Occasional Notes From Suzanne - A weekly audio-essay on faith, a book recommendation, and a recipe

“The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hurries to its place where it rises. — Ecclesiastes 1:5”

Last week, I watched the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean every morning, and I don’t know why I was surprised to discover that no two sunrises are alike.

Some mornings it rose behind clouds, its arrival hidden until the very last moment when, suddenly, the sky was suffused with orange and pink until the smallest edge of fire overcame the clouds, which sat upon the ocean like a flotilla helpless to hold back such beauty.

The first few mornings, I went out to watch the sunrise to be able to say that I had. Once I realized each morning would offer an unexpected entrance, that became my focus.

When all is well in our lives, God’s love warms our heart and warms our back and blesses everything we touch, and during these days, it is easy to love God in return because, like the sunrise on a clear morning, there is nothing to hide the radiance of that love.

#catholic #christian #inspiration

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One afternoon sitting at an outdoor café in Paris, I felt a bit sad, and so I paid my bill and headed across the square to the Louis Vuitton store and bought myself a purse.

That purse sits on a shelf in my closet. Nowadays, I’d feel silly carrying it anywhere in Breckenridge. Thankfully, we live in a low-key town. If you stroll down the aisles of City Market, you’d be hard-pressed to differentiate the billionaires from the regular folks. I like that.

I worked for eight years on the 98th floor of 2 World Trade Center in New York City and used to stand at the tall windows facing uptown and feel like I was on top of the world. Now, I can’t imagine any skyscraper comparing to the beauty of the mountains I see each morning from my bedroom window.

When I lived overseas, the highlight of most evenings was meeting my friends for drinks. For the past year, I’ve been meeting my friends from St. Mary’s and Our Lady of Peace on Zoom at 5 p.m. for evening prayer.

I am tickled pink that my priorities have matured over the decades, especially as I enter my 59th year. But I take no credit for the change. It was God.

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I discovered proof of God on Wednesday afternoon in the tree branch shadows cast across the snow and frozen stream where I had stopped on the side of the road to let Kiki catch her breath and Bear investigate the smells of other animals. Kiki and Bear are my elderly adopted Newfoundland dogs. Our walks meander.

My Lenten journey is only a few weeks old, but already my days have been filled with prayers of all sorts, communal and private. Rosaries recited, scriptures pondered, psalms prayed aloud and centering prayer in silence. Prayers said in the dark as I drift off to sleep and said again at 6 a.m. as the light begins to create an outline of mountain peaks outside my window.Proof of God

We can argue all day long about figurative and literal creation stories and theories of evolution and life on other planets and whether all this scientific knowledge confirms or just disproves the existence of God.

But I don’t need scientific proof or the measurement of the speed of sound and light when I have silence and light among the shadows of a winter afternoon.

To see it as more than frozen water and dormant trees is to recognize I have a conscious mind that perceives beauty. To have a momentary observance of nature lift my spirits is to understand we were formed by a creator who was not assembling automatons but souls with imaginations to appreciate the beauty of a world beyond its utility.

Our souls were given not only an appreciation of creation but an innate need to create. Our souls compel us to communicate with our creator, through art, music, science, technology and all the good things that flow from our creative minds.

#Catholic #Christian #lent #inspiration

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She had promised to bring chili to the church dinner to feed her neighbors. But it was the end of the month and she didn’t have much in her cupboards. She had even less in her bank account.

But she did have two large sweet potatoes, four cans of beans and two cans of crushed tomatoes. She peeled and chopped the sweet potatoes, mixed them with the beans, tomatoes and spices. When it was cooked through, she had created a delicious, warm meal to feed a half-dozen hungry souls.

The story of Jesus feeding the five thousand with two fish and five loaves took on new meaning for her as she realized that the real miracle that Jesus performed that day wasn’t the multiplication of food, but love.

Have you ever come to the end of the month and discovered you had little food in your refrigerator and even less money in your bank account? I have. In past years, more than one month-end found my cupboards bare. Perhaps that’s why I find food insecurity in our community, especially among children, a need that speaks to my heart.

To live in our mountain community is a privilege. To be surrounded by natural beauty and a caring community is a blessing. What could make it better? To live in a community where no child goes to bed hungry or wakes up and goes to school without breakfast.

During this season of Lent, we are called to almsgiving, which asks us to obey Jesus Christ’s command that we love our neighbors as we love ourselves. I can’t think of anything that embodies that more than making sure our neighbors have food in their cupboards.

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After attending Ash Wednesday Mass, I stopped by the Breckenridge library. One of my favorite librarians, Jane, came out with an armful of books for me. She asked what I had decided to give up for Lent, I believe because she had read my column last week.

I sheepishly confessed that I had settled on something only the night before. I decided that my Lenten sacrifice would be to give up my nightly viewing of political talk shows and the accompanied scrolling through social media.

From 6 p.m. until bedtime, no TV, no computer, no social media. Instead, I will read, knit, listen to audiobooks or classical music — all activities I love yet somehow fall by the wayside once I turn on the TV and pick up my phone.

Although this is being done as a Lenten sacrifice, it’s also a personal reckoning. I say I value books over TV, but I haven’t been living that truth.

Even after I’ve turned off the TV for the night and headed to bed to read until I fall asleep, I check news sites until my eyes grow too heavy to read. How to reconcile my aspiration with my reality?

