the rosary

 

I grew up in a fairly religious Catholic family. 

We all went to church every Sunday, and dad occasionally served as an usher. For a number of years, our mom helped out with funeral lunches. 

For at least a few years, our family would migrate to the living room after dinner during Lent, and we would pray the rosary on our knees.

 It's been decades since I have owned a rosary, but the topic came up today when I was reading a James Patterson book titled "Diana, William, and Harry". 

Princess Diana was well known for her charity work, which brought her into contact with Mother Theresa. One on occasion, Mother Theresa gifted her with a rosary, which she took back to London. 

After her death in Paris in 1997, her butler brought a suitcase containing that rosary with him to Paris, and he wrapped it around her fingers for the flight back to England. It was a rosary that Diana had received from Mother Theresa. He pressed the rosary into Diana's hands, and it went back to England with her in the coffin

 Mother Theresa gave rosaries to a lot of people - and some of them have led to some miracles. Listed below are some samples.

 The rosaries of Mother Theresa have led to a few miracles.

https://www.catholiccompany.com/blue-pearl-mother-teresa-rosary-i131083/#mz-expanded-view-1372970058832

 

Jim Castle was tired when he boarded his plane in Cincinnati, Ohio, that night in 1981. The 45-year-old management consultant had put on a week-long series of business meetings and seminars, and now he sank gratefully into his seat ready for the flight home to Kansas City, Kansas.

As more passengers entered, the place hummed with conversation, mixed with the sound of bags being stowed. Then, suddenly, people fell silent. The quiet moved slowly up the aisle like an invisible wake behind a boat. Jim craned his head to see what was happening, and his mouth dropped open.

Walking up the aisle were two nuns clad in simple white habits bordered in blue. He recognized the familiar face of one at once, the wrinkled skin, the eyes warmly intent. This was a face he'd seen in newscasts and on the cover of TIME. The two nuns halted, and Jim realized that his seat companion was going to be Mother Teresa.

As the last few passengers settled in, Mother Teresa and her companion pulled out rosaries. Each decade of the beads was a different color, Jim noticed. The decades represented various areas of the world, Mother Teresa told him later, and added, "I pray for the poor and dying on each continent."

The airplane taxied to the runway, and the two women began to pray, their voices a low murmur. Though Jim considered himself not a very religious Catholic who went to church mostly out of habit, inexplicably he found himself joining in. By the time they murmured the final prayer, the plane had reached cruising altitude.

Mother Teresa turned toward him. For the first time in his life, Jim understood what people meant when they spoke of a person possessing an "aura." As she gazed at him, a sense of peace filled him; he could no more see it than he could see the wind, but he felt it, just as surely as he felt a warm summer breeze. "Young man," she inquired, "do you say the rosary often?" "No, not really," he admitted.

She took his hand, while her eyes probed him. Then she smiled. "Well, you will now." And she dropped her rosary into his palm.

An hour later Jim entered the Kansas City airport, where he was met by his wife, Ruth. "What in the world?" Ruth asked when she noticed the rosary in his hand. They kissed and Jim described his encounter. Driving home, he said. "I feel as if I met a true sister of God."

Nine months later Jim and Ruth visited Connie, a friend of theirs for several years. Connie confessed that she'd been told she had ovarian cancer. "The doctor says it's a tough case," said Connie, "but I'm going to fight it. I won't give up."

Jim clasped her hand. Then, after reaching into his pocket, he gently twined Mother Teresa's rosary around her fingers. He told her the story and said, "Keep it with you Connie. It may help." "Although Connie wasn't Catholic, her hand closed willingly around the small plastic beads. "Thank you," she whispered. "I hope I can return it."

More than a year passed before Jim saw Connie again. This time, face glowing, she hurried toward him and handed him the rosary "I carried it with me all year," she said. "I've had surgery and have been on chemotherapy, too. Last month, the doctors did second-look surgery, and the tumor's gone. Completely!" Her eyes met Jim's. "I knew it was time to give the rosary back."

