Biblical Poem for November 19, 2021: Responding to the Word of Jesus Christ by Patrick McCaskey

 

Poems About the Gospel, 
Patrick McCaskey

Responding to the Word of Jesus Christ

 

Luke 11:27-28

 

From the “Navarre Bible” commentary,

We know that “The Tradition of the Church

Has always read these words as great praise for

The Blessed Virgin.”  She believed God’s word.

 

From the “Catechism of the Catho-

lic Church,” 149, we know that “Throughout

Her life and until her last ordeal when

Jesus her son died on the cross, Mary’s

Faith never wavered.  She never ceased to

Believe in the fulfillment of God’s word.

And so the Church venerates in Mary

The purest realization of faith.”

 

Mary was not the least bit contrary.

She helped everyone, even the most wary.

 

Patrick McCaskey

 

Patrick McCaskey is a Vice President and Director of the Chicago Bears, Chair of Sports Faith International, and Chair of WSFI Catholic Radio 88.5, as well as poet and the author of our Sports and Faith Series.  The Sports and Faith include stories of athletes and others who live exemplary lives like George "Papa Bear" Halas, Pat's grandfather. Surprising, inspiring, and all very human, Patrick McCaskey's Poems About the Gospel is Patrick's first book of poems where readers can find a few words of encouragement in every one. Poems About the Gospel is available from Sporting Chance Press, Amazon and select bookstores like the Little Way in Crystal Lake.

 

Copyright 2020, Sporting Chance Press

Biblical Poem for October 18, 2021: Seventy Disciples Have a Mission by Patrick McCaskey

 

Patrick McCaskey,
Author of Poems About the Gospel

Seventy Disciples Have a Mission

 

          Luke 10:1-19

 

Jesus Christ sent seventy disciples,

Two by two, to places where He would preach.

They were chosen to be the advance men.

They were taught to say, “Peace be to this house.”

 

The Navarre Bible notes are instructive.

“Our Lord…requires of them detachment and

Abandonment to divine providence.”

 

“The actions and words of the disciples

Are, like those of Jesus, a call from God

To repentance, which must come from the heart.”

 

Saint Josemaria Escriva wrote,

“Don’t doubt it: your vocation is the greatest

Grace our Lord could have given you.  Thank Him

For it.”  I thank God for my vocation.

 

Patrick McCaskey

 

Patrick McCaskey is a Vice President and Director of the Chicago Bears, Chair of Sports Faith International, and Chair of WSFI Catholic Radio 88.5, as well as poet and the author of our Sports and Faith Series. He is also a grandson of George "Papa Bear" Halas. Surprising, inspiring, and all very human, Patrick McCaskey's Poems About the Gospel is a book for all seasons where readers can find a few words of encouragement in every poem. Poems About the Gospel is available from Sporting Chance Press, Amazon and select bookstores like the Little Way in Crystal Lake.

 

Copyright 2020, Sporting Chance Press

 

Thinking of Willa Cather

I was thinking of Willa Cather lately. For me, she came highly recommended by an English teacher I had, Sister Faith Schuster. Sister Faith came from a large Catholic farm family in Pilot Grove Missouri. Willa Cather spent much of her childhood in Red Cloud, Missouri. I would imagine, Sister Faith would have felt a kinship with Cather. I have written before about Sister Faith and how proud she was of her parents who had lived long and faithfully on the farm.  Faith was all about faith, all about literature, and all about truth and beauty. 

I read a few of Cather's books in college and recently picked up her novel, O Pioneers, once again. I watch Peter J Rea's video blog about books in which he briefly mentioned it. I thought I would have another look. I am not going to pontificate on the book, but I will say that Cather says a great deal in few words. I have come to appreciate writing that kick starts your brain rather than fills you with details. 

One other things that I want to mention about the book is just how different we are becoming from people like those described in Cather's work. The Swedes, Bohemians, and French Canadians that Cather writes about in O Pioneers are far different than modern people today. If you are one of those who want to chase young readers away from such writing to the "more exotic" or more diverse, I don't think you need to bother. 

Cather's personal life is a bit of a mystery, although that was not thought particularly relevant when I was in college. But she had a Catholic background and that was in keeping with much of our reading in those days. She eventually moved to New York and did much of her writing from that urban setting, but reflecting more or her rural experiences than city life. 

A Friend Called Me to Talk About the Brown and White

 A friend of mine called me from his new home out west where it is much warmer than Illinois. He wanted to congratulate me on my book The Brown and White. He recently bought a copy without any arm twisting. It was good to have his kind words because one of the main characters in this fictionalized biography passed away about a year ago. Like a lot of other people, I am coping with the loss as we approach Christmas. I feel good that I got to tell a little of his story along with mine and I know he liked the book. The Brown and White tells our story about high school life on the south side of Chicago in the late 1960s. It's a funny story with a dose of lost love and drama. I suppose I can say it is "based on fact." 

