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Mothering Spirit

everyday parenting as spiritual practice

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Sacraments

to be vessel and passage

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Right now are the waning days of pregnancy. Contractions come and go. Intense, then subsiding. I can't walk without waddling. Sleep is fitful, restless. Comfort is elusive. I wake a hundred times. Every morning the kids ask if the baby will be born today. No one knows. These are my last days to carry. To be a vessel. Soon I will become the passage. . . . Each time the priest lifts high the cup and plate, intoning the thundering prayer I've heard for decades, I try to understand. What does it mean for God to be held in human hands? To offer us a way to become holy? Eucharist is vessel and passage. Jesus said I am the Cup of Life and I am the Way, and people were so startled by his strange words that they remembered them, recited them under breath a thousand times, wrote them down and passed them on, pressed them into the hands of others saying, see? It is all here. If you can try to understand. If you can believe. What I believe is this. We gather … [Read more...] about to be vessel and passage

an Advent book club: week 4 {preparing}

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A voice cries out:‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low;the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’ (Isaiah 40:3-5) This week we're reading in Everyday Sacrament: This is My Body, Given For You A Litany of the Dirty Work The Focal Point . . . Preparing. Less than one week till Christmas. We all feel it, the snowballing rush toward the end, the express-shipping last-minute purchases, the packages piling by the door, the cards spilling out of the mailbox, the hundred to-dos scribbled onto the already long list. It's go time.  A dear friend of mine is preparing for the birth of her baby, any day now. The final weeks of pregnancy are a time zone unto themselves, a planet of preparation … [Read more...] about an Advent book club: week 4 {preparing}

an Advent book club: week 3 {waiting}

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"Be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You too must be patient. Make your hearts firm, because the coming of the Lord is at hand." (James 5:7-8) This week we're reading in Everyday Sacrament: "A Strong Hand on the Shoulder" (psst: if you haven't yet gotten your copy of the book, you can read this chapter here) "Chrysalis in the Communion Line" "The Gift of the Pilgrimage" . . . Waiting. Already/not yet lies at the heart of Advent. We know (or we think we know) what we are anticipating, Whom is to come. And yet we must fill the in-between with living, as time holds at arm's length what we cannot yet grasp. For years I've kept these words of Caryll Houselander on my desk in winter. She's one of my unofficial patron saints - an everyday mystic, a woman who saw with clear eyes. Her words on waiting are rich and … [Read more...] about an Advent book club: week 3 {waiting}

an Advent book club: week one {hoping}

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Everyday Sacrament - The Messy Grace of Parenting

"...and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." (Romans 5:5) This week we're reading these chapters about hope in Everyday Sacrament: "Parenting Toward Possibility" "The Spirit's Flashes" "To My Children, Called in Childhood" (psst: if you haven't yet gotten your copy of the book, you can read this chapter here) We hear a lot about hope during Advent. It's a season of anticipation. Eager hearts looking toward Christmas. Prayers of peace, hymns of encouragement. Waiting in joyful hope becomes our refrain. Especially on the brink of December, when we're not yet tired of snow or stressed by shopping, it's easy to hum along with hope. But hope is a hard thing, isn't it? This week's chapters speak to different sides of hope. The audacious prospect of bringing a child into the world (and into the church). The comforting presence of God in daily moments of despair (or … [Read more...] about an Advent book club: week one {hoping}

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About Laura

I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. Mother, writer, wonderer. This space is where I explore mothering through writing. It’s where I celebrate how God shows up in the chaos of raising children. It’s where I love to build community with readers like you. Read More…

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thismessygrace

Mother, writer, wonderer.
Seeker of God in chaos & life with kids.
Author of Everyday Sacrament & Grieving Together.
Glimpses of grace & gratitude.

thismessygrace
True confession: I never noticed Epiphany. We thr True confession: I never noticed Epiphany.

We three kings, endless rounds at church. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh; got it. Magi made it to the manger; let’s clean up now.

I mistook it for a child’s story, a charming end to Christmas. I missed all the angles of light it waited to shine.

Scripture offers a thousand doors by which to enter any story. If you think you’ve got it All Figured Out, turn around and try another. The Word holds infinite mysteries we have not yet uncovered.

You might discover truth you never expected—an epiphany waiting for you.

(And if you want to dig deeper, I’d love for you to join us on retreat this week!)
Spent the second day of the year staring at these Spent the second day of the year staring at these two hard, glorious truths. Winter makes the most beauty from the coldest nights, and what looks like death is often the beginning.

I stared up into frozen trees for five full minutes, looking like a fool, and I stared into tiny roots of the dying seed for even longer.

Here was God whispering the same truth, with wind blown ice crystals and wheat stalk seeds. You can only glimpse a sliver of the creation you are becoming. Just wait till the wild full bloom is born.

#newyearprayer #catechesisofthegoodshepherd
A viral poem. A premature baby. Birth and death, m A viral poem. A premature baby. Birth and death, masks and murder, a jarring jumble—like nearly every day in 2020.

But still the joy of new life at the center, even with the hard world edging all around.

I expected none of it, all the news that turned the year upside down.

But neither did I expect the truth and hope I found from so many here.

I tagged a few of the friends and voices I have been grateful to listen and learn from this year, changing from what they are teaching me.

Let their words & work & witness encourage you.

Drop your favorite accounts in the comments below, so we can follow them, too?

Here’s to hope, brimming on the horizon. The new year won’t change everything, but it will change us—and we can change each other.
Reminding myself today, to bear light & hope into Reminding myself today, to bear light & hope into a weary world. 🕯
It took all of Advent for me to notice us behind t It took all of Advent for me to notice us behind them.

Beholding in our own exhausted joy.

We never could have prepared for the suffering surrounding that birth. We had no idea how much harder everything was about to turn, on the cusp of the world about to change.

It took all year for me to see that they were showing us that way, too.

Through the impossible.
Through the dark.
Trusting together.
We use short-hand for “the shortest day of the y We use short-hand for “the shortest day of the year” as we inch toward the solstice, but it feels like the opposite.

Darkness stretches longest.

Once upon a time when I used to drive to pick up kids from school (and to think I grumbled! what I wouldn’t give now), December always brought the days when I had to gear up to turn the transmission.

Yes, it’s already dark at 4:30 p.m. Yes, you can venture back out. Yes, you can do this.

Even in these longest, darkest days, you can keep going.

I am writing in the dark right now. Not just because 5:00 a.m. is the sole silent hour left in my day, in a house brimming with humans, every last one prayed for. But because I don’t know what comes next.

None of us do.

The anxiety and uncertainty that dawned last March have become a way of life, our eyes glazing over headline and headline, one unbelievable story after another that would have stopped us in our tracks in years past.

We joke, we snark, we sigh or scroll—all signs of overload. Our minds and bodies cannot take anymore.

What will next year hold? What will Christmas feel like at home, alone or apart? Will New Year’s bring hope?

I don’t know.

But I know we can learn how to do much more in the dark than we thought possible.

So here’s to the longest darkness of the year. Tomorrow will bring more day and we will find more light. The smallest slivers and merest minutes mean the most now.

May we hold tight to the light. May we trust that darkness will not overcome it.
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