Moving Day...

Posts for Chocolate For Your Brain will continue over on the Catholic Channel of Patheos at Chocolate For Your Brain!  I started this week and am still learning the ropes of adding photos and proper posting.  It's going to be a learning process. 

So it's a renewal of my blog but with some new bells and whistles.   
Welcome to the Renaissance of my writing...I hope.    

Moving Day is Coming

 It's been in the works for a while now, but Chocolate For Your Brain! is moving to Patheos.   

I'll let you know when exactly, but all of these posts will migrate there once it's up and running.  Back in September, I'd been considered.  Now, after a few months of trying to figure out what to do, or how to do it, the hour approaches.   

Why am I doing this?  

Well, first, to get myself back in the writing spirit, where five hundred words doesn't feel like a push.  Second, to become part of a community of writers again, which would in turn spark my own brain to jog around the park.  Covid-19 makes everything laggy and saggy, including humor and a joyful witness...so I'm packing up and joining Patheos --a faith based website with multiple channels including one labeled, Catholic.   I think I qualify.    

What's been going on lately? 

Well, I've been teaching, I've been fretting about all my family in Texas, and it's very icy here and the snow blower decided it was too much work to clear our driveway so it quit on the maiden voyage, leaving all of us with our backs to take care of the rest.   

What really gets me is all that work doesn't amount to much of a calorie burn, only a sore back.   

In the meantime, I'm doing Lent...it's awkward like most Lents, where the recognition, you've already messed up tends to tempt one to not simply start over again.   But I'm trying...and I'm going to go on trying.   

What else are you doing?  I'm supposed to be editing.  I've found I can get the bills paid, organize lesson plans, fold clothes and do dishes and will, before I start tackling that stack...but I need to...so I paid a visit to Barnes and Noble today, to remind myself of the goal.   When I see all the stacks of books, it's  a reminder of all those who managed to see it through to the end.   It makes me wonder how many others have a stack like mine.  

It also makes me want to either a) declare a it's my week, hole up in the computer room and tell everyone to bring me food and remind me to shower until it's done  or b) cry and panic and put it off some more or c) beg everyone to remind me to edit every day until it's done.   I know, it should be c).   
I just stress ate the last of my emergency chocolate thinking about editing.   Now I really don't have any excuses.   

I'm thinking of exercising...that really tells you how much I don't want to edit.    
However I know, the only way it gets better is if I look at it.  It's like a swimsuit I don't want to put on, because I know how it's going to look.      

Moving day is coming.  In the meantime, I'll be over here, editing and trying not to cry at the reality, I should have hit the gym a long time ago, both literally and figuratively with this manuscript.  

Book Review at Patheos!

Like the title says, I read a book and reviewed it and the post is over at Patheos. :)

Why I Am NOT Leaving the Catholic Church

The Anchoress over at Patheos tagged me in a challenge, created from Tod Worner of The Catholic Thinker's post, Why I Am Not Leaving The Catholic Church.  She asked people of the Catholic media, the blogosphere, from Catholic newspapers and websites and radio and TV to answer this question.  It's a challenge, because saints and writers and popes have answered this question with greater reflection, time and wit than I can muster, and reading their responses, I find I agree with all of them.

I have always been Catholic.

I don't know that I could be me otherwise.  If tomorrow, I were to stop going to mass, stop praying, stop reading Catholic writing, stop writing for Catholic publications, stop everything to do with being a Catholic, I would look like me, talk like me, even sluff off housework and homework like me, but I would be like a me with a bad cold, a poor functioning version of myself.

So here are my reasons.

