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Lengthy look at an upcomong book

5/23/2018

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Years ago I gave a Catholic lecture tour of parts of Australia.
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In Sydney I noticed something I had not  seen before. Every 5 blocks or so would be a house with a big sign on it SAFE HOUSE. This was so that kids walking around could run in if they were being followed by some dangerous person!
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Thinking about the problems in our Church, this image came to mind, I think from Jesus, that we, the faithful Catholics are sort of “safe houses” for others as we undergo the Tribulation and the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart.
To be a sort of safe house in the tribulation and the Immaculate Heart OR MARY’S IMMACULATE HEART AS OUR SAFE HOUSE.
When I first came to live here in Corpus Christi, living so much alone after being in the dorm of Holy Apostles College and Seminary, I had the grace of conversations throughout the day and, sometimes, in the night with Jesus.  Then this began to taper off. I asked Jesus if there was a reason. He seemed to reply: I do not talk to you so much because I want to bring you to wordless union with Me – not even too many thoughts in your mind.  Sing, as you will in heaven.
Here is the introduction to a new book I am working on with Al Hughes – pray for it, please, even if you are not yet 80 or beyond.

 
 
 
What Now?
 
A Pilgrim’s Roadmap for 80 Year-old’s and Beyond
 
by
Ronda Chervin, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy
and
Albert Hughes, Lt Colonel United States Air Force Pastoral Counselor and Spiritual Director
 
copyright, Chervin May, 2018
(for dedication page:
for my twin-sister, Carla, with love, Ronda
for Shannon, Katie and Martha with love, Al)


 
Contents
Introduction
Sorting out one’s Life
           What were my dreams?
           Where did I succeed?
           Where did I fail?
What now?
          New Crosses:
Pain and fear of worse pain and/or total disability
Left behind by loved persons dying first
Being ignored by younger adults
Anxiety about living situations now and later
Limitations of 80 Year-old’s
Capabilities of 80 Year-old’s
God’s Call Now
Am I Ready for the Last Journey?
The Journey Home
 Introduction
by Ronda
“Our span is seventy years, or eighty for those who are strong.” (Psalm 90
The purpose of this roadmap is to provide Christian insight and inspiration to those 80 years or older.
Until I reached the age of 80, I thought that there was no need for such insight and inspiration at such a time in life.  I pictured myself a shut-in living in a bed, heavily sedated with pain-killers, but with my soul soaring into eternity!
However, now at 81, happening to know still highly functioning 90 year-old’s, I realize it isn’t quite so simple.
What now? A Pilgrim’s Roadmap for 80 Year-old and Beyond began, really, when I started inserting insights and inspirations into my Blog (seegoodbooksmedia.com for RondaView).
Develop the themes into a book?  Well, I did write just such a book when I was 60 years old, entitled Meeting Christ in the Joys and Sufferings of Aging.  But 60 is nothing like 80! 
Talking about the idea of such a book with Al Hughes, he came up with a title and chapters immediately.
“Why don’t you write it with me?” I begged. After all, you are pushing 80, too!”
We had recently finished writing 2 books together: Escaping Anxiety along the Road to Spiritual Joy and Simple Holiness: A Six Week Walk on the Mountain of God, both published by Enroute Books and Media.
He said, “Yes.”
As I begin writing What Now? A Pilgrim’s Roadmap for 80 Year-old’s, here is my life-situation. I am alone, a widow dedicated to Christ, residing in a beautiful apartment on the Bay of Corpus Christi, Texas. 
Retired!  This is after 8 years at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Connecticut, where I taught philosophy and saw a hundred people every day at the 3 meals provided in the cafeteria.
I retired just before my 80th birthday. I would surely, finally, become a true contemplative and even, if God so willed, a Catholic mystic, levitating to the ceiling of the Church. 
Instead, after a year and a half of living alone, even though Jesus speaks to me in my heart, I find myself lonely and restless.  “Me, myself, and I” are not my favorite human company!
Every day I go to Holy Mass, spend an hour in silent prayer, love to recite the rosary, read the Liturgy of the Hours, and chat on my family’s facebook. Some days of each week I volunteer at the parish office, teach a few small groups, visit with my spiritual director, Al Hughes, and other friends. But still there are hours and hours of time with nothing to do!
Why not work on one final book?
Before going on to Al’s introduction, I think it would be good for me to call to mind some of the good “models” I have of 80 year-old’s among my family and friends.
My father, who died in his late 80’s, was still doing writing up to the last 5 years of  his life. Ralph De Sola was the author of many books, the most important of which was the standard Abbreviations Dictionary, updated every few years, available in public libraries.
He owned a beautiful house in San Diego, California, with Spanish-American decor and large maps and pictures on the walls. Since he hating seeing relatives and friends fighting over legacies after people’s deaths, he devised this helpful custom.  For years before his death, when anyone came to visit he asked them which of the pictures, furniture, and books they wanted the most.  Then he appended to these selections the name of the person they would be given to after his death by his executor.  It worked. No fights.
 When my mother, Helen Winner De Sola, who was separated from my father in their 50’s, turned 80 she had already made a transition from apartment living to a beautiful assisted living apartment building overlooking the Pacific Ocean. But, then, due to greater dementia, she moved into a convalescent home, and finally to a room in our house with a live-in attendant. 
Looking back, I realize she is a model for me of prudence in that she saved enough money from various editing jobs and social security to be able to live in such lovely surroundings at the end of her life.
She was also a model of humor and courage. Examples of humor: in the hospital after colon cancer surgery, I came to visit her and tremulously asked her how she felt.  “Well, the nurses aren’t very interesting to talk to!” she remarked,  characteristic of her being such a conversationalist all her life. 
Another I will never forget is my mother in a wheel chair in our living room bumping into the stroller of my grand-daughter.
“How do you like your first grand-daughter?” I asked her.
“We have a lot in common.  We’re both bored to death here!”
But the most wonderful part was the last months of her life when she was on a feeding tube. The Medicare group that sent out attendants chose for her a Philippino nurse who had trained under Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s Sisters.
Instead of focusing on my mother’s hygienic needs, she sat by her side all day leading her in childish charismatic songs of a type that before this my mother would have scorned as sentimental drivel.  So, I would find them clapping their hands and singing: “Now we’re going to go to our Father’s house where’s there’s joy, joy, joy!”
The aspect of my mother’s ‘80’s that impresses me the most is that even in the last year one could still exhibit the good personality traits that were always there, such as prudence and humor. And, that God could find some absolutely unpredictable way to reach us even on our death-beds.
______________________________
I like to think of the account my old friend, Alice Von Hildebrand, gives of the deathbed of her famous husband, Dietrich Von Hildebrand.  “As he lay dying he prayed over and over again, “Christ, bid me come unto Thee!”
It seemed to me so touching that this renowned Catholic philosopher, at the end had only one wish, not to enunciate an unforgettable truth, but to beg our personal Savior to come to him.
 
