A Very Merry Main Street Market

Merry Christmas everyone. I hope you enjoy the company of family and friends.

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is the gingerbread house. So, I went earlier this month to the Very Merry Main Street Market at Beaumont Civic Center. It was fun to watch the kids working hard to build the gingerbread houses. It was more fun to watch the parents take the task very seriously.



Merry Christmas everyone

Alchemist, The Book

I don't read much fiction. But, when I started reading Alchemist,I couldn't put it down. I can't remember the last time I read a novel that made me re-think the meaning of my life.

Anyone can easily find yourself in this book. You may be one character or the other. By the time you finish reading the book, you'll have a better understanding of yourself.

I appreciate the writer's view of the Middle East. He could have easily used the stereotypical view of the Middle East. Instead, he showed the wisdom of his Middle Eastern characters.

The best thing about the book is its shortness. The back of my copy included an interview with the writer, Paulo Coelho. The interview was originally published on beliefnet. According to Paulo, the book will be made into a movie. I doubt the movie can capture the spirituality and philosophy of the book.

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Alchemist

The Murder of Sister Karen Klimczak

UPDATE - Mar. 10, 2007
On Wednesday, Craig M. Lynch, the murderer of Sr. Karen Klimczak was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Since her murder, I asked myself, "What does Sr. Karen think of her murderer?." Knowing her work of peace, I had a feeling she has already forgiven him. I wasn't mistaken. The Buffalo News reports:

Fifteen years before Sister Karen Klimczak was strangled by an ex-convict on Good Friday, the Buffalo nun wrote a letter of forgiveness to her killer.

She apparently had a premonition, perhaps during her prayers or a dream just before Holy Week in 1991, that her life would one day be taken violently.

Back in 1991, she wrote:

“ ‘Dear Brother, I don’t know what the circumstances are that will lead you to hurt me or destroy my physical body,’ ” Sister Jean read.
[...]
“ ‘No, I don’t want it to happen,’ ” she read softly. “ ‘I would much rather enjoy the beauties of this earth, experience the laughter, the fears and the tears of those I love so deeply!’ ”

Sister Jean continued: “ ‘. . . Now my life has changed and you, my brother, were the instrument of that change. I forgive you for what you have done and I will always watch over you, help you in whatever way I can. . . . Continue living always mindful of His Presence, His Love and His Joy as sources of life itself — then my life will have been worth being changed through you.’ ”

R.I.P Sr Karen. You were a walking angel on earth.

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UPDATE - Dec. 19, 2006
The jury has reached a verdict. The Newsday reports:

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) _ A jury has convicted a parolee of killing a pacifist nun at the halfway house she operated in Buffalo.

Craig Lynch was found guilty late Friday in Erie County Court of manslaughter, burglary and second-degree murder for beating and strangling Sister Karen Klimczak on April 14 in her room at Bissonette House.
[...]
Lynch could face 25 years to life in prison at sentencing March 7. He is in jail without bail.

Read more...

R.I.P Sr. Karen. I hope your murderer will never hurt any other person.

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ORIGINAL POST - Apr. 19, 2006

On Friday, Sister Karen Klimczak from Buffalo, N.Y. went missing. On Monday, the search for her came to an unhappy ending:

Just as 600 people prayed for a miracle that a missing nun who devoted her life to nonviolence would be found alive, authorities made the devastating announcement Monday evening that her body had been recovered and that an ex-convict she tried to help was arrested in her murder.
[...]
Police said Sister Karen Klimczak, 62, who had lived and worked at Bissonette House - a halfway house on 335 Grider St. named for the Rev. A Joseph Bissonette, a priest brutally murdered in the same building in 1987 - was killed by one of the parolees staying there.

Read more...

Then comes the reason behind her murder:

Sister Karen Klimczak was killed for a fake bag of crack, then buried in a deep grave in a crumbling back shed where no one could have found her, police revealed Tuesday.

Detectives who investigated the Good Friday slaying of the pacifist nun said that her alleged killer, Craig M. Lynch, 36, confessed that he was high on crack cocaine and bent on getting more when he went into Sister Karen's room at the Bissonette House halfway house.

His plan was to steal her cell phone and sell it for money to buy crack. But when she walked in, he panicked, then strangled and beat her, authorities said.

Read more...

He could have asked her for money. She would have definitely helped him in one way or another. Instead, he turned to violence toward a person who advocated peace until her death.

Praying With The Iraqi People

A Christian Science Monitor journalist/Writer/Contributer wrote last week:

Does it matter that Iraq is almost completely a Muslim society and I'm a Christian? As I pondered this question, I found where Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of this newspaper, wrote: "God is universal; confined to no spot, defined by no dogma, appropriated by no sect. Not more to one than to all, is God demonstrable as divine Life, Truth, and Love; and His people are they that reflect Him - that reflect Love" ("Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896," p 150).

There isn't a Muslim God and a Christian God. There is, I believe, only the one infinite All-power. This makes us all children of the one God, and therefore we have a brotherhood that is wider than the narrow confines of religious dogma

Read more...

Prayers have no boundaries. When in need of a prayer, don't hesitate to ask a Muslim, a Christian or to pray with you. I believe in the power of interfaith even when some people disappoint me. I always think back to myself and say, "There are good and bad apples in the basket. Pick the good ones."

Iraq certainly needs your prayers these days.

The Kidnapping of Fr. Sami Abd-Ahad

UPDATE Dec. 11, 2006
The kidnappers released Fr. Sami on Sunday. Thanks God he returned safely to his family, friend and parish.

