Sundays with Suzanne

I took care of the paperwork to make my move to North Carolina final. And I couldn't be happier. What's next?

Are you are Martha or a Mary? Does that question make you bristle as much as it does me? Well, listen to this 10 minute inspirational message to find out how I finally put that sore point to an end!

I visit the Ashe County Farmers Market in West Jefferson, North Carolina and the most interesting discovery are the people on the other side of the table.

Let the Spirit move you!

My mother was raised in the Pentecostal church. She experienced the Holy Spirit as a physical manifestation, speaking in tongues. She often said  that she wished that I could experience Holy Spirit as she had. I have not spoken in tongues, but I have experienced the Holy Spirit as inspiration to be better and do better in the face of my own selfishness, because God’s Love was stronger than my weakness. That must be the Holy Spirit.

Here's the latest audio version of my newsletter, plus a recipe and a what I'm reading now.

I'm calling it Sundays with Suzanne.

Kiki passed away on Thursday. After she had stopped eating earlier in the week, I took her to the vet to find the cause. The blood test came back normal, then the vet took Kiki back to the x-ray room. Within minutes, the vet called me back to join her. On the screen behind her was an x-ray of Kiki’s lungs. The vet pointed to five tumors on Kiki’s lungs.

Kiki was 13 years old when she passed, I adopted her when she was nine. The first eight years of her life were unkind and left her fearful of people. She taught me about resiliency and healing power of love. Every relationship, whether human or companion animal, can teach us to be better.

When we went to Mass today and our priest placed ashes on our forehead, whether in a bold cross or a freeform smudge, we were reminded that we are created from dust and our lives are just as fragile.

Yet, it’s remarkably easy to become complacent. To take for granted our faith, our lives, and our people.

Have you thought about what you want to do with your retirement year? What will give them meaning? 

All the books in a library are merely fire kindling if we don’t read and learn from their content. The finest woodworking tools are decorative chunks of metal if we don’t put them to work.

So it is with all the types of prayer and even our precious Bible, if we don’t use these tools to spend time with God each day, and if we don’t learn to listen for his still small voice.

What a difference this simple sentence has made. I not only say the greeting every morning when I sit down to pray, I also find myself saying the words at random moments through the day because they warm my heart. When I say them, I feel God close to me, and that is an answer to prayer.

This year while I search for my home and a sense of physical security, I will focus on my spiritual security, and doing the things that I know will remind me of God’s ever present light, his love for me.

What will your word of the year be in 2023?

This season reminds us that Jesus, the Son of God, knows our broken hearts, has felt the warmth of our tears, the exhaustion in our bones, the hunger in our belly, the loneliness in crowded room. He healed broken bodies, and he will heal our broken spirits.

You are not required to do any more than you can right now. Only remember that you are dearly loved and that your life matters.

I’ve never been good at waiting. When I was a child I would crawl beneath the Christmas tree branches and shake the presents to see if I could guess the contents, because I did not want to wait until Christmas day.

Thanksgiving is meant to be family gathering, especially when our families are far flung, and our meetings intermittent, or annual at best. But too often, what was meant to be a joyful, becomes a rehashing of old grievances, political, religious, or mis-remembered childhood events.

What I learned this week is that in addition to giving ​thanks, we can give grace.

Giving grace means knowing your brother has a gift for speaking with strangers, that's how he's grown his successful business. Instead of being impatient while waiting, I'll grab my knitting and get to work on the heel of a sock I've been putting off because it's a tedious knit.

Getting established and making new friends is something I am very familiar with. Why did I think it should be any different this time, is it because I am older?

The irony of course, is that as we get older it is almost certain that we will have to move to a place where we may not know anyone, leaving behind our community to start all over again where we are strangers, even if it is on the happy occasion of our retirement.

Allow me to provide some examples on what has made this latest move not only possible but for the most part, a good adventure.

All Souls Day is a way to honor our loved ones and I know we are meant to remember that they are now in the joyful embrace of God and enjoying a heaven that is more beautiful than our limited imaginations can conceive.

Death is a new beginning for them as well as us, and because we are human, I hope we will also give ourselves space and time to jealously admit that we still wish they were here with us now.

I do understand the frustration of unanswered prayers and unanswered questions of faith and church hierarchies that feel exclusionary to at least half the population.

In the past when I read of yet another sexual abuse scandal by a pastor or a priest using the authority of their position to prey on young people, my anger would compel me to want to leave the Church.

In the past I considered these options, myself. But in the end, I chose to become a contrarian in uncertain times.

