Tying up loose ends

ACN-NW Baba Ganouj

This is my last entry for the month of July and also my final one before I head off on Thursday for a week’s holiday. In some ways I am ready for a break, in others I am wishing that I had another couple of weeks before going. Now that all of the children are in residence full-time and the University has settled down for the summer, my WHOLE family is here ALL the time and ACN-NW is a very busy place indeed! This afternoon is deceptively peaceful (son 1 out with a friend, daughter out at work, son 2 out with husband on a walk), so it felt like a good time to collect my thoughts before I undertake my final push to sort things out before I go off.

Things have really begun to pick up in my office over the last couple of weeks. Let’s face it, for all of the hard work I have done up until now still only a handful of people know that I am here. This is beginning to change, though—in the past 2 weeks I have had a number of phone calls from benefactors who live locally and would like to make donations or from people who can’t through to HQ in Surrey and need information about something or other. Even though sometimes I get calls on weekends or after hours, at this point it is still so exciting to get any call at all that I am delighted to hear from anyone at any time. This may change, of course, but for now I am happy to reach out to those benefactors who ring ACN-NW on a Saturday morning on the off chance that someone is in. This past Saturday was an excellent case in point. I had a lovely chat with a benefactor who lives near Wigan. I was able to help her with some Mass stipends and she now knows that ACN has an active presence in her region—Result! The excitement kept on coming because shortly thereafter the postman came and delivered a generous donation to ACN in memory of a man from Merseyside. How cross could I ever get with dealing with ACN business out of hours when I get to meet new benefactors and experience the generosity of the friends and family of former benefactors?

So far, this week has been largely devoted to PRAYERS FROM OUR HEARTS, the Final Push. Almost everything has been written and edited, and Lorraine and I are just finishing up the last few texts before delivering them all to Patricia by the end of play tomorrow. This has been hard work—I am not by nature a ‘finisher’; I am an ‘ideas person’—so I have had to put on my ‘details’ hat and stop myself from coming up with new plans for just long enough to finish this initiative. Still, now that it is nearly done, I can appreciate how undergoing the process of thinking, writing, thinking again, editing, waiting for approval, getting involved with other things for a bit, coming back to it, writing some more and so forth has really helped to sharpen the offering and to make it more meaningful. I hope that the primary schools throughout my region and Scotland think so, too!

I have also done some more work on the ACN-NW Prayer Vigils for Religious Freedom. These are going to be great! When I get back from Dorset or Devon (I didn’t pay much attention when my husband booked the cottage!), I am going to need to think seriously about publicity strategies. It would be a shame to organize these wonderful events only to discover that no one knew about them! I’ll put my head together with Marketing at HQ and I’m sure that we’ll come up with something fabulous.

Over the weekend I attended an appeal by William Pilkiewicz at St Edmund’s in Little Hulton, near Bolton (Diocese of Salford). My husband and eldest son came along as well and we were all able to lend a hand. William did a great job and the parish responded enthusiastically. It is nice to go to Mass in a new church in a different place and observe how the comforting familiarity of the Mass can be interpreted in so many slightly different ways. It was all rather uplifting, I thought.

Yesterday I decided to hold a taste-testing session for my recipes for typical Middle Eastern school dinner food (this is part of PRAYERS FROM OUR HEARTS). The accompanying picture shows the ingredients for ACN-NW baba ganouj. Here are two of my recipes, in case you are feeling peckish:

Hummus

Ingredients: 2 cans chick peas (410g each); 2 heaping tablespoons tahini; 3 tablespoons olive oil; juice of half a lemon;2 cloves garlic, pressed; salt to taste

Method: whiz all ingredients together in a food processor until smooth. You can use a potato masher or even a fork it you don’t mind a few lumps!

Baba Ganouj

Ingredients: 2 large aubergines; 2 cloves garlic, pressed; juice of 1 lemon; 3 tablespoons tahini; 2 tablespoons olive oil; salt and pepper to taste

Method: bake or grill the aubergines until the skin is cracking and bubbling and the inside is very soft; you will need to turn each several times. Halve each aubergine lengthwise and scoop the soft flesh into a food processor add the remaining ingredients and whiz until smooth.