50. I stay because I believe the Church to be true.
49. I stay because I love beauty.
48. I stay for the sacraments.
47. I stay for the saints.
46. I stay for the Song of Songs and the Book of Tobit.
45. I stay for the mass.
44. I stay for the litanies, the novenas, the devotions.
43. I stay for the rosary
42. I stay to learn at the feet of Mary.
41. I stay for the cross.
40. I stay for the crucifix.
39. I stay for adoration.
38. I stay for Lent.
37. I stay for Advent.
36. I stay because there is no better means of understanding suffering than through the stations of the cross.
35. I stay for the popes, because I trust the Holy Spirit's judgement, more than my own conscience.
34. I stay for the Holy Spirit and all the gifts of grace waiting to be poured out.
33. I stay for the miracles.
32. I stay for the ordinary time.
31. I stay because it is the lightest of crosses, to remain in the Church, when people all over the world, suffer for the privilege of remaining.
30. I stay because I love it.
29. I stay because the yoke is easy.
28. I stay because life is hard, grace makes it possible, love makes it bearable, and faith makes it luminous.
27. I stay for the songs, even the ones I don't like.
26. I stay because every week in the pews, I see the whole community, coming with their crosses, and we are all present.
25. I stay to taste Heaven here, because I'm impatient.
24. I stay because absent my faith, most of the people I love would not exist.  
23. I stay because I always want to have everyone at the feast.
22. I stay because I know God is.
21. I stay because I know I need to know the Father.
20. I stay because the only way to fully know the Father is through the Son.
19. I stay to feast on the Eucharist.
18. I stay because there is always more to know, more to learn, more I could be doing, more I could be loving, and the Church in her fullness, is always fuller than my dull imagination can fathom.
17. I stay because I'm obedient, or trying to be.
16. When I read the doctors of the church, the wisdom of their thoughts seems obvious, and I wonder how amazing the world would be, if more people, including me, embraced the faith with more abandonment.
15.  When I read the saints and their diaries, and see the very real, very personal, very intimate relationship they hold with Jesus, whether through mystic visions or dialogs before the Blessed Sacrament, or in prayer, I think, "I want that."
14.  Because when I go to mass, it isn't just me.  When I pray, it isn't just me.  When I read scripture, it isn't just me.  I am never alone.  All of Heaven partakes in the mass, and the angels and saints pray with us when we ask, and the scripture, comes alive and speaks to the heart.
13. I stay out of gratitude for the 1000 miracles I can remember in my own lifetime of answered prayers.
12. I stay for the Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious and Luminous Mysteries.
11. I stay because I could not raise these ten people without prayer, without grace, without the sacraments.
10. I stay because I cling to the cross.
9. I stay because for several weeks, I'd suggested the idea of adoration to my spouse.  On the way home from a school meeting by myself, I impulsively turned into the St. John's parking lot and punched in the code to go into the little chapel.  It wasn't my normal place to go, but as I say, it was on impulse.  Sitting in the back row, was my husband. It felt like a date Jesus had arranged.
8.  Many faiths love beauty and feasts; many faiths love and serve the poor; many faiths love the scripture and sacred writings; but fewer faiths ask their followers to deny themselves, and fewer still to embrace the cross, and only one that isn't satisfied with merely good, but seeks to create out of the broken people who come, saints.
7.  The Church has Percy, Chesterton, O'Connor, Tolkien, Waugh, Shakespeare and Milton, Fitzgerald and Hopkins. Lots of the cool kids for a former English Major, and still a Major English Nerd.
6.  The Church has saints like Peter, Paul, Therese of Lisieux, and upcoming, Blessed Mother Teresa, considering Dorthy Day, and the Venerable Fulton Sheen.  I love the diversity of Saints, it gives me great hope.
5. The sacrament of Reconciliation. I need it often.
4. The mercy of Purgatory.  (Because I'm usually unprepared for whatever it is).
3. The Holy Spirit has always been my friend.
2.  I stay because only here, does the water of my soul become wine, only here, will the five loaves feed five thousand, and only here, will I be satisfied.
1. I stay for the Eucharist.
  

  

Today I'm over at Patheos...

Ask and ye shall receive...

I wrote up the CatholicConference4Moms and you can read about it over at Patheos as a guest poster for the Anchoress.  Cue Happy Dance....

For Larry D

Larry D runs a blog, Acts of the Apostasy.  He wrote about how he despised Patheos at one point, and now he's writing for them.

Now me, I've loved Patheos ever since I discovered it and now...I'm still here.

But I'm not envious or anything like that, no.  I'm grateful and filled with Catholic joy for my fellow Catholic blogger and his success at becoming part of the big league of Catholic bloggers over there hanging out with The Anchoress, Mark Shea and Simcha Fisher. 

While I'd love to be part of the cool kids who all seem to fit in, I'm here in blogville double A farm team. So in honor of all those who warm the bench of the Catholic blogosphere, I offer this tribute to Larry D.  

  

Want to be a Patheos Catholic blogger,

want to send links to my sister and my brothers...

want to have my smiling face...

in the listings at Catholic Patheos......

as a blogger for Catholic Patheos.......

but again, not jealous. I promise.  

Published!

I know...the cool advice is to act like you've been there before...but I have never EVER been cool.  So Trumpet Blare! YEAH! YAY! YAY! I've got a piece over at Patheos. 
(Since this is a humor blog, I figured I'd better give you a chuckle for stopping by). 

Click on this to see the actual piece.
It's on the nature of suffering, and the value as seen through the lens of faith.


Also, just a reminder, Small Success Thursday is now over at Catholicmom.com but since Mr. Linky we think last week was having trouble, you just list your successes in the comment section. We're working on an alternative.

Have a great Thursday!