Peace on Earth – I Wish

 

A little over a year ago, I was in the Holy Land touring its historic and religious sites. After returning home, many were curious about the trip and asked me lots of questions.

I repeatedly emphasized to anyone who inquired that if they ever get the chance to go to Israel, do so. You will be forever changed.

Historically, you can almost trace humanity’s existence over the millennia there.

For those who are Christians, it roots your faith in a tangible setting. Geographically, everything was right where the Bible said it was. Americans tend to believe that we are at the center of the universe, but to see believers from every corner of the world, of various races and ethnicities in all types of garb, all there for the same reason, put into perspective the universality of Christ’s message and God’s presence in the world.

After having been on the tour, I now know what the flowers look like on Mt. Tabor, how rocky the terrain is, how brightly the sun shines there. I can still feel the silky dried salt on my skin from the Dead Sea and the heat of the dessert on my neck at Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. I not only looked back to the past there, but I also looked toward the future, as we gazed out over the beautiful Jezreel Valley, where the battle of Armageddon is prophesied to take place at the end of the age.

Gazing out over the Jezreel Valley.

Ed at Qumran.

I told someone that to me Jerusalem is the earth’s belly button. It seems as if the umbilical cord from heaven terminates there on earth and connects us to that which is not of this world.

One of the other questions I was frequently asked was, How safe were you there? And I repeatedly told people that never once did I feel unsafe. In fact, as I was getting on the elevator on our last night in Jerusalem, another group of Americans got on with me, and one of them asked me if I’d been to the Western Wall that day. When I said yes, he replied, “You know they shot and killed someone there this morning?” Surprised, I told them we were there in the afternoon. Apparently, some man had come to the Wall and was acting strangely. When security questioned him, he attacked the soldiers patrolling the area with a knife and he was shot. “Wow,” I said. “You never know what’s going to happen.” 

“Well,” another American said, “Last night was Halloween back home, and in Chicago 14 people were shot. No one pays attention to that.”

Well, since the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas, everyone is paying attention now and no one feels safe. After having been to Israel, I feel extremely sad about the violence happening there and wonder how our Catholic tour guide is faring, and all the Israelis we met, as well as the little Palestinian kids who waved to us on our tour bus as they stripped olives from the trees in their back yards. The violence all seems so unreal and unnecessary.

                                 

   The "Glory to God in the Highest" arch entering Shepherd's Field.

One of the first places we visited on the tour was Bethlehem. And next to the Shepherds’ Field is a church called the Chapel of the Angels. Like many churches there, it was designed by architect Antonio Barluzzi, and it is situated near the remains of a 4th-century church that was originally on the site where the heavenly host brought their “good tidings of great joy” to the shepherds minding their flocks.

                                           

 Chapel of the Angels designed by Antonio Barluzzi.

Inside the church, that was designed to look like a field tent much like the shepherds would use, are murals depicting the scenes of the angels coming to the shepherds to announce the birth of the Savior. Around the dome is the inscription: Gloria Excelsis Deo, et in Terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. 

 

                                               

 The inscription on the dome inside the chapel.

 

These were the words of the angelic host and translates from the Latin to say: Gloria to God in the Highest and in Earth peace to men of Good Will.

There are some who say that it should be translated as Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men.

There is a difference between the two translations. In the first, the peace extended to Earth is only experienced by those with good will in their hearts and the latter extends peace to all.

No matter how you translate it, Israel and the rest of us on earth could really use some peace this Christmas season. 

This article originally appeared in the December issue of Northern Connection magazine.

Lessons Learned from the Ancestry DNA Test & Geneaological Research

My latest post from the Catholic Writers Guild.

Who Do You Say That I Am?

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Janice Lane Palko

By Janice Lane Palko

You’ve seen those Ancestry commercials about people who believe they are one race or nationality and then take a DNA test and find out they are not who they thought they were. My husband could be featured in one of those commercials.

This past Christmas, I bought him a DNA test because my parents had had their DNA tested as a gift for me and my siblings. Hence, I thought testing my husband would give our children a clearer picture of their genetic heritage.