My god-mother, Leni Schwarz, was a loving, very helping woman, but also tense and easily upset when frustrated. It was a marvel to me to hear that when she was finally in a convalescent home with no duties, she became radiantly peaceful.
Myself a loving but also very tense, easily irritated woman, I thought that, possibly, I would become finally peaceful when I had nothing to do but pray and praise.
_________________________
Another 80 year old: when I was in my late ‘60’s, after Holy Mass friends used to bring me sometimes to visit this old, old, woman who lived on the same street as the Church. Although pretty much a shut-in, she was always beaming with joy.  “She has a grateful heart,” were the words a friend used to explain it!
I find that any day I devote to thanksgiving for every good thing in my life, all the way down to toilet paper, is a day that is joyful.
_____________________
When I was a new convert and age 23, I was brought to see an old dying holy woman.  Her name was Marguerite Solbrig. She was the founder of a lay community. I only saw her for 10 minutes. There was a bed with covers and all I could see was the face of this woman. Her large brown eyes were glowing with mingled suffering and joy as she looked at me with love. 
I will never forget that look.
Now, at an age closer to hers, I am thinking: We shouldn’t think that our life on earth is over if we can’t do our usual work in the world or in the Church. With one look of love, if we truly live in the depth of the heart of Jesus, we could do something intensely meaningful for another person.
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Ascension Dissension

5/16/2018

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One of the priests at a Mass  I attend regularly inveighed against the decision in our diocese to change the day of the Ascension to the Sunday.  “40 days is 40 days.”  Why should it be changed just because so many of our people find a Thursday inconvenient?
I thought of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where quite a number of the menfolk take the 1 car off for an hour and a half ONE WAY commute to work.  How difficult would it be to go to Mass himself or the family to go on a Thursday or Wednesday evening if his job site couldn’t spare him? 
These were the type of reasons I thought it was good to let the Bishop decide about scheduling certain feast days, so that some Catholics wouldn’t have to be in sin for not coming when it would be so difficult.
A mentor of mine, however, suggested the Church could announce that Catholics can be dispensed for such big reasons, rather than tamper with the sacred calendar which reminds us that eternity is more important than our schedules.
I wondered how many Catholics would ever think there were dispensations, vs. just deciding themselves and then feeling guilty or just giving up on Confession when they thought a Church obligation was unreasonable?
So, if you happen to be a Church minister concerned about this issue in a diocese where the Feast Day is on a weekday, maybe spread the idea of dispensations?

