Oct. 29, 2010: You don’t want to leave out the best person available, by Shea Crum

When I think of promoting unity, I think of family. To promote unity, you need to include everyone around you. Then everyone feels included and feels like they are of some importance to the group.

When people aren’t included, they could feel feeling lonely and left out. Then those people could start to feel angry and that could lead to bad decisions such as fighting and putting each other down. When people experience these feelings, they feel worthless and that their lives have no meaning. Also, people can bottle up those bad feelings and make bad decisions like hurting themselves or by taking their anger out on others. An example of this is the 1999 Columbine school shooting.

When people on a team feel left out and start arguing, it affects them and the rest of the team — almost always in a negative way.  When this happens during practice, it can have a drastic affect.  Then when the team starts to play in games, the competiveness can make bad feelings show their ugly head. The team members should be playing together, but because they have fought so much they look at the person next to them as an adversary instead of as a teammate who can do the job. As a result the team loses games.

A way we can include everyone is by asking for everyone’s input about the situation, and then by not putting each other down and by helping each other up when we make mistakes.

Another reason you should include everyone is because maybe that person that you left out may have had the best idea or skill on the group or team. Without giving that person a chance, you’ll never know what he or she is capable of. Everyone deserves a chance.

— Shea Crum is an eighth-grader at Concordia Junior High School and is the son of Shelbi Hamel.

New life: Architect unveils next step in Marymount plan

By Doug Weller

The Register

The Salina business community was looking ahead when it helped support a new Catholic college a century ago.

Architect Donnie Marrs likes to think he’s doing the same with the continued development of Marymount College’s signature building, opened in 1922.

The business community in Salina, Marrs explained, not only contributed the land but raised more than $50,000 to encourage the sisters to build in Salina.

Marrs and his son Dahx announced Monday (Oct. 25) they are ready to begin selling residential condominium units in the college’s former administration building. That has been his plan since he purchased the building from the Diocese of Salina in 1993.

The Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia opened Marymount as a girls’ academy and women’s college and later as a co-educational college. The sisters turned it over to the Salina Diocese in 1983 because they no longer had the staff or resources to operate it. The diocese closed the college in 1989, prompted by mounting expenses and the inability to raise $5 million for an endowment.

Marrs’ plan calls for the construction of 22 condominiums in the south wing. Another 13 could be created in the north wing, most of which has been leased for commercial use. The Marrs family has lived in the central tower of the building the past 18 years.

“It really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own a piece of this building,” Donnie Marrs said. The project, he added, would “help perpetuate the life of this building.”

He called his eventual investment in the residential development, about $2.5 million, a “leap of faith” similar to what the sisters did when starting the college.

The condominiums will be from 1,000 to 1,500 square feet in size, Donnie Marrs said, although early buyers would have the opportunity to pick the locations and sizes.

The unfinished space will sell for between $95 and $125 per square foot, he said. Buyers would pay to finish the interiors to their specifications. In addition, they would need to purchase parking space in an underground garage to be constructed beneath the sunken garden immediately west of the building. Construction of the garage will begin once sufficient units are purchased.

A 1,000-square-foot unit, Marrs explained, would cost $95,000 to purchase, at the lowest price, and possibly another $50,000 to finish, depending on the owner’s preferences. Each parking space would cost $25,000. The total for that residence, with two parking spaces, would be $195,000.

Monthly condominium fees would cover utilities and insurance and property taxes on the building, which he estimated at $3 to $3.50 per square foot a year, or about $300 a month.

The building will have new windows; new water, gas, sewage and electrical service; secured parking and entrance; and use of other parts of the building, including the gymnasium, a roof garden and the surrounding grounds, Marrs added.

The condominiums will qualify for the city’s Neighborhood Revitalization Program, which rebates property taxes on the improvements.

Marrs explained that the owner’s $50,000 investment to finish the interior of the sample 1,000-square-foot unit would be exempt from 100 percent of the property tax for five years and then 50 percent for another five years.

