My Swan Song with Connecting the Dots

Mark Shea's program with Breadbox media is becoming a podcast only program, and as such, my Mondays have been freed up for my kids to ask me, "What's for dinner?" and "Can you drive me to the mall?" and "Can we watch a movie?" As such, while I'll still stop by to visit Mark on his show from time to time, it won't be a regular fixed gig.

For the past few months, I've been able to post a note on my door at five o'clock on Mondays "On Radio," and thus insured that no one bothered me for a full sixty minutes. 

 I'm thinking, I might not tell them just yet.  

Here's the most recent and last episode of Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea and Sherry Antonetti. 

Connecting the Dots

Every Monday, Mark Shea and I enjoy a good talk.  This past week, we shared Easter Sunday stories and delved into the great mystery that is The Shroud of Turin.

Connecting the Dots

I'm sorry I didn't get to this yesterday, it's been a busy week.  You'd think having Spring Break, I'd have more time to write.  Somehow, it seems there is less time.  I'm guessing that's how it always feels, you never have enough time to do everything you would will, and when your time is free, projects line up like jet fighters to take it away. 

All of which is a long prologue to a link to Monday's Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea. We talked about Palm Sunday.  Or as I call Connecting the Dots, Sherry's private public CCD experience where she pays attention, with a good friend as the teacher.

It's Holy Week, and I feel I'm crawling to the finish.  Somehow, my prayer has become ever more scattered as we've drawn closer.  I still take all the intentions to prayer, but my capacity to focus, to sit, and to pray seems to be less and less.  I suspect this is God's way to make sure I don't attribute any success in this Lenten journey to me, but rather consider myself to have been borne through it. Someone who wakes up from having been sick for a long time, cannot take credit for losing weight, even if they do, but reap the benefit.  I vote for that explanation of why I think my prayers have become more a tangled mess of intentions, and intentions about tangled messes.

However, I did hear one really solid podcast I also want to share. I've been following Fr. John Riccardo's Rerouting series, and the most recent one, hits hard.   Before you listen to it, take a calculator and figure out how many days you've been alive on this Earth.   For example, I calculated I've been alive exactly 18,546 days.   You can use this generator to do it for you. (I was off by two days when I checked it).  That's the easy part. 

Now, if you don't have a lot of time, but can give 8 minutes, listen to this podcast. 
The more in depth homily which proposes this project is here. It's fifteen minutes.  If you don't have time for either, or don't want to do a podcast or can't, the project is to write out all of your sins, from the beginning of your life until now.  Ask the Holy Spirit to show your sins to you.  Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal your flaws not as a form of condemnation, but as a revelation of how we required, each of us, the crucifixion, and to prepare us for the great goodness of Good Friday.  

Connecting the Dots

With writing, it's either feast or famine these days, but you can always count on a good conversation between Mark and me over at Breadbox Media's Connecting the Dots. Come listen to the two of us discuss the Death Penalty, and why from a Catholic perspective, it might be that such a thing in this century, should be unthinkable. Why? Because God desires mercy, not sacrifice, and even the first murderer was given the full protection of God from retribution by others.

Woman at the Well

I bring this up because the Woman at the Well keeps showing up or more accurately, Jesus keeps meeting me at the well, and since I didn't come to the well, he keeps moving the well.  It was there on Sunday in the readings.  It was there Monday with Mark Shea and Connecting the Dots.  To top it off, I saw a link to the priest who challenged us to enter more deeply in, Fr. Dan O'Leary.   

Now I love Fr. Dan. I've loved his theology, his homilies, his thinking and his faith ever since he burst into our lives when I was pregnant with Faith. I met him on Easter in 2002. He'd been through the busiest week of priesthood there is, and came to the hospital to anoint me.  I also love him because he was willing to risk our friendship when he saw me holding onto a grudge.  He warned me, I could hold on and be destroyed, or give it over and find peace.  When the Holy Spirit hits you over the head three times with a reading, it's clear if nothing else, you need to go back to it, to consider am I holding onto something, am I keeping myself from the living water?

It was a reminder.  Jesus is there, seeking a relationship with us, breaking down the walls we've created through false gods, through our sufferings, through all the failures we've held onto over the years.  We all are the woman at the well, going to find something that would satisfy, because we've tried everything.  We are all the woman at the well, wanting something more and knowing what we've found up to now, wasn't it.  

So we go again, hoping this time, we'll find the living water.

Connecting the Dots Podcast Link up!

Mark Shea and I talk about the Resurrection on Connecting the Dots!

Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea

Today Mark and I talk about Lent, about joyful deaths, about the Orans posture at mass, and about evangelizing Aliens from other worlds. In short, we try to get to as many things as our imaginations can fathom in an hour.  

My take?   I spent some time thinking about this after the show.

