COVID19 — Deacon Patrick

El Bandito Incognito

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 19:51:11 +0000

(note too, the dino in mask, Dinosaur Center, Woodland Park, Co.)

This blog is spread primarily by word of mouth ... please forward with abandon! I'm an award winning author. Here are my books. Oh — I'm not on social media so to “follow” me: Subscribe and receive new posts free in the mail!

Take a Virtual Pilgrimage this Holy Week

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 18:36:53 +0000

Now is the perfect opportunity to take a virtual pilgrimage this Holy Week. Virtual Pilgrimage for Holy Week.

May Jesus startle you with joy!

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#holyweek #virtual #COVID19

Death Without Faith is Terrifying and Without Reason

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 16:04:24 +0000

The western world, the United States included, is about as secular, agnostic, and atheist as when Christianity was spreading across Europe. It has been over a millennia since society at large did not share a Judeo-Christian moral foundation, including a general belief that death was not the final word. Now? Now it is fairly common for people who self proclaim as rational to declare they know oblivion is the only rational reality after death, never mind they can't explain the reasoning behind such a conclusion other than not believing in “fairy tails.” Nor can they name a “first cause” prior to the Big Bang, to explain the existence of the mega-dense matter of all the universe that ... goes bang. But they declare two certainties as rational: there can be no God, and death is the end. How terrifying, death without faith!

For people without faith in God or an afterlife, which, it bears keeping in the for of our minds, are a higher percentage of society than we've had in over a thousand years, COVID-19 is terrifying. It is oblivion lurking in every breathed or sneezed or coughed water droplet.

It is said there are no atheists in fox holes. We are all in a fox hole. Society at large is now, globally, more keenly aware that this mortal coil ends in death, and that death may be anywhere and everywhere.

What difference, faith?

The person who knows, without question, the truth that this mortal coil is but the fallen world and death's veal is simply the beginning of eternity, the things of this world, including life in this world, are transitory. Life, with faith, is not a zero sum game of take what you can, protect what you have because there are no eternal consequences, no eternal hope, no hope at all, of any kind, because ... oblivion. Life with faith is free to love one another as Jesus has loved us. Kindness, generosity, no fear. Yes, there is a virus, yes, we want to live to continue to do what God put us on this good green earth to do, yes we love one another, oddly, by social distancing right now and pray that will end soon, but we are free. For, should I die, whatever the cause, I know this is not the end, but merely the beginning. Faith puts the virus in its place, as it did the plaque, and all other strife in this fallen world for over two-thousand years.

If you are in the fox hole and wondering about this whole faith thing, ask. Seek. Knock. It will be given to you.

May God startle you with joy!

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#COVID19 #faith #Catholic

Multi-Generational Living: Challenging Choices Amidst COVID-19

Thu, 02 Apr 2020 22:28:42 +0000

Many countries, the United States included, have culturally turned away from multi-generational living. COVID-19 is exposing some of the weak spots in this change. Among the weak spots is young families with rent/mortgages who just lost their jobs and have no family nearby. Chances are, we will emerge from this with more young families living with their parents or aunts and uncles. Elderly parents/grandparents often live in a retirement community of some sort. COVID-19 prompts separation and two-weeks quarantine if one leaves. This can leave a grandparent suddenly alone if their spouse needs medical attention, regardless of if it is coronavirus related or not, and hard choices regarding to stay on their own, or stay with family for the duration.

Gifts of multi-generational living

There are many, perhaps forgotten, gifts of multi-generational living.

Economies of scale. It is far more economically efficient to have multiple generations living together. Multiple wage-earners, multiple homemakers, one roof. Child care, shopping, meal prep, and shared costs of home rent/ownership/maintenance benefit everyone.
Wisdom. Often, though not always, wisdom is gained with age. It depends on the level of humility along the way. Where wisdom is gained with age, that wisdom can be passed on, almost by osmosis, by living together, recreating together, sharing meals, talking, sharing labors of home life. Of course, lack of wisdom and humility, on the part of one or more parties, can make shared living untenable, so that must be prayerfully considered.

