Author: Susie

Today we traveled 333 miles west in under 5 hours. Right after Tallahassee I started looking for “a place to stop” and I settled on Pascagoula. Ever get a taste for seafood? Well, this is the place! When we checked into the hotel we asked where we should go for seafood… “Bozos” was the answer! We ate enough shrimp, oysters, crabs, clams, and oysters to feed a large family! Now there is shrimp in our little refrigerator and I’m offering to make a shrimp sandwich for Chuck’s lunch. So goes day 2!!! I swam in a HOT pool under the equally HOT sun! I plan to find a Catholic church with an early Mass to go to before we take off west tomorrow. This is a lot easier than the wagon trains had it! God bless our fore families who made this trip on foot, horseback and wagon. Thank God they did it! Sleep well dear reader!

Day One of the Great American Peabody Adventure and what a fun time we have had so far! 302 miles in a little over 4 1/2 hours and we landed in Madison, Florida on Interstate 10. Standing at the check-in counter, I craned my neck to spot it! Yes! The pool! 95 degrees on the thermometer and a big blue pool. Hurry, hurry to the beautiful room! Change into my bathing suit and out the door to the pool. No hesitating here… Ah! a giant outdoor bathtub. It was actually cooler than 95 degrees I guess. I walked down the steps into the water, scanned the blueness, and I headed for the deep end and the shade. As I wallowed against the wall in about a foot of shade, with my back to the sun and a water jet caressing my lower back in 5 feet of cool water, it came to me what I did when I entered the pool. I scanned for depth and shade. I thought about what some of us do when we enter a new room: Do you seek the back wall and put your back to it, where you can see the door? Do you seek an air conditioning vent, or steer clear of all vents? Do you seek a quiet spot or a noisy spot? I thought about some of us always in the same place at church… Do you seek the right or left? Front or back? Do you stand and see where the A/C is blowing? For me, at St. James, it is to the right facing the altar about the 3rd row back. Since I got to Saint James, I have moved from the left side to the right. I think I can hear better over there…. What does it mean?

After my little pool exercising, we went into town and ate the Friday night special fish buffet at O’Neals. Ah! Catholics have a sway… how many fish fries are on Friday? There was a table with about 10 very happy ladies right behind us! (Chuck said, “it’s the Garden club”). I mean those ladies were laughing and telling stories and both waiters talked with them about “grandma!” Madison is a small town where everybody knows your grandma so you better behave!!!! Oh my goodness… After a plate full of grits, corn, sweet potato, ribs and chicken (oops I skipped the fish)… I headed for the cobblers. I missed the banana pudding. As we left, I nearly dragged Chuck back, as I shouted, “they have banana pudding!” Chuck rushed me out, pulling his ball cap lower on his face (big city boy style)…. We are now ready to finish our first day in our room with wine and a movie. It’s early yet… God bless us and you. Celebrate your happy day!!!

I have been honored to know some really good people in my life and Janet is one lady I’m thinking is having a good time with God right now! Janet’s family home was in the house next door to our house in Miami at Westwood Lake long before I moved in. She married and moved not far from her family home, but she returned often to swim with her children in the lake behind our houses. Janet was pregnant with one of her children at the same time her mother and her sister were pregnant. The 3 pregnant ladies played in the lake where Janet’s brother and I later played and had long talks as adults. It’s a kooky story, but my friend Mike is one of those “late pregnancies” that surprised everybody! When Chuck and I moved into the house next door, Janet had already lost her husband, Whitey, and she had moved away. Whenever I saw Janet we had such wonderful, funny, happy conversations about “the past.” Life was good, and we had nothing to complain about. I never heard a negative word from Janet. God blessed her with a sunny, beautiful personality. Janet passed away recently at age 84 after a battle with Alzheimers that saddened all of us. To watch the light slowly go out on a happy life is a slow, lingering grief. God blessed Janet with a quiet death this week.

Janet’s short life makes me wonder: What is a life well lived? It is a life spent thinking things before us are good things. Flowers are meant to be treasured and sniffed, not trampled. Clouds are meant to be clapped over, because clapping keeps the rain away. Puppies are to be cuddled, and children are to be read to. Mean-spirited people are to be shivered at and given to God. People are to seen as God’s children. All of the people, even the ones we disagree with so strongly, are God’s creations. Thank you Janet for teaching me to clap!

This is the beginning of a four month Odyssey around the United States! Celebrating the interstate road system, we will begin at almost the beginning of Interstate 10 in Lake City, Fla and travel across the bottom of the US to Tucson. This first part of our trip will be a relaxing drive across country. I hope to find good hotels every 270 to 300 miles, relax in a warm pool, eat a good meal, and sleep in a clean bed every night. Repeat. I think our whole first leg will be in desert country, ending in Arizona which I always think of as “Arid Zone.” Chuck and I are not looking forward to the heat, but our goal is a submarine convention in a large (cool) hotel in Tucson. I have warned our friends that they will not see us for 4 months! That’s a long time to be gone from home, but this trip can’t end until we witness a cousin’s wedding in Springfield, Massachusetts on December 9, 2023. We can’t get homesick and go home before December 9 because we have the wedding! So stick with me… I’ll describe the United States as I have gleefully described what we have seen before on our trips. So… sign in occasionally for this wild, “Where’s Susie?” trip.