In the fall of 1987, Ruth's sister, Liz, fell into a deep depression after her divorce. She asked Jim if she could borrow the rosary, and when he sent it, she hung it over her bedpost in a small velvet bag.

"At night I held on to it, just physically held on. I was so lonely and afraid," she says, "yet when I gripped that rosary, I felt as if I held a loving hand." Gradually, Liz pulled her life together, and she mailed the rosary back. "Someone else may need it," she said.

Then one night in 1988, a stranger telephoned Ruth. She'd heard about the rosary from a neighbor and asked if she could borrow it to take to the hospital where her mother lay in a coma. The family hoped the rosary might help their mother die peacefully.

A few days later, the woman returned the beads. "The nurses told me a coma patient can still hear," she said, "so I explained to my mother that I had Mother Teresa's rosary and that when I gave it to her she could let go; it would be all right. Then I put the rosary in her hand. Right away, we saw her face relax! The lines smoothed out until she looked so peaceful, so young." The woman's voice caught. "A few minutes later she was gone." Fervently, she gripped Ruth's hands. "Thank you."

Is there special power in those humble beads? Or is the power of the human spirit simply renewed in each person who borrows the rosary? Jim only knows that requests continue to come often unexpectedly. He always responds though whenever he lends the rosary. He says, "When you're through needing it, send it back. Someone else may need it."

Jim's own life has changed, too, since his unexpected meeting on the airplane. When he realized Mother Teresa carries everything she owns in a small bag, he made an effort to simplify his own life. "I try to remember what really counts-not money or titles or possessions, but the way we love others," he says.

 https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/faith-and-character/faith-and-character/mother-teresa-s-rosary.html

  

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The funeral of Princess Diana was on June 6, 1997. Ironically, Mother Theresa died of a fatal heart attack exactly two days earlier.

 Have you ever wondered who made the first rosary? If you have, the answer can be found in the link posted 

https://www.theirishstore.com/blog/story-behind-catholic-rosary-beads/

 Along with the cross and the sacred holy water fonts, the small beads that makeup Rosary beads are one of the most familiar and recognized symbols of Catholicism. According to Catholic tradition, the rosary was instituted by the Blessed Virgin Mary herself. In the 13th century, she is said to have appeared to St. Dominic (founder of the Dominicans), given him a rosary, and asked that Christians pray the Hail Mary, Our Father and Glory Be prayers instead of the Psalms. The original rosary of St. Dominic had 15 decades.

 

Rosary Beads Meaning

The main function of the rosary beads is to count prayers, the prayers that are counted on rosary beads are collectively known as the rosary. The purpose of the Rosary is to help keep in memory certain principal events or mysteries in history. There are twenty mysteries reflected upon in the Rosary, and these are divided into five main mysteries which correspond to the five decades of the rosary.

• Five Joyful Mysteries are prayed on Mondays and Saturdays. These events all have to do with Christ’s birth.
• Five Luminous Mysteries are recalled on Thursdays and were instituted by Pope John Paul II in 2002.
• Five Sorrowful Mysteries relate to Jesus’ suffering and death and are recalled on Tuesdays and Fridays.
• Five Glorious Mysteries remind the faithful of Jesus’ resurrection and the glories of heaven and are prayed on Wednesdays and Sundays.

 

Although a variety of prayers might be used in saying the rosary, a selection of standard prayers is most commonly used. They are Apostle’s Creed, Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be. A decade consists of one Our Father, ten Hail Marys and one Glory Be.

 

Apostle’s Creed:

 

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified; died, and was buried. He descended into Hell; the third day He arose again from the dead; He ascended into Heaven, sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saint, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.

Our Father:

 

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom comes; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

Hail Mary:

Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Glory Be:

 

Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.How Many Beads In a Rosary?

 

There are 59 beads in a rosary.