Challenges of multi-generational living

Caring for elderly relatives can be challenging. There may be options for home care assistance, but this is likely challenged by COVID-19. It is important to have some idea what you're getting into and what help is available through insurance plans.
Pride. As referenced in “wisdom” above, lack of humility leads to a lack of wisdom and an abundance of pride, in whatever flavor is particular to that individual. Combining multiple generations of pride under one roof, or even one substantially strong version of it, can be untenable and a detriment to everyone. Tips that can help: humility, humility, humility. Humility always offers a path forward, and we can only make one choice at a time, and, however sad it may be, only for ourselves. Choose the humble choice and you will help everyone move forward. Grin.
Reconciliation. Living together means bumping into each other, which sometimes causes strife. Where strife, sin. Where sin, the call to reconciliation. A future post will explore this more, but in essence, study the steps of the sacrament of Reconciliation in the Church and apply them, non-sacramentally, to seeking forgiveness from loved ones. Tips that can help: humility, humility, humility. Grin.

COVID-19 is going to reshape society in it's wake, whatever the wake looks like, in ways we will need to wait to see, but it makes sense that more people will return, of necessity, to multi-generational living. Find comfort in knowing that for most of human history, multi-generational living was normative. Breaking families apart by generation is a modern contrivance.

May God startle you with joy!

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#Elderly #COVID19 #Multigenerational #Catholic

Praying with the Rosary God Gave You

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 16:16:36 +0000

Ten fingers. One decade of the rosary. Most of us came equipped with a built-in rosary. And in this pandemic, more and more people are wondering how to pray. This is how you pray the rosary.

Why pray the rosary?

I have brain injury. Long story, but the short version is multiple concussions since I was twelve, with the final one in 2002. It took me years to again be able to pray the rosary, and when I first was again able to, I only prayed the “Our Father” and “Hail Marys” because all the other prayers confused me. If that is what you need to get started praying, just dive in and pray.

Meditating on the life of Jesus helps put everything in perspective, including in “unprecedented” times (aren't they all? Grin). Entering into the life of Holy Mama Mary as she receives and accepts the Annunciation from Saint Gabriel the Archangel in the first joyful mystery all the way through to the pain of Jesus our Christ on the cross and his crucifixion in the sorrowful mysteries, to the elation of His resurrection, ascension, and the crowning of Mary as Queen of Heaven ... it opens up the entirety of the Gospels to the soul, and the soul to the Gospels, in a way the brings the Word alive in the manger of our souls.

Pray the rosary and find Jesus in the manger of your soul.

Ten fingers, ten beads

Start with your left hand.
Announce the Mystery for this decade.
Pray the “Our Father” on no fingers.
Gently press your left thumb to your left pinky and pray the first “Hail Mary.”
Move your thumb to your left ring finger, pray the next “Hail Mary.”
Continue, to your thumb. Make a first, and stick out your thumb, pointing to your right hand. Pray your fifth “Hail Mary.”
Same thing on your right, but I go from my index to my pinky, so it's all the beads/fingers in a row, except for the thumb, which on the tenth and last “Hail Mary” then points back to my left hand.
Announce the next decade's mystery.
Pray the Our Father on no fingers, and continue on.

Instant, ever present rosary. Of course you can ask a loved one to send you one if they have an extra, buy one, or even make your own (you have time now, right?). Cord and knotted beads or by kit (unless you have beads et al on hand).

Hail Mary...

May God startle you with joy!

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#pray #rosary #COVID19

Homemaking, Reclaimed

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 15:29:58 +0000

Thrust into the space called home near twenty-four-seven? Budget realities setting in that while buying take out daily helps local restaurants survive, it's expensive without the same income coming in? Getting tired of the poor quality of entertainment, riff with promotion of sin? Seeing the clutter of your home pile up? It's time to create hearth, the way hearth was created by so many of our grandmothers or great-great grandmothers.