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Last year I gave up wine for Lent again and each morning I wrote, I love being sober, in my gratitude journal. I’ll be honest, I felt silly writing this because I had had no intention of remaining sober once Lent was over.

Then I realized that I meant what I was writing. I loved being sober. I felt better physically, emotionally and mentally. I slept like a baby every night, which was a relief since I had been plagued by insomnia for years.

So when Lent was over, I made the choice to continue to enjoy my sobriety. As Lent returns again I am celebrating my one year anniversary of sobriety and I couldn’t be happier.

Giving up something for Lent isn’t what we do to prove how holy we are, quite the opposite. I believe it’s to admit how human we are.

What should we give up?

Walking Our Faith podcast is 10 minutes of weekly inspiration. Please "like", share, and review this podcast so we can reach more people. Thank you!

Suzanne Elizabeth Anderson’s column “Walking our Faith” publishes Saturdays in the Summit Daily News. Anderson is the author of 10 novels and nonfiction books on faith. She has lived in Breckenridge since 2016. Contact her at [email protected]

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Will you join me in a special project for 2021? Beginning this week and through the end of the year, let’s read through the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

We will read two chapters each week. It will be a wonderful opportunity to practice lectio divina, as we incorporate prayer into our Bible reading, and see what a difference it makes in what God reveals through his holy word, and in our personal relationship with God.

You may use any Bible you find most comfortable to read. If you don’t have a Bible, you can download the free Bible app to your phone.

Each week at the end of my column, I will mention the reading for the coming week.

I hope you will join me. I believe our walk through the Gospels will give us a fresh perspective of what Jesus said and stood for. Whether you are religious or not, whether you have read the Bible for years, or this is your first time, I believe our faith will be deepened.

Read this week’s chapters and choose a passage that speaks to you:

Gospel of Matthew, Chapters 1 & 2

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel-which means, “God with us.” (Matthew 1:22-23)

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I had not given much thought to the idea of a word for the year. It was more of a musing I had after listening to a podcast on that topic at the beginning of January.

So as I drove to work, I considered what word to choose. I wanted something inspiring or aspirational, and so I tinkered with the word “finish,” as in, I want to finish writing the mystery that is two-thirds done and has remained so for the past 10 years.

Then I thought, no, let’s go bigger. I’ll choose the word “success.” After all, isn’t that what we want for all our endeavors? Yes, success would be my word for 2021. Then just before I turned onto Main Street in Frisco, a question popped into my mind: What about trust?

Trust, as in, do you trust in God’s plan for your life?

I wanted to roll my eyes, but I was driving. Because trust in God’s plan, when I could find no evidence of it, was an ongoing issue intrinsically tied to the word success in my mind and part of a tired conversation I’ve been having with God for years.

I preferred success.

Later that day, I was discussing this with my friend Amy, and she laughed and said that’s just the way it worked. It wasn’t that we chose our word but that the word chose us, and usually they are two very different words.

Later, she emailed me a paragraph that did a wonderful job of explaining the greater significance of choosing a word for the year.

“We can ask for a word through meditation, and it will come to us in different ways,” Amy wrote. “Sometimes, it just keeps showing up and it stirs something in us. It keeps repeating itself until we stop and pay attention to it. We do not select it. It selects us.”

Suzanne Elizabeth Anderson’s column “Walking our Faith” publishes Saturdays in the Summit Daily News. Anderson is the author of 10 novels and nonfiction books on faith. She has lived in Breckenridge since 2016. Contact her at [email protected]

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The definition of grace is “unmerited favor.” Prosperity preachers say it’s akin to winning the lottery. But I’d like to suggest a more sustaining definition taken from the words of Jesus, himself:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” — Matthew 11:28-30

I understand now that grace is God’s extended hand of compassion in difficult circumstances. When grace is the last thing we want to give ourselves, or our neighbor, God asks that we let him carry that burden.

I believe we need to dedicate the coming week to prayer. Let’s ask God for an outpouring of grace on our country. We are all weary right now. Weary of the pandemic, of economic uncertainty, of political rancor. Our hearts are broken and mistrustful of those in authority.

Sometimes it feels as if we are pushing against the wind. Which is exactly when we need God’s grace to lift our weary shoulders and show us the hope that is in front of us.

Suzanne Elizabeth Anderson’s column “Walking our Faith” publishes Saturdays in the Summit Daily News (summitdaily.com). Anderson is the author of 10 novels and nonfiction books on faith. She has lived in Breckenridge since 2015. Contact her at [email protected]

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Most difficult for me as a person of faith is to see that even among people with whom I share the same beliefs, we are on opposite ends when it comes to politics. Up until Wednesday, I took that divide in stride and hoped that after the inauguration later this month, things would improve.

After the insurrection at our Capitol on Wednesday, we received a warning that our country is at a dangerous crossroad. And we must choose what we as a country, as people of faith, will do next. We can no longer politely decline to discuss politics with those we share a pew.

I believe that we need a national day of prayer. Not to pray for a particular political leader but to pray for our country, not as an abstract concept but for our survival.

We need to put aside our political differences and even our religious differences and pray.

We need to repent of our sin and our arrogance in using God‘s name as a cudgel to claim the moral high ground and to judge one another. We use God‘s name to divide ourselves, brother against brother to claim that God is either a Democrat or Republican and doesn’t like the other side, which is of course nonsense.

#chirstian #catholic #inspiration

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