“The Life of Jesus: An Illustrated Rosary,”

by Mary Billingsley

Artist Mary Billingsley has offered a wonderful gift to the world, a unique, new way to pray the Rosary that stirs the senses, touches the heart and renews the soul.

First, for those unfamiliar with the chain of beads or those who need a refresher course, she spells out the words of all the individual prayers, and in beautifully drawn info graphic style labels exactly how to use each portion of a Rosary.

Her clever paintings then accompany beautifully sounding, simple to grasp language for each prayer of each of the five decades of the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary that long have been part of the Catholic tradition, plus the newer Luminous Mysteries added by Pope John Paul II in 2002.

No Rosary needed

One doesn’t even have to have a Rosary to pray the Rosary with this gorgeous 56-page Eerdmans book that’s a lovely combination of art and text. Just read and pray and turn the page.

If you’re the type of person who takes comfort in your Rosary beads, you’ll get new meaning by reading along as you pray as you always have.

Franciscan Friar of the Renewal Father Benedict Groeschel notes in a foreword that Billingsley crafted this work for children, but that “children of all ages” will find value in the rich text and colorful, creative paintings that depict scenes from the Scripture.

Paintings that fill the senses

While the text tells the Bible stories in plain English, the paintings are busy, eclectic works that force readers to scour every corner for the little  details that Billingsley has dropped in to make elaborate scenes.

They are the fruit of a unique process in which Billingsley takes found objects — an old gate, a hand-made crutch, a hunk of ribbon — and creates a shrine of a scene from Jesus’ life — Finding Jesus in the Temple,  the Marriage Feast at Cana, the Last Supper — which she then paints.

Every time you look at one of the scenes you’ll see something you hadn’t seen before.

The whole package of words and pictures makes almost sensory overload, but what it really does it add additional meaning to what can often can become prayer by rote. — bz

I’m close to making a purchase decision on an eReader, specifically the Sony PRS-300 (Pocket Edition). It looks to be just the right size for me and the right price.

Have a couple questions for folks with an eReader…

1. Do the Sony products allow you to ’subscribe’ to a blog somehow? Would love to be able to read some of the blogs I follow on this device.
2. Again, Sony products, are you only able to buy books from Sony or can you buy from Amazon and other places?
3. Do eReaders in general do a decent job of displaying PDF files?
4. Any regrets on your purchase? Do you wish you would’ve gone with a different size, make or model?

Thanks in advance!

I’ve had my iPhone for a little more than 6 months now, and it has been an incredible experience. I’ve had Blackberries and Palms before, but this ‘fella integrates my tech life with my ‘real life’ more seamlessly and more enjoyably. It didn’t hurt that I also made the complete switch from PC to Mac. 

Creating a list of ‘Five Faves’ is pretty difficult, since I’ve installed 50 to date, so I’ll just focus on those that I actually use the most. I’ll leave out the core apps that come pre-installed, because as you can imagine, the email / calendar / contacts apps are my primary day-to-day tools.

In no particular order . . .

1. Tweetie 2 – It supports multiple accounts, saved searches, twitter trends and is respectably fast. Maybe someday, Tweetdeck and Hootsuite for iphone will win me over, but for now Tweetie has my vote.
2. Facebook – I’m a moderate ‘Facebooker’, so it’s nice to keep up to date with friends on the go. The Fan Page feature is nice.
3. The Weather Channel – The 36 hour and 10 day forecasts are my favorite features here. There’s a whole slew of ‘Weather’ apps out there, but this one suits my purposes.
4. Fox Sports – I have to admit, I’m a sports junkie and this app feeds my need. Not as visually inviting as ESPN SportCenter (which I also use occasionally), but it’s always got the latest scores, schedules and breaking news to keep me plugged in until I’m in my car listening to KFAN AM 1130.
5. NewsRack – Ask any tech head how many RSS feeds they’re following and it’ll probably be quite a few. I’m following over 30 feeds covering technology, design, development, religion and productivity tips. If I don’t keep reading those things often, within a couple days I’m buried. Integrates and syncs with Google Reader and a plethora of saving/read later options, including my personal favorite, ‘InstaPaper’.

Honorable mentions . . .