The following are the steps for praying the rosary using rosary beads:

 

1. On the crucifix, say the Apostles’ Creed.
2. On the next large bead, pray the Our Father.
3. On the next three small beads, pray three Hail Marys.
4. On the chain, pray the Glory Be.
5. On the large bead announce the first mystery (Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful or Glorious) then say the Our Father.
6. On the next ten beads, pray ten Hail Marys while meditating on the Mystery/
7. On the chain, pray the Glory Be.
8. Repeat steps 5 through 8 for the next four decades.If you were to ask what object is most emblematic of Catholics a large number of people would say the rosary. We’re familiar with the images: the silently moving lips of women and men in the church and the rosary hanging from their wrist. They truly are a symbolic treasure of Catholicism and something that remains with you throughout your life, being given to you as early as your first communion.

 

 

Most of us are familiar with the stories of Mary's appearance at Lourdes, Fatima, and Mexico City (the Lady of Guadalupe), but there have been credible sightings at a number of other places around the world. Click on the link below to view them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Marian_apparitions 

I have not been to any of them, but I ALMOST got to the shrine in Knock, Ireland when I was in that country in 1999. The van I was driving held me and 5 women, but none of them wanted to stop – so we didn’t. 

Knock (Irish: An Cnoc, meaning The Hill – but now more generally known in Irish as Cnoc Mhuire, "Hill of (the Virgin) Mary") is a village in County Mayo, Ireland. Its notability is derived from the Knock Shrine, an approved Catholic shrine and place of pilgrimage where the faithful believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph and Saint John the Evangelist appeared on 21 August 1879.

In the 20th century, Knock became one of Europe's major Catholic Marian shrines, alongside Lourdes and Fatima. It was one of the focusses of Irish peace pilgrimage during the Second World War, when the Catholic Irish prayed for peace and to prevent the spread of war to the island. One and a half million pilgrims visit Knock Shrine annually. Pope John Paul II, a supporter of devotion to the Virgin Mary, visited Knock in 1979 to commemorate the centenary of the apparition. Knock is also a civil parish in the ancient barony of Costello.

On 26 August 2018 Pope Francis visited the shrine at Knock as part of a visit to Ireland for the 9th World Meeting of Families. 

The Catholic faith is not the only one that has prayer beads, since Muslims do also. Since the Muslim faith requires prayers 5 times a day, prayer beads are fairly common among Muslims. I once worked with a devout Muslim at a car dealership in Evanston, and he would occasionally go into a small room by himself and work on the beads for a while.

 

A misbaḥah is a tool which is used as an aid to perform dhikr, including the names of God in Islam, and after regular prayer  It is often made of wooden or plastic beads, but also of olive seeds, ivory, pearls, and semi-precious stones such as carnelian, onyx, and amber.

A typical misbahah consists of three groups of beads, separated by two distinct beads (called imāms) along with one larger piece (called the yad) to serve as the handle.^[2] The exact number may vary, but they usually consist of 99 beads to assist in the glorification of God following prayers: 33 Tasbeeh (subhāna-llāh ), 33 Tahmeed (ʾal-ḥamdu li-llāh), and 33 Takbeer (ʾAllāhu ʾakbar).

Some suggest the 99 beads also refer to the 99 names of Allah. Smaller misbahas consist of 33 beads, in which case one cycles through them three times to complete 99. However, misbahas may also consist of 100 or 200 count beads to assist in the dhikr duties of certain Sufi orders.

It is often carried by pilgrims, dervishes, and many ordinary Muslims of all groups, except for Wahhabis, who consider it heretical innovation (bid'ah) and only allow dhikrs to be counted on the fingers. Many Shi'is use beads made from clay from Karbala, sometimes colored red in memory of the killed Imam Husayn's blood or green in memory of his brother Hasan (who supposedly turned green from poisoning).

Misbahahs are also used culturally to reduce stress or as an indication of status in society.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misbaha 

Rosaries can be purchased at a wide variety of religious stores, but if you're Irish, the website below offers some intriguing options.

 https://www.theirishstore.com/celtic-jewelry/rosary-beads-religious 

I'm no longer a very religious man, but if I decided to buy one sometime in the future to buy one, it would be because of the words of James Patterson, on page 198 of his latest book.