Enjoy!

Thanks for reading!  Caroline

Another amazing Angelus moment!

Courtyard Cafe at Tabor

My Angelus window at Tabor

Prayers from our Hearts Assembly Script

Reception at Tabor

Yesterday I made a trip that I should have made long ago. Tabor is a retreat centre just outside of Preston that I have wondered about for a few years now. I know a several people who go there quite a bit and lots of others who have been once or twice. I got in touch with Fr Frank Gallagher, the Director, a while ago to ask whether he would like some Persecuted but never Forgotten booklets. He replied positively, so when I sent the booklets I asked if he would consider hosting a Prayer Vigil for Religious Freedom. We agreed that I should head to Tabor for a bit of a chat.

Tabor has been constructed out various ranges of farm buildings that the Carmelites purchased twelve years ago. The facility is wonderful—calm and tranquil—with lots of amenities from chapels to function rooms to café space to guest rooms. Fr Frank was brilliant—really helpful and supportive; I left with my mind buzzing (never a good sign!) with lots of ideas about ways we might work together in future. I joined their e-mailing list and will now receive their schedule of events twice a year. Our Prayer Vigil at Tabor will take place on Monday 2 March 2015 between 7 and 10pm—I am looking forward to it already!

Some interesting smaller things came out of the meeting as well. Fr Frank says that most of the PbnF booklets are already gone. I’ll look into sending some more info when I get back from holiday the week after next. I also mentioned that, with my academic hat on, I would be happy to help out with a talk or day-long course on medieval art if that appealed; I would waive any fees in return for a donation to ACN—everyone’s a winner! My long-suffering husband, who is a professor of medieval history, is happy to do the same; he has even written a book about the Carmelite Order, so he may be in higher demand than yours truly. He told me that he would also be happy to ‘sing for an ACN supper,’ as it were—so maybe we can use our lengthy liberal arts educations to help persecuted Christians. (I’ve just remembered that when our children were little, they used to tell people that their Mummy and Daddy were ‘useless’ doctors because we were doctors, but we couldn’t make anyone feel any better; a sad, but true indictment of our PhDs. Children don’t half know how to cut straight to the heart of the matter!)

Just as I was packing up to leave, my Angelus alarm went off—what a surprise! I was alone in the Chapel facing a beautiful stained glass window with sunlight pouring through it. It was a lovely place to stop for a few minutes and pray. I loved Tabor, and that made me feel that Tabor might just love me, too!

Btw: we are now up to ELEVEN confirmed Prayer Vigils for Religious Freedom, with at least another five in the pipeline. I’ve got a very busy few months ahead of me…

Thanks for reading!  Caroline

And, now, back to the Studio

I have had a great day today. After a hectic start to the week, I had a whole day at ACN-NW HQ and I was able to get right down some hard work on the remaining texts for PRAYERS FROM OUR HEARTS. This morning I finished off the ‘tasting menu’ which will allow pupils in participating schools to sample foods served as part of a typical Middle Eastern school dinner. I love Middle Eastern food, so working out recipes to provide 30 tiny servings of baba ganoush and falafel is a labour of love for me. I also had the help of my youngest son—who is also quite the foody—soon  I’m feeling doubly confident about my choices.

After lunch I moved on to the script that I needed to write for a primary school assembly. I was aiming for something about 5 minutes long that provided some child-friendly background on ACN. After three hours or so I ended up with about 8 ½ minutes of news-breaking reports delivered by top-notch ACN reporters with catchy names like Ace Reporter and Harry Headliner. My son, loyal to a fault, stuck around to help me with a run-through (complete with much enthusiasm and several silly accents) and to select illustrations to go along with the script. Tonight I’ll force all of the children (including a Uni friend of my elder son who is currently visiting us) and my long-suffering husband to go through it again. Shall I play Tabby Topstory or stick with Annie Anchor back in the studio?

Just a few more texts to generate and Scottish Lorraine and I can move on to the heavy editing and final polish stages of this initiative. About time, too—we need to have everything to Patricia by close of play next Wednesday. We think we are on target, but only time will tell!