Dahx Marrs said inquiries about purchasing units have come from alumni of the college and from people who live and work in the downtown area.

“The demolition is complete. We’re ready to build spaces for people who want to live here,” he said.

Almost all of the material being removed will be recycled, he noted. Wood trim will be refinished and installed as new floor plans are developed. The original wood floors will be refinished and the intricate tile floors will be preserved.

The buildings’s Chapel of the Immaculate Conception also is being preserved and has been off limits to development and commercial use, Donnie Marrs noted.

They have had numerous requests to operate it as a wedding chapel or reception hall, but the family has declined to do so.

“Our desire is that it exist in that present state,” he said, noting that condominium owners also would have access to the chapel.

For more information on the Marymount project, go to http://www.marymountproperties.com or look on Facebook for marymountks

Oct. 22, 2010: Searching for peace in ‘The Twilight Zone’ by Brenton Phillips

On Dec. 25, 1944, a regiment of American paratroopers trudged out of the mountains after 30 days of fighting in The Philippines. Suddenly the line halted and the soldiers braced for a sniper or machine gun nest. A whispered message made its way down the line: “It’s Christmas.”

The grimy troops, unshaven and hungry after a month in action, had forgotten the American Christmas that was — literally and figuratively — thousands of miles away. For them, for a moment at least, peace on earth dulled the sharp edge of combat.

Years later, one of those soldiers wrote,  “I continued to lift my feet one after the other, and suddenly I wasn’t aware of the cold rain or mud. I gave no thought to the sickening ache deep inside the gut that had been with me for so many days. Someone had just transformed the world. Those two words reminded me that people still lived, and that we did, too.”

The paratrooper who wrote those words was a short guy with an electric grin who talked through his teeth. By 1960 he had become an Emmy-winning creator of live television shows and “The Twilight Zone.”

That Christmas Day in 1944 was also Rod Serling’s 20th birthday.

The degrading stress the young Serling endured in the Pacific found different manifestations when he returned home to a different world — the dog-eat-dog maneuvering for money and position, the battering, stress-filled concrete jungle of bosses, meetings, deadlines, the morass of modern madness W. H. Auden labeled “The Age of Anxiety.”

Serling pounded out this angst on a typewriter. He called for mercy and understanding for the people not only on the brink of the abyss, but also for those just having it hard, like characters in his teleplays “Patterns” and “Requiem for a Heavyweight.”  And he continued that call in “The Twilight Zone.”  He searched for his own better angel.

Many people describe the general mood of “The Twilight Zone” with adjectives such as eerie, creepy, spooky, uncanny, etc.  All true, of course—but these adjectives ignore what the best episodes explore: Everyman and Everywoman’s daily search for peace. Serling’s most convincing characters grapple to escape anxiety — and frequently lose.

(This running theme of losing is a credit to Serling, who understood that the canned happy endings of both comedies and dramas of the time often rang false, often had little to do with reality; his modern parables often serve as unsentimental warnings, not just mere mindless entertainment in the “vast wasteland” of television.)

Although “The Twilight Zone” has become synonymous with the strange, most of Serling’s characters are fairly typical. They are common people, average Joes and Janes on the nondescript streets of Atomic America. A meek bank teller who wants only to have “time enough at last” to read his beloved books, hampered by a harpy of a wife and a society of “tongue-cluckers.”  (Ironically, he finds peace only after a nuclear nightmare, a fleeting peace shattered when his glasses are shattered.)  The business executive who escapes the metropolitan rat race, returning to his boyhood home and discovering he’s not — and never again will be — that little boy playing in a perpetual summertime paradise. A pool player is obsessed with becoming the best, only to find that the price of being best is unbearably tedious.

But just when “The Twilight Zone” world seems hopelessly bleak, Serling and his other writers give us glimpses of Everypeople not in the twilight before darkness but in the twilight before dawn. A “nervous man in a four-dollar room” who makes a living as a two-bit thief battles his better angel and victoriously walks out of his cheap room and his cheap self, we hope, forever. A depressed teacher at the end of his career realizes his efforts really did positively shape his students. An “obsolete man” dies with peace and dignity despite a totalitarian government’s efforts to dehumanize him.