 Elton John recorded a tribute to Marilyn Monroe in 1974. For his mom's funeral, Prince William asked Elton John to sing the same song for his mother's funeral - and he did. 

Even today, that song still brings years to my eyes. 

Elton John - Candle in the Wind/Goodbye England's Rose (Live at Princess Diana's Funeral - 1997) - YouTube 

Goodbye, England's rose. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the afternoon break

 

My sister and her spouse often have a beer on their deck late in the afternoon before they start preparing dinner. In a way, it’s a throwback to the time that my parents would have cheese, crackers, and beer (usually Hamm’s) on the table outside in the backyard in the afternoon during the summer months.

 

Sharon and I often have cheese and crackers when I get home from school, but I normally have a glass of wine instead of a beer. I still like beer, but I normally have one at dinner time if it pairs well with whatever we are having for dinner that night.

We had roughly 30 people in attendance at our 50^th wedding anniversary part two weeks ago, and most of them brought beer. As a result, we had a LOT of beer left over. My favorite beer, though, was a Paulaner Hefe-Weizen, which was first brewed in Munich in 1634, roughly 80 years after the 1516 German purity law was passed.

1634 was a long time ago, but humans have been consuming beer for a MUCH longer period of time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beer

Beer is one of the oldest drinks humans have produced. The first chemically confirmed barley beer dates back to the 5th millennium BC in modern-day Iran, and was recorded in the written history of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and spread throughout the world.

As almost any cereal containing certain sugars can undergo spontaneous fermentation due to wild yeasts in the air, it is possible that beer-like drinks were independently developed throughout the world soon after a tribe or culture had domesticated cereal. Chemical tests of ancient pottery jars reveal that beer was produced as far back as about 7,000 years ago in what is today Iran. This discovery reveals one of the earliest known uses of fermentation and is the earliest evidence of brewing to date.

Author Thomas Sinclair says in his book, "Beer, Bread, and the Seeds of Change: Agriculture's Imprint on World History" that the discovery of beer may have been an accidental find. The precurser to beer was soaking grains in water and making a porridge or gruel, as grain were chewy and hard to digest alone. Ancient peoples would heat the gruel and leave it throughout the days until it was gone. A benefit to heating the gruel would be to sanitize the water and the temperature required to denature grain proteins would also denature disease microbes. Leaving the gruel to sit would change it. Fermentation would occur and they noticed the change in taste and effect. Yeasts would settle on the mixture and rapidly consume the oxygen in the mixture. The low oxygen was a significant consequence of allowing the yeast to digest sugars by anerobic respiration. The yeast would release ethenol (alcohol) and carbon dioxide as by-products and, hence, beer was born.

In Mesopotamia, the oldest evidence of beer is believed to be a 6,000-year-old Sumerian tablet depicting people consuming a drink through reed straws from a communal bowl. A 3,900-year-old Sumerian poem honouring Ninkasi, the patron goddess of brewing, contains the oldest surviving beer recipe, describing the production of beer from bread made from barley.

In China, residue on pottery dating from around 5,000 years ago shows beer was brewed using barley and other grains.

The invention of bread and beer has been argued to be responsible for humanity's ability to develop technology and build civilization. The earliest chemically confirmed barley beer to date was discovered at Godin Tepe in the central Zagros Mountains of Iran, where fragments of a jug, from between 5,400 and 5,000 years ago was found to be coated with beerstone, a by-product of the brewing process. Beer may have been known in Neolithic Europe as far back as 5,000 years ago, and was mainly brewed on a domestic scale.

Beer produced before the Industrial Revolution continued to be made and sold on a domestic scale, although by the 7th century AD beer was also being produced and sold by European monasteries. During the Industrial Revolution, the production of beer moved from artisanal manufacture to industrial manufacture, and domestic manufacture ceased to be significant by the end of the 19th century. The development of hydrometers and thermometers changed brewing by allowing the brewer more control of the process, and greater knowledge of the results.