• Flixter Movies – Nice for getting bite-sized reviews of upcoming movies. Also integrates with Facebook.
• Wikipanion – So far, much better than the Wikipedia app.
• World Cup Air Hockey – Reliving the ‘Miracle on Ice’.

How about you, what are your ‘Five Faves’?

“Food Will Win the War: Minnesota Crops, Cooks and Conservation during World War I,”

by Rae Katherine Eighmey

Baby boomers, get ready to be amazed at what our ancestors did that I’ll bet you never heard about.

Food historian Rae Katherine Eighmey has pulled together bushels of facts that I’ll be surprised if the post-World War II crowd has read or been told about. Page after page of this Minnesota Historical Society Press paperback brought behavior changes and sacrifices that were news to me.

I’d heard generic references to rationing from relatives, but much of that was from their WWII experience. The first World War was a whole different, untold story. Believing “food will win the war,” U.S. leaders asked that food be conserved at every American table.

Meatless Mondays and Wheatless Wednesdays were all part of a national program to conserve protein for the fighting men and to enable more food to be shipped to the starving people of Europe.

Eighmey called food conservation during World War I “the first large-scale, social-networking enterprise of the twentieth century,” and it was accomplished before radio, television and telephones in much of the country.

“This was ‘everyone’s war,’” Eighmey noted, “and accomplishing this task depended upon the good will of informed and enlightened American citizens. It succeeded, thanks to the organized and voluntary efforts of ordinary people meeting in kitchens and classrooms, libraries, theaters, and churches, on street corners and over backyard fences all across the country — sharing information, inspiring cooperation, and creating solutions.”

Peer-influenced results

The recipe for success included two main ingredients, Eighmey wrote: Persuasive information and the actions put into motion by social-networking and peer-influence efforts.  Harvesting letters home, newspapers from the era, little circulated newsletters and national archives, the author shows how during those war years of 1917-18 Minnesotans in cities, towns and rural areas demonstrated how to be unselfish, how to be responsible citizens, and how to willing people can be on behalf of the common good.

Men, women and children in every household reduced their intake of wheat, meat, fats and sugar. In February 1918, only three of the week’s 21 meals were without restriction: seven were meatless, seven were wheatless and five were both meatless and wheatless.

Slogans became part of the social influences. Every woman, for example, was allegedly “drafted” into the ranks of the “Army of American Housewives”  — kitchen warriors saving calories that would feed the troops instead. Farmers were referred to as “soldiers of the soil.”

Growing food in victory gardens and canning extra food became important for even city dwellers, and the University of Minnesota’s home economists  got to work inventing new recipes to use substitute ingredients for wheat flour and beef, putting corn meal, rice and barley flour into recipes for bread,   and encouraging consumption of more pork, chicken and fish. Among the recipes devised by one Minnesotan: a wheatless, sugar-saving potato chocolate cake.

Minnesotans were urged to eat more cottage cheese, grow more potatoes, and to “Can Vegetables, Fruit and the Kaiser, too.”

Needed instruction done

Milk as a protein substitute went over well in a dairy state like Minnesota, and the university’s extension serve, the U. S. Department of Agriculture and the Food Administration all took educational efforts wherever they could find a group willing to listen to instructions about cold-pack canning, making cottage cheese, even storing eggs for up to six months.

Thanks to Eighmey and the Minnesota Historical Society, those of us who’ve never been forced to ration anything have a better idea of how some remarkable numbers were achieved. America shipped 23 million metric tons of food to Europe during the years of the first World War.

As a poster at the time noted, Americans could “Save a loaf a week, help win the war.”

And they did. — bz

Order by clicking on http://shop.mnhs.org/moreinfomhspress.cfm?Product_ID=2548

I figured it would happen sooner or later. Today was the day.

All winter, I have been navigating through lots of slippery sidewalks and streets in my walking and running routine. I have tried to be very careful on the ice, and I think I have gotten pretty good at staying on my feet.

But, finally, I fell. The spill took place in the last mile of my run this morning. The temperature had dipped below freezing overnight and I saw some slick spots as I jogged my usual route. Near the end, I slipped a bit on a sidewalk, then tried to slow down as I crossed the street. My foot hit a patch of ice, and I fell sideways. I tore a dime-sized hunk of skin off the palm of my right hand, and bruised my elbow and knee. But, thank the Lord, there were no broken bones.

