I’m leaving. But don’t worry. It’s just for a couple of days.
I’ll be talking to students.
Narrating a musical production of words I’ve written.
Having tea with a friend.
And spending time with my 10-year-old, mother and grandmother.
Thanks for waiting it out while I go on this adventure. You can find out more on Peace Garden Writer, where I’ll share even more details next week!
This Mother’s Day, my internal focus turned away from my own mothering, and more to my mother, who spent a quiet day three hours away, going to Mass, then bringing some gifts to her own mother, who is 98.
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| Mom and Me, circa 1969 |
I wish we could have been together. Thankfully, I’ll see her later this week when I travel to her city to do an author visit at a neighboring school, named for one of the teachers who once taught her.
Nevertheless, she was on my mind as I went through the day, receiving love and a few gifts from my family here, including several boxes of chocolate (which have drawn lots of interest from the kids), a Cold Stone Creamery cake (chocolate no less), and a small pile of cards.
One of the cards carried such a beautiful message from my 12-year-old that I was left a puddling mess right there at the table. She seems to have inherited the gift of writing from the heart, and I have to say, it’s an amazingly touching thing to be on the receiving end of that.
It started this way:
“Mom, thank you for everything you do for me. I know a lot of the time I don’t show how much I love you or how thankful I am for the things you do, and that’s why I love today. Mother’s Day reminds me how much I really love you, and if you were gone, I don’t know what would happen. It’s too bad, though, once a year isn’t really enough to celebrate someone who cares for you and loves you every day of the year.”
A few sentences later, after apologizing for her sour attitude sometimes when it comes to the things that go undone in our busy, and often messy household, she added, “Please know that you are an amazing mom! I’d much rather have you be here for me emotionally than at home cooking and cleaning all of the time!”
She ended with saying sorry that she was not able to come up with the kind of “beautiful words you write,” and that’s when I lost it.
How much more beautiful can words be than when they come through honest humility, as these obviously did? As someone whose primary “love languages” are quality time and words, I was deeply moved, and filled up I’m sure for a good couple days or more.
But I can’t not see, even in her words, my own mother, who demonstrated those same things to me by caring less about appearances and more about tending the soul.
So Mom, now it’s my turn. I am so grateful you are in my life. If I had to choose from a million moms and could see into each of their hearts, you’d be the one I’d pull from the crowd and wrap my daughter arms around.
In many ways, it took becoming a mother myself for me to truly see just how amazing you are, and I’m eternally blessed by being your daughter. I love you!
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| Grandma Jane and Elizabeth, future writer of the heart |
P.S. Speaking of mothering, winners of the recent book drawings for Marge Fenelon’s “Imitating Mary: Ten Marian Virtues for the Modern Mom,” are Lori and Ginny, who both commented on that post on Peace Garden Mama (an extra copy in my hands gave me the privilege of offering two). Congrats, and I hope you enjoy!
The other day, I found the Church in my mail.
Not email, but the snail-mail variety — old school. The envelope was hidden among the pile of mostly junk, and since it bore the return label of our kids’ school network, Blessed JPII Catholic Schools, I figured it was yet another notice of lunch money due, a report card reported, or a meeting mentioned.
But when I opened it, I found something that took my breath away — my father’s name.
Robert Beauclair, the man who helped bring me into this world and taught me how to fish and write.
The memorial came from a teacher of my daughter’s and his wife; money had been donated to the school in honor of my father, who left us Jan. 11 of this year.
They didn’t know my father. He lived three hours away and stayed close to home these past years as he suffered through the effects of diabetes. They likely didn’t know he’d been reared on Catholic schools, and how his vivid recollections of those days with the nuns had made me wish, as a younger parent, that our kids could experience the blessing of learning in a faith environment, too.
Dad would have been touched knowing someone had thought of his grandchildren enough to donate money to their school and their Catholic education on his behalf, even though the donor and honoree had never met.
As I read the card in the minivan at school pick-up time, the tears began to flow. And in that moment of profound gratitude mixed with joy and some sorrow, too, the thought occurred to me: this is the Church.
