Into the Sunset

 Luky;
ONE of my jobs in the office was to keep a supply of stamps for sale to the staff.
A member of staff came in one day to post a letter to a firm of undertakers.
"We've had a death in the family", he said morosely. "The worst of it is that is was my fault, in a way."
I looked at him in horror.
He continued; "He borrowed a thousand rand from me to buy himself a motorbike. He was killed outside a little town last month. If only I had refused to lend him the money, he might still be alive."

Double take
In the days before he met me, my husband had gone for a trip on the back of a friend's motorbike when the friend had an accident. People passing afterwards called an ambulance, and they took the driver to the hospital.
When he came to after a couple of hours, his first question was: "Where's Sean?"
"Who is Sean?" the Doctor asked.
"The guy who rode on the back of my bike."
"We found only you."
"Well, you'd better go back quickly and look for Sean."
So the ambulance went out for the second time, and in a ditch beside the road they found Sean, still unconscious.

Older and wiser
I've never driven a motorbike, but when I was young I knew a few boys who owned one, and they'd sometimes let me ride pillion.
If birds could talk and explain what it's like to fly, I think they could only describe the freedom I experienced on the back of those bikes. You feel so free and so glad, and the little worries of every day become unimportant.
"Faster, faster!" you think. And those days there was no speed limit to speak of, and we'd laugh at those signboards which warned: "Drive like lightning and you'll crash like thunder."
I don't want to be a wet blanket because I myself experienced the joys of pillion riding on a motorbike, but, older and wiser now, I'd be nervous about my own children doing the same.

Scale of values
Years ago my eldest son was home for a weekend, and we went for a walk together. Not far from our house, a neighbour's son, totally incognito in heavy crash helmet, goggles, leather jacket, boots and gloves, roared past us.
"Does he think he is impressing us?" I said when I'd recovered from shrinking on to the pavement.
"Yes," my son said calmly. "You see, he'd be impressed by me if I roared past him on a motorbike, wearing those clothes, and so he thinks I'm impressed by him."

Into the sunset
I remember the months some boys who had accidents on motorbikes spent being nursed. They suffered tortures and lay in plaster for months, but they counted the days until they could get up. And do you know what the first thing they intended doing was?
Not, as I hoped, to buy a little car. Not a chance. They only wanted to get back on to their motorbikes and go screaming off again, into the sunset.

Being Oneself is a Great Blessing

Luky;

WHEN I was first married I felt that every other woman in the world was superior to me in some way.

Some had money - not I. Others had children - I didn't, though fortunately they soon made their debut.

Still others were able to crochet and sew and set their hair in a professional way. They dried apricosts, held a weekly baking day, canned peaches, made jam and chutney.

Moreover they displayed great strength of character by refraining from eating their own glorious products.

I, on the the other hand, though unable to prepare these delicacies, was always a grateful recipient when they came my way in the form of gifts.

Although that feeling of inferiority persisted for many years I am relieved to find that it has finally died a natural death.

I no longer want to be like anyone else, but am happy merely to be myself.

Not that I've grown accomplished during the intervening years; far from it.

If anything I've got better at cutting corners and turning a blind eye on things no other Dutch housewife would ever tolerate.

And if I could have my way I would still like to be slim, glamorous, a firm but loving disciplinarian, a scintillating companion and all the other things I'm not.

But no one is totally devoid of charms in the eyes of their nearest and dearest, and one of my children once said:

"You may not be slim or pretty like the other kids' moms, but you're just like a bag of sugar."

Swallowing my not unnatural dismay at the first part of the sentence, I requested elucidation of the latter half.

"Well", the child said, "you never notice it while there's some in the cupboard, but it's terrible when it runs out.

Come to think of it one could even compare you to a pound of salt."

"We'll stick to sugar", I commented shortly, "and in future you may keep your personal remarks to yourself" - which remark doubtless left my child mentally comparing me to a bottle of vinegar. (It's marvellous with chips.)

There are times, particularly over Christmas and New Year, when I relax my never-very-firm rule of not eating cakes or chocolates - with predictable results.

It is after times like these that I feel nature has cast the soul of a poet into the form of a chef.

The only heartwarming result to come from my embonpoint is the fact that I'm called Auntie by people of my own age group and I'm always offered a seat in the bus.

When I read about the saints and how they denied themselves food and drink, I feel very despondent.

But there you are, would the saints impress us so if their deeds were easily emulated?

And so I have accepted my shortcomings, and I have the consolation that not even my arch-enemy can call me smug - smugness being such a glutinous, disagreeable trait to my mind.

And somehow, in spite of my mismanagement, things continue to flourish.
The children passed into their next school year, there are flowers in the garden, and the car we bought second hand years ago still goes, even if it does need a little push now and again.