Several years ago, two of my coworkers broke their arms in March falling on ice. So, I’m very aware of the dangers that the freeze and thaw of late winter bring. On the positive side, one fall during an entire winter is pretty good, if you ask me. I’m sure hoping not to add any more spills to this total.

The scrape on my palm made me think about Jesus and the wounds he had on his hands from the nails when he was crucified. I experienced some pain as I washed my hand, but I’m sure it’s nothing compared to the agony that  Jesus endured. So many times when I think of Christ’s passion, I am amazed that he was willing to take on such great suffering.

I know that I do not possess such a willing spirit. But, at least, during Lent and after a fall like this, I can experience more gratitude for the price Jesus paid for my salvation.

It was late on Friday afternoon and my son, Joe, and I were cruising south on Interstate 94 toward the Twin Cities. We were on our way back from a pair of college visits, one to Minnesota State University Moorhead and the other to North Dakota State University.

Joe spotted a deer on the edge of the woods and noticed it still had antlers. Most bucks have shed them by this time, so I thought this was an unusual sight. We also noticed that this deer and several others looked full bodied and healthy. They obviously have gotten through the cold, snowy winter in excellent shape.

The sightings gave me an opportunity to share a spiritual lesson based on a hunting-related experience Joe had recently. When we went to Montana over Thanksgiving to visit his grandparents and hunt with Grandpa Bob, Joe got an unexpected gift at the end of the trip. Grandpa Bob had a beautiful .270-caliber rifle with a high-quality Nikon scope. He got the gun before the season and hunted the entire fall with it. As it turned out, he never fired a shot at an animal with it.

Still, he was very fond of the firearm. Yet, in an amazing act of generosity, he gave the gun to Joe right before we left. Joe was nearly speechless and could hardly believe what had happened.

I brought this up on our drive home and asked him a few questions about this extraordinary gift: Why would Granpa Bob give you such a gift? What does it mean to you? Why did he choose you?

I wanted him to get a sense of the magnitude of this gift and to develop an appreciation for it. I went on to encourage him to think about his sexuality in a similar manner to this gift from his grandpa. Our sexuality is a precious gift that we give to another. It is very special and not meant to be casually given. God wants us to treat it with the highest degree of respect and only to give it away to one person, and in the context of a committed relationship — marriage.

This was my opportunity to drive home lessons I had learned on Theology of the Body from a book written by Christopher West, one of the foremost experts on the subject. The primary expert, of course, was Pope John Paul II, who delivered this work of theology in a series of talks that were picked up and assembled into the work that was eventually called Theology of the Body.

I know my brief analogy doesn’t do the topic justice, but I wanted to be able to take something Joe could relate to and connect it to this important concept. When he goes off to college — wherever it ends up being — there is sure to be all kinds of temptations, including sexual temptation. The best safeguard is to have a firm foundation of theology and morals in place, and to develop a high sense of responsibility in living according to your beliefs.

Also, I am hoping he will choose a college that has an environment compatible with his beliefs. In three weeks, we will be visiting the University of Dallas, which is a Catholic college with a strong liberal arts emphasis and a great reputation. We’ll see how Joe reacts to it. This is an important decision for him, and my hope is he will select the college that’s right for him — the one God has for him.

So, I will be fervently praying for him in the coming weeks. I humbly ask those reading this to do the same.

“Articles of War,”

by Nick Arvin

What’s it like to be in a foxhole when the enemy starts firing into your position?

What’s a like to be a scared 18-year-old private from Iowa in a shallow, mud-sloppy hole in eastern France protected by a couple of tree trunks over your head when the German Army begins its famous “bulge” during World War II’s Allied push toward the Rhine?

What thoughts go through your head when around you other soldiers are dying, when their bodies are blasted apart by explosions and their blood and pieces of flesh spatter your face?

Nick Arvin’s writing makes you duck your head when you read that the shelling is starting again. Along with the soldiers you pray for the booms and the shrapnel to stop. It’s writing so vivid you want to curl into the fetal position for cover.

“Now I want to take a poll,” a battle-hardened soldier calls out to his comrades in neighboring foxholes when the shelling finally subsides. “How many of you are still atheists?”

Frozen or driven by fear

“Hero” isn’t quite the right description for the protagonist in “Articles of War” because George Tilson, nicknamed Heck by fellow soldiers because he refuses to curse, is a coward.