I am sitting at the dining room table that is covered, not with plates for a lovely tea, but with paper that will help me to put the last year together for Chuck to begin to “do our taxes.” In the past, the job was much more complicated. We had 4 rental houses and jobs, now, we are “retired” with only one rental house and mortages paid to us. All I have to do is go through the expenses and list everything we spent to see how Chuck and Uncle Sam are going to communicate. This time of reckoning also involves reckoning the checkbook… With Chuck as the master financial guru in this family, my checkbooks must balance. So I sit down about this time and spend a few hours…. finding the “offs”. So I want to know… how come 6 + 7 doesn’t equal 9? pooey!

I have been coming into a new way to argue lately. It involves asking someone… “just who are those democrats you want to eliminate? Is it 50% of the population? Isn’t that the same thinking Hitler and Stalin used to eliminate Jews, Cossacks, Muslims?” A friend actually argued, “well, it isn’t 50%; there are independents.” Wow. I’m just saying… And another person said, “those people who moved to Florida for lower taxes, but speak out against DiSantis…. they should leave!!!” So… I ask, “who are they…’those people’?” All of them? Whoever they are. Isaiah wrote in chapter 58: “the Lord will answer if you call for help, and he will say: ‘Here I am! If you remove from your midst opression, false accusation and malicious speech… then light shall rise for you in the darkness.'” I’m all for the light folks! I choose light. So I’m a little voice occasionally asking… “do you really want to eliminate anyone like in the past?” God bless us!

Good morning dear gentle readers! Today I remember Waaaaay back to the Team of the 1980s. The University of Miami. Bernie Kosar, redshirt freshman, took over the team when Jim Kelly separated his shoulder. Howard Schnellenberger and Jimmy Johnson made us National Champions. Miami went on to win 5 National Football Championships and put many young men into the National football leagues. Chuck and I went to New York to watch Miami play the first game of the season in Giants stadium. I saw Schnellenberger and Jim Kelly standing near a team bus, and I ran up and hugged Jim Kelly!!! Those were the days my friends! We werecrazed fans! My girl friend Bonnie and I still text all the way through UM football games, and now, last night, I texted through another football game with young men jousting for a National Championship, but it was Paula I texted with, our young man is Patrick Mahomes, and the men were young, but I am not. Oh dear. Oh well, memory is fun. Enjoy!

My dear readers! It has been almost a year since I wrote! Have you heard of a broken heart? I think I lost “it” when on January 6 the United States Capitol was stormed and some of my “friends” said that it was unfair that people were being arrested for the attack and the breaking and violence January 6 represented. It was heart breaking, and to this day I have to leave meetings when people say they “can’t wait for a regime change so the innocent attackers can get out of jail.” Then on 24 February, Russia attacked Ukraine and it was more than my heart could bear. Today finally I can write. …

It’s almost Valentines Day, and I’m moved to pray for Babies. My friend, Sandy Rosch (Treasurer of the Garden Club), has a very sick grand baby. He had a hurting ear… it developed into a BIG ear infection that has gone to the brain. He has had a surgery to open up the ear canal, drain the infection, and remove blood clots  His 5 doctors are working to determine what the infection is and treat it appropriately. Little Leo James Rosch is 2 years old.  Sandy reports that her daughter in law hasn’t eaten since the baby became seriously ill. I was with Sandy as she made and received phone calls and spoke with her son out in Arizona. This was a pain right in front of me that led me straight to prayer. I thought, my friends have been there. You have had sick babies. Like my mother, some of you have lost babies. You know what it is to cling to the cloak of Jesus as you lay on the floor weeping. “If only I could touch the hem of his garment.”  Lord, I pray, bless babies who are in trauma and in exile. Bless babies in the rubble of this world, Ukraine, Syria, Turkey. God bless the babies. 

In the Gospel of St. Mark (7:31), Jesus healed a deaf and speechless man: What did Jesus say when he looked up to heaven and he groaned? Was it a prayer to his father?  Was it… “Father, heal this little one. I love him. Let him be healed so he can hear your word, and then speak it?”  I pray, Let us all be healed. Let us hear the word which that God spoke in Genesis 3, “I do not expect you to know what I consider good or evil…  You don’t need to know…  Just Love. Listen (let your ears be opened and listen). We can not know what is evil. We cannot judge.”  Listen to God tell us “Love.” Ask God to clear out our infection, our deafness, our confusion… Lord let us be OPEN! “Ephphatha!”

The original Good Friday was awful. A man was beaten horribly, spat upon; a circle of thorns thrust into his scalp. Forced after the beating and torture to carry a cross up a hill to Golgatha, outside the city walls where criminals wer hanged, nailed or tied up, to stay there for days. To be the example to others not to “do the same thing.” But what evil crime did he commit? He loved us.