My parents’ tests confirmed what my great-grandparents and grandparents had always told me—that I was predominantly Irish, with a splash of English, Welsh, and German. My hubby has always believed that he is half Italian and half Slovak. Imagine our surprise then when I opened the Ancestry email two days after Christmas and learned that he was 29 percent Italian, 25 percent Slovak, and, faith and begorrah, 19 percent Irish! Where did his green roots come from? We still have no idea.
My mother, whose maiden name is Hughes, registered 11 percent Irish and 50 percent Great Britain. Technically, my husband was more Irish than my Irish mother. The target of good-natured jokes from my family over the decades for not being Irish, my hubby now is one of the clan. He has taken great delight in his newly found heritage, lording it over my family, prompting him to don his “Who’s Your Paddy?” T-shirt reserved only for St. Patrick’s Day wear. The axis of our world has shifted a bit, and now I will have to throw away the “Honorary Irishman” button I gave him 36 years ago when we were first dating.

Accompanying the DNA test came a free month’s subscription to the Ancestry website, and I took full advantage of it. I discovered some things along the way. I learned that one paternal great-grandfather, James Lane, had a mother named Mary, a sister named Mary, two wives named Mary as well as a daughter named Mary, which made keeping all the Marys straight very difficult. I learned that a maternal great-great grandfather, who the family had been told had died when my great-grandmother was very young, most likely skipped town to take up with another woman in Colorado. I also learned that my English great-great grandmother who owned a bar, smoked a pipe, had a tattoo, and a pet parrot (I must have descended from sea captains.) and had 13 children was not widowed as had been reported by my late grandfather. She had divorced her husband as her marriage license to her second husband, my great-great-grandfather, stated because of “cruelty and barbaric abuse.” She went on to have a set of twins, one of whom was my great-grandmother. While Catholics dominated my heritage (hence the myriad Marys), I did find some Welsh Baptists and Cornish Methodists among the lot.

My Paternal Grandmother Agnes Moran Lane circa 1915

However, the most stunning discovery was that I had a fifth great-grandfather, Martin Short, (not to be confused with the comedian and actor), who came from Dublin in 1750 to the U.S. and fought at the battles of Bunker Hill and Yorktown and crossed the Delaware with General George Washington.
In addition, I learned some other, more important things. First, life matters. Although in this day and age, we treat it rather cavalierly, why, if life were not so important, would our ancestors have taken such pains to record births and deaths and chronicle who we have descended from?

Are you there, Martin Short?

Second, as writers, we provide a link to the past. I taught memoir writing for a number of years, and I always urge everyone to write their life story. What we put on paper today may one day offer clues, insights, or inspiration to someone yet to be born.

Third, you are dead for a very long time. My searches revealed a few relatives who died days after birth or as young children and one centenarian. However, no matter how long any of them lived, most have now been dead longer than they were alive, and with each passing day, they are even “deader.”
We will all eventually be dead longer than we have been alive. Therefore, plan accordingly. Make the most of your time on stage. Dream big, write beautifully, love with passion, leave a legacy. And all the while, prepare for your eternity. What you do now will determine where you will be later.

Finally, whether you think you are one nationality or ethnicity and you find out that you are not, or whether you find heroes or scoundrels or just common housekeepers, coal miners, railroad laborers, or shopkeepers in your background or not, it really doesn’t matter. Jesus posed this question of his disciples: Who do you say that I am? We should also ponder the converse. Who does He say that we are? What is our real identity? What He tells us is that we are His fallen creation, who He reclaimed for Himself on the cross so that we could become His beloved children and live with Him in eternity.

While it is interesting to know where you’ve come from, it’s more important to know where you’re going. That supersedes any knowledge of our earthly identity. Cling to your heavenly heritage because it’s the only one that truly lasts.

Six Sunday

Hi and Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Here is a teaser for my soon-to-be released novel St. Anne's Day. Hope you enjoy it as much as the first grilled burger of the summer season. Enjoy and thanks for stopping by. Also, you can read a sample chapter of St. Anne's Day on my website at www.janicelanepalko.com.

While you are there, sign up for email notification of when St. Anne's Day is available.

 “Please don’t tell my mother I hired you,” Gerry said. “She thinks Medicare provided you. She’d have another heart attack if she knew I was paying out-of-pocket for a private-duty nurse.”

 “My lips are sealed.” Anne noticed how he glanced at her lips for an instant as if to see if she should be taken literally. The predatory gaze that passed over his face made her heart beat irregularly, and flustered, she bent and picked up her bags.

Six Line Sunday

Here's a sample from my soon-to-be released novel, St. Anne's Day.  Enjoy!

“Why did you invite her anyway? You say she’s just an employee. Oh, I know, you invited her so she could change water into wine for you!” Claudia said.