Jokes aside, when I see how we manage to carry on, I become deeply aware that it does not matter so much how clever, beautiful or accomplished you are - what did Helen's beauty ever do for Troy? - but that it is important for God's blessing to rest upon one's efforts.

I have never had need to complain for lack of that, anyway.

Catherine Nicolette;

Well. I was that child with the remark about the bag of sugar.

It just shows you, once again, from a child's perspective, how adults do not always quite understand what you are trying to say.

What I was saying was that, Mom had a lap that did not disappear when you sat in it.

She had a real mom's figure, with beautiful Dutch curves that were marvellous for a sad child to come home to from school, and snuggle in while telling all the little childhood troubles.

And Mom was not just pretty, she was staggeringly beautiful with a serene Dutch face and porcelain skin.

And I loved sugar more than anything else in the world - except for salt.

So I was giving great compliments - or so I thought . . .

The Christmas Candle and the dedicated work of the Salvation Army

Photograph by Lumiere Charity volunteer Britain
For use copyright free for any worthy purpose

Catherine Nicolette

Unemployed and starving
My father spoke on many occasions about the Salvation Army.
As a young man, unable to find work in the Recession, he was starving in the streets of London.
Members of the Salvation Army found him, gave him food, shelter and clothing until a friend from years gone by recognised him and helped him on his way.
Dad could never speak for long about the Salvation Army.
He would just say, "They saved my life" and then go silent.
The truth of the matter is, that if the Salvation Army had not selflessly helped my father out so many years ago, he would have died; and I would never have had the chance of life.
Their act of Christian love continues to pass the candle on to every person I meet, because - without their ministry - I would not have had the chance to meet them.
The candle of my father's life would have been snuffed out by poverty and starvation before his time.

A candle of hope
In the light of this, I watched the new film version of 'The Christmas Candle' which shows the wonderful work and deep faith of those who minister in the Salvation Army. . .

This Christmas Past
This Christmas past introduced the film version of Max Lucado's 'The Christmas Candle'.
The film imagery and gentle sweep of events around a candlemaker's shop, the local community and their Church provide a beautifully filmed background to a gentle and thought-provoking story.

Jane Austen atmosphere
Max Lucado illuminates our life with his charming story at Christmas.
There is a Jane Austen atmosphere about the community, as the relationships among the town inhabitants is explored and the doings of neighbours are eagerly followed.
The theme of hope is illumined in the concept of an angel blessing a particular candle.
The concept of suffering, pain and despair is explained in the experiences of the Minister and various of the town inhabitants.
The reality of doubts is dealt with, the Minister as well as his parishioners facing the human struggle towards deeper faith.
The joy of the Christian Message that Jesus Christ is born to us, and that every day is a new day gifted from God is beautifully portrayed.

Luminous Susan Boyle
The luminous Susan Boyle truly sings like an angel, as she embarks on her first movie role. 
Christmas is not just once a year, with the Crib, the tree and the celebrations tucked away under the staircase until the next December date.
Christmas is every day.
Every day the wonderful Jesus Christ is born anew in our lives as He brings us fresh hope and strength.

Why not purchase 'The Christmas Candle'
Why not purchase The Christmas Candle DVD and make it a Christmas event for the family?
Let's support our Christian movies, and the dedicated people making them.

The Christmas Candle
http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=WYWKPGNX

Movie trailer 
http://www.thechristmascandlemovie.com/

Endorsements
http://www.thechristmascandlemovie.com/endorsements 

Purchase 'The Christmas Candle' book 
http://www.amazon.com/The-Christmas-Candle-Max-Lucado/dp/1401689949 

DVD release dates estimated to be in February or March 2014
http://www.ondvdreleases.com/1856-the-christmas-candle-dvd-release-date.html

IT'S NICE TO GO OVER OLD GROUND

Luky;

WE WERE strolling along the extensive grounds of the new school that has replaced the old Greenhill Convent of Bloemfontein. Whenever we passed a group of girls they'd rise to their feet and nod respectfully. "These are some old girls who want to see the new buildings," our guide Sister Philip explained, indicating us. "Take a good look at us," I advised. "This is how you'll look one day."

The girls smiled the pleasant enigmatic smile you only get from girls educated by nuns or boys raised by Brothers. From personal experience I know that this smile may cover any emotion, from profound agreement to a cynical: "Sez you!"

It was the ninety-eighth anniversary of the founding of our old school. It was in 1876 that the first Holy Family nuns reached Bloemfontein by ox wagon. Generations of girls have passed through their hands since, girls who have become gradually less critical of their preceptresses and more grateful to them as the years have passed.

Therefore some of us had come together that morning to pay our respects to the old school and see how it was managing to exist without us.