Today, the brewing industry is a global business, consisting of several dominant multinational companies and many thousands of smaller producers ranging from brewpubs to regional breweries.^[13] More than 133 billion liters (35 billion gallons) are sold per year—producing total global revenues of $294.5 billion (£147.7 billion) in 2006.

 If you are looking for a way to wind down at the end of the day, you may want to forgo your afternoon latte and go for a beer instead.

After all, you deserve a break today.

 

 

 

 

wow, that was fast!

 

Liz Truss just resigned from her job as the British Prime Minister. Her tenure in office was a mere 45 days, making her time in office of any Prime Minister in U.K. history going all the way back to 1721.

A disastrous series of self-inflicted wounds — which turned into a political death spiral — began with a misfired attempt by the Conservative Party leader to radically reorient the government’s economic agenda by slashing taxes without saying how the decision would be paid for. It sent the markets reeling, and Truss never recovered.

By the end of her tenure, according to a YouGov poll, Truss’s net favorability stood at minus 70 percent. If that figure had continued its downward slide, she would have been on track to overtake Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has a net favorability rating of minus 84 percent among members of the British public.

Truss became prime minister on Sept. 6 after being elected by members of the Conservative Party to replace Boris Johnson as their leader. Her first two weeks included the death of Queen Elizabeth II and were politically muted while the country entered a period of mourning.

 

But on Sept. 23, her finance minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, made a fatal misstep: Without any warning, he unveiled a significant shift in the country’s economic strategy, promising to slash taxes for the highest earners and biggest corporations — with no plans to pay for it.

 

Almost immediately, the British pound’s valuation tanked, the United Kingdom’s central bank was forced to hike interest rates, and the cost of taking out mortgages soared. Inflation — already at record highs — raised the cost of living further, shredding the Conservative Party’s reputation for fiscal responsibility. Some working-class voters who were drawn to Conservatives by their embrace of Brexit were turned off by a renewed sense that the party represented only the interests of financial elites.

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/?reload=true&_=1666280117667

Of the 56 Prime Ministers who have served during that time period, 22 left office because they had resigned.

The most interesting character in the long list of Prime Ministers is Winston Churchill, who served two terms. The first term was from May 10, 1940 to JULY 20, 1945. His second term was from October 20, 1955, to April 5, 1955. Although he technically resigned in April of 1955, he remained Prime Minister until 1964, and was given a state funeral upon his death in 1965.

Even though Churchill was instrumental in defeating the Nazis, his Conservative Partly lost in the 1945 general election.

Since 1950, Truss’s Conservative Party has won 11 out of 15 elections, including the last 4. The Labour won the other 4.

 Like the U.K. the United States has alternated between conservatives (the GOP) and liberals (the Democratic Party). Ever since Ronald Reagan’s first term in office, the GOP has operated on the assumption that tax cuts (primarily for the reach) would lead to economic growth. However, if you analyze the effect of the tax cuts, you’ll realize that “trickle down economics does not make sense.

 In December 2017, just days before President Donald Trump signed the $1.9 trillion tax legislation that would create sweeping changes to the U.S. federal tax system, he told television viewers that “it’s going to be one of the great Christmas gifts to middle-income people.”

For several months, the president had been selling the legislation on the claim that the tax cuts would “be rocket fuel for our economy.” His claim was critical to defending against the criticism that most of the tax cuts would go to corporations and the very wealthy—supposedly, the money would ‘trickle down’ to the middle class.

The president and administration officials, often echoed by Congressional Republicans, claimed that as a result of the tax cuts: • Business investment would jump. • GDP growth would skyrocket to between 4 and 6 percent.  • Household incomes would increase between $4,000 and $9,000. • Job growth would accelerate. • The tax cuts would ‘pay for themselves’—adding nothing to the federal debt, or even reducing it.

These claims were not the president’s invention; they originated with and were repeated by the most senior economic policy experts in his administration. Kevin Hassett, then the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), said that the median wage increase for workers due to the tax cuts could amount to $20,000 per year. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that “not only will this tax plan pay for itself, but it will pay down debt.”