The Church isn’t what we see and hear in visual sound bites on the evening news. It isn’t even the beautiful buildings in Rome, nor the astounding art housed within them — good things in their own right that point us to the divine. The real heart of the Church is the Holy Spirit working through its people.
This doesn’t just happen. We aren’t inclined, as human beings, toward generosity. Something must prompt us to reach out in love to a stranger, and that something must be so strong, so compelling, that it would nudge us to think of someone we’ve never even met, and not only that but respond in love.
Before losing my dad, I’d read of money donated on behalf of so-and-so to thus-and-thus organization, and I didn’t really understand it. But I get it now. It’s a big, big deal to honor the dead in this way, and in so doing, to love the living. Because I know this gift, though in his name, wasn’t just for my father but for those younger ones who exist in part because Dad helped give me life. It was borne out of hope and love — two things the Church does very well despite what the world says.
We get so caught up in the negativity of the world and the Church’s necessary response that it’s easy to forget the essence of who we are, our common source, and how our fellow brothers and sisters, people of God all, are spreading light to one another one card, one hug, one simple word at a time.
Perhaps I need to make this a regular offering. Consider this, then, the first installment of, “This is the Church.” If you have examples of how the Church has brought life to your world in quiet but powerful ways, I’d love to hear them to share in a future post!
The sky brought some delightful surprises this week.
Speaking of inspiring sky shots, you’ll find a bit of that in this video, one of the top picks of this year’s Goodness Reigns video contest headed up by my friend Suzanne Haugh. I’m going short on words today so you’ll have time to watch this beautiful piece (it’s less than 4 minutes).
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| http://goodnessreigns.com/vote/2013-share-the-story-contest/father-john-nepil/ |
May your week include an inspiring vista or two!
Peace be with you…
[Originally printed in The Forum newspaper Wednesday, May 1; reprinted with permission.]
By Roxane B. Salonen, The Forum
BRIARWOOD, N.D. – When the Red River began flowing this spring, so did Sharon Beauclair’s memories of a flood four years ago that sneaked up and surprised this small township just beyond the bounds of Fargo.
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Jill Prososki, left, helps her friend Naomi Beauclair work to rebuild a dike for the second crest of the 2009 flood at the Beauclair family home in Briarwood. Special to The Forum |
Remembrances of the frenzied activity that engulfed the neighborhood come easily – the makeshift human sandbag factory, helicopter rescue missions and a popcorn tin turned temporary latrine.
But stories of how God stayed nearby through it all fall to the fore just as readily.
“At one point I looked out from the top floor of our house and I thought, ‘Okay Lord, I’m just going to trust you that it’s all going to work out,’” Beauclair says.
She still marvels at how the neighbors pulled together despite being “tired, cold and dirty; they just kept plugging along.”
At one point, the water had filled in to such a degree that the road leading to their home from South University Drive went under. The National Guard had stopped anyone from coming through, yet more sandbags were needed to save their home.
As Beauclair looked out at the rising water with concern, two familiar faces suddenly emerged.
Grant Allex and his son, Addison, had found an opening and were wading in from the road to help their friends.
“They were angels. They helped us get our sandbags down,” Beauclair says. “When they left, Grant had to carry Addison on his back because the water was so high.”
The night before the river crested, Beauclair’s husband, John, went in search of drain plugs, but met with a “closed” sign at Menards. Another man also walking up to the store asked John what he’d come for. Turns out he was a plumber who had plugs to spare back at his shop, Beauclair recounts.
Another time, the couple woke at 4 a.m. to find water seeping into the window well – the result of a leaking dike. So they and their three of six children still at home yanked on their coats and boots to help dig a trench for sump pumps.
The pumps needed gas, though, and John couldn’t reach the road. That’s when a man helping another neighbor appeared and offered the use of his pickup parked over the barrier by the road, Beauclair says.
The family also benefited from food brought in by a neighbor who’d evacuated but come back to feed her hungry friends, and received countless prayer offers, as recorded on their ill-attended answering machine.
Beauclair says she attributes the gestures to more than simple human kindness because to her, the timing and selflessness of those who acted point to something divine.
