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everyday parenting as spiritual practice

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blessing

the blessing (and wound) of brothers

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"Brothers!" He calls after them. As if he lives in a monastery, my mom laughs. "Brothers, wait up!" All day long the sacred word is intoned. That is the brothers' room, the brothers' school. Not just from the youngest looking up. The oldest gathers his confreres with a single summons: "Brothers! Time for dinner!" All three rush - sliding laughing elbowing - into the dining room, jockeying for position in whatever they've declared is the best seat in the house tonight. End result is always the same. One crows with delight at victory, one stews with simmering resentment, one shrugs that he'll get his way tomorrow. (When the squabbling is settled, someone will declare that once the baby is old enough, then All Four Brothers will sit on the bench together.) "We are the Best Brothers Brigade," they sang all summer before the smallest was born. For weeks they walked around the house together, skinny arms draped over three sets of shoulders, smiling as they'd turn corners … [Read more...] about the blessing (and wound) of brothers

a prayer for a new school year

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My kids are off to school this week, and I've been busy behind-the-scenes with writing projects I can't wait to share very soon! In the meantime, here is a prayer for all of us in the midst of transition: to a new season, a new schedule, or a new school year. A prayer to God who guides us all. You are Alpha and Omega.      Bless the end of our summer and the beginning of our fall. You are Abba Father and Rabbi Teacher.      Bless our homes and our schools, our families and our communities.  You are Wisdom of the Ages and Beauty Ever-New.      Bless our study of the past and our dreaming of the future. You are the Creator and the Word.      Bless our building and designing, our reading and writing. You are counter of our hairs and caretaker of the sparrows.      Bless our big and small decisions, our light and heavy worries. You are healer and reconciler.      Bless our bumps and bruises, our fights and failings. You are the sower of seeds and the reaper of … [Read more...] about a prayer for a new school year

presentation

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My babies were each a few days old when I placed them in their great-grandfather's hands. Seated each time on the same couch in my in-laws' living room, he and I gazed down together at the peaceful beauty of a sleeping child. Their bodies hardly noticed the transfer from arm to arm: heads simply flopped from one side to the other, limbs still curled in newborn C. Their soft cheeks snuggled into his thick flannel shirt; their pink toes dangled over his old corduroy pants. But the move to me seemed monumental. From one generation to the next, a stretch across time. I have no grandparents of my own left. So the gift of Grandpa in my life has been a reminder of these figures from my childhood: one grandma's hug, another's warm smile, my own grandpa's deep guffaw. Their faces and stories rise in my memory when we visit Grandpa. Behind thick glasses, his eyes beamed as he welcomed each new great-grandson. "Teeny, teeny baby," he cooed, patting their backs with a rough, weathered … [Read more...] about presentation

to comfort and to challenge

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Hanging next to our front door is this Irish woodcut print with the prayer below: God, keep my jewel this day from danger From tinker and pooka and black-hearted stranger From harm of the water and hurt of the fire From the horns of the cows going home to the byre From teasing the ass when he's tied to the manger From stone that would bruise and from thorns of the briar From evil red berries that waken desire From hunting the gander and vexing the goat From depths o' sea water by Danny's old boat From cut and from tumble - from sickness and weeping May God have my jewel this day in his keeping I have always loved this blessing (aside from the dated language) and the image that accompanies it, because I think it speaks to the heart of parenting: the competing desires to protect your child from the dangers of the world and to push him out to explore its beauty. The mother stands watching, waiting; you can almost feel her anxious restraint as she holds back from removing every obstacle … [Read more...] about to comfort and to challenge

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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

thismessygrace
Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated from Notre Dame. Now we’re thick in the midst of life-with-kids, celebrating middle school & preschool & everything in between. 
 
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Rules: Open to the U.S. only. Entries will be accepted until 6/11/22 at 11:59 pm CT. The 2 winners will be chosen at random and announced on 6/12/22. Per Instagram rules, this promotion is in no way sponsored, administered, or associated with Instagram, Inc. By entering, entrants confirm that they are 13+ years of age, release Instagram of responsibility, and agree to Instagram's terms of use.
“How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “H “How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “How did you let your heart break a thousand times?”

I want to call my mother and ask her impossible questions, to probe her heart that held five children and let each of us go in the hardest ways. But I know what she will say, “It’s hard. But you’re doing a beautiful job.” She can’t give words to the deepest yearnings and groanings. None of us can.