Gary Cohn, then the director of the National Economic Council (NEC), said that “we can pay for the entire tax cut through growth over the cycle.” Larry Kudlow, the second director of the NEC, claimed that “the deficit…is coming down, and it’s coming down rapidly.”

Other economists were highly skeptical of these claims.

Jason Furman, chairman of the CEA during the Obama administration, said that the White House claim of up to a $9,000 increase in household income due to corporate tax cuts was “more than a little far-fetched.” Austan Goolsbee, another former chairman of the CEA said that the administration’s “trickle-down, magic-beanstalk…argument” was “nonsense.” Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said that he “would be hard pressed to give [the administration’s tax analysis] a passing grade.”

Two years after the tax cuts were enacted, evidence clearly shows that the critics were right. Overall, the economy is not outperforming solid trends that predated implementation of the tax cuts and were inherited from the Obama administration.

GDP growth has averaged 2.5 percent — exactly the same as the average in the quarters before the tax cuts, and nowhere near the 6 percent promised by the president. • Business investment, which is essential to a stronger economy, lags substantially behind the average of the quarters that preceded the tax cuts.

Household income increased only $550 in the first year after implementation of the tax cuts—far behind the previous three years and not close to the $4,000 to $9,000 or more per household that the administration had claimed.

The Congressional Budget Office now projects that the 2017 tax cuts will increase the national debt by $1.9 trillion over 11 years.15 The tax cuts are not remotely on track to ‘pay for themselves.’

As a result, policymakers in the future may be pushed to make cuts to programs that are critical to middle-class families, like Social Security and Medicare, and forgo crucial investment in infrastructure and education that are essential to sustainable economic growth.

In addition, the almost $2 trillion hole in the budget may make the economy more vulnerable to the next recession because it will be far more difficult for Congress to find the will and resources to pass the fiscal stimulus necessary to jump-start the economy. This is especially concerning given that the Federal Reserve has less ability to fight the next recession because it cannot implement large rate cuts to stimulate the economy.

As a result, it is crystal clear that the 2017 tax cuts have not remotely achieved the economic miracle that the Trump administration promised. While die-hard defenders of the tax cuts likely will claim that the greatest benefits still lie in the future, the current trends suggest that those benefits will never be achieved and that the rationale for the tax cuts was unsound. By the time the experiment has fully run its course, Americans will already have paid a very steep price.

 

https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/4150f60c-56af-4b6a-8f0e-fb0b34aafed8/tax-cuts-fail-to-deliver-promised-economic-boost.pdf

The resignation of British Prime Minister Liz Truss on Thursday morning puts an end to a month of economic and political turmoil. Republicans should take note of her mistakes if they want to avoid a similar debacle after the midterms and in 2024.

Truss’s first mistake was to push a radical economic agenda she did not campaign on. Her personal views supporting a low-tax, smaller government were telegraphed years ago in her book, “Britannia Unchained.” But she did not campaign for the premiership on that agenda. She had promised some modest tax reductions and offered rhetorical backing for deregulation. But those were far short of the sweeping tax cuts she and her chancellor of the exchequer unveiled in their now-infamous mini-budget proposed in late September.

 

Failing to prepare public opinion for her proposals meant there was no widespread support for them in any segment of British society. Conservative MPs who championed fiscal stability were gobsmacked at the prospect of widening deficits as far as the eye could see. The broader public backed more spending and taxation, not less. And investors who had made calculations about the British economy based on her public statements were blindsided, sending interest rates soaring and pushing the pound to historic lows.

 Republicans are at risk of making the same mistake if they retake control of Congress. The GOP’s midterm messaging focuses on inflation, crime and immigration, but the party is not telling the public much about what it would do to combat those ills. That might be good politics, but it also means they would have no mandate for significant departures from the status quo. Using the national debt limit next year as leverage to force significant spending cuts, including to Social Security and Medicare, as has recently been rumored, would be as politically disastrous for the GOP as Truss’s supply-side tax cuts were for the Tories.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/20/truss-resignation-british-republicans/