“I knew there was a higher power involved because it was always right when we needed it, like when John needed the plugs,” she says. “What are the chances a plumber would walk up just then?”
Three empty chairs
On the other side of the river that same year, Mark Krejci was slugging sandbags with his new neighbors in south Moorhead.
A native of East Grand Forks, Minn., Krejci says he knew flooding well and felt their area was safe.
But the elements proved otherwise, and soon he and his father, a potato farmer, were fashioning sandbags from burlap bags.
As the river neared crest, they got a call from their pastor, the Rev. Mike Foltz from St. Joseph’s Church. Because so many of the neighbors were from St. Joe’s and couldn’t get to church, he offered to bring Sunday Mass to them.
“We all piled into a family room of one of the homes and packed the place with chairs,” he says, noting that three extra chairs had ended up in the middle of the circle. Then, just as Foltz was about to begin the service, the doorbell rang.
It turned out to be a Moorhead firefighter who’d been helping with the flood fight and his wife and son, Krejci says. They’d just lost their home to overland flooding and were looking for a neighbor, and when they found out what was about to take place, they asked if they could join in.
“We’d gotten a late start because we were talking,” Krejci says, “but I guess God wanted us to wait for these three. It was just one of those great ‘God moments.’ ”
Where’d everyone go?
Sometimes, for whatever reason, when God calls his people to action, silence follows. Such was the experience of Barb Olson, Fargo.
A city girl, Olson remarried after being widowed and was thrust into country living when she joined her new husband, Otis, on his family farmstead near Perley, Minn., in the mid-1990s.
Then came the record-breaking winter of 1997, its horrid ice storm and resulting flood, which engulfed their home – so much so that fish could be seen jumping in the swirling waters outside their doorstep.
Inclined toward ministry work from an early age, Olson says her greatest desire during the crisis was to gather with her faith family at church, but she soon discovered the church had been abandoned.
“When you’re kind of marooned by water everywhere, the one thing you want to do is have services in the church, but (the pastor) decided to cancel services since it was flood time,” she says.
And she may always wonder why, though neighbors were helping neighbors, their farmstead was overlooked. “My husband is well-known as was his father and grandfather, and yet not one person volunteered to come out and help us,” Olson says, noting that Otis learned their farmstead had been overtaken while helping someone else.
The couple ended up living in the home for a year without electricity or running water, using boats to reach Highway 75 to replenish supplies. Despite being insured, they ended up having to spend $100,000 of their own money to move the house closer to the road, since the foundation had been ruined.
Through it all, Olson says she never lost faith in God and learned much about perseverance. “I care for other people and I’m called on a lot but I’m the one who is blessed in that,” she says, mentioning her favorite passage, Psalms 121. “If Christ doesn’t shine through you, you can’t minister to other people.”
Life-giving waters
Zach Priddy, a college student in the National Guard in 2009, didn’t have a home that needed saving, but his soul did. After losing his father when he was 15, he says, he’d never really gotten over the emotional pain and had started numbing his feelings with drugs and alcohol.
His girlfriend was about to break up with him when he arrived in Moorhead for flood duty, he says. While there, he began attending Apostolic Bible Church and was welcomed with open arms.
“To get addictive behaviors out of your life you have to develop positive relationships,” he says.
“I developed all these friends at church and in the Guard, and it helped me get past all that.”
Priddy ended up with the girl, Rochel, now his wife, and is giving back to that church by serving as its youth leader. “The flood changed my life in a good way. I’m totally different from what I was three, four years ago,” he says.
Roxane B. Salonen is a freelance writer who lives in Fargo with her husband and five children. Readers can reach her at roxanebsalonen@gmail.com
She’s got some appetizers in her recipe box that are to die for!
This post is simply to whet your appetite. Now, head on over the Peace Garden Writer for the scoop!
[Originally printed in The Forum newspaper Saturday, April 27; reprinted with permission.]
My friend Katie welcomes springtime by placing grass seeds and soil in clay pots, then delighting as the seeds grow and turn into plush circles of green stems.
For the past years observing this tradition, I’ve been struck by how simple a thing as green grass can bring such joy.