I wish I could ask my grandmothers, each of them gone for decades now, each of them matriarchs who raised big broods of their own. I never got to know them as an adult, but I have heaps of questions: How did you do it? How did you not lose yourself or your way? Or did you, and that was precisely the point?

I want a whole book of answers to impossible questions, and none exists. So I send my thoughts to the mothers of faith whose short stories, mere snippets on pages, have sparked small lights to guide me along. To Sarah and Ruth, Hagar and Rachel, Mary and Elizabeth. Every unnamed anguish the holy ones carried, every treasure of love they held in their heart.

Is it any coincidence that birth often brings both cries and screams, laughter and joy?

We hold it all within us. We cannot give words to the enormity of what it means to mother.

I sit outside a coffee shop two blocks from my children’s school on a sunny afternoon, the last day of the year. I wipe away tears for the natural nostalgia, but I also feel the gutting grief welling up from my own wounds of motherhood to know a deeper truth: marking milestones with love and longing is nothing compared to the gaping loss of not having your child here to break your heart in a thousand tiny ways.

So I resolve again, a hundred times again, to let this vulnerability become the strength that keeps me fighting for all children to have what I want for my own: life, love, health, safety, support, opportunity, community, hope. This is how parenting asks us to change. To let the particulars of our lives stretch us to love more widely.

I once thought “to mother” meant to have and to hold.

Now I know it also means to let go.
Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I s Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I shared after the school shooting in Uvalde.

Remember: we can’t do everything, but we can each do something.

Just because we can’t eradicate evil overnight doesn’t mean we can’t take small strong steps toward change.

Any work for justice and peace is long and hard. But we can build this work into our daily lives in concrete ways.

Look at the children in your life. What would you do to keep them safe and alive?

Start there. Let your life and love lead you.
When women meet, the world changes. Today is the When women meet, the world changes.

Today is the Feast of the Visitation. A day when we remember the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth.

Two women pregnant with new life, blooming with prophetic power.
Two mothers called to change the world.

What would happen if we gathered together like this today?
How could the world change if we made Mary’s song our own?

“He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.”
(Luke 1:51-53)

Imagine if we stayed in this holy space—not for a moment’s meeting, but for months together—to gestate the dreams God was waiting to birth through us.

Imagine if we let ourselves be filled with the Holy Spirit to shout out with loud cries.
Imagine if we lifted our souls with prayers of justice and joy.

Imagine if we gave each other strength and service, courage and compassion, as we kept asking how to answer God’s call in our ordinary lives.

When women meet, the world changes.

If you want to know how to fight for justice for your children, for your people, for this world, look to the Visitation.

The mothers will show us the way. They already have.

(Image from the “Windsock Visitation” by Br. Mickey McGrath, OSFS, commissioned for the Monastery of the Visitation in north Minneapolis.)
Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached t Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached today on the Ascension.

Right now is a time to be prophetic and pastoral, a time for each of us to ask how God is calling us to act.
I am writing this to us next week. When our right I am writing this to us next week.

When our righteous anger will have quieted down. When the white-hot fury pulsing through our veins will have subsided. When the news cycle will have moved on.

Do not forget how we felt tonight.
Stay angry. Flip tables.

We cannot live like this. Literally—our children are dying. Our elders are being murdered. We have accepted violence as—a way of life? An unfortunate side effect of freedom? A helpless shrug?

No. I am not resigned.
Stay angry. Flip tables.

Remember how it felt today to hear the news and feel the world crack open—again, for we have heard it a hundred times now. Remember how you felt sick to your stomach. How the children around you glowed, alive and fragile, miraculous and vulnerable.

Remember how you wanted to do something, anything, how you wanted to act, how you wanted to stop and scream for it to end, how every cell in your body cried out that this was evil and unjust and horrific and cannot continue.

Press into that memory like a bruise.
Stay angry. Flip tables.

The only way anything changes is if we change. Change what we believe. Change who we support. Change how we vote. Change where we give. Change how we act. Change how we speak. Change how we pray.

There are no easy answers to terrible, complex problems—which is what gun violence in the US has become. But the lack of easy answers makes it all the more urgent and vital that we press into our righteous anger and say NO MORE.

Stay angry. Flip tables.

I am writing this for us, for tonight, for next week. And I never want to write it again.
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