I love God too much to turn my back on him. I cannot imagine what a mess my life would be without God at the center of it. To borrow a phrase, without God my center would not hold.

Our grief may make us feel like turning inward — to replay our favorite moments with our beloved over and over again. But we must not allow ourselves to be completely cut off from the exterior world, because that is where our future lives. So, as we move through our grief, we must do so while performing this delicate dance of caring for our broken heart, realizing that part of caring for our beloved’s memory involves moving out into the world. Little by little.

I strongly believe that my walk of faith should not be yours, nor yours mine. An authentic walk of faith is a private matter between you and God and one which you must choose to pursue or not to pursue, each day.

What should we do as we face a new chapter in life? For me it was turning 60 and losing my mother. This episode begins the quest of considering how I will live the final third of my life.

Like blinders on a horse, I seat myself at the front of the church so I can mind my own business.

How often do I make erroneous assumptions about the prayers of those around me? I see someone who appears to be financially well off in the pew to my left and think they have not a care in the world, not realizing that they are praying for a child who hasn’t spoken to them in years.

I see a family who is blessed not with financial wealth but with the wealth of having six children, and I wonder how they can adequately provide for so many, not realizing that they thank God every day for his abundant provision.

I watch the way others take Communion, if they lift their arms during the Our Father prayer, or if they slip out before the service ends.

Very often, when I am sitting with an unanswered prayer, here’s what I want to say to God: “Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!” — Psalm 4:1

I want to know that I am heard. I want God’s consolation even if the answer I receive isn’t ultimately the one I want. But I want a visible sign that I am heard. When my heart hurts, I want to know that God cares.

“Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; hold not your peace at my tears! For I am a sojourner with you, a guest, like all my fathers.” — Psalm 39:12

From the words of these psalms, I understand I am not the only one.

Which leads to the uncomfortable question of, “Why pray at all?” Does a change in my life come because of my own actions, or because I have prayed to God? Or both? Who gets credit when a need is answered, and who receives blame when it isn’t? Me or God?

This is a daunting question, because it considers the very nature of our relationship with God. It’s right up there with the question of suffering, which I have yet to hear a satisfactory answer to. It is a question we see wrestled with in the Book of Job. When God finally shows up, his answer to Job is essentially, “Who are you to question me?”

Ending our year and beginning a new one with a thoughtful reflection lets us see we are stronger than we believed and our lives are richer then we imagined. We discover grace surrounds us on more days than not.

Instead of a list of resolutions, find yourself some quiet time this week, and reflect on the past year: What good thing did you experience? Are you proud of yourself for keeping an important commitment to your partner or your children or yourself? Can you remember a time when you gave someone grace through acts of compassion or patience or generosity? Did you overcome a fear or find courage to make a big move even as you were afraid?

An unexpected snowstorm. And in this hour before sunset, the sky has cleared enough for the lingering rays of the sun to cast a delicate wash of pink across the newly fallen snow.

This beauty can make you feel cozy and secure or desolate and lonely. My decorations are up, my first round of Christmas cookies have been baked and given out. Handel’s “Messiah” plays in the background as I move around my home.

It occurred to me that not only did the road engineers not need my help, but they could see the result of this construction project when I could not. I had not needed to be worried all those months.

Simultaneously, it occurred to me that this was a very fitting analogy for what my prayer life can feel like.

Over the course of this podcast, I have spent more time reading, thinking and writing about God than I have in the previous 54 years of my life. And what have I achieved? Do I feel enlightened? Have I attained a higher level of consciousness?

Actually not at all. To be honest even if I spent the next 50 years continuing my pursuit of God through books and prayer, I don’t think I would be any more enlightened than I am right now.

Instead, I have discovered that with every book I read, I want to learn more.

What I discovered is that when I don’t go to church, something is missing in my life. Something is missing in my spiritual walk with God. Yes I can worship and love God on my own. I do so daily. I can even worship God through church services that are televised through my computer or Zoom.

But worshiping and loving God with other people on Sundays and during weekday services in person — knowing that I pray with and for others, that they pray for me, that our voices are lifted together as one — is more than I can accomplish alone.

Our evening prayer service, which still meets via Zoom, has become more meaningful as we began meeting in person once a month. The remarkable moving of the Holy Spirit is palpable during this in-person prayer service. What’s different?

On Tuesdays after the 8 a.m. Mass at St. Mary’s in Breckenridge, we are invited to stay for 30 minutes of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. These 30 minutes of silent prayer and meditation seem to be the perfect way to end the Mass and start the rest of our day.