My dear gentle listeners. Many have questioned my desire to attend daily Mass, and quite honestly! I enjoy the time with Jesus! Well today was no exception! I was blessed to hear our visiting priest Monsignor Mark’s homily. At a certain point I wanted to "rewind to hear it again!!!!" But all we have are my measly notes, taken as he spoke. He spoke about John 8:21 and Numbers 21 wherein the serpant was raised on a stake to save sinning Hebrews, and Jesus said he too would be lifted up to save sinners. The church links these two readings just before Easter to point out the intimate connection between the Old Testament and the fulfillment by Jesus. Monsignor spoke of a man who opposed war in Nazi Germany and died for his resistance. Dietrich Bonhoeffer died by hanging in a German prison camp. He answered the Jewish questioning, "Where is God?" by pointing to a young man being hanged by Germans… "he is here." Where we find Jesus is not pleasant to look at. But Catholics look at the Crucifix. Jesus affixed to the Cross in often bloody fashion. Where we see suffering and innocence killed by sinners who kill innocence, there we find God. Then Monsignor Mark quoted a prayer Pope Frances recently prayed, composed by Archbishop Domenico Battaglia of Naples:

Lord Jesus, born under the bombs of Kyiv, have mercy on us.

Lord Jesus, dead in the arms of a mother in Kharkiv, have mercy on us.

Lord Jesus, in the 20-year-olds sent to the frontline, have mercy on us.

Lord Jesus, who continues to see hands armed with weapons under the shadow of the cross, forgive us, Lord.

Forgive us if, not content with the nails with which we pierced your hand, we continue to drink from the blood of the dead torn apart by weapons.

Forgive us if these hands that you had created to protect have been turned into instruments of death.

Forgive us, Lord, if we continue to kill our brother. If we continue like Cain to take the stones from our field to kill Abel.

Forgive us if we go out of our way to justify cruelty, if, in our pain, we legitimize the cruelty of our actions. Forgive us the war, Lord.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, we implore you to stop the hand of Cain, enlighten our conscience, let not our will be done, do not abandon us to our own doing. Stop us, Lord, stop us, and when you have stopped the hand of Cain, take care of him also. He is our brother.

O Lord, stop the violence. Stop us, Lord. Amen.

Copyright © 2022 Catholic News Service, Inc. All rights reserved.

During these weeks before Easter we are encouraged to think about our beliefs and feelings about what we choose and what we do. We read in the Book of Jeremiah that Jeremiah was thrown into a deep dry well to die because he wouldn’t worship false gods…. in Daniel a dictator threw Hebrews into a furnace when they refused evil ways; a lady named Susanna would rather die than give in to lusty old men. …Daniel and Jeremiah summarize: "It is better for me to fall into a pit without guilt than to serve false gods."

During Lent, we are asked to think about our false Gods: hedonism, disbelief of Scripture, immorality, love of money, to the exclusion of helping others. Is it better to give up false gods than to sin before God? It is better to become Fire! May you realize the Holy Spirit is working very hard to get you to listen to Him! He is the Spirit of God and he wants your trust. Sunday is Palm Sunday! We still have time! God bless us!

It begins with rudeness, criticism, labeling, and disrespect, and it grows into meanness because it is unchecked. It is the kind of behavior where we speak exactly whatever we are thinking without checking our conscience at the door. It is behavior that clearly shows our disrespect and it hurts. What can we do to stop behavior that hurts for it does hurt? We can speak up. We can say, "that hurts." We can ask the speaker to check his or her words. Last evening, a friend made several disparaging remarks and quoted me some "facts" about the compentency of the President of the United States, whom he calls, "your president." What? not our President? I said, "that is not polite!" To me, as I said it, my answer sounds weak… What is polite? It is having the "good manners" to show respect… That seems to be gone from our culture that has turned to distinct labeling, saying, "you are a "XXX" and I am not, therefore, because I think "XXX" is crap, I can be rude." We hurt those who disagree with us, and the most I can come up with is "that is not polite"?

I cringe at the words because I’m not made up to criticize , in public, anyway. Oh I’ve had some awful thoughts, but it’s between me and my conscience, and I apologize a lot to God because the Bible tells me that God loves his creation and I’m sitting here saying, "OH God how can you love "X" person?"

So I pray and tell my friends, we have a vote every 4 years. I remind my friends "We the people" wrote the original words. And that includes me. I take on the responsibility for the sins we have committed and for the glories we have accomplished because I am an American. We the people wrote the words and fought for the freedoms we have that are backed by old fashioned values. Over the years, "We the people" have done some awful things, like slavery and assassinations; neglect of the poor, abortion, and I take that on as mine too because I am an American. Yes we did that, now let’s clean up our act. Pull together, Quote Peace. Quote Love. How many people believe in God and that God loves them? "He lifts infants to his cheeks and bends down to feed them" (Hosea 11.4). He has our name written on his hands (Isaiah 49:16)… He is so close… I hope a lot and I hope that people like me realize what is it like for God to love our hearts and our lips when ugliness pours out of our hearts and lips? Is it acceptable to insult and injure? Does God like to be near my lips and heart when insult and injury reside there? I apologize to my Lord for the words and thoughts that pour out of our minds, lips, and hearts. While the Lord’s lips are on my cheeks am I offering him clean lips and clean heart? God bless us.