Quartet

I don't watch talent shows but when I do, it's because I've ignored everything until the winner emerges, and it's fun to see what they do and not have to sit through anything else.  You're busy. I'm busy, so instead of giving you four blog posts with four links, you get all of them in one place, here.  Enjoy.  

1) Hello Everyone! It's Sherry here with another Small Success Thursday! Small Success Thursday is about making gratitude a reflexive way of thinking about the world and your life. If you will, it is the domestic version of the Canticle of the Sun, where we praise God for the gifts of the early morning feedings, the late night homework, the dishes, the laundry, the minutia that seemingly clutters our lives and yet reveals by that very clutter, how blessed to the point of overflowing, our lives are. Like most things in life, it appears simplistic, to seek to be grateful for all things, it seems beautiful when you hear it, maybe even a little too sweet, until you have to practice it. (There's more).

2)

Over at Aleteia with a story that took place in 1993,  I must say, I'm honored by the title: The Happiest, Most Inspiring Pro-Life Story You'll Read Today.

3) I woke to this surprise over at the National Catholic Register...Your Family Will Be a Sanctuary of Love: A Letter to New Parents.

4) Finally, if that wasn't enough, The Diocese of Kansas City, Saint Joseph's Parish, reprinted a piece I wrote back in 2013: 50 Things to Do if You Can't Go to the March for Life!  It's been republished on Catholicmom.com as a result too.

Guess I'd better get to work on those petitions for the mass I need to finish, no one is going to believe I didn't have time.

Because We Need Beauty

Today, if I look at the news, it is hard not to fall into the sin of despair.   It is why we need things like sunsets and the laughter of children, the taste of chocolate, the color red, spring with all of its riotous outrageous color, and beauty saturating our souls, feeding them against the pain, the wrong we creatures made in God's image inflict on ourselves daily.  
So I began a post wherein I wrote out the lies that the serpent says, but it brought me lower, then I saw this lovely lovely post on my facebook wall.  I think it says what good art says, everything through less, everything through love even in the face of death.