Rod Serling believed in peace, forgiveness, redemption and mercy. A half century after “The Twilight Zone” first enthralled — and reflected — us on TV, it still reminds us (sometimes not so gently) of those wounded among us who have “crossed over” into twilight zones and beyond in the midnight. And, if nothing else, we should be beacons to them in their distressed darkness.

— Brenton Phillips chairs the English-Communications Department at Cloud County Community College.

New ‘Deepening the Mystery’ seminar energizes participants

Sister Pat Francis Centner hoped to find answers to the questions she was asking herself “as a woman religious today.”

It was different for Sister Marie Orf. She was finishing her term on her congregation’s Leadership Team and felt a need to re-energize and reflect on her life as a woman religious.

But for Sister Evelyn Mee, as much as anything, it was just a month away from Baton Rouge, La., where life is still marked as “before Katrina” and “after Katrina.”

Yet each of these three sisters said they completed the 30-day “Deepening the Mystery of Religious Life” seminar at Manna House of Prayer accomplishing what they hoped for — and much more.

“We’ve been changed, each in our own way, by God in our time here,” said Pat, a Franciscan sister who lives in Prairie Village, Kan. “I want to take things I’ve learned here and integrate them into my life.”

The three sisters, along with Sister Mary Hubert McQuinn, echoed each other as they sat down to talk about their experience in this first-ever seminar, designed and presented by the staff at Manna House.

They were among 16 sisters who came from congregations across the eastern U.S. to take part.

The Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia who staff Manna House hoped the intensive program would “make a significant contribution in awakening our awareness of both the mystical and the prophetic nature of consecrated religious life,” explained Sister Bette Moslander.

A part of that, added Sister Janet Lander, was just by providing “30 days to step back and refocus. Women get into their stride in ministry and works, and can lose sight of their original reasons for choosing religious life.”

And, noted Sister Marcia Allen, it was an opportunity to see the “traps of complacency and workaholism; we get so caught up in what we do that we forget who we are.”

That was one of the most important messages Marie Orf heard. As she prepared to return to her Sisters of the Precious Blood congregation in O’Fallon, Mo., she said, “I don’t want to go back the way I came; I want to be a lot more than do.”

Mary Hubert, also a member of the O’Fallon congregation, agreed: “I just want to go back and live what we’ve seen here: quiet service and love. I hope I can quietly re-enter my community and live by example.”

The women praised the Sisters of St. Joseph and lay staff at Manna House, both for their hospitality and service and for the example they provided by living what they teach.

But, Marie added, that doesn’t mean that the 30 days at Manna was a vacation. “It was work!” she said. “You had to be open to new ideas, new thoughts, new points of view. It was worth it, but you had to be willing to work at it.”

Yet it was a different kind of work — and one Evelyn very much appreciated five years after Hurricane Katrina dramatically changed her life.

“The worst of the storm missed us, but we took in the sisters who were forced out of New Orleans,” recalled Evelyn, who is a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph. By the time the hurricane and flooding were over, her congregation had lost their New Orleans Motherhouse, novitiate building, infirmary and two smaller houses.

“It’s been five years, but for us, everything changed. I really needed 30 days of silence and prayer.”

The Manna staff worked out a individualized program for Evelyn, in which she took part in the first intensive week of the “Deepening the Mystery” seminar, then had a personal retreat with spiritual direction. Her free days coincided with the group’s, so she was able to remain connected with the program.

Pat Francis Centner had withstood a very different kind of storm before her month at Manna House.

She had spent the last 10 years caring for her mother and providing pastoral care in a parish. After her mother’s death, she said, “I was looking for a way to take time to discern my own vocation. When I got this brochure, everything was tied in to my questions as a woman in religious life today.”

That’s exactly what Bette Moslander and the other staff at Manna want to hear as they look back on the inaugural “Deepening the Mystery” program.