Just before Easter this year, Katie prepared a vessel for each in our group of friends, instructing us to put them in a dark place for a few days to let the seeds germinate. Timing this well would produce a plethora of green sprouts come Easter morning, she promised.
Once home, I opened the door of a low-lying storage space large enough to hold a handful of boxes and placed the container inside.
We need green more than ever this year, I thought.
But Easter came and went, and in all of the excitement of preparation and participation, I forgot about the life-giving gift in the closet.
The next time I visited Katie, her pot of luscious green popped out, and my heart sank as I remembered. What had I done by leaving the grass seeds in that light-less space? Had they surrendered and died?
That afternoon I approached the tiny closet where I’d placed the grass seeds with dread. Bending down, I immediately noticed signs of life – yellow tendrils reaching tenaciously through the crack between the door and wall.
Inside, long stems leaned toward me. Though glad to see them, I frowned at noticing their pale colors.
Faintly, I heard the grasping grass whisper, “We could not, would not give up.”
I placed the container on the mantle of the electric fireplace that keeps my toes warm in winter then thanked the lot for not relenting, despite my deficiency.
As the days passed, yellow turned to green; not the hue that could have been but bright enough to prove not all had been lost.
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What started from seeds that were forgotten in a storage space has grown into healthy grass. (Roxane B. Salonen / SheSays contributor) |
Though I’m happy to have them to remind me of a springtime promised, the reaching stems haunt me, too, reminding me of a movie based on a short story by Ray Bradbury, “All Summer in a Day.”
The main character, a young girl, lives on Venus, which the sun visits only once in a great while. On the day of its appearance, the first in nine years, she becomes locked in a closet and misses the big event, while her classmates frolic in the sunshine and flowers.
How desperate we are for what the sun offers: warmth, illumination, hope.
Having been on the receiving end of sunshine, I can’t help but think a life without faith would be like being stuck in a dark closet, sensing the sun but not being able to access it.
Those in dark spaces may need us to help open the doors, to let in the light. We in turn need this from others during our own times of darkness.
We’ve been warned a flood is certain to come our way soon here in the Red River Valley. As during past flood events, I expect to see many neighbors working hard to open doors leading to darkened closets for others.
And I’m hopeful that on the other side of what we’re about to go through, the sun will shine more vibrantly than ever.
Roxane B. Salonen is a freelance writer who lives in Fargo with her husband and five children. If you have a story of faith to share with her, email roxanebsalonen@gmail.com.
This weekend was slated to be a quiet one. With the soccer season delayed, it looked to be a weekend of singing for a funeral and Mass and maybe cleaning out the van (still on the list).
Then Friday around 5, a friend posted on Facebook that she had two free tickets for the Chicago concert to give away. Within minutes, the deal was sealed and plans put in motion to get ready for a “first day of spring by all accounts” surprise date night.
I had a chance to see Chicago in the summer of 1987 in Bismarck, where my sister and I were sharing an apartment for the summer. Their album, Chicago 17, had been a smashing success, and we were among its two most ardent fans.
I was just months away then from meeting the boy who would become my future husband. He accompanied me to this go-around. Our six-rows-back seats were good.
But towards the end we got up to stand to the side of the chairs to see better, and rather than kick us out of the aisle, the security guard suggested we get a little closer. “Go ahead and take your lady friend up to the stage,” he said to Troy. So off we went.
Unbelievably, we were within spitting distance at that point, and the whole show took on an even more exhilarating turn as we got close enough to shake hands and exchange smiles with most of the group!
The sax player even saw me with my phone and came on over to entertain me!
It was quite a night. A few weeks ago, my oldest daughter saw the city Chicago on a choir tour trip. Loved this shot from her visit to the Windy City:
Saturday night, I took some of the kids on a river walk to see how high the Red is becoming. My dad was a fan of walking for the sake of walking, and beyond exercise, for breathing in the fresh air and beauty of God’s grandeur. I felt him with me as we went on our exciting jaunt along on the edge of the river, and over the Veterans Memorial Bridge.
It was a stunning night and I came away with some great shots.
What excitement have you got going on in your neck of the woods this week?