Last Tuesday during adoration, I finished praying my rosary, sat back in my pew and contemplated the Blessed Sacrament as my fingers absentmindedly toyed with the wooden beads of my rosary.

I was, frankly, feeling a little out of sorts with prayers for my mother to regain her ability to walk after hip surgery and my own search for remote-based work. So I resorted to the remedy that always brings relief when I feel overwhelmed with worry: I count three things I am grateful for.

The main body of the rosary is made up of five decades of prayer beads: one large bead followed by 10 smaller wooden beads. The large bead represents the Our Father prayer, and the smaller beads represent the Hail Mary prayer. Altogether, this makes one decade, which is repeated five times.

As I began to count the things I was grateful for, I found myself keeping track by moving my fingers along each bead. I quickly completed the first decade of gratitude, but could I think of 50 things I was grateful for?

I’ll ask you to excuse me this week because as I recount my experience from last Tuesday’s Mass, I still get a smile on my face. And quite honestly, it’s inexplicable to me.

I arrived around 7:45 a.m. so that I could pray before Mass began. My prayers usually entail a laundry list of things I want to ask God’s help with.

But on Tuesday morning, I knelt, bowed my head and said “thank you” in the silence of my mind. I found myself repeating “thank you” over and over and over again.

After a few minutes of this one-note prayer, I began to wonder what I was thanking God for?

Last week, I watched the Olympic trials for swimming. Swimming is my favorite Olympic sport because I was a competitive swimmer for 11 years from the age of 11 through my sophomore year at the University of Michigan.

A reporter asked one of the swimmers what his strategy would be for the finals against a very competitive field. The young man replied that he had trained for this day and that his job now was just to swim his own race and not worry about what others were doing.

That’s what I loved about swimming competitively. My race would be won or lost based on my own training and how well I performed on that day. No one was going to jump in my lane and stop me from swimming. My success or failure was up to my own efforts.

What do these lessons from swimming have to do with our walk of faith?

Does it make a difference when we pray alone or together? This week I discuss what I recently gained by sharing my prayers for my mother during a weekday Mass.

 Over the past six years I’ve shared my walk of faith in my column for the Summit Daily News and I see a better version of myself today than existed when I began. But now I’m curious. How you are living your faith?

Today begins what I hope will be the first of many interviews that I’ll share in the coming year. Let’s meet Amy Evans, a Breckenridge fine artist. I chose Amy because she leads two centering prayer groups in Breckenridge and I wanted to know how her faith practice informs her artwork.

Would you like to share your walk of faith with others? Please send me an email at: suzanne@suzanneelizabeths.com Here are some questions to get you started: How has your faith changed your life? What spiritual practices resonate with your heart? Where do you go to find and speak with God? I look forward to hearing from you!

What compelled me to get up and go to swim practice in pre-dawn darkness? I loved swimming. I loved competing. I loved my teammates. I loved how it felt to glide through the water. I loved everything about swimming. And I knew the only way to excel at swimming was to practice it consistently — always pushing myself to do better.

My devotion to my swimming career in high school is what came to mind as I tried to find a way to describe my newfound pleasure in attending weekday morning Mass and evening prayer and praying the rosary.

When I first moved to Breckenridge, I didn’t know a soul, but I began regularly attending the Saturday evening mass at St. Mary’s Catholic Church. I was greeted by Barbara Rasmussen who always said “hello” and asked how I was doing.

If I didn’t show up for a few weeks, she asked where I’d been the next time she saw me, which had the effect of giving me second thoughts before I skipped another Saturday evening Mass. It was also an important lifeline because I was going through a difficult depression during that first year.

Church communities offer a special kind of support that we might not find elsewhere. I believe it is because we understand that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and it is God who responds, “Come to me all you who are burdened and weary and I will give you rest.”

I’ve begun attending 8 a.m. Mass at St. Mary’s on Sunday mornings. If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be doing this, I would have laughed because I’ve never been a morning person.

On a recent phone call, I told Mom I began going to the 8 a.m. Mass because Ken brought doughnuts from Daylight Donuts along with freshly made coffee.

I’ll do just about anything for a chocolate covered doughnut or two.

sometimes get mad at God. Not for something he has done but for something he has not done, which I, in my infinite wisdom, felt he should have. Of course, my wisdom is not infinite; it’s actually pretty limited. And God‘s wisdom is infinite, which means I often don’t understand things from his greater perspective.

