“Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least I’ve always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!”― Hilaire Belloc
Eight years ago today….
We threw a really big party and invited a bunch of friends and family to celebrate the beginning of our new family. It was an amazing party. (And a pretty nice sacrament too, you know?)
So how did we celebrate our anniversary?
We had company over for dinner, probably for the first time since we moved in here.
I made blueberry peach cobbler, purple potato and quinoa salad, roasted cauliflower, and chicken with mushrooms and wine sauce. We put a tablecloth on the table (and flower leftover from my birthday since Bella who has great foresight chose the bunch of carnations with the most buds “so that they would last longer.”
Despite burns, blisters and shattered bowls, we had a wonderful dinner with our friend Karla Goncalves, Dom’s former co-worker, bringing her to our home before she enters the cloister of the Trappistines next month. It was a joy to share our home with her and to see how Isabella and Sophia lit up in her presence as they shared their lives with her for a brief evening.
I need to try a tablecloth more often or having company more often. The kids all pitched in to help clean up for our guest. The girls gave her a tour of the house while Dom and I finished cooking dinner (and broke a serving bowl and burned ourselves.) It was wonderful to see them so excited over company.
And sweet Karla brought us some Trappestine chocolates, a medal of Our Lady of Aparecida and Aparecida holy cards and some Portuguese comic books for the kids. And some great stories about World Youth Day, too. Seriously, this was a great idea. A wonderful anniversary dinner, full of joy and laughter. Even if Ben and Anthony were too weirded out by company to eat any dinner.
No pictures of us at the table of or Karla. I was too busy with feeding kids and managing chaos to grab the camera. You’ll just have to imagine.
You know there’s just something really right about a table with milk in sippy cups *and* a nice bottle of wine….
Dom and I are making a vow to try to be better at hospitality. Inviting people over to share a meal with us in the midst of our happy, crazy, chaos. This life is too good not to share the joy.
Melanie, Do you know what the English title would be for the book quoted or if it is available in English? Have you read any other books by Edith Stein that you would recommend? Thanks, she is a saint that I know very little about and would like to know more.
Hi Becky,
I meant to look that up but it was getting late. I found a complete bibilography and it looks like that essay appears in Essays On Woman (The Collected Works of Edith Stein)http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=catholicnetrevie&l=as2&o=1&a=0935216596 Translated by Freda Mary Oben. CWES 2 (1987).
I have that collection and have read some of the essays, though it was a while back. I think it’s some of her more accessible work. Since she was a philosopher, much of her stuff is academic and rather beyond me.
A good starting place is her autobiography: Life in a Jewish Family: Her Unfinished Autobiographical Account (Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol 1)http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=catholicnetrevie&l=as2&o=1&a=0935216049
This is a good collection that attempts to make her writing and spirituality accessible to a general audience: Edith Stein: Essential Writings (Modern Spiritual Masters Series)http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=catholicnetrevie&l=as2&o=1&a=1570754284
This is the biography I’ve read: Edith Stein: The Untold Story of the Philosopher and Mystic Who Lost Her Life in the Death Camps of Auschwitzhttp://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=catholicnetrevie&l=as2&o=1&a=0898704103
This one is more recent release, though actually an earlier biography, and looks good. The author was novice director and then prioress of the Cologne Carmel when Edith Stein lived there and this was the first biography written: Edith Stein: The Life Of A Philosopher And Carmelite (Stein, Edith//the Collected Works of Edith Stein)http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=catholicnetrevie&l=as2&o=1&a=0935216367