Of course, when I wrote the book we thought we lived through some tough times, but kids today have lived through some unimaginable horrors. But my story is my story and it is about times as they were back then. 

My friend is a marketing/sales guy who said I really soft pedaled the book to the extreme. I suppose my sales efforts have been understated, but at the same time true to myself.  I have this idea in the back of my head that some day someone from the movies will give me a call and ask if I am interested in selling the story. I've joked about this for a few years now. 

It's hard to be too confident in promoting your work these days. I am just an average guy who wrote my story over 40 years and then published my book. I had plenty of time to make it better. In good conscience I can't brag about a 200 page work that I took four decades to write. In my publishing career I once had an academic with a rough manuscript on a hot topic that he would send my way only if I could produce it as a textbook in six months. I got his book done as required.  I worked on another book that once came in a few thousand pages with hundreds of very difficult formulas and reams  of pages on government programs and regulatory materials. I was lucky to get a lot of help from a great editor with a math degree and we got it out several months later. I think we sold a dozen or so editions. 

It's tough to sell a personal story because everyone has their own. What made mine more interesting than most is the times and my school characters. My add copy  reads: 

The Brown and White tells the story of Collin Callaghan's freshman year at a Chicago Catholic High School. Collin is a white boy who is living in turbulent times in a changing city. He clings to his neighborhood and his family as he heads out each day with his classmates on the Brown and White, the ancient school bus driven by free-spirited Willie. Memorable characters abound as this story unfolds. Collin's loveable family, especially his Irish Catholic policeman father and his Irish immigrant mother face life together. Collin and classmates blaze their own humorous and passionate trail through the late 1960s. A unique cast of terrific teachers are there to see the boys through. Laughs and life meet readers head on as they travel on the Brown and White.

If you read this and are intrigued by story, take a chance on a copy, it's $12.50. A few of my kids spend that on side trip to Starbucks when they buy a few of those gigantic flavored coffees. That is about as strong a pitch as I can make! 

Lawrence Norris 

sportingchancepress.com

Bookies Bookstore to host Chicago Bears VP Patrick McCaskey for Book Signing on June 15, 2019

                                                                                

PRESS RELEASE

Crystal Lake, IL—Sporting Chance Press author Patrick McCaskey will be signing his new book Worthwhile Struggle at Bookies this Saturday in Chicago at 10324 South Western Avenue at 1 PM.

Bear fans think this year’s team might lead to something special–if you want something special this year for Christmas, birthdays, and Fathers’ Day–Worthwhile Struggle checks all the boxes. Worthwhile Struggle is the fourth book in the Sports and Faith Series published by Sporting Chance Press of Crystal Lake. Each chapter is titled after one of the author’s 10 Commandments of Football, principles based on McCaskey’s life with the Chicago Bears and reflecting his own distinctive sense of humor. The book includes vignettes of athletes such as Tom Waddle, Bill Wennington, and Sister Jean of Loyola University (who also graces the cover). McCaskey family stories, Bears history, and sports questions/answers round out the sports coverage. For the faith component, stories of saints and McCaskey’s Biblical poems are included. Struggle is a theme that is clearly seen and understood in sports, which serves as a metaphor for life lessons in the Series.

McCaskey, a grandson of Chicago Bears founder, George “Papa Bear” Halas, is one of the team owners and serves as a Vice President. McCaskey is a frequent speaker and author who is involved in the Bears charitable and outreach efforts.  Working for good causes for over 40 years, McCaskey is Chair of Catholic Radio Station WSFI (88.5 FM) and Sports Faith International (an initiative the honors high school, college, and professional athletes and coaches who lead exemplary lives).  

Specs:

Worthwhile Struggle

352 Pages, 5.5” x 8.5”

Paperback

Includes index, table of contents

Photo and Illustrations

Pub. 2019, $20 each

Printed in the United States

Brown and White Update

I have not paid enough attention to marketing my own book, The Brown and White. However just recently I have been sending note out to high school English teachers. If  you get one of these, I am serious about sending sample books out to English teachers that may be able to use the book and assign it for their courses.  I am convinced that The Brown and White will get read by students from Catholic High Schools. I started writing just after graduating myself! 

You can see the book at sportingchancepress.com

Description:

Forty plus years in the making, The Brown and White is a fictionalized memoir that tells the story of Collin Callaghan's freshman year at a Chicago Catholic High School. Collin is a white boy who is living in turbulent times in a changing city. He clings to his neighborhood and his family as he heads out each day with his classmates on the Brown and White, the ancient school bus driven by free-spirited Willie. Memorable characters abound as this story unfolds. Collin's loveable family, especially his Irish Catholic policeman father and his Irish immigrant mother face life together. Collin and classmates blaze their own humorous and passionate trail through the late 1960s. A unique cast of terrific teachers are there to see the boys through. Laughs and life meet readers head on as they travel on the Brown and White.