That doesn’t stop me from getting mad at God because I am human and was created with free will. And God, in his infinite wisdom, never wanted to deny me the freedom to make mistakes and learn or, more often, blame him for the outcome of my poor decisions or shortsighted vision of how things should be right now.

I believe the question we should ask is not why more Americans don’t believe in God or don’t go to church. God exists whether we acknowledge him or not. And we have created churches to suit every taste, from dance halls to living rooms.

The real question is: Why don’t more Americans find personal meaning in a relationship with God? How do we create a meaningful, personal relationship with God?

It got me thinking of my own approach to reading the Bible this year. I am reading the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, just two chapters a week over the course of the entire year.

I got the idea when I received my Word on Fire Bible, which contains only the four Gospels but also a wealth of commentary and vibrant artwork related to every important passage so that commentary and artwork make up as many pages as the actual sacred text.

I’ve discovered that this wealth of information has greatly expanded my understanding of the context of each passage. As I read, I find myself underlining passages, taking notes in my journal. Best of all, I look forward to reading each day.

Which brings me to a few quick tips I’d like to share...

#catholic #christian #inspiration #faith #bible

“The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hurries to its place where it rises. — Ecclesiastes 1:5”

Last week, I watched the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean every morning, and I don’t know why I was surprised to discover that no two sunrises are alike.

Some mornings it rose behind clouds, its arrival hidden until the very last moment when, suddenly, the sky was suffused with orange and pink until the smallest edge of fire overcame the clouds, which sat upon the ocean like a flotilla helpless to hold back such beauty.

The first few mornings, I went out to watch the sunrise to be able to say that I had. Once I realized each morning would offer an unexpected entrance, that became my focus.

When all is well in our lives, God’s love warms our heart and warms our back and blesses everything we touch, and during these days, it is easy to love God in return because, like the sunrise on a clear morning, there is nothing to hide the radiance of that love.

#catholic #christian #inspiration

One afternoon sitting at an outdoor café in Paris, I felt a bit sad, and so I paid my bill and headed across the square to the Louis Vuitton store and bought myself a purse.

That purse sits on a shelf in my closet. Nowadays, I’d feel silly carrying it anywhere in Breckenridge. Thankfully, we live in a low-key town. If you stroll down the aisles of City Market, you’d be hard-pressed to differentiate the billionaires from the regular folks. I like that.

I worked for eight years on the 98th floor of 2 World Trade Center in New York City and used to stand at the tall windows facing uptown and feel like I was on top of the world. Now, I can’t imagine any skyscraper comparing to the beauty of the mountains I see each morning from my bedroom window.

When I lived overseas, the highlight of most evenings was meeting my friends for drinks. For the past year, I’ve been meeting my friends from St. Mary’s and Our Lady of Peace on Zoom at 5 p.m. for evening prayer.

I am tickled pink that my priorities have matured over the decades, especially as I enter my 59th year. But I take no credit for the change. It was God.

I discovered proof of God on Wednesday afternoon in the tree branch shadows cast across the snow and frozen stream where I had stopped on the side of the road to let Kiki catch her breath and Bear investigate the smells of other animals. Kiki and Bear are my elderly adopted Newfoundland dogs. Our walks meander.

My Lenten journey is only a few weeks old, but already my days have been filled with prayers of all sorts, communal and private. Rosaries recited, scriptures pondered, psalms prayed aloud and centering prayer in silence. Prayers said in the dark as I drift off to sleep and said again at 6 a.m. as the light begins to create an outline of mountain peaks outside my window.Proof of God

We can argue all day long about figurative and literal creation stories and theories of evolution and life on other planets and whether all this scientific knowledge confirms or just disproves the existence of God.

But I don’t need scientific proof or the measurement of the speed of sound and light when I have silence and light among the shadows of a winter afternoon.

To see it as more than frozen water and dormant trees is to recognize I have a conscious mind that perceives beauty. To have a momentary observance of nature lift my spirits is to understand we were formed by a creator who was not assembling automatons but souls with imaginations to appreciate the beauty of a world beyond its utility.

Our souls were given not only an appreciation of creation but an innate need to create. Our souls compel us to communicate with our creator, through art, music, science, technology and all the good things that flow from our creative minds.

#Catholic #Christian #lent #inspiration

She had promised to bring chili to the church dinner to feed her neighbors. But it was the end of the month and she didn’t have much in her cupboards. She had even less in her bank account.