Would meeting aliens from another world or finding life on other planets shake the foundations of our faith?

Simple answer?  No.

Why? I think it is possible, we are unique in the universe, in that we are the most sentient (God help us), in which case, it speaks to perhaps needing to recognize our task as stewards of all creation including the suns, moons, planets and stars and get to work caring for everyone we encounter, for they too are made of the same stuff as the suns, the moons, the planets and the stars.

However, I am not troubled by the idea of  not being alone in the universe because even if that first scenario is the case, we have a lot of company.

If there is other life (tangible, living through time and occupying space and having matter), if it is non-sentient, then we must care for it as we are called to shepherd eagles, embryos, humpback whales, butterflies, orchids, redwoods, penguins, lions, wolves, lambs and all that grows or creeps or swims or flies upon the earth.

If we discover life forms with will and intellect, then they are our brothers, and we know, we are always  our brothers' keepers even if they are stronger and bigger and more evolved intellectually, physically or even morally than we are.  Our mission does not change even if our position on the food chain might, it only, (like the universe), would be expanded.  

Catholic means Universal, ergo I'm going to go with the concept that such a faith would include within it, all that inhabits the Universe.  As the bard said, "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Hamlet (1.5.167-8)

We cannot outdo our God in love, in generosity, in creativity, or I would add, imagination. If we can conjure wizards, two-hearted thirteen lives doctors, hobbits, Vulcans and Jedi Knights from our limited minds, who knows what wonders God holds for us to find if we were to venture out past our own safe shores.

Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea Podcast is Up!

You can listen to Mark Shea, Rod Bennett and me talk about writing, the process and some of the inside baseball of the writing life.  It helped me get back in the saddle about submitting.

One of the big issues for writers is isolation, which is why when writers get together and talk shop, time falls away.  For one of the fastest hours on the internet, start checking out Connecting the Dots every day at five o'clock.  Rod Bennett will be back Wednesday as Mark's co-host.  I'd also recommend listening to one of Rod's talks: Four Witnesses Brought Me Home.

I'm honored to be in such company.

Link up!

Monday's Podcast with Mark Shea over at Connecting the Dots focused on encouragement. We also punned and talked about when God decides to pull back the veil in response to the cry of our hearts.   Wish I could have thought of a good pun in response, but I promise you, it's a great one worthy of preserving in internet amber.

It's an odd thing, I'm quicker on the keyboard than on the spot, so when the lead teacher asked me to give an example of verbal irony, I couldn't think of one, I got tongue tied.  She said, "Very good."

I'd love to say it was intentional, so let's go with that...

Wow! This Just in....

I didn't know this piece got published until I began my book keeping for January. Over at Aleteia, there's a piece about learning to "Be not afraid," when it comes to letting my son Paul grow up. I love the title, That Time when the Holy Spirit Hit Me Right Upside the Head.   Live Action News also asked for a reprint of the piece, the Happiest Most Pro-Life Story.  

Also, today Mark Shea and I had a blast talking on Connecting the Dots about the philosophical/moral error of Either/Or when it comes to addressing human need.   We also talk about snow, G.K. Chesterton, mention the interview of Bishop Robert Barron on the Rubin Report and the Superbowl.  Like I said, it was a blast.  

Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea

Mark Shea is loads of fun to pal around with on the internet, and on the radio through the internet. When he invites S.C. the editor of Eye of the Tiber, a great Catholic Satire site, it's even more merriment as we pun, discuss satire, discuss writing and laugh an awful lot over at Connecting the Dots! 

Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea

The Podcast for Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea, and guest Matt Swain is up for your listening pleasure. (I'm there too).  

We discuss amongst other things, fifteen days dedicated to Prayer for Christian Unity.  We tend to think such things might involve platittudes or what you would find on the back of a car bumper.  The reality is much more about being authentic witnesses to Christ with all people, and discovering we are both our brother's keepers, and they are ours.   We have far more which unites us (say performing the corporeal and spiritual acts of mercy), than divides.

It isn't an act of betrayal of the faith to see in the faiths of others, a genuine devotion and zeal, and a divine spark of curiosity about both how we are to live now, and who we want to know forever. Laced in the hearts of every person, is a desire to be loved and not merely liked or tolerated.  We want to be embraced as the sons and daughters of the King, to hear "Well done, good and faithful servant," when we're finished with all of this, and to know when someone else heard us, saw us, worked with us, shared bread with us, they saw in our joyful witness, something of Divine love.  Matt Swain is working with the Coming Home Network to invite all people of Christian persuation to pray for a greater understanding amongst the faith denominations about the who we all worship, and how we are to treat each other.  If you're interested in finding out more, Here's where to go. Tell them Sherry sent you...

