The Resolute Woman

Category: courage

  • Keep swimming–and keep singing

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    resolutewoman
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    My friend whose husband has brain cancer visited me. What can we do when something bad happens? Sometimes you can take action to find a solution, but sometimes there is no solution. These words are from a poem from How Beautiful the Beloved by Gregory Orr.  One of the best kinds of friends are friends…

  • Happy?

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    resolutewoman
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    What do you need to be happy? In his book, Endurance, Alfred Lansing writes about Earnest Shackleton and his 28-man crew, who were stranded in an island of ice in the Antarctica for 17 months in 1914 and 1915. With little food—and without cell phones! Lansing remarks about Dr. Alexander Macklin’s “good humor.” Dr. Macklin…

  • One year of war

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    resolutewoman
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    February 24, 2023, marks one year of war for Ukraine’s people. One year ago, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Russia that the consequences would be “an abundance of pain, filth, blood and death….War is a huge calamity. This calamity carries a huge cost—in every meaning of this world.” Say a prayer for the people of…

  • Truth

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    Sometimes, it is difficult to know what to believe. We hope Sojourner Truth was right when she said, “Truth is powerful and it prevails.”

  • Catastrophizing

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    resolutewoman
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    My neighbor took a photo of a bobcat one morning recently—at the house across the street from ours. Yikes! We overreacted—and worried about our dog Jack—and all of the smaller dogs and the cats in the neighborhood. Disaster! However, my friend Mary, a retired biologist, didn’t panic. “How exciting,” she said. “Not very many people…

  • Easy answers and half-truths

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    resolutewoman
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    A friend sent me these words recently—from a Franciscan blessing for justice and peace. May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, hard hearts, half-truths and superficial relationships. May God bless youso that you may live from deep within your heartwhere God’s Spirit dwells. May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and…

  • How dare they?

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    resolutewoman
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    Vice President Harris says we must fight for a woman’s right to control her body. She spoke on January 22, 2023—the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade, the decision that guaranteed a woman’s right to abortion. She spoke in protest of a recent Supreme Court decision that took away that…

  • Let your actions speak

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    resolutewoman
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    Beto O’Rourke is now teaching a class at the University of Chicago and writing email messages to people like me. Beto’s advice: “Keep the faith, keep up the fight and let our action be the antidote to any despair that tempts us.” –Joy

  • Speak up–in a loud voice

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    resolutewoman
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    As I said in my last blog post, one of my resolutions for 2023 is to speak up. I was reminded of that resolution recently when I read a Martin Luther King Jr. quote: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” –Joy

  • Courage

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    resolutewoman
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    Time magazine has named Ukrainian President Zelenskyy its Person of the Year. Zelenskyy, the magazine staff explained, deserves the award “for proving that courage can be as contagious as fear.”