Injured slightly in a non-combat accident, Heck is in no hurry to return to the front. Lessons in maturity happen while he’s recuperating, a love interest of course, and more realization of the horrors of war that may await him when he returns to the fighting.

All of which adds to the fear that at times paralyzes him, at other times pushes him to act less than heroically, and leads to being forced to do one of the most distasteful acts any soldier is ever ordered to do.

First published five years ago, “Articles of War” is a slim 178 pages packed with nerve-testing scenes. Arvin takes his readers not only into battle but into the mind of someone who might just be a lot like you and I in terrifying, irrational situations. The Doubleday hardcover is now out as an Anchor paperback.

Read it and you won’t help but think about what American soldiers must be going through in Afghanistan and Iraq today, and wish they were all home. — bz

“Lent and Easter Reflections for the Younger Crowd,”

by John Behnke, CSP

Father John Behnke would make a great editor.

The Paulist priest has a terrific ability to condense Scripture readings to the meat of their messages, and that’s what he offers for each day of Lent, the Triduum and Eastertide for all three of our liturgical cycles. What is many verses in the original becomes 2-3-4 sentences in common, understandable English.

Packed into this 140-page Paulist Press paperback are these summaries of the readings, the Psalm and the Gospel for each day, a thought to reflect on from Father Behnke, plus two unique touches.

First there’s an unfinished prayer that invites personal completion. A sample is:

“Dear God, sometimes I jump the gun and blow things all out of proportion. Help me to keep a good perspective on life. Please help me to ….”

Each day also includes a thought from a college student, so the young readers this book was written for can get an idea of what their peers think about the day’s message.

Father Behnke was for several years chaplain of the St. Lawrence/Newman Community that serves the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and he invited students to add their voices to the work. For example, student Annette Johnson wrote this in her “My thoughts” comment about the Gospel story in which the Sanhedrin blast Jesus for performing a miracle on the Sabbath:

“Help me to not be such a hypocrite when it comes to people that I don’t like. Help me to stop having such a selfish view of my beliefs. help me to open myself to learning from others.”

I think you’ll find the comments brutally honest and touchingly personal.

A toe into the meditation pool

In the suggestions for using the guide, it’s pointed out that the re-written Scripture is a supplement to, not a substitute for, the readings contained in the Lectionary. “The author’s intent is an easy-to-read primer to help initiate the almost adult person into the joys and peace of spirit and mind one gains through personal contact with God that can be achieved by means of a structured meditation.”

The whole book is a great aid for anyone needing a useful tool to help get into the habit of prayerful reflection. This may be a worthwhile gift to someone upon their Confirmation, something that gets them started on a daily quiet time, time for prayer, reflection, a conversation with God.

And Father’s re-writing is so spot on.

Take his take on Exodus 20:1-7, better known as the Ten Commandments:

“One day God said to his people, ‘Here are some rules I want you to always follow:

1. Pray only to me because I’m the one who made you and saved you.

2. I don’t want to hear any of you swearing.

3. I want one day out of the week to be a special day for you. Don’t do too much work that day so you can relax and spend some time praying to me.

4. I want you to listen to your parents (even when you grow up) because they have lived longer and know more about life than you.

5. Don’t kill anyone for any reason.

6. Don’t fool around with someone you’re not married to.

7. Don’t take anything that isn’t yours.

8. Don’t lie about anybody.

9. Don’t always be wanting things that belong to other people.

All I’m really asking is that you ‘love me and keep my rules.’”

Although there are only nine re-written commandments, I still highly recommend “Lent and Easter Reflections for the Younger Crowd.” — bz

Paulist Press publications are available at many bookstores that sell religious goods and books, and are available by phone by calling the customer service department at 1-800-218-1903.

I was greeted by a surprising sound on my run this morning — birds singing. For two months, it has been mostly silent except for the sound of cars and traffic.

The quiet was very nice, but I welcome these signs of spring. It won’t be long until my favorite bird starts sounding off — the wild turkey. In the meantime, I hope these songbirds keep greeting me with their beautiful melodies. I remember listening to them during my childhood. The one I always liked hearing was the cardinal. Its distinctive sound always caught my attention.

