Disturbing Nap Time . . .

 Marcella tends to sleep the day away but just try and motivate her to wake up or play and we get the 'look'!

Experiments . . .

 While I was doing other chores, I set the sewing machine to trying some new designs today. The pink heart is very small but took 38 minutes because of all the overlay work on it. The bookmarks are going to my daughter and her friends who reside with six in-house felines. I really should be finishing up quilts but the lure of new design patterns tempted me from the straight and narrow today.

I have also discovered that patience is an ongoing virtue when you want to add embroidery patterns to your computer but don't want to go into debt doing so. I browse through the patterns on three sites and put the ones I really would like into the 'wish-list' section. Then I wait . . . Eventually, all sites have some kind of sale and the one today offered patterns for a dollar apiece if you purchased ten. Since most of them usually run six dollars and up, that was quite a savings.

I'm still amazed about sewing these designs onto 'plastic' and then removing the 'plastic' and having only the thread work left.

Sign of Peace or Mere Greeting . . .

In many Catholic Churches, today, the Sign or Kiss of Peace has gotten way out of hand. Instead of a devout, dignified part of the liturgy, it has turned into a mad scramble to grab as many hands as possible before the priest reaches the Lamb of God and, even then, people are still racing around the church looking for unshaken hands. To me, it is a major distraction to what we have gathered at Mass to celebrate. It is not a time to renew friendships or grab in bear hugs people we just talked to coming into Mass. A missionary priest once explained the right and wrong way to approach this part of the Mass and a parishioner came out exclaiming, "If I want to extend the Sign of Peace and Christ's Love, I'm going to spread the Peace of Christ to as many people as possible!" This was even after it was explained that this was symbolic and if you run  around the pews in a handshaking frenzy, you are just greeting people . . . and greeting people belongs outside of the church.

A friend passed the following on to me from her church bulletin. It is nice to see a pastor giving such good instruction and I hope he has better luck with it than I've seen at our parish!

The Kiss of Peace has two directives from Scripture; to greet each other with a holy kiss, and, to leave your gift at the Altar and be reconciled with each other. Neither directive is to be taken literally. It is symbolic of the Peace of Christ flowing from the priest who is Christ to the people gathered in thanksgiving and then to all we meet beyond the Assembly. IT IS NOT A FREE-FOR-ALL. The Kiss of Peace should be characterized by dignity, not frenzy. So here goes:

1) The priest says: "The peace of the Lord be with you always".

2) We respond: "And with your spirit".

3) He says: "Let us offer each other the sign of peace".

4) We turn to the persons on our right and on our left and offer our hand (or if it is someone we are morefamiliar with, our cheek) and say "Peace be with you".

5) They respond: "And with your spirit".

We have to remember that the Eucharistic Liturgy/Mass is the Prayer of Christ to His Father. It’s NOT ours. We are privileged guests and we should behave with dignity and decorum, with respect. It’s not a rave or a tailgate party. So let’s take the instruction from our Bishop seriously and respect WHAT we do, and DO it with reverence.