“With this, we were dealing with contemporary issues, and we challenged them,” Bette said. “But it seems they found the value we were hoping for in that challenge.”

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For more about Manna House…

The inaugural “Deepening the Mystery of Religious Life” seminar was from Sept. 13 through  Oct. 21 at Manna House of Prayer in Concordia, Kan.

For information about other workshops and retreats at Manna House, go to http://www.mannahouse.org

Messages Home: What we talk about when we can’t talk about ‘it’

Since January 2009, Sister Loretta Jasper has been serving as a family counselor under a program ­designed and funded by the U.S. government. She is now in her second year working with the children of military personnel at a Midwest Army base. To protect the confidentiality of the people she works with, she does not identify her location or any individuals. This is one of her “messages home” about her work.

We don’t talk about it anymore.

It affects many of the kids in the school where I work every day; it touches the teachers and staff who face many of the same issues. It is, in fact, my reason for being there.

But we don’t talk about it.

Instead, the top administrator at the school where I have worked for the past year believes that by not talking about it, everyone can just focus on academics and the students will thrive and achieve.

It makes my job — as a family counselor here to support and assist the children of military personnel who have served or are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan — a challenge, to say the least.

But it — deployment, or upcoming deployment or just completed deployment — is no longer allowed as a discussion topic at my school.

So what about the kiddo who continues to wiggle and jiggle through the day, and gets in trouble for that?  Then there is the kiddo who is called to task for not listening or not following directions?  Or, the child who moves into an immediate rant when not selected for playing the drum in music, or being first in line.  Indicators of the effects of it include tardiness, fatigue, irritability, tearfulness, sadness, forgotten assignments, having no coat, being unkempt, and on and on…

The kids, of course, aren’t the only ones affected in a town that butts up against a military base. Many of the staff and teachers are spouses of active-duty soldiers who are deploying, deployed or returning from deployment. The effects of it they show include fatigue, stress, physical illnesses, depression and anxiety, to name a few.

And then there are those among us who know exactly what it is all about:  Retired military and their spouses among the staff and teachers who know from their own experience about the broader effects of this long war of multiple deployments, with physical or emotional damage to the soldier and physical, social and psychological impacts on the whole family.

These retirees are among the most concerned about the untended it.

So how do I create an opportunity to engage the heart in the midst of this line-up of challenges?

ACATAMIENTO: the vibrant zeal of the Sisters of St. Joseph!  I wait; I remain present and visible to each teacher, staff member and child. I wait for the invitation to engage and to interact beyond the hello, the hug, the compliment, the encouragement to move into the concerns related to the wiggles, the inattentiveness, the rants, the tardiness, and the stressors of the job.  When that door opens a little wider, then I am able to support and assist in mending the injuries of the heart and hearth.  The it then becomes a tangible topic of conversation.

How do I wait?  With patience and relationship building!

Each day I am present to each child who passes by me in the school lunch line. Each day I tie a gazillion shoes laces.  I help individual children learn sounds, letters, numbers or patterns; I cheer on a child’s choice of library book; and I model behavior asked of the teacher.  My presence and visibility to a teacher, paraprofessional and teacher aide who is over-stressed with job expectations (and daily life!) seems to be soothing for that person.

Days come and go with no mention of it.  What I do know is that the moment I miss a music class, or lunch, or reading time, I hear about it from the teacher, the aide or the child. I was absent (and missed!).

The dear neighbor has many faces, and there are many ways to serve. My role in this particular school remains: presence, visibility, and as I am invited.

What does Father Jean Pierre Medaille have to say about this in our Maxims?

Forgive all injuries and, to arrive at a greater perfection of Christian charity, gladly please as far as possible those who offend you and who displease you the most.  Do not be content at welcoming opportunities to serve when they arise; carefully and promptly seek them out yourself in order to imitate more perfectly your heavenly Creator. (MP I, p. 11)

Oct. 15, 2010: Tolerance, unity can provide a path to peace, by Christina Fabarez

Today we live in what is often described as a dog-eat-dog world. Monetary gain, social status and material superiority are emphasized as the way to find happiness. However, our culture would ultimately benefit if unity was accentuated and applied. Unity promotes world peace, cooperation and comfort.