Off to walk the dog shortly as my working day is nearly done, but I wanted to finish off by saying that I failed my driving test on Monday. Only 3 minor faults, though—which is pretty darn good!—and one major fault which I personally felt I had under control, but no point in crying over this (well maybe only for another day or so). I have scheduled another test for after my holiday and we will have to hope for the best.  Feel my pain…

Thanks for reading!  Caroline

This is driving me crazy!

Simon's Dashboard

It is time, my friends, to let you all in on a little secret: when I moved to this country from America in 1991 I stopped driving. I have had a driving licence since I was seventeen, so I drove for ten years or so like a normal person, but once I switched countries for some reason I became a ‘drivee’ rather than a ‘driver.’ Why I did this I am not exactly sure, but despite plans to remedy the situation when the children were small (largely so that my husband didn’t have to do all of the driving), I never did anything about it.

In some ways being a non-driver has been beneficial; I am a great walker and so are my children—“if Mummy is taking us to the playground, cinema, chip shop, etc, we are walking”-in fact, I could argue that I have done them a great service by fostering their appreciation of their legs as a mode of transport (I notice that many of their friends do not share this outlook!).

I’ll admit that I had more or less planned to be chauffeured for the rest of my days by the time I decided to apply for the NW Manager position with Aid to the Church in Need. As you know I somehow was lucky enough to be appointed and am thankful every day that I applied for this job. The only stipulation set before me was that I must get myself a UK driving licence. “No problem”, I thought, “I already know how to drive; all I have to do is do it on the other side of the road and with a standard transmission.” How hard could this actually be?

Well, let me tell you, it has been hard—I mean, very, very, very hard.  For starters I come from the land of HUGE, gas-guzzling houses on wheels and have never had to change a gear in my life.  Furthermore, over 20 years of not driving has meant that I am, naturally, a bit rusty, but unfortunately I have discovered that what you never lose about driving is all of the sneaky corners that you begin to cut once you have passed your test. You know what I mean—all drivers do it: do you cross your hands over each other when you steer? Or coast with the clutch down when you are turning corners or going down hills? Or not bother to signal when changing lanes because no one else is bothering? Or ignore cycle lanes and position your car too far to the left?  When people joke and say that they would never pass their test if they had to take it again tomorrow, BELIEVE THEM because, for most of us, it would be true.

Anyway,  after weeks of cramming lessons into my spare time and trying to bring myself up to speed (forgive the pun!) with my new job, I am now about to take a driving test. I am petrified—I don’t remember being this scared on my 17th birthday when, after 6 one-hour lessons and a few weeks of cruising around my hometown in my father’s estate car, I took my first test! Simon, the world’s most patient driving instructor, says not too worry and that I’ll be fine as long as I remain calm (and check my mirrors a million times and approach roundabouts really slowly and remember to straighten out my wheels before I reverse when executing a 3-point turn and…I could go on and on and on…). I am trying to have faith in myself and what Simon says and that God will help me pass this test so I can concentrate fully on my work for Aid to the Church in Need.

What can you do? You can say some prayers for me, that’s what! Just like when I say the Angelus all by myself in my dining room and I suddenly feel part of a community working together to help others, knowing that my readers are supporting me while I go through this rather stressful ordeal will make all the difference to me. Please stop for a minute around 2:27pm on Monday and say a little prayer for me—I’ll fill you in when I write my next entry. Argh….  

Thanks for reading!  Caroline

Oh, the things we do for our Mothers!

ACN-NW's Master Heart-Weaver

Curved diamond heart

My Little Heart Weavers

My children must really, really love me. Over the years they have always risen to every challenge that I have set. They never let me down when I needed their help in the office at Lancaster Cathedral; they haven’t always suffered in silence, but they always helped me when there was no one else. I am pleased to announce that my in-house team of helpful teens has now pledged its allegiance to ACN-NW and, as the Regional Manager, I must say that I am delighted and, further, that I am not surprised. Partly they help because they are clever people and they know that if their mother is happy, they are that much more likely to be granted the next favour/loan that they ask for, but they also help because they are interested and they care. They are nearly grown up now and I am incredibly proud of their strong sense of right and wrong and the ways in which they express their faith. Perhaps all those formative years of setting up folding tables and handing out service sheets and washing up after parish lunches haven’t done them any harm after all…