"This is where our matrics sleep," Sister Philip announced, leading the way into a spacious and airy wing of the building.

"Gosh," I said to my friend, another old girl who lives in my town and who had brought me here, "can you remember how we used to sleep on the balcony, even in the heart of winter? We must have been made of sterner stuff in those days. I doubt whether I could still do it today."

"Sure, 'twas the greatest punishment for any of you to be put indoors," Sister Philip commented derisively.

As we followed her from floor to floor I thought about our visit to the cemetery and the graves of our old Sisters that morning and of the thrill I had experienced when I'd spotted the grave of  Sister Camillus.

I have not been a faithful old girl, I must confess, and the first and only other time I had visited these graves I was walking beside Sister Camillus as she put flowers on a Sister's grave. And here was Sister Camillus, dead for years.

Ah, and there was the grave of infirmarian and cook, Sister Gerard.

Oddly enough she had died within a week of the demise of her own sister, another Holy Family nun. They were buried side by side.

I popped a flower into the glass jar on her grave, mindful of the days when she said referring to my sister and myself: "Sure they're two bold ones but this one (meaning me) is the boldest."

Sister Philip had come to the end of her tour and it was lunchtime. We thanked the kind Sisters, said goodbye and went for lunch to my friend's sister who lives in town. After lunch my friend's husband looked at the time. "We'd better go home quickly you two."

And off we went - regretfully.

But nothing would keep us from going back next year.

Mary's choice

Photograph taken by Lumiere Volunteer Britain
and used with kind permission

Luky
Mary's choice
Bernadette of Lourdes was chosen by the Mother of God as Her special messenger to tell the world of the need of prayer and sacrifice.
As a token of Bernadette's credibility, Our Lady showed her a spring which continues flowing to this day and whose waters have cured many from illness and disease.

Keener vision
Yet I doubt whether those of you who have been to Lourdes will dispute the fact that whereas it is generally illness which brings us there, it is our religious belief which becomes the chief beneficiary of our sojourn.
Francois Mauriac says: "I cannot walk a few steps in Lourdes without asking myself what I believe and what I don't."

Little heaven
The magnificent background of Pyrenees succeeds in providing beauty and the devotion of the people leads one to believe that Bernadette spoke for many besides herself when she said in uncharacteristic outburst: "The Grotto was my heaven."
When in Lourdes again, I was delighted and proud to be recognised by the Grotto chaplain.
I knew him, of course, but was hesitant to approach.
They meet so many people.
He hastened forward with outstretched hand, exclaiming: "Ah! So you came back!"
Ah, so I did.
How could I fail to, having once known this beautiful place!

Catherine Nicolette;
The Power of Lourdes
I have been to Lourdes twice. 
Once with Mom on a pilgrimage when I had just turned seventeen.
And once, many years later.
The first time I went, I was youthful and strong, full of hopes and prayers for the future.
My purpose was pilgrimage, to find out what God wanted me to do with my life.
I received great blessing during my pilgrimage to Lourdes.

The Second Time
The second time I went, I was in my forties, in severe pain and struggling to walk.
My purpose was to ask for physical healing.
When I got to the Piscines later in the day, there were too many pilgrims to be assisted, so I was requested to come back the next morning.
I was there at Dawn the next day, two hours before the Piscines opened.
When the Bath Attendants came out, the tears began flowing from my eyes.
The other pilgrims who were waiting helped me to walk to the front of the queue and gave up their places for me.
No instant miracle happened that day.
When I left the Piscines, I still walked as slowly.
My left arm and hand still would not move.
The pain was still there.
Yet the cloud over me had lifted. I somehow knew I would get through the illness.

After leaving Lourdes, I found the diagnosis I sought from a dedicated doctor in South Africa and received amazing Ayurvedic treatment in India which restored my almost paralyzed left arm and slow legs to full mobility.

Gifts
That day in Lourdes, I received the gifts of courage and strength to face all my illness would challenge me with.

And, it would seem, a new gift of healing hands . . .


Lourdes apparitions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourdes_apparitions

With thanks to Wikipedia

Hats off to the Menders of Ways

Luky;
WHEN my husband was in hospital once, one of his friends used to visit him regularly.
I really took a fancy to this man, who claimed to be a reformed alcoholic.
I always admire people who are not ashamed to admit their failings, and I try to be like them - but there are some things I prefer to bury under a stone.