Funny dialogue: 
I live right by the Bay in Corpus Christi and our apartment complex has its own fishing pier. An advantage of being an 81 year old “safe” woman is that you can have cool conversations with men without seeming “frisky.”
I was chatting with a 60 year old fisherman in a desultory way.  But since he couldn’t avoid noticing my large Benedictine crucifix I asked him if he was a Catholic.
“I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in God,” he replied smiling.
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“Oh, I can prove the existence of God if you like.”
“No, I don’t.”
So when we got around to chatting about our jobs – he is a surveyor – I said:
“Oh, I was a university professor.”
“What did you teach?”
“Philosophy – like proofs for God’s existence.”
“What?  People get paid to prove God’s existence????”
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I am re-reading a book of Kierkegaard I last read 50 years ago.  It is a classic called, Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing.  In a fascinating analysis, this Danish Lutheran existentialist of the 19th century, provides a version, really, of Catholic spirituality of holiness.
He calls the opposite of striving for holiness, double-mindedness. He means any excuses, paltry or elaborate, that Christians give for straddling Christianity and worldliness.  He includes such surprises as wanting to follow only God’s will, but on condition that I be a leader! God forbid, I be, instead, a weak, sick invalid in a bed all my life!!!
If you have “interiorized” lots of Catholic spiritual wisdom, you can jolt your conscience by reading this famous book! 


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To the Point of Getting Serious

5/9/2018

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I sometimes find it helpful when praying formal prayers such as Liturgy of the Hours, to insert myself and God the Father, personally into the prayer the prayer as in where it says God, to put in “You, God,” or where it says “God, help your sons and daughters,” to put in “God help me, your daughter.”   Not, of course, to want to alter the liturgy of the hours, but only in private prayer to make it more pointed.
I have dreamed of an assisted living community of like-minded Catholics, ever since the death of my husband in 1993.   Sometimes God answers our prayers virtually vs. literally.  As I gaze at the daily communicants in our small parish, most of whom are elderly and, some, assisted in getting rides to the Church, I often think “Here is your assisted living community, Ronda!” 
Over time there is a spiritual bond between the “dailies” even if we don’t see one another in our homes.
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“The elephant in the living room” is a phrase used in 12 step to describe how there might be someone in the family with a terrible addiction, but no one talks about it.
A kind of new elephant in the living room of the Church is the crisis going on where because Catholics have so many different understandings of it, some think it better never to talk about it.
Since, sometimes, people ask me what I think about it, I thought that laying out a spectrum of different viewpoints could be helpful.
Here is a such a Spectrum as I see it. The numbers move from those who think there is no crisis, to the maximum amount of crisis.
1.   A VIEW I DON’T HOLD: Many teachings in the area of faith are symbolic rather than literal such as the Resurrection of Christ was not his literal body but meant that after his death, his spirituality survived. Or, moral teachings of the Church change over time. Consider that in the time of Bible since probably ½ the known people in the world were slaves, slavery was seen as part of life, with only the treatment of slaves being a moral issue. Eventually we came to see that slavery was wrong in itself.  So, in today’s Church there is room for change on issues such as communion of those married outside the Church, or same-sex marriage.  (Ronda’s added comment: my research shows that in Biblical times, slavery was the preferred alternative to being killed by victorious enemies in battle.  It was never approved by the Church such as marriage as a sacrament between a man and a woman at all times in the Catholic Church. Slavery was tolerated but not approved and eventually the slave trade condemned by different Popes.  I compare it to how many pastors will tolerate parishioners living luxuriously, even if the teaching of the Church is that is good to have necessities, but that our luxuries belong to the poor.  For more on that you can read my Way of Love, the part called “Making Loving Moral Decisions.”)

2.  ANOTHER VIEW I DON’T HOLD: A Catholic should be free to interpret doctrines as literal and others as symbolic and on moral teachings one could see them as ideals rather than universally binding. Your own conscience should be your norm. Pastoral practice should allow for exceptions to rules. Some of the teachings of Pope Francis RIGHTLY reflect this viewpoint.
 
3. A VIEW I DO HOLD: Doctrines in the Creed and other documents are true, and only symbolic in a secondary sense. For example, Jesus truly, FACTUALLY, rose from the dead, and also He spirituality survived. Perennial moral teachings include the admonition never to commit any intrinsically evil act such as the deliberate killing of an innocent person, from the innocent unborn, to innocent civilians in war, not to be targeted. Pastoral practices should reflect this truth.
 