About the Author:

Sporting Chance Press author Lawrence Norris has a little marble angel on his desk, just under his computer screen. It's not very big, but Norris says it "looks over" all his labor each day. Norris wears a brown scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel every day. It's the scapular that he always wore as a student at Mount Carmel High School in Chicago. On one wall of his little office, there are religious images housed in beautiful gold frames that are shaped like little stained glass windows. His desk is home-made from an old dining room table. And as a publisher and an author, surrounding Norris are boxes of his company's books and an old floor to ceiling bookcase that includes a small sampling of his old books. He has another small bookcase by him and several more throughout his house. Most of his old books have little value to anyone other than himself.

Norris is not sure if the Dominican Sisters who educated him in grade school or the Carmelites who did the same in high school or the Benedictines who took Norris on in college would love all his work. But he hopes so.

Details:
Product Details: The Brown and White
ISBN: 978-0-9819342-7-3
192 pages, paperback,
September 2016

Review of the Brown and White from the Mount Carmel Website

hERE'S THE BOOK REVIEW THAT WAS ON THE MOUNT CARMEL HIGH SCHOOL WEBSITE.

The Brown and White

THE BROWN AND WHITE

Jon Potocki '65 and Terri Stadler '65 review The Brown and White by Lawrence Norris's '71. This "fictionalized memoir" brought the alums back "home" and proved to be a thoughtful fictionalized account of life at Mount Carmel in the 60's.

Thomas Wolfe, the early 20th century author said, “You can’t go home again.” But both of us recently had a close encounter with the Southeast side of the 1960s in Chicago. We just finished reading The Brown and White, a “fictionalized memoir” written by Lawrence Norris, a 1971 graduate of Mount Carmel. We were so impressed with the author’s stories that neither of us could put it down. Because of its storied format and short chapters, we both finished it in a matter hours (and as John proudly proclaims, ‘not bad for a guy who was in the lowest section for all four years’).

The book was written about a student, the author, and his freshman year at a fictional all-boys HS, “St. Mary’s,” on Chicago’s south side (September 1967 to June 1968). The encounters he writes about between the upper classmen and the new freshmen included many experiences that many of us actually had during our first year at Carmel: being called “Bennies,” being the brunt of the upper classmen’s jokes and high jinx, etc. 

Although the book is a fictionalized account, most of us tried to identify every character in the book with someone from our first year at Carmel, 1961 – 1962. Growing up on the South Side of Chicago was and still is a special kind of life. 

The book takes its title from the brown and white school bus that the student rode and centers on the many experiences that he had coming and going to school in the turbulent late sixties: passing the (Aquinas, Mercy, Longwood, St. Francis, Loretto) girls who were waiting for their CTA bus, getting harassed by the residents in the “bad” neighborhoods that they drove through, all the while looking out for something or someone special passing by in a car. 

The book contains various “hooks” that caught both of us as we scurried through its pages. First, the complex and confusing social aspects experienced in the Chicago during the Sixties (i.e., race relations, assassinations, the Viet Nam war, sportpractices, football games and girls) contributed to the personal development of each and every student at the school in the book, as well as our own. Second, for many us, there was one person at Carmel who had a lasting impression on each of us. In the book, a guy named Willie, the bus driver of the Brown and White, was the adult who had a special impact on the author and the other bus riders. As an unlikely adult, he would have a major role in two of the students’ lives. Third, the portrayals of each fictional teacher triggered our own imaginations, trying to identify each of them. Finally, family played a major roll for the author and for us. Whether ours were a loving and thoughtful family or one filled with dysfunction, the book captured this critical element in the development of each of us. 

Finally, we both identified with the book’s main character in numerous ways. His freshmen experiences, in many ways, were our freshmen experiences. We think that anyone who reads this book will feel the same tug back to their freshmen year at Carmel. Mount Carmel High School, then and now, is more than just a school. It is what our society today needs: the challenges of pursuing hard work, following direction, obeying authority, developing right relationships among all students and teachers (regardless of race, academic capability or social background), and being presented with the opportunities to grow physically, mentally and morally/spiritually. The book is all about this growth for the author, and in turn, invites us to reflect on our own growth that we experienced at Carmel. 

Mr. Norris did a great job with his book. We believe that new students and alumni should all read this fine work. It will bring back some fond memories for many alumni and contribute in many ways what the brown Our Lady of Mount Carmel Scapular is really about for new students. If you work hard as a boy you will leave a man: Ready to think of others in a challenging world where inclusiveness benefits all, where Our Lady of Mount Carmel points us to her Son, the God who lives with us and in us today, just as we learned in the Sixties hanging around the Chicago’s south side. 

The Brown and White can be purchased on Amazon by clicking here.