Our first foray into Liturgical Living - St George's Day

Liturgical Living - shaping our lives so it takes on the rhythm of the Church calendar.

When I first decided that now was the time to finally “do something,” I of course wanted to get started right away. But I wasn’t sure where to begin (or how). Thankfully I had read here, here, and here about celebrating saints’ days by having a special dinner and the next one that was coming up (that I could get excited about) was St George’s day on April 23.

This day was the perfect way to begin, as all the ideas I had read for celebrating it were easy for me to do.  St George is the patron saint of England, so one of the dinner ideas suggested was to make shepherd’s pie. My husband practically grew up on shepherd’s pie, so this dish was not unfamiliar to me. My favorite recipe for it even comes from the BBC.

Nailed it!!

Another suggestion was to read St George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges. This is apparently a popular book, as there were 21 copies available for it at the library - and for good reason! Her retelling of the story St George is extremely well done and the illustrations are gorgeous.  Though I have to admit, I had to adapt the adaptation for the toddler.  She loves her stories but this was just a wee too wordy, even for her.  But I finally learned the legend of St George and the dragon, and the spiritual allegories were all over the story! (More on that later)

The last thing I did was to print off a couple of coloring pages of St George and the Dragon - this was just for kicks. (My coloring in of the dragon is pretty awesome, though. Don’t you think?)

Don't be jealous.

But how did the day actually go??

*sigh*

Our little girl seemed to be trying us at every turn that day.  Right from the beginning, when she purposely kicked me square in the boob during a diaper change, to the very end of the day when she refused to eat the shepherd’s pie and decided it would be better to whomp on Daddy, I had to keep asking St George to pray for me and give *me* the courage to do what God was calling me to do.

Liturgical Living Lesson #1: You may think you’re doing this for your family - but you will find God is calling you to do this for *you*.

This was George’s biggest lesson: at one point in his journey he saw the heavenly city and he wanted to go there with his hot girlfriend, Una. But an old wise hermit told him he needed to do what he was called to do first (i.e. kill the dragon).  The parallels to my life were too obvious. Maybe painfully obvious. So after removing my little dragon to her room for hitting Daddy. I prayed for grace to finish the day well.

And you know what? She ended up eating all her dinner and going back for seconds! I’ll call that a victory for the Lord.

Day One

Lately there's a song on the radio that has really been working its way around my head and heart. The artist sings about how he wishes his life was... different. Yet, he recognizes that just wishing is not going to get him anywhere.  "I gotta do something. Here goes nothing!"

This is my Day One. I've talked a lot (to my husband mostly, and ad nauseum) of needing a change in almost every area of my life - spiritual, relational, creative, civic, diet, health - pretty much everywhere (except fitness... so far there's nothing moving me there to, uh, move me).

That's where this blog comes in... You see, I've watched "Julie and Julia" many times, so I know how this goes. (What? This movie has a lot of wisdom in it! (that, and butter)).  The jumping off point - that place where Julie really changes - is when she commits to her two-fold goal of cooking every recipe in Julia Child's cookbook AND blogging about it. (There's the tie-in, in case you were wondering.)

I could make all the changes and do all the things in and for my family by myself and for myself.  Sure, I could.  But I think and I hope that more permanent, lasting change will come if I somehow commit to writing it down. Processing it. And opening myself up to the public eye. Thus, this blog.

At the moment, I have no firm schedules in mind and no "rules".  I'm still formulating my goals. This is my "gotta do something. Here goes nothing!"  Wish me luck.