The past two days saw all four of us involved in assembling the craft resources for PRAYERS FROM OUR HEARTS (yes—I’m still excited, so it’s still in caps…). I know that I introduced you all to the joys of paper heart-weaving when Scottish Lorraine came to visit the ACN-NW office. My eldest son and I have put together what we feel is a comprehensive and deeply helpful series of images to provide step-by-step instructions for weaving hearts—this took hours away from the Latin poetry that Son #1 is memorising for some university exams he will sit in a few months. It was worth it, though—he is a great hand model and a heart-weaving natural! Yesterday my daughter and younger son came on board to help me develop nine different patterns and to weave an example of each one. I was very grateful that they were willing to help as this made what would have taken me all day into an enjoyable couple of hours spent together. I must report that I am doubly proud that they would help with this—I have been weaving hearts for a couple of years now and my children, despite much initial eye-rolling and merciless ridiculing of their ‘sad’ mother, all have mastered the basic techniques—especially after I forced all of them (and my husband) to weave fifty golden hearts in less than a week for my in-laws fiftieth anniversary a couple of years ago. They claim to have been ‘scarred’ by that experience, but, to help their mother and Iraqi and Syrian refugees, they are back in the heart-weaving saddle once again. Thank you, Christopher, Clemmie and Gabriel!

Scottish Lorraine and I are currently looking for volunteers (with or without primary school-aged children) to test drive the heart-weaving resources. If you want to give it go, just let me know—but be warned: heart-weaving may change your life forever!

Thanks for reading! Caroline

Religious Freedom Prayer Vigil World Cup: ACN-NW: 6 Apathy: Nil

ACN NW Regional Planning Meeting

My first prayer vigils for Religious Freedom aren’t until the end of November (thank you to Wrexham Cathedral and St Francis, LLay--22/23 November--and the Parish of St Mary of Eden in Carlisle--29 November), but I am already making lots of plans. I’ve contacted about twenty venues and most of these are thinking about dates at this point—people seem to be keen to participate. By the time everyone has come on board we are likely to be talking about between fifteen and twenty Prayer Vigils—that’s a lot of prayers being offered all over my region to ask that others be given the chance to worship however they like without fear of punishment. I’m looking forward to these events; they will help to raise awareness and, in a purely selfish way, I will have the chance to meet lots of people and hopefully to forge lots of links between the various parishes and ACN-NW. By the way, my timely (and witty) world cup reference reminds me: have you watched the ACN World Cup themed video on our website? Go on, it won’t take long and is definitely worth a watch!

I promised a bit of a recap of this week in this blog, so here goes. On Monday I touched base with one of our ACN Board Members, Lord David Alton of Liverpool. Lord Alton and I have known him for several years now. We had a very informative meeting—lots of exchange of contacts and ideas—just the sort of thing that I love! Several new ideas for the North West emerged in the course of our hour-long chat; you will hear more about these in due course.( I can’t give everything away all at once—I need to leave some things out or you might not keep reading this blog!) Tuesday was a catch-up morning and the monthly Regional Marketing and Fundraising Meeting that I mentioned in my last post.

Wednesday I went to Scotland to visit Scottish Lorraine to firm up some more details concerning…wait for it…here comes the actual name of our initiative for primary schools…for the first time EVER in print…yes, you saw it here before anyone else…PRAYERS FROM OUR HEARTS! Worth the wait, I hope—we like it and we hope that schools across the North West, North Wales and Scotland will love it!

Yesterday and today were spent on PRAYERS FROM OUR HEARTS (I’m going to continue to capitalise this until my initial excitement begins to wear off!). It’s time to firm everything up, to make lists for the designers and printers, to write and proof all of the texts and to double check the details to make sure that we’ve thought of everything (Scottish Lorraine and I are nothing if not thorough). Yesterday, among other things, I wrote out easy step-by-step instructions for weaving hearts, the craft element of the offering. Later on today my helpful teenage force of volunteers is going to pose for photos to accompany said instructions; my daughter and her friend may well be upstairs doing their nails in preparation even as I type this. I’ll let you see a sample in one of next week’s posts.