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ORIGINAL POST Dec. 6, 2006
There's been another kidnapping of a Chaldean priest in Baghdad. He's the sixth priest to be kidnapped in the latest wave of terrorizing the Iraqi Christian community.

Fr. Sami was kidnapped after leaving his home to go to church two days ago. Patriarch of the Chaldean Church Emmanuel III Delly has pleaded for his safe return in an open letter to his kidnappers.

I'll keep you unpdated on Fr. Sami's status. Please, keep him and all the innocent Iraqis in your prayers.

KFC: Our Daily Chicken

It's time for another Catholic joke. I hope you enjoy it:

A salesman from KFC walked up to the Pope and offers him a million dollars if he would change "The Lord's Prayer" from "give us this day our daily bread" to "give us this day our daily chicken." The Pope refused his offer.

Two weeks later, the man offered the pope 10 million dollars to change it from "give us this day our daily bread" to "give us this day our daily chicken" and again the Pope refused the man's generous offer.

Another week later, the man offered the Pope 20 million dollars and finally the Pope
accepted.

The following day, the Pope said to all his officials, "I have some good news and some bad news. 'The good news is, that we have just received a check for 20 million dollars. The bad news is, we lost the Wonder Bread account!'"

Source: Comedy Central

Lisa's Testament of Faith

Sometimes, readers send me stories that got be shared with the other readers. We can all learn from each other. Today, I share with you Lisa's story:

I was born into a Church of England family. My parents had me christened in the church that they married in. I assumed that I was a Christian. My Mum had been a Sunday school teacher, and used to sing “Jesus” songs with me in the bath, but I only remember them making me feel pretty uncomfortable.

As a teenager, I started to explore my identity. I studied RE in school. RE taught all major religions, and it started me thinking very seriously about whether or not there was a god. I was especially impressed by the Sikh religion. I also remember a group of us exploring the occult until a friend warned us that it would cause us to go to hell. We found an encyclopedia picture of hell, it did not look fun and so we stopped.

I took my A levels in science. It was at this point that I decided that there had to be a God on intellectual grounds. Chemistry taught the theory of chaos, in which all things became more disorganized unless an outside force organized them. Also I recognized the logic of the periodic table of elements. No one but a higher being could have done these things. I remember asking my Christian friends how they had found God. I also prayed to him myself, asking him to find me, or at least let me know which religion had the right answers.

After A levels I went straight to University. I wanted to be a missionary doctor; perhaps by being very good I would find God. I started to question evolution, which had been a large part of my biology studies. A close friend became a Christian in college, and he completely changed over night. It was like watching a different person take over. In my eyes he became a better person, and yet I was not convinced that he had all the right answers. He kept telling me that I needed to be born again. He invited me to his baptism and the pastor asked everyone to stand up if they wanted to receive Jesus as savior. I remember shrinking in my seat and wondering what my new university friends would think of me. At the same time I found myself standing up. At this point in time I was aware of a deep hunger to belong to God, and an awareness that I had sinned. I felt a relief after standing up, and a realization that Jesus was God. This was a completely new experience.

Several weeks later I was praising God, and became aware of a strong force upon me. I felt afraid and very ecstatic at the same time. I started to praise God in a strange language that I had never learnt.

However, I soon became unwell. I suffered from very severe anxiety. My Mother blamed my new faith and insisted that I never again go to church. My bible was burned. I felt worse and further away from God than ever before. I continued in my pre-Christian life, having no power to control my sin. I had a complete fear of death and hell.

For ten years I actively shunned the church. My Mother died and I got married and had my first child. It was after my son was born that I decided to return to my search for God. I went (very tentatively) back to church. I got baptized. I worked harder and harder to find peace with God, eventually getting involved with multiple church projects. You see, God had dealt with my sin, but it was not the sin but the sinner that needed to be dealt with. It was not what I did but what I was that was the problem.

I remember looking seriously at the 10 commandments. I had broken many of them over the years, but now I had reformed myself and could seriously manage them all, except “thou must not covet”-I remember feeling really perplexed when I thought about this, it felt impossible, there was something badly wrong. Then and there I decided to give up all my church work. If I could not keep the 10 commandments, then church work was a waste of time. Besides I was tired of it all, it felt like too big a job. I began to pray, I begged God to change me. I wanted to become acceptable to him. I realized that I was a sinner. God showed me just how badly wrong I was, in every area of my life. He also gave me the ability to turn away from my sin. I remember one night he woke me, I was really afraid to be in his presence, because He is a holy God and in comparison I am just a worm (I was reminded of Isaiah having an experience of God, in which he cried out “Woe is me, for I am a sinful man and I live within a nation of sinful men and my eyes have seen the king, the Lord almighty”). I thought that I would die as his holiness was totally overpowering, and my only plea was that Jesus is my savior.

The next morning it was like a complete miracle. I was really free. I have never since felt that overwhelming fear of death. I now know the peace that passes all understanding. I can truly sing “my chains fell off, my heart was freed, I rose went forth and followed thee,” I actually join with Newton singing “ amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” I know that in this life I will never be perfect, but the power of the cross can overcome. In him there is a power to change that is quite beyond description. He has taken me beyond a set of rules and adopted me into his family. Suddenly the New Testament makes perfect sense. Over the years that have passed, I have repeatedly asked the Lord at what point in my life he saved me and his answer has remained the same-2000 years ago, on the cross.

-- Lisa

Thank you Lisa for taking the time to write me your story. I really appreciate it.