Two-Fer Thursday

I know, it is all grace and we are blessed.  I know it so deeply in my bones, we've made "We are blessed" the theme of this year.   My poor little blog, the new year has not been kind.  Here's my link to Catholicmom.com for this week's Small Success Thursday and here's the podcast for Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea!  We are blessed.  I'll try to do better.

I'm trying to carve out time to write, it's just everything seems to need equal time these days; work, the kids, the house, everything! It means everything gets a fraction of the time it deserves and I always feel I've short changed whatever I've given a fraction and whatever I haven't given even that little.  It is hard not to always feel fractured, because I'm only giving fractions.  

It occurred to me, that was the problem. I felt dissatisfied with the giving, because I wasn't giving enough.   If I gave all to each, I would no longer feel I wasn't giving enough.  That contradictory thought somehow consoled me and felt true.  Give all, and I won't feel fractured, give all and I won't feel like I'm short changing anything or anyone.

Connecting the Dots Podcast

Yesterday's podcast with Mark Shea was about influences, people who helped form who we are and why.   We looked into what makes us, ourselves.  We talk about books, people, witnesses living and deceased, the gospels, and those people we never knew the names of, who taught us things we still hold onto, so many years afterwards.

Monday's Work

If you missed the talk on Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea on Monday, not to fear, the link for that talk with Tom Hoopes and Mark Shea, talking about Tom's book, What Pope Francis Really Said, is right here. 

I have this book on Kindle and I'm breezing through it, not because it doesn't address things deeply, but because it's written in an easy style, and goes over the ways in which what Pope Francis said things and how they were interpreted, and how they were meant.  It's worth your time.

If you hang around to the 4th quarter of the program, you even get to hear my Yoda immitation.

Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea

Every Monday, you can hear Mark and me talk about things from a Catholic perspective. On this past Monday, we began delving into "Blessed Waiting," and discussions of how to God, all times are soon. It's only all of us with our limited understanding of time, that cannot recognize the everyday miracles of our own lives simply being.

I know...I know...I'm behind my own times...

Okay...I feel like I'm repeating last week's post.   On Monday, I talked with Mark Shea on Connecting the Dots. On Tuesday, I found out a piece ran on Aleteia regarding family lore in November.

Add in Small Success Thursday and my poor blog had no love this week.  Will I do better next week?  I'll try.

I promise, I'll try.

Catching Up

I'm playing clean up to myself.  On Monday, Mark Shea and I discussed Fr. Pavone's decision to place an aborted child's naked body on what looked like an altar, to prove the evil of abortion.  You can listen to our discussion here, but I understand as a follow up, the Bishop of Amarillo has begun an investigation to address the matter.  Pray for his discernment, and for Fr. Pavone, and for all injured by this decision and the subsequent two videos.

On Thursday, I wrote aSmall Success post as usual, but the day ran so long, I didn't get to link up to it until today, but it's good counsel for if you find yourself discourged by anything.  "Keep Calm and Kindness On..."  It's the best cure for whatever is dark in your life.  I know, I've never regretted when I've followed it, only when I haven't.

Lastly, I woke this morning to a lovely surprise.  I have a piece in Aleteia.  It's a reflection on what happened when I took my kiddos to a quieter earlier mass.  I hope you enjoy it.

Have a lovely weekend, I will write more I hope tomorrow.  

Connecting the Dots Podcast is Up

If you missed yesterday's podcast over at Mark Shea's very cool corner of the internet because you were out trick-or-treating, not to worry, like Halloween candy, the podcast is just as fun and good the next day.  

So have a listen while you drive, work out, make dinner or whathave you, as Mark and I talk Halloween, favorite costumes, favorite memories and in preparation for today, Favorite Saints, all from a Catholic perpsective.

Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea Monday!  <--but all="" and="" be="" because="" br="" cannonized="" disorganized="" ever="" friends="" get="" if="" it="" nbsp="" of="" patron="" people="" re="" s="" she="" sherry="" special="" tardy="" the="" today.="" who="" will="" you="">

Small Success Thursday and the Connecting the Dots Podcast link up!

I know, writing has taken it on the chin lately.  I'm trying to force myself to make more time.  However, I've maintained continuity with two things, Small Success Thursday and Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea...and what luck, I have links for both of those things today!

So first, stop by Catholicmom.com and read up on this past week's comings and goings with Small Success Thursday and the piece entitled, "The Side They Pierced."

After you've left your successes in the com box (and I hope you will), come back and listen to Mark Shea and me, or rather, listen with us as we hear about Tom McDonald's trip to Jordan.

I just wish you could have heard us talking behind the scenes when we heard the music. Tom had great stories about his trip to Jordan as a journalist, and honestly, I wanted to go pack my bags. 

You can read about his trip here.