4. A VIEW I DO HOLD: Some Cardinals, Bishops, and lay scholars, are convinced that Pope Francis is wrongly propagating #2 in some instances.  They have asked him to clarify and, so far, he has not done so. They are praying for a clarification in the direction of #3.  In the meantime, such lay people are clinging to Jesus and to priests they trust for guidance.
 
5. Some Catholics in different states of life, believe that Bergoglio, who they no longer call Pope Francis, is clearly heretical; some that his election was invalid; so that in either or both cases a conclave has to be held in the near future.
 
6. Some Catholics are convinced that the prophesied Tribulation and the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart is imminent, trumping all these other matters. I AM NOT CONVINCED BUT I WISH IT WERE TRUE.
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Old Embers of the Consuming Fire

5/3/2018

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'Part of aging is reflecting about how God interwove things in one's youth into ways to witness to the faith.  One of these that came to mind is this:  
​all the time nowadays people use the word “respect” as in “showing respect for others,” etc.

But for those brought up as total atheists such as myself and my twin, I can’t remember ever hearing the word respect when I was a child.  Analyzing this later, I realized, why would anyone respect another human if you thought that humans were just grains of sand with an id attached? 
Of course, as Americans, we believed in rights, but this was really just a cultural hang-over for our remote Christian heritage where it was taken for granted that humans had immortal souls and weren’t just hunks of matter of a highly intricate variety!
 
I found that my Catholic students were fascinated by such observations.
Amidst all the fatigue of old age, with the inertia that exhibits itself in feelings of not having energy to do anything one used to do easily, come surprising graces such as this one:
I tutor 2 home-schooled Catholic pre-teens 9 and 11 years old for a few hours once a week. I was thinking I was too tired to keep this up.  But today I was continuing lessons about the saints and I was up to St. Hildegard. I had the mother find the sung hymns she wrote in the 1100’s on the web.  I asked these very bright kids, who have been going to daily Mass since early childhood, what they thought the word “mystic” meant. 
When I gave them my definition, an enhanced sense of the presence of God, vs. new age descriptions with fortune tellers, etc., here was what they said:
“Oh,” said the 11 year old girl, “you mean what I wake up in the night and sense the mystery of life, and I can pray for long periods of time with no strain?”
Said the 9 year old altar server, “Oh, well, I can always pray better when I am alone and I would say I almost always sense the presence of God.”
Then, when we played the music, I told the girl, who is studying ballet, that I thought the chant like hymns felt like stretching to heaven and that I bet she could dance to the hymns. She rose and danced to the music. 
I suggested that some day she might have a dance studio where she could do sacred dance more easily than amongst her younger sisters and brothers running around all the time.  She was delighted with the thought. And I seconded the idea the boy had of cleaning out a closet and making it into a little prayer cell.
What a beautiful time that I would have missed if I had let inertia convince me to stop these lessons!!!
Someone gave me a terrific prayer leaflet for anxiety.  Maybe some of you know it.  There was a certain priest, Don Dolindo, a friend of Padre Pio, who taught worried people how to pray Jesus, Take It Over, whenever they got into what we would now call obsessive anxiety.  Google it if you need such a help.
Volunteering and old age:  
It can seem like a good idea, but watch out.  I thought it would be ideal to volunteer a few mornings a  week at the parish office where there was a great need.  The parish administrator is a marvelous woman, patient, diplomatic, who loves serving the parishioners who call on the phone and come to the window for help with Mass intentions, buying candles, getting sacramental certificates.
The thing I enjoyed the most, contrary to all expectations, was shredding!!!!  I had never even seen a shredder except on TV!  I loved the rhythm of it and the sense of closure!!!! 
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But the other things, which you would think a woman who worked her way through college as a secretary, could easily do, I found very hard.  I can’t remember numbers at age 81.  So, I put on the receipt for the Mass intentions 2012 instead of 2018!!! Or, I put the godmother in the place on the certificate that says birth mother.
Humiliating  mistakes!!!! 
So, after some months of trying my hardest I am now only an emergency volunteer! 
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    Author

    Ronda Chervin received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Fordham University and an MA in Religious Studies from Notre Dame Apostolic Institute. She is a dedicated widow, mother, and grandmother.
    Ronda converted to the Catholic Faith from a Jewish, though atheistic, background and has been a Professor of Philosophy and Theology at Loyola Marymount University, the Seminary of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and Franciscan University of Steubenville. She is an international speaker and author of some fifty books about Catholic thought, practice and spirituality. One of her latest is LAST CALL, published by Goodbooks Media.
    Dr. Ronda is currently retired and living in Corpus Christi, Texas after her years of teaching philosophy at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut.
    You can contact her via e-mail by clicking here or by emailing [email protected] directly.

    Visit her websites:
    here and here.

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