Working, learning, laughing,worshiping together - Family!

Maria shared these wonderful pictures over the weekend on her blog with the kids helping with house cleaning chores each day.  She has added this to their daily routine, along with homeschooling and going to mass and of course the time to play and get some physical activity, with nap time and meal time - that adds up to a very full day for the kids!  It keeps Maria hopping too!  I recall my nest years when I was allowed to stay home with my growing family.  Talk about shared patterns in families - Ruth and I discovered that we had our 5 kids just a week apart - time wise.  She and John were 9 years and one month, and Simon and Luke are 9 years and 5 1/2 weeks apart!  We each experienced a lot of different things in the midst of those years, but the final family is much the same at this point.  How familiar and wonderful it is to have them so close by and all the memories and JOYS of family come flooding over me!  I did not homeschool, as Maria does, but we did have some great times sharing baking or canning or outside with dad and the cows and calves, and art project Saturdays -which got Nancy on fire to the point now that daily on her blog - http://www.dosmallthingswithlove.com/  She has art projects almost on a daily basis to share with the thousands that follow her!  She also shares from the heart often... I especially loved this sharing last week and it has to do with what I am sharing about now - the ability to be home with our family! http://www.dosmallthingswithlove.com/2013/11/reflection-supported-mother.html

So wonderful to see the kids taking JOY in helping out with the cleaning!  I did not have a schedule, but it always surprised me to have the little ones interested in cleaning along side me - my strongest memories was little ones swishing around in the toilet with a rag - it was probably the water attraction!  The girls did love to help in the kitchen - we washed dishes in the sink throughout the day as we had no dishwasher other than mom, and that was a big time to be involved helping out.  Of course baking was always a group project as was canning together - some of my favorite times!

Baking our famous bread dough that was transformed into many things from hamburger buns to using our homemade pie filling to make special bread for Sunday!  I am toying with the idea of doing this for breakfast up at Cross Christmas Camp for Saturday morning - it will be David from El Paso's birthday that day!  It looks like something that would work well with 4 candles in it to sing Happy Birthday to an excited little boy! 

More family fun/work canning applesauce 22 years ago... and every year since with whomever is around to help.  A few times it has just been Pat and I, but all the other times there are some to help.  It was especially wonderful this year to have 3 of the kids with their families for a lot of our canning days!  The big mixture of shared times of work, play and prayer/worship  makes up for a wondrous small slice of heaven called Family/domestic Church! We might not have a lot of the electronic stuff involved in our fun over the years, but we make what we are doing together enjoyable.  Just as the poor widow today giving what little she has to give away for others... we give of our time and energy and share one with the other towards the common good.  Sometimes it is not what we want to be doing at the time, but that makes it all the more important to give!  May we do it with a joyful and cheerful attitude to make it a good time shared as we work side by side.  Now that is what I need to work on, O Lord!  May I learn at the feet of my children as they cheerfully and willingly go outside to help on the farm!

Here is a little girl, who was happy with a couple pancakes decorated with colored sugars by her brother and singing Happy Birthday to her with her one candle!

Jesus, it doesn't take a lot of expensive "things" to bring happiness to families!  I will always remember someone saying to me that they were only having a couple kids so that their kids could have everything that she had never had... being one of the oldest in a family of 10!  How can this be?  There is so much more value, and it is truly the pearl of great price, to be blessed with siblings, and each one makes our LOVE and our experience of LIFE grow ever more and more!  How can "things" ever compete with LIFE/LOVE/LIGHT?  Even the times where the Most Cherished Cross enters in - the times we are called to die to self and it hurts - we are brought to a better place of new eternal LIFE through these times!  When we are weak is when we turn to Jesus - our Good Shepherd - who lifts us up in His loving and forgiving arms and carries us!  The widow today in the Gospel giving all she had - made her totally depend upon God, and do you think that He left her without?  No, He tended to her every needs probably much more than she could have with those few meager coins!  This is happening to this day with those that give to the Community of the Lamb when they beg for their food from the poor.  Often, they hear of the blessings that have poured upon them when they give from their want!  May we give without counting the cost this day and always.  Jesus, we trust in YOU.  Amen and Hallelujah

Bless-bless, Barbara Luke

Their place

"Without a moment's hesitation they received us into their place.  'Their place' was a piece of wasteland strewn with garbage, a few boxes, and an old mattress on which a young black woman was lying asleep.

Juan the oldest among them, an old Mexican fisherman with a heavily lined face, said. 'I can see that you're from God, and that you're also with us!  Thank you.'  Then he made room for us, and very politely invited us to sit down in the shade.

Leslie, a frail young blond woman, told us that she had been baptized two years before. 'I was washed clean of all my sins! But now' she went on, 'I've gone back to my old ways.  I am a prostitute and a drunk.'  She began to cry, 'But ever since I was baptized I feel that God is with me.  I've kept in touch with Him.  Today you've brought Him here with you!'

Monica, a little older, added:  'God is here.  He is everywhere. Always.  But we often forget that.'

We asked them if we could sing our mid-day Office in their place, here in the shade.  They accepted joyfully, punctuating the prayer with applause.

'Hear the voice of my prayer

When I cry towards You,

When I lift my hands

Towards Your Holy Temple...'

Juan raised his hands to the sky while we were singing the anthem, and cried, 'It's beautiful!', while Monica punctuated each line of Psalm 119 ('Your Law is the Truth... Look on my misery, deliver me, for I have not forgotten the Law.') with cries of 'Yeah!  Yeah!   Right on!'

Ed, who just a few minutes before had been worried about us - 'Your not too hot?'  - got up during the prayer and went off.  A few minutes later he came back with three bottles of cold water he had just bought for us.

When it was time to leave we looked through our Bibles to find some holy cards we could give each of them.  There were not enough to give one to Ed.  Timidly a Little Sister offered him a green plastic rosary.   Deeply honored, he replied, 'If you give me that I'll wear it always!'

Then he tried to put it over his head, but the rosary was too small.  Monica got up and, gently and patiently, she managed to little by little get it over his ears and then his nose.  It was funny and touching.  We all laughed at Ed's good humor as he responded to this treatment like a happy child.  From now on he would always wear the rosary!

Deeply moved, we left them.

The young woman lying on the mattress had apparently heard nothing of what happened.  But when we walked past her she stood up and made a big sign of the Cross."

From a booklet that The Community put out after their first visit to the U.S. in 2007.  Imagine a group of religious in their blue habits - "the color of the sky and the shape of the Cross" Fr Jean Claude - and when they sing it is truly like listening to the Angels in Heaven!  No wonder at the response of these little lost lambs!  They are such an example of giving and loving without judgment as Pope Francis asks of us to LOVE as Christ did and He asks us to take up our Most Cherished Cross and follow HIM!

Little Sister Inez taking her habit -such a powerful witness of Christ alive and well in this world!

Little Bernadette will always know and LOVE the Community of the Lamb and already wears blue!

Peter Mayer - Holy Now

This was too cute - Gus singing Happy Birthday to his one year old sister last week when they were here visiting!