A few quotes from ENDOW’s Discover Your Dignity Part II Study......

Autumn is a wonderful time to reflect upon the changing seasons and the fact that all of life, including our own, comes to an end. This can arouse fear within many of us in considering the unknowns which lie ahead of us. My study group in Boulder is presently concluding the ENDOW Study Discover Your Dignity, A Woman’s Journey Through Life, Part II. This study has been a tremendous blessing as it has given us a glimpse into the beauty and wonder of the final “season” of earthly life and to our ultimate destination, our entrance into eternal life. Have you ever considered the fact that God keeps on giving us unique and special gifts and missions right through our dying day? In learning and knowing a bit more about the very special years of growing older...and wiser, there has been much relief and even joy in anticipating these years. This study has facilitated some of the very best discussions within our group as women have shared loving stories of personal experience in these years as well as the joys of sharing these special years with Mothers, Grandmothers and elderly beloved. What a treasure box to explore, appreciate and anticipate! I highly recommend this beautiful study!

Here are a few quotes from the Study Guide....

“Family prayer has for its very own object family life itself, which in all its varying circumstances is seen as a call from God and lived as a filial response to His call. Joys and sorrows, hopes and disappointments, births and birthday celebrations, wedding anniversaries of the parents, departures, separations and homecomings, important and far-reaching decisions, the death of those who are dear, etc. -all of these mark God’s loving intervention in the family’s history.” Pope John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, 59

“When you are lonely, go and visit somebody who is still lonelier than you! .....In this you are going to find strength and consolation.” Pope John Paul II, You are a Treasure for the Church!

“Love begins by taking care of the closest ones-the ones at home. Let us ask ourselves if we are aware that maybe our husband, our wife, our children, or our parents live isolated from others, do not feel loved enough, even though they may live with us. Do we realize this? Where are the older people today? They are in nursing homes (if there are any). Why? Because they are not wanted, because they are too much trouble, because.....” Mother [Blessed] Teresa, In My Own Words

Treat yourself to learning more about the special plan God has for us all during the second half of life in this study. The plan of God revealed within this study have both relieved fear of our own elderly years and has increased our compassion and desire to accompany our beloved elderly on this sacred journey into eternal life.

Embrace this beautiful season.......and each year and season of our lives! May we all pray for our elderly and show them the love, respect and care that brings joy to God and to us all.

Check out more about this ENDOW study here.

Kindness is the summit of fortitude.......an inspiring quote......

The quote below, found in ENDOW’s “Discover Your Dignity: Part II” study.....(more on ENDOW’s DYD II here) provides us with a rich invitation to ponder how a strong woman lives out her vocation of love.

“The Bible does not praise the weak woman, but the strong one, when it says in the Book of Proverbs ‘it is kindly instruction she gives’ (Prov 31:26), because kindness is the summit of fortitude. The motherly woman has the privilege of this direct and important function----to know how to wait; to know how to be silent; being able, when faced with injustice or weakness, to turn a blind eye, to excuse, to cover shaming things up---which is no less a work of mercy than that of covering the nakedness of the body.”

Gertrud von le Fort, The Eternal Woman

"For both we and our words are in his hand, as are all understanding and skill in crafts." Wisdom 7:16

COME HOLY SPIRIT!!! Please give us your gifts to do the will of God for His glory! Please intercede for us, our Blessed Mother Mary!

A Little Help from My Friends

By Terry Polakovic

I am lucky because I live in a house that has a great front porch. I have spent hours on that porch sharing stories with family and friends. It was the inspiration for this blog. However, I quickly realized that it wasn’t much fun sitting out there by myself. I needed a little help from my friends.

So, over the next several days and weeks, you will start to meet them, and I am sure you will come to love them just as I have. Many of these men and women helped to found the ENDOW program, and all of them have made it what it is today ~ a fast growing, educational program for women based on the teachings of the Catholic Church. I can honestly say that it has been a grand adventure for all of us and it is our greatest hope that a few people have benefitted along the way.

Now a little bit about friendship…taken from ENDOW’s Discover Your Dignity: A Woman's Journey through Life, Part II study guide:

“…True friendship is one of mutual love and goodwill. Communication is an essential component. True friends want to share the most important things in their lives; they want to do the same kinds of things and do them together. They want their lives to coincide in a very real way. As Aristotle put it, they must “eat salt together.” This kind of friendship means helping each other grow in virtue and communicating to each other that we are lovable. It means taking the time to really know one another for who we are and looking beyond each other’s shortcomings to what we can ultimately become. Essentially, true friends help us to see ourselves as we truly are and they give us an insight into how God loves us…”

Perhaps more than ever, today we need to sit on the front porch with our friends. Both the porch and our friends remind us that we are human. We need to be reminded. Never before in history has our humanity been so severely tested. In a world that has lost its affinity for closeness, we need to remember that we were made for relationship. Frances Weaver, the author of The Girls With the Grandmother Faces and a friend of mine from years gone by once wrote, “The fabric of American life began to disintegrate with the disappearance of the front porch…When we moved to the patio in the backyard, then to the TV in the house, we lost important human contacts.” She was right. Let’s do our best to recapture them.