 In the other room, Peg slapped her knee, laughing silently.

The argument continued for a while. Everyone at the party sat staring, their ears straining to hear more.

Hey, I Know that Person! 

In my novel that I’m working diligently on to indie publish in the coming year entitled, St. Anne’s Day, one of the main characters featured is Peg McMaster. Peg is an elderly woman, who, to put it mildly, is a crackerjack. All writers draw from their personal experience, and I’ve realized that Peg is an amalgam of my maternal and paternal grandmothers—Gertrude and Agnes.

While my grandmothers got along well and enjoyed each other’s company, they were very different in so many ways. Grandma Gert smoked, swore (nothing obscene but vulgar), loved to read and watch movies. She was very lax with regards to rules and regulations. Although Catholic, she rarely went to Mass, but she donated lots of money to various Catholic charities from the Indian Missions--who sent her lovely tokens of appreciation like a thermometer that was imbedded into the white plastic skeleton of a fish--to the Shrine of Sainte Anne de Beaupre.

Grandma Aggie on the other hand never swore, never smoked and used to smash the empty beer bottles from the beer her sons had drunk with a hammer so the garbage man wouldn’t know they had liquor in the house. We once caught her in her bare feet, and you would have thought we had found her streaking she was so embarrassed. She attended daily Mass and ate fish every Friday even when you didn’t have to anymore.

Somehow when I was creating Peg’s character, I managed to meld their personalities into one wise-cracking, devoutly religious old woman named Peg, who sometimes steals the show from the main characters, Anne Lyons and Gerry McMaster.

 Do I Know You?

If you are a writer, has there been a family member or friend who has influenced the development of one or more of your characters?

If you are a reader, has there ever been a character in a book that closely resembled someone you actually knew?

And if you tell me Edward from Twilight or Hannibal Lecter, from Silence of the Lambs, I’m going to freak!

Escape from the Island of Misfit Books

Branded, libeled, I write words that are found in the Bible 

I’ve been reading a lot about branding these days.

No, I haven’t been watching reruns of Bonanza or haven’t purchased a herd of steer.

Branding is a marketing buzzword, which, according to the American Marketing Association, means to establish “a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.”

In order to successfully publish and sell my novels, I have learned it is necessary to “brand” myself. I don't even want a tattoo, so why would I want a brand?  This goes against all that society has been harping on us about for the last few decades—that it isn’t nice to categorize or stereotype people. Branding oneself is not an easy or painless task.  It requires really knowing who you are as writer and what you feel passionate enough about to put into words.

But I guess I’m not really not branding myself; it is my books--their subjects and my style of writing--that I’m trying to fix in the reader’s mind. But another marketing source states that I must also be the brand and says that if you write, oh let's say, sassy, sizzling Westerns, you may want to wear red cowboy boots with your bustier! Glad I’m not writing Westerns! (Believe me, you should be glad too.)

I Want to Be a Dentist!

I’m slowly coming around to defining what I write, and I think for now I’d term it romance--whether comedic or suspenseful--that appeals to the mind, heart and soul. One of the reasons, I’ve decided to go indie is that my books don’t really fit in anywhere. Like Hermey the Elf in Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, who wanted to be a dentist, I don’t fit in with the major publishers. I’ve been marooned on the island of misfit books!

I’ve tried marketing them to the inspirational publishers, and I've come very close to getting picked up by one of them.  But most of those are evangelical Christian houses, and I’m Catholic.  My books are filled with Catholic influences so that wasn’t quite a perfect fit.  Also, I’ve found the writing guidelines for the inspirational publishers to be very restrictive. By no means are my books filled with obscenities and graphic sex, but some of those publishers even frown on the characters dancing, having a drink or saying the words: gosh, darn and cripes because they are derivatives of God, damn, and Christ. Unfortunately, there seems to be a dearth of Catholic publishing houses that feature fiction.  But from the feedback I've received from women who have stumbled upon my sample chapter of St. Anne's Day, which I'm in the process of publishing, I believe there's an market for what I write.  Do you think there is?  (Warning--Even if you say no, I'm still going to publish.  The genie is out of the bottle!)



That Didn't Hurt a Bit!

I believe there's a market out there for contemporary fiction that is witty, warm, and wise.  Witty?  Warm?  Wise?  Wait! I think I just branded myself.  Wow, and it didn't hurt a bit!  (Still not getting a tattoo, though.)