Homemaking is the black sheep of vocations in today's carrier focused feminist society, yet it is the foundation of life that we miss without realizing it, that used to hold society together in ways we are just beginning to fathom, except for the love of “grandma's special recipe” that only cousin Betsy ever learned.
It's time to reclaim it, and make your home livable and stretch your budget as far as possible to weather this storm!
Yes, day one you'll burn stuff, day two you'll serve raw stuff, day three you'll somehow both burn stuff and serve it raw, but by day four you'll discover that low and slow generally fits the bill (and the exceptions will make more sense later anyway), and come day five you'll start to wonder what happens if you add this spice or that garlic to your scrambled eggs, and the craft of culinary creativity will be ignited.
Creating hearth is humble work. It repeats. Dishes keep getting eaten upon because some fool keep preparing food, and those dishes then need washing, and the floor where the eggs fell doesn't clean itself, even with a dog helping out. Clothes get dirty and need washing. Kids need disciplining to pick up said dirty clothes and once old enough to do the laundry and earn their keep while you burn dinner and serve it raw. Grin.
Hearth: the space created at home that embraces family in the warm, healing balm of Christ, fueling them to face whatever life throws at them, loved into being by the sacrificial love of the woman who makes hearth (and let's face it, all gender freedoms aside, women are the best as this wondrous, essential gift to humanity, the hearth).
You're home, may as well make the best of it!
Holy Mama Mary is the Queen of Heaven and her vocation was to create hearth for her son and husband. Hearthmaking is a noble vocation and call.

May God startle you with joy!

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#homemaking #COVID19

Homeschooling vs. Schooling at Home

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 15:06:34 +0000

Teaching public school curricula at home directly as a parent or through distance learning online is vastly different from homeschooling.

Parents are scrambling to get a computer or tablet so their kids can school at home, with the packet (curricula) provided by their child's teacher. This is not homeschooling; this is schooling at home. It is important we name the difference because educators are already trying to claim parents aren't qualified to teach their children, and after the dust settles and if parents and students who had schooling at home forced upon them underperform or no-show, public educators will, in a massive show of inability to think critically and logically, will conflate that with “see, parents are not qualified to teach.”

Want to learn how to homeschool, for real?

reject public school packets and curricula. You know best what your child should learn, and if, like my wife and I fourteen years ago, you decide you want to exercise your right to be your child's primary educator, there are better places to start (see below for homeschool stats outperforming public and private school by a significant margin). This post has resources for starting to homeschool.
Connect with your pastor (by phone, video, text, email, social media, of course) and ask them to connect you with a family that homeschools so you can start a halo for homeschooling families.
Limit screen time only to family time. A fantastic way to dive in to homeschooling is to have conversations with your kids about the content you watch now, as a family, for only a small amount of time. Otherwise, no computers, phones, devices, video games. Pencil and paper promote learning and thinking. Cursive writing even more so.
Cultivate the mindset that everything is learning. Life is learning. Budget getting tight without income and “needing” to buy take out every day? Learn to cook, together. You'll fail, laugh, discover what went wrong, and change what you do next time, and that is learning. That is humility.
Pray together. Prayer makes great bookends to the day. We wake at 6am, read a family story for 20 minutes, one-note chant Lauds (Morning Prayer, from the Liturgy of the Hours), then at breakfast we follow the advice of Saint Benedict and read the day's Gospel and then commentary on it (Catena Aurea is excellent). Angelus at noon, and rosary at 8 for bedtime. Kids need structure, and prayer as bookends bring excellent structure to the day.

Homeschool is not easy, but it is simple

All things simple are hard. Homeschooling is no different. It takes two minutes to understand homeschool, a lifetime to master. Perseverance, humility, and kindness (most especially to yourself) are key.