Not so Steve (fictitious name).
In an accent called Johannesburg Bronx, he started his reminisces, eyes brimming with laughter and eyebrows dancing, "When I was an alkie . . ."
And soon everyone held their sides with laughter from sincere appreciation that a man who by his own admission once plumbed such depths was able to overcome his weakness.
"I had the DT's," he recalled with relish. 
"Crumbs, that was awful.
Mind you, there's a lot of rubbish spoken about those pink elephants you're supposed to see when you're having an attack. 
There's no such thing."
"What did you see, then?" I asked.
"White elephants", he said.
And he added;
"They knew me in the pubs from the Cape to Cairo.
As I'd walk in, I'd shout; "Shake a leg, youse camel drivers.
Give a thirsty man a drink!"
Steve's reform came about when he met a woman - I thought she was breathtakingly lovely, and so did Steve - who paid him the compliment of marrying him and making him the envy of most men who knew him.
I wouldn't advise a daughter of mine to marry an alcoholic in the hope of reforming him, but this girl pulled it off.
Her husband went on the wagon and became a devout churchgoer and devoted father to his children.
He never touched a drop of alcohol again.

I thought a lot about Steve since going on a diet.
When in Lourdes in 1971, I was so joyful that I decided to heed the request for sacrifices Our Lady made to St Bernadette, and gave up alcohol and smoking.
If Our Lady was pleased with my sacrifice, she couldn't have shown her satisfaction in a more baffling way, because I picked up 7 kg over the two weeks, to which I have been steadily adding in the years that ensued.
You don't notice half a kilo over two months, but it adds up over the years.

My husband had long been trying to persuade me to diet, with scant success.
He said that going out with me was like going out with his mother; and what happened to that marvellous self-discipline he admired in me when he first met me?
Finally he got his way, and I began my diet.
I know now what horrors Steve must have experienced when he took the pledge.

I went about my diet in a scientific way.
Before tackling it, I made a novena to St Jude, patron of hopeless cases, that I might be granted the self-control to stick to my diet.
Spadework completed, I collared an acquaintance who had shed 28 kg over four months and asked her how she accomplished this feat.
She gave me her diet, and a Spartan regime it was, for breakfast, a cup of grapefruit juice and a boiled egg;
for lunch, two old-fashioned ounces of meat and and as many vegetables as you liked, except for peas.
Unfortunately for me I only like peas, but then this was a diet, not a picnic.

For supper there was a tiny wedge of diet cheese, and as many salads as you liked.
Your treat for the day was one piece of fruit, and of course the knowledge that in four months' time you'll weigh 28 kg less.
There was one snag to the diet; if you ate one slice of bread, you undid all the good four days of hardship had accomplished.
What a blow for Luky, the baker's daughter!

I had been on the diet for eight days.
On the third day, I took a slice of bread - all right, if you insist, I ate three.
Then again on the eighth day I had a slice of bread - all right, all right, four.
And so after enduring the pangs of hunger for eight days I had accomplished exactly nothing.

Or had I? Weight loss, for vanity's sake, is not the most important thing in the world, but to appreciate the trials of the poor and hungry is just that.
I could not forget the plight of the underprivileged while I was enduring the diet.
And at the rate I was going, that would be forever.

It's more important to be nice

Luky;

ARROGANCE and snobbery, both by-products of pride, the first of the seven deadly sins, are two traits I cannot abide.

Even at school I met arrogant girls; children who automatically assumed they were a cut above the others and the sad thing about them was that they quite often succeeded in making me feel inferior.

One day I complained to my mother, who explained to me that truly worthwhile people, those who are high achievers, are very seldom arrogant because so much effort goes into their achievements, leaving them no energy with which to look down their noses at others who may be less talented.

True enough. 

It's often a lot harder to deal with the wives and secretaries of great men than with the men themselves.

Reflected glory has turned many an underling's head, whereas the Great Man himself is sometimes just a good old three and fourpence.

One of my daughters once said of some children that they were snobs because they didn't want to play with her.

I told her not to speak in this way because by conceding that others look down upon one, one downgrades oneself, or so I viewed it.

"Oh no Mommy," she said.

"To me it is the greatest disgrace in the world to be arrogant.

Such people don't make me feel inferior at all.

Quite the reverse."

Sometimes a child sees more deeply than an adult.

This was one of those occasions when I learnt from my child.

Learning French

I always chuckle to recall another incident.

I had started studying French and in the early stages we were taught how to go shopping.

We were taught that beef in French is called boeuf, pronunced buff with the vowel sound lengthened.

Shortly afterwards a very patronizing woman I had never met phoned to give me a story about cordon bleu cookery.

She spoke of a French dish.

I asked her to repeat the name, which sounded like boof.

"It means beef in French dear," she said condescendingly.

"Oh, you mean boeuf," I replied tactlessly.

Wind out of her sails

Suddenly the wind went out of her sails and she started speaking in a normal tone of voice.

She must have believed I knew French.

How wrong she was.

But whether I did or I didn't, does a knowledge of a foreign language automatically raise another human being from the ranks of the ignoramus to those of the social equal?