I have also begun work in earnest on some new initiatives. I am thinking about various ways in which ACN-NW could work with Farid Georges, a Syrian Orthodox painter from Homs in Syria. Farid is currently living in Germany and he has recently completed a series of paintings inspired by his difficult experiences living as a Christian in his native city over the past couple of years. His images are visually extremely powerful, and coupled with his explanatory texts, they tell a truly heart-breaking story. Can we bring the paintings to the UK? Or maybe create an exhibition that could travel around the North West region? Or maybe a booklet about them? Then there is the Angelus Angels project; how might that work? Will it work?  See what it’s like to be inside my head with zillions of ideas floating around all of the time? Thanks heavens that I am not in this alone—my colleagues at ACNUK HQ are always there to help me think things through. Stick with my blog to see how these ideas (and, no doubt, lots of others!) develop over the coming months. And let’s not forget the Seminarian Challenge and next year’s Prayer Vigils for Vocations and opening up dialogues with universities in my region …

Job done!

Two computers are better than one

Three (yes, three!) pictures accompany this entry. All come from my meeting in Scotland on Wednesday. My favourite is the final one that sums up our meeting: we had jam donuts and chocolate and crisps AND Lorraine gave me some pens to take home (the ACN-NW staff goes through pens like nobody’s business!). The Scottish office puts on a much better meeting than ACN-NW. I must raise my game in future!

Thanks for reading!  Caroline

My Dear, we simply must stop meeting like this…

ACN NW Regional Planning Meeting

Big Monthly Regional Marketing and Fundraising Meeting yesterday; the attached picture shows you just how we managed to squeeze me, Scottish Lorraine, Portia and Patricia along with all of our papers and files into my dining room!  These meetings are always very productive as they allow us to touch base, exchange information, ask questions and canvass opinions. Yesterday’s meeting was nearly 2 hours long—my phone was actually hot by the time I hung up—but it left me with lots to think about and to get on with so my poor old phone will just have to suffer…

There is an art to the conference-call-meeting, and I am not naturally good at it. I love the connection and the chance to engage with other committed people to get a worthy job done. What I hadn’t realised about meetings by phone is how reliant I am on physical presence and body language to gauge the impact of what is being said. I am a very physical person; when I was an academic, I regularly began my lectures with a warning that at some point I was entirely likely to trip—I tend to jump about and run to the screen to point at things and there are always loads of leads and chair legs, etc; it all adds up to potential disaster even after years of experience! I am enthusiastic and I guess that that exuberance has to flow out of me somehow…falling flat on my face in front of 300 undergraduates may not have been dignified, but at least they always remembered the point that I had been making! Anyway, I find it very difficult to discuss things with people when I can’t use my own face and hands to make my point and when I can’t watch other people’s facial expressions. Words say a lot, but they don’t say everything. Curiously, I have recently participated in a conference call with my brother and two sisters (we had to deal with some family issues that had come up); this I found very easy—no problems at all—when my younger sisters described the situation I knew exactly when to laugh and when to cry and when my hulking brother-who is an American football coach-tossed in one of his typically mono-syllabic contributions I required no further elaboration from him whatsoever.

The difference lies not in the nature of the subject matter being discussed, but rather in how well we all know each other. I don’t have to guess when my sister is smiling and she doesn’t have to wonder whether my staring off into space means that I am not interested (she knows that I am merely ‘mulling’). As I get to know my colleagues at ACN better, and as they get to know me, we should become more adept at filling in the missing faces at our phone meetings. Indeed, I think that we are already getting better at it. I, ever bubbly and chatter-y, am learning not to be concerned about silences as we all absorb what we’ve heard or the more hesitant way we all speak when we are thinking something through and trying to articulate that process at the same time. This, I feel, is progress and adapting to a new way of working together; this is good.

However, I am writing this as I sit on a train to Motherwell to have a Primary Schools session with Scottish Lorraine; I will confess to a certain sense of excitement at the prospect of a bit of face-to-face interaction. I plan to wave my arms around and smile and wink and stare off into the distance as much as I possibly can!

Plenty of developments to report already this week, but I was feeling a bit philosophical this morning. In my next entry I’ll bring you up to speed on everything that’s going on.