Welcome to Peace Garden Mama and the Blog-Tour Train of Marge Fenelon’s latest book, “Imitating Mary!”
It was at my hometown parish of Our Lady of Lourdes in Poplar, Mont., where I first met Mary. Outside our church just off Highway 2 stood a statue of Our Blessed Mother in a makeshift grotto. Below her, Bernadette, the poor child from Lourdes, France, knelt in admiration.
We didn’t pray a daily Rosary in our home and yet I felt a great love for Mary. As a teen girl going through challenging emotions, I felt comforted by the thought of her. She seemed gentle, understanding and faithful. I knew she loved her son, and I knew she loved me, too.
Though Catholics are sometimes challenged for putting too much emphasis on Mary, I’ve never felt the concern. Is it possible to care for the mother of Jesus, the savior of the world, too much?
Despite the fact that Mary has traveled with me all these years, there’s a part of me always yearning to know her more. And with my friend Marge Fenelon’s latest book, “Imitating Mary: Ten Marian Virtues for the Modern Mom,” I feel like I’ve finally found the resource that will come close to satisfying my need.
It’s a bit like stumbling upon the diary of a great-grandmother you’ve known has been with you, but until that point, you’ve only known bits and pieces about her. But alas, with this latest find, you can finally delve into the interior and really know the heart of this beloved person to whom you are connected.
Marge begins her book sharing an observation she’s noticed within our culture: a tendency by women to be convinced that motherhood is either a commodity or an affliction. “It only follows that if our culture doesn’t value motherhood, then it won’t value the mother either,” she begins.
Through Mary, Marge hopes to change all that. After all, what better model do we have in a mother than the mother of our Lord himself? Marge says that by entrusting our motherhood to Mary, we can “become the mothers God intends for us to be, the mothers our children need and the mothers society lacks.”
So offers ten chapters that delve into all that Mary was: Mary’s Fiat, The Unwed Mother, The Handmaiden Mother, The Messenger Mother, The Young Mother, The Committed Mother, The Fleeing Mother, The Attentive Mother, The Grieving Mother-Child, the Disciple Mother, and finally, Letting Mary Mother Us.
There’s no mother who will not find something in Mary to be drawn toward.
In a section titled “Motherhood as a Vocation,” Marge notes that “part of the beauty of Christianity is the idea that suffering is a doorway to grace.” In this way, she said, motherhood is a vocation, “a unique calling from God that sets us on the path to union with Christ.”
Traveling through Mary’s life for our benefit, Marge uses Scriptural scenes and then expounds on them for the modern reader, helping highlight their relevance to us here and now.
For instance, in sharing about Mary’s journey to visit Elizabeth after learning of her pregnancy, which was fraught with danger and worry, Marge draws a parallel to our lives. When we’re worn out and upset, she said, our family’s needs can seem just as difficult. “Sometimes a trip across the living room flood can feel as long and grueling as a first-century trip from Nazareth to Judah.”
Some may feel intimidated by Mary, thinking that someone as holy as this handmaiden can never be someone to truly emulate. But Marge begs to differ. Emulating Mary, she said, doesn’t require a major overhaul of our lives, and can be done in small steps, beginning by doing the ordinary things extraordinarily well with an attitude of joy.
“You don’t have to do more things; simply put more into the things you already do,” she said.
I could go on quoting and pointing to the treasures within, but it’s never the same as opening a book and diving in for yourself. I’m happy to share that readers will have two chances to end up with a copy of this beautiful book. Ave Maria Press is doing a giveaway, which you can enter here. In addition, by leaving a comment and your email address in the combox here, you’ll be automatically entered into my drawing. I’ll announce the winner on May 10.
You can also order the book from Marge’s website, Amazon or Ave Maria Press.
May God bless you, and may our sweet mother Mary — a mother we all share together — walk gently with you!
Today, I’m sharing one of the recent pieces I wrote for The Forum.
Here’s a hint:
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| The book Fran Weintraub uses to teach beginning Hebrew at Temple Beth El in Fargo is shown. (Carrie Snyder / The Forum) |
The rest is over at Peace Garden Writer!
