Christin Lore Weber writes about herself as a child who bore a different name--Mary Jane Lore. The people, the places, the stories of the past are as she experienced them in the 1940s between her birth and her eighth year when she lived with her immigrant grandparents and their descendants on the Boundary Waters of Lake of the Woods in Minnesota. The remote beauty of the place, stories she was told of a family struggling to identify as Americans, influences of a grandmother with a steely will and unbreakable determination to succeed, of a mother whose tuberculosis had made childbearing forbidden but who bore her anyway, an early aviator for a father, and a grandfather who could soften an often frightening world with his stories and tenderness. This is a memoir through the eyes of that small child with mythic sensibilities, and interpreted by the woman in her wisdom years whom she finally became.
Enter a Mysterious, Cloistered World Full of Passion and Regret, Where the Lines Between the Sexual, Artistic, and Religious Become Blurred. This achingly beautiful and revelatory first novel is the story of three generations of strong-willed women and their battles to balance personal longings with the disciplines of their church: Meghan, who dismisses the priest's injunctions about sex until tragedy befalls her family; Kate, who so fears God's power to destroy that she shuts herself off from emotion completely; and, finally, Elise, whose connection to unknowable forces drives her into the most exhilarating, disillusioning, and haunting experience of her life. Written with lyricism and emotional authenticity, Altar Music is a portrait of a nun as a young girl, an epic tale of a family both defined and divided by its religious beliefs, and a powerful story about mothers and daughters.
What can I not live without? What is strong enough to endure the challenges life brings? What is steady enough to survive intact through every change? What is, at the same time, so common, so ordinary, so natural that it warms my heart and gives peace to my mind? This is my Finding Stone.FINDING STONE: An invitation to join Finding Woman on a journey to find your Stone of healing, wisdom, and power.FINDING STONE: A quiet parable and soul-work reflections employing the ancient meditative practice of standing before Life's mysteries.FINDING STONE: A book to be read slowly, kept by your bed, or carried in your backpack, purse, or briefcase. A book to give to a friend.Come, take the journey of the Stone.
At the turn of the Twentieth Century a young girl, Millie, is caught between her mother's needs, her father's expectations, and a secret that she will need her entire life to recognize. The secret will motivate her towards her most profound yearning and her deepest anguish. Christin Lore Weber writes with an intensity that catches the reader up in the power of language as well as the tangles of relationships between intriguing characters. She weaves a story that will touch your heart.A story, like a shawl, is knit over time and contains various patterns. This story was knit over generations of the lives of women in the lineage of Milda Schatz. Each woman, mother to daughter, down the generations carried the pattern in her fingers and as a flowing thread of memories. Each of them took part.Liese, who hid what she had made, Julia-lost, Julia unraveled, Milda, who tangled and untangled the skein.But Milda also kept the family secrets like heirlooms. "She lifted a box from its hiding place in her dresser drawer and set it on her lap. She took a deep breath before removing the cover. The sight of the blue shawl, unchanged over all these years, drove her heart up into her throat. Her breath caught on it. She made a little sound, involuntary, a moan....She stared at it as though she had never seen it before, and holding it in her hands, felt almost worshipful, as though she held a relic and had become lost in contemplation. She must have sat for an hour, holding the shawl, a thing too beautiful to wear, until her breathing deepened like the breathing of someone in a dream. Then she returned the shawl to its box and replaced it in the bottom of the drawer. On top of it she organized all the other finery, closed the drawer, and turned out the light."
Caught in the turmoil of renewal resulting from the Catholic Church's Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, a young nun and her mother struggle to understand and live their faith in a new and often unfamiliar religious world. Sister Christin, eager to implement the new directives from Rome, finds herself with theological vision but without guidelines, wisdom or life experience to create structures for living that vision. "No one knows how to do this " Humorous and sometimes tragic results ensue. Her mother, Alyce, proud of her daughter but at the same time concerned for her welfare at such an unstable time, encourages and warns her of possible dangers through letters and occasional visits to the convent. As the two women exchange these "words in their fingers," the reader will experience the effect their church in turmoil has upon the lives of each of them.This is a memoir of a turning point, a thin place in the texture of an ancient institution, of a surrounding culture on the edge of a new understanding of the world, and of the souls of even the most common women who lived through those times and attempted to influence the outcome. For the human soul, it was an edge both terrifying and tender.