Same thing is true now of a male turkey’s gobble. Bird numbers in Minnesota have gone up steadily over the last 10 to 20 years, to the point that there are plenty of turkeys most everywhere hunting is allowed. I worried a little bit about how they’ve been doing with the cold and snow we’ve had this winter, but a wildlife biologist once assured me that, as long as they can find food during the winter, they’ll do just fine. With a higher amount of unharvested corn left in the fields, the turkeys have plenty to eat.

Needless to say, I’m getting excited about the upcoming spring season. What’s really cool is that this will be one of the first years in a long time that everyone in my family who turkey hunts will have a license this spring — my three sons, including William, who is going on his first turkey hunt, my brothers, Paul and Joe, and my Dad. Can’t wait to see how we all do!

“Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage,”

by Elizabeth Gilbert

Since her last book — “Eat, Pray, Love” — sold 7 million copies, I hoped for something worthwhile out of Elizabeth Gilbert’s supposed “making peace with marriage.”

What a waste of time.

If she hadn’t been an author with a  recent success, I wonder if any publisher would have bothered with this 280-page memoir that’s part pity-party, part narrow-minded opinion-spouting, anti-Christian, too much about her birth family and not enough research about the marriages of real people outside her circle of friends or Third-World villages.

Dozens of therapists, priests, counselors and pastoral ministers have written much more useful works about the sacrament, and they didn’t have to consistently bash organized religion over and over and over in order to do it.

Gilbert’s obviously writing for those who haven’t use for anything so trite as religion or church. Her consistently going back many centuries to bring up outdated views held by some church leaders in the distant past gets annoying, especially when she rarely quotes the sources of the “facts” she’s spewing upon the public.

Selective history

She attacks the concept of marriage as a sacred union between one man and one woman, spending page after page proclaiming the rightness of her belief in same-sex marriage. She claims marriage hasn’t historically been between one man and one woman, but it took all of six minutes for me to flip through Paul’s first letter to the people at Corinth to find in the seventh chapter of his letter, “every man should have his own wife, and every woman her own husband.” That’s something he wrote in the first century, which to me makes one man, one woman marriage pretty historical.

Lord knows the Catholic Church through the ages wasn’t perfect, that abuses occurred, that religion was used for power by some. But Gilbert misses the point when she charges that churches are trying to “rule” when it comes to defining marriage; rather, churches and church leadership are working extremely hard to inform, advise and help society see the wisdom of one man and one woman as a relationship expressed by the word marriage, and that it is so much more than just a commitment.

Gilbert seems to get that when she finally works her way — painstakingly for the reader through her personal journey — to the contribution of a community to marriage.  There is a “collective accountability” about marriage that is supportive. As Gilbert puts it, “Maybe all our marriages must be linked to each other somehow, woven on a larger social loom, in order to endure.”

She seems to get it, too, when she makes the connection that a person can be happy in marriage because they know they are indispensable to somebody else’s life, because they have a partner, because they are building something together, something they both believe in.

Then she goes and ruins it again by male bashing — which I suppose an author is supposed to do in order to be published by someone like Viking and make it with the in crowd. Men, the claim goes, get more out of marriage than women do. What a one-sided, pessimistic point of view!

The world is bigger than Gilbert’s world

Perhaps it’s that attitude about “Committed” that bugged me the most. This is a writer who is so into her own world — her own issues — that’s she’s pulled together a bunch of research to fit her own views.

She’s ignorant of the views of one helluva lot of other people and makes leaps of judgement about the rightness of her own views.

My journalism professors in college would have graded work like “Committed” a “D” at best, marking it up in red with the questions, “Why so few sources?” and “Where’s your attribution?”

The single piece she writes that hit home was her analysis of the result of the intimacy of a long marriage: “It causes us to inherit and trade each other’s stories. This, in part, is how we become annexes of each other, trellises on which each other’s biography can grow.”

Other than that, isn’t until page 214 that Gilbert gives readers much of value when she quotes true experts on marriage — John Gottman and Julie Schwartz-Gottman — about conflict resolution.

My advice? Google Gottman and you’ll get good stuff on marriage from folks who one, know what they are writing about, and two, aren’t so self-absorbed as Elizabeth Gilbert. And, if you want to read a worthwhile memoir, try Patricia Hampl’s “The Florist’s Daughter.”  (see the review at http://bit.ly/cGydew) – bz