The word “unity” is defined as “a combining of all parts to reach the state of being one.”

Without unity, no civilization, religion, club, or athletic team will succeed or survive. Cooperative effort is necessary. Each part functions with a specific job.

Think in terms of a successful volleyball team: The back row must pass the ball to one spot, so the setter can perform her job, and the hitter must be ready to hit effectively. If the pass is off, the setter must scramble to reach the ball, and that in turn upsets the positioning of the front row attacker. Those three players must do their specific jobs and at the same time communicate to achieve harmony and to score a point.

We as Americans can do the same thing, by leading by example and being the first to draw together for the betterment of human kind. Consensus will initiate worldwide change.

Family and close friends are supportive. Have you ever wondered why? It’s because of unity. You are comfortable around them because you love them, are loyal to them and are understanding of them. If they make a mistake, you forgive them.

Why not treat everyone like that? It would become second nature to make peace with those who mess up or make bad decisions.

If secondary schools would stress the importance of intercommunication and continue this throughout high school, the idea of oneness and tolerance would bubble up through those generations. Short-term solutions would become apparent to young people, and small conflicts throughout high school and college could be avoided. Love, instead of hatred would be administrated. In the long run, conflicts between racial groups could be eased and overcome. Also, clashes between states or countries due to miscommunications or misunderstandings could be circumvented, dissipating skirmishes or even wars.

Calling for world peace may sound like a cliché, but it’s obtainable. The way to peace is changing our views to include tolerance and unity.

In the word “unity” there is one i. If you take the i out, you are left with un ty — untie. Unity cannot begin unless you are in it and society will “untie” without it.

Isn’t it nice to think that something you do might positively influence future generations? But nothing you do now will persevere without unity. When you die, will what you accomplished be reflected positively? That is a question we all should consider.

— Christina Fabarez is the daughter of David and Carol Fabarez. She is a senior at Concordia High School and is vice president of the Friends of Rachel.

UPDATE: Winning chili spices up October evening

Bob Maxson’s “straight-up chili” — no cheese or chips on top, no sweets to finish it off — was the top votegetter in Thursday’s Chili for Charity. But everyone who showed up in downtown Concordia this evening received the prize of a beautiful October evening and a chance to support local organizations.

The annual outdoors Chili for Charity event drew eight contestants, which each offered a sample of homemade chili — some with fixin’s and others, like Maxson’s, unadorned. A few even sweetened things up with after-chili treats of mints, miniature cinnamon rolls and caramel apples. Maxson was serving his chili to support Breckyn Reynolds, the 2-year-old Concordia girl born with multiple heart defects. Representing the Sisters of St. Joseph were Neighbor to Neighbor and Helping Hands, the food pantry at Manna House of Prayer. The Neighbor to Neighbor chili makers were the defending champions from last year.

The event at Sixth and Washington streets was sponsored this year by the new Neighbor to Neighbor center, a sponsored ministry of the Sisters of St. Joseph, and Cloud County Community College. Proceeds from the event make up the prize money, which is shared by the winners.

Survey: No simple answers to poverty

There were 30 questions on this summer’s countywide survey of people living in poverty — and even more as the results were discussed at the latest Community Needs Forum.

Fifty people attended the “working lunch” Thursday at the Sisters of St. Joseph Motherhouse, to hear what people from throughout Cloud County had said on the survey about what services they use and what help they need.

In all, 77 surveys were returned. And while that is not enough of the 600 surveys it make it “statistically valid,” according to Sister Jean Rosemarynoski, it does represent nearly 1 percent of all the Cloud County adults who meet the federal poverty guidelines.

The four top services used by those responding involved food: food stamps, food banks, free and reduced school lunch programs and commodities that are distributed free.