Homeschooling outperforms public and private schooling

Why? The reasons are numerous, but kids thrive under personalized attention, and parents are best equipped to discern what that is for each child and provide it. Catholics are called to be their children's primary educator, and homeschooling is a beautiful way to achieve this. Homeschooling engages kid's natural curiosity and cultivates their desire to learn into ownership of learning. Homeschooling teaches kids how to think, not just absorb facts for a test, only to regurgitate and forget them. Homeschool educates the parents as much as the kids, and each helps the other learn and think better.

Source: TopMastersInEducation.com

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#homeschool #COVID19

Riffing on COVID-19

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 22:42:48 +0000

Various and sundry dry good thoughts that may just be me.

“Unprecedented” is being used at globally unprecedented levels.
Being so unprecedented means no one knows much of anything, because, how could they. This virus is unprecedented. This near simultaneous global shut down is unprecedented.
We, all of us, each of us, are soldiers on the front line. Some more obviously than others, but with 80-85% of infected people showing no symptoms whatsoever, we are all on the front lines.
Soldiers obey orders and fight for the man next to them. That's what we are each doing. I, for one, have a lot of questions. There is much I do not understand. But wars are won because soldiers obey orders from their general, and our political leaders are our general. But now is not the time to ask questions, because no matter who asks the questions, no one knows the answer, and this is the course we are taking, so, we follow our leader(s) and reserve the questions for when we are standing outside the far end of the tunnel, in the flowery meadow basking in the sun.
Faith matters. Fear of a virus that, before the internet may have passed as a vigorous flu season, is feeding sin, a virus that infects 100% of humans and, without Christ the cure, has an eternal death rate of 100%.
Saints travel in bunches, and these times call for living saints. Create and join a halo, even by video chat, and run toward Christ together!
Read as a family instead of screentime. Here is a series of modern Catholic parables I pivoted to have address the current challenges of faith and virus, on Shepherds and Halos.
Fear itself is not a sin, but fear fuels our mistrust that God is God and we are we.
Fear not! God is God. God so desires deep, abiding, eternal relationship with us that he made this whole universe this way just to be with us and give us the opportunity to choose Him and say “Yes!” to the cure of His Son Jesus our Christ.
Christ is with us always. Yes, many of us around the world are not able to attend Mass and feel a deepening hunger for something that seemed routine. Saint Augustine fasted from the Eucharist in his last days, so his hunger for Christ might deepen. May our hunger for Jesus deepen, even as we enter into spiritual communion with Jesus in watching Mass from home.
Be the hands and feet of Christ for your brothers and sisters in the trenches next to you by serving them and their needs, and be amazed by how much it launches you forward.

May God startle you with joy!

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#COVID19 #Catholic #RandomThoughts #halos #parables

Bishop Sheridan's March 27, 2020 Pastoral Message

Sat, 28 Mar 2020 17:11:14 +0000

#Catholic #COVID19 #Coronavirus #Christ #Light #Hope

God Gives All Parents the Grace to Homeschool

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 16:36:04 +0000

Catholics believe that parents are the primary educators of their children. IT is also a basic human right for parents to educate their children. Whatever your faith, the shutting down of schools due to COVID19 is a reminder of our call, and there are plenty of gifts and challenges to rise up and answer it. Know and trust that God gives the grace needed to all parents, we just need to open our hearts, that we might run toward Jesus with open arms and receive the gifts of grace he has already given us!

Here are a few things to consider as you begin homeschooling (we homeschools all our kids).

As a parent, God gives you the grace to be their primary educators. This is your calling and you can do it. It may just take some time to build new muscles.
You may find you learn more about our Catholic faith educating your kids than you knew possible. What a beautiful thing!
Homeschooled kids test above public schools and private schools, and these are all parents who felt like you feel right now at the beginning, outperforming the “experts” in education. You got this! You really do. Perseverance, prayer, joy, it is a wild and wondrous journey! Homeschool Stats.
Finally, you may be surprised to learn what your kids have been learning in school. You may well discover why parent's have the responsibility and call to be their children's primary educators.

Please see below for homeschooling resources, many offered free right now...

#homeschool #COVID19 #coronavirus