Weekend Wisdom - October 1st, 2023
My husband and I are blessed with two sons, both of whom attend school with me at Notre Dame of De Pere. When our second son was born, we initially thought WOW, he is just like our older son! Any guesses where this is going? Turns out he is nothing like our older son! Weird how that happens.
Our youngest son is the loudest person I know. Keep in mind I work with over 400 students on a daily basis, so I have a fairly good gauge of typical kid-volume levels. He makes funny voices and faces, sings, and is just generally loud. All. The. Time. Recently at baseball, we could hear his voice from the dugout loud and clear despite being seated a decent distance away in the bleachers. It’s like when a sports player is “mic’d up” and you can hear the sound bites as they talk to themselves, teammates, and coaches. Typically very entertaining. These sound bites from our beloved loud child are the background noise of our life at home and while sometimes overstimulating of course we wouldn’t change it for the world.
My son’s many loud sound bites pushed me to think about the other little bits of background noises or repeated phrases running through my life these days, specifically mini-moments of prayer. While I strive to create large moments of prayer and refection as well, the sprinkling of prayerful sound bites keeps the conversation open with God throughout the day. Here are a few of my current favorite prayer sound bites that are keeping God ever present in my day:
Sabbath Habits are greater than Sunday Scaries: Amberly’s recent statement and writing on this powers my weekend rest and reset. As a chronic sufferer of the Sunday Scaries, this tiny sound bite has been life-giving!
Wow, God! Thanks!: Last year Fr. Luke Ferris shared this simple prayer for expressing gratitude throughout the day. Moments of beautiful weather, sunsets, smiles with students, and relaxing with family are all perfect moments of gratitude.
God is good all the time: Fr. Josuva opened two recent student Masses with this simple celebration response. There is also a tiny sign in my office with the same words. As usual, God knows I need multiple reminders. God is good in good times and bad, happy and sad. Even if the Sunday Scaries creep in, I can rest in God’s goodness.
I encourage you to keep a lookout for your own prayerful sound bites or if you find your sound bites are leaning a bit on the negative side, feel free to try out some of mine to reframe the goodness.
Molly Mares
Principal Notre Dame of De Pere