Food programs also ranked No. 1 in terms of services that have been most helpful.

The top services these people in poverty say they need in Cloud County are all health related: Dental care and vision or hearing assistance.

But, said Sister Marcia Allen, president of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia and a member of the poverty group within the Community Needs Forum that drafted the survey, “What we found, really, was that there is no general category of poverty; there are as many faces of poverty as there are people.”

Allen said she and the others who decided to try surveying people living in poverty “may have been naïve to believe we could categorize it; it is not a simple issue.”

Those at the meeting who work with local organizations providing services agreed.

Complications they cited included limited affordable and reliable child care, few “family wage” jobs, an unwillingness or inability to leave Cloud County for broader job possibilities, state regulations and red tape and even “pride that can keep families from asking for help.”

But for Everett Ford, the answer is simple.

To begin with, he said it was notable that only five of the 77 survey respondents were male.

Ford, who has been a regular participant in the 12 working lunches so far, said the answer has to be “better jobs. We’ve got to get more jobs in here.”

Kirk Lowell, head of the local economic development agency Cloud Corp., agreed — but even that is not simple, he said.

Lowell cited the Kansas Inc. “County Economic Vitality and Distress Report,” which ranks the state’s 105 counties by relative economic performance.

In 2008, the newest report available, Cloud County tied for 99^th place, which was actually an improvement over the 102^nd place for 2007.

“Everything that’s proposed to come into this community, it’s fought,” he said. “No matter what the project or idea, there’s always going to be for and against. But we’ve got pitchforks and torches in the meeting room.”

Local government and community residents have to be more pro-business, Lowell argued. “When we get the opportunity, we need to jump on it.”

But even that is not the whole solution, he conceded: “If the person in need doesn’t seize the moment, there’s not much you can do.”

Two things that have been done over the past year, those attending the “working lunch” agreed, are the Concordia Year of Peace and the Community Needs Forum itself.

Part of this session was to ask participants if the community meetings, which began in January 2009, are still serving a purpose.

“This is the only forum that brings everyone together, and very good things have come out of this,” said Crystal Paredes. She noted that she and others have learned a great deal about programs available for women and children — and she praised the work of the Sisters of St. Joseph in launching the Neighbor to Neighbor center in downtown Concordia. “But we also noticed there aren’t the same kind of services for men.”

So she and others through the Concordia Christian Church are working to create “The Father’s House,” which will provide mentoring and positive role models for men in the community. The program is a direct outgrowth of discussions during the working lunches, she said.

The Year of Peace project, scheduled to conclude in December, is another direct outgrowth. And Rosemarynoski announced Thursday that it will continue through 2011. “We’re calling it ‘Another Year of Peace,’ and we’ll have new shirts,” she said with a laugh.

Lowell called the Year of Peace “the best thing that has happened in this community in 50 years; we can actually talk about some things.”

Donors featured in new Messenger

The October  issue of The Messenger is in the mail, and available here in PDF format.

In this issue you can find coverage of the St. Joseph Home Reunion in Abilene, a feature on Sister Generosa Walker celebrating her 100th brithday and photos from the Concordia Fall Fest, at which the Sisters of St. Joseph were honored as grand marshals. And as a special feature, we are honoring everyone who gave to the sisters in the past year. The “Development Office End of Year Report” is 12 pages acknowledging all of you who generously gave gifts supporting our sisters and our missions from July 1, 2009, through June 30, 2010.

In fact, the 28-page issue is so large that we have to make it available in three separate PDFS:

CLICK HERE FOR PAGES 1-13, for reunion coverage, Sister Generosa’s birthday, special messages from Sister Marcia Allen and Jean Rosemarynoski, plus a variety of other features.

CLICK HERE FOR THE CENTERSPREAD, pages 14 & 15, highlighting the sisters’ role in Concordia Fall Fest.

CLICK HERE FOR PAGES 16-28, for the End of Year Report and the eulogy for Sister Marie Coleman.

Yes! Rap with the CSJ Sista Volunteers

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