to thinking about it, and realized that one of the things sabotaging some of my own parish’s ministries is a lack of Stuff for the Whole Family to Do.
It’s not like families with young children are really going to turn out for ministries five nights a week, don’t mistake me. There’s only so much a person with humans for children can do, time-and-energy-wise. But in order for a family with young children to do anything. at. all., there has to be provision for the whole family. The crying people. The climbing-the-curtains people. The elementary-aged people. The teen people. The female people. The male people. All of them. And if we’re feeling broad-minded, how about the elderly-relative-living-with-you people? Or the not-so-polished-in-the-social-skills-for-reasons-beyond-their-control people?
–> Because otherwise, church stuff breaks apart the family. Oh it’s all lovely to get together with just the girls, or just the fathers-n-sons, or whatever it is. We do that here and there. Sunday afternoon our girls met for Little Flowers while our boys went mountain biking. It was good. But there are only seven nights in a week, and people keep insisting we eat dinner together at least a few of those.
[Without wishing to pull out the Evangelicals Are Smarter Than Us card, I will point out that on Wednesday nights around my town, most of the other churches are hosting an evening of this-n-that, in which you can bring your whole family, and all y’all get your faith-formation or ministering-to-people fix in one fell swoop. It’s only one night a week. But it’s one night a week. Some of the churches do the same thing Sunday nights too. Or Fridays. Or whatever.]
So anyhow, that’s my question: If your parish is successful at getting families involved in the life of the church, what is it that works so well?
3.
Happiness is agreeing with your editor.
3.5
fairy wings and magic wands. Works great.
***
Well, that’s all for this week. Tuesday’s Link Day, which is when instead of e-mailing fun things I ought to post but forget to, you just tell the world all by yourself. Entirely optional.
In honor of Felix Baumgartner’s historic leap from space, I present to you two…yes, two!!!…links!
http://links.laughingsquid.com/post/33641957292/feline-baumgartner
Enjoy!
ps – you’re linked up, too!
Thanks, Larry! And my son thanks you. I’ve shown insufficient interest. Even to the point of telling him he couldn’t count watching the video as school. He’ll appreciate your correcting my deficiencies. :-).
Here is my link… with some info I recently learned in relation to the photo. So link AND relates to a good portion of this blog…. but I am late to responding so I hope my really long comment makes up for it!
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-rxjA4cr9R_Y/UIUgly2UlDI/AAAAAAAAQdE/Hqn5QFApgFg/s400/DSCF0232.JPG
First, about the photo. That is me, at the Suwon Folk Village, in front of a “Filial Piety Monument gate” and the descriptive plaque was in Hangul, English and Chinese. It said “This monument was set up to commemorate a woman for her filial peity to her parents-in-law and faithfulness for her husband.” I thought it was neat and decided to upload it to Facebook and tag my hubby, Larry L and my in-laws. They enjoyed the sentiment.
Second, I feel like I am always learning something new no matter what I’m doing…which is good because I enjoy that and it keeps life interesting. I stumbled on piece of history that correlated to the above type of monument.
It all happened when was doing a little bit of research for the local SCA people here because they have been told that it would be impossible for them to document Korea for heraldic SCA purchases because it wasn’t period… hehehe… challenge accepted! Says the girl who mockingly laughed at the Laurel who said red isn’t a period color for coptic tunics..oh sorry.. Ahem.. where was I?.. oh yeah. I may have found the info they needed but the minor bit of research I googled/wiki’d led to neat tidbit about Filial Piety (which is of Confucian philosophy, a virtue of respect for one’s parents and ancestors) and how it affected Catholicism evangelism to the East during the 14-16 centuries and beyond… what was interesting to note was that some missionaries believed that Catholic beliefs and Confucius thought were very similar. For example, Matteo Ricci, an Italian born Jesuit priest/missionary to China who made many significant influences to the Chinese culture that brought many converts and well as the meeting of a Korean(Joseon Dynasty) emissary in China that can be used for the SCA… ” He did not explain the Catholic faith as something foreign or new, instead, he said that the Chinese culture and people always believed in God, and that Christianity is simply the most perfect manifestation of their faith. Thus the Chinese Lord of Heaven (天主) is identical with God. He supported Chinese traditions by agreeing with the veneration of the dead.” (Wikipedia) Of course, that last part did not go over so well during his time…but I can see what he meant and had thought. IE “Honor thy father and mother” and having experienced an Eastern culture that has roots in different philosophies I can see where Matteo could come to the conclusion… in fact, on that note, Id say that most people who have been to South Korea would agree with me that Korean society is far better at respecting their elders than the majority of the Western societies.
Just some interesting thought…
And I read through the majority of the “List of Roman Catholic Missionaries” from Wikipedia that pertained to pre-16c. Yes its wiki but there can be some good reading that will lead to want to look for more information… which is usually the case for me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_Catholic_missionaries_in_China
Additional note, in that list, St Francis Xavier, is the one accredited for allowing Japanese personas in the SCA by way of his four disciples that were of Japanese descent in the 16c.
I’m loving the Korea reports. Thanks! Good things to think about.