But she did have two large sweet potatoes, four cans of beans and two cans of crushed tomatoes. She peeled and chopped the sweet potatoes, mixed them with the beans, tomatoes and spices. When it was cooked through, she had created a delicious, warm meal to feed a half-dozen hungry souls.

The story of Jesus feeding the five thousand with two fish and five loaves took on new meaning for her as she realized that the real miracle that Jesus performed that day wasn’t the multiplication of food, but love.

Have you ever come to the end of the month and discovered you had little food in your refrigerator and even less money in your bank account? I have. In past years, more than one month-end found my cupboards bare. Perhaps that’s why I find food insecurity in our community, especially among children, a need that speaks to my heart.

To live in our mountain community is a privilege. To be surrounded by natural beauty and a caring community is a blessing. What could make it better? To live in a community where no child goes to bed hungry or wakes up and goes to school without breakfast.

During this season of Lent, we are called to almsgiving, which asks us to obey Jesus Christ’s command that we love our neighbors as we love ourselves. I can’t think of anything that embodies that more than making sure our neighbors have food in their cupboards.

After attending Ash Wednesday Mass, I stopped by the Breckenridge library. One of my favorite librarians, Jane, came out with an armful of books for me. She asked what I had decided to give up for Lent, I believe because she had read my column last week.

I sheepishly confessed that I had settled on something only the night before. I decided that my Lenten sacrifice would be to give up my nightly viewing of political talk shows and the accompanied scrolling through social media.

From 6 p.m. until bedtime, no TV, no computer, no social media. Instead, I will read, knit, listen to audiobooks or classical music — all activities I love yet somehow fall by the wayside once I turn on the TV and pick up my phone.

Although this is being done as a Lenten sacrifice, it’s also a personal reckoning. I say I value books over TV, but I haven’t been living that truth.

Even after I’ve turned off the TV for the night and headed to bed to read until I fall asleep, I check news sites until my eyes grow too heavy to read. How to reconcile my aspiration with my reality?

Will you join me in a special project for 2021? Beginning this week and through the end of the year, let’s read through the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

We will read two chapters each week. It will be a wonderful opportunity to practice lectio divina, as we incorporate prayer into our Bible reading, and see what a difference it makes in what God reveals through his holy word, and in our personal relationship with God.

You may use any Bible you find most comfortable to read. If you don’t have a Bible, you can download the free Bible app to your phone.

Each week at the end of my column, I will mention the reading for the coming week.

I hope you will join me. I believe our walk through the Gospels will give us a fresh perspective of what Jesus said and stood for. Whether you are religious or not, whether you have read the Bible for years, or this is your first time, I believe our faith will be deepened.

Read this week’s chapters and choose a passage that speaks to you:

Gospel of Matthew, Chapters 1 & 2

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel-which means, “God with us.” (Matthew 1:22-23)

Most difficult for me as a person of faith is to see that even among people with whom I share the same beliefs, we are on opposite ends when it comes to politics. Up until Wednesday, I took that divide in stride and hoped that after the inauguration later this month, things would improve.

After the insurrection at our Capitol on Wednesday, we received a warning that our country is at a dangerous crossroad. And we must choose what we as a country, as people of faith, will do next. We can no longer politely decline to discuss politics with those we share a pew.

I believe that we need a national day of prayer. Not to pray for a particular political leader but to pray for our country, not as an abstract concept but for our survival.

We need to put aside our political differences and even our religious differences and pray.

We need to repent of our sin and our arrogance in using God‘s name as a cudgel to claim the moral high ground and to judge one another. We use God‘s name to divide ourselves, brother against brother to claim that God is either a Democrat or Republican and doesn’t like the other side, which is of course nonsense.

#chirstian #catholic #inspiration

I often write about how we are the hands and feet of God. 2020 showed us how true that is. God’s friendship with us, arms open wide, reaching out to help when we are hungry or cold or in need of an ear to listen, is what God asks us to do for one another.

2020 is the year we did. We saw it in the tireless work of our neighbors who are healthcare providers, educators, grocery workers, pastors and priests, who kept us going through the pandemic because they wouldn’t give up. We saw it in our neighbors, the restaurant and small business owners who worked to keep their doors open and employees paid, so we chose to shop local this year.

#inspiration #christian #catholic 

I believe this year and this Christmas will be remembered for the rest of our lives for what we have lost and what we have gained and most of all what we have learned about caring for one another, especially for those who cared so much for us.

I hope this Christmas you will welcome Christ into your home and into your heart. Merry Christmas!

#christmas #advent #christian #catholic