NFP Hot List

I'm always looking for a good book to pass onto a friend who may be ready to hear arguments against contraception or a good book study to do among friends. Here are several good finds with varying styles that may be helpful.

And continuing along the lines of breaking the silence...start a book/bible study with your girl friends!! Many of these even have reflection questions at the end of each chapter.


Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution by Mary Eberstadt.  You have to take a sneak peak at a great video and website on the book...it's fully loaded!! 

This is my first pick for getting concrete statistics and information on the negative and harmful effects of contraception.

Style, Sex, and Substance: 10 Catholic Women Consider the Things that Really Matter 

Joanna suggested this one to me and I can't wait to read it. It would be a great starter for for going deeper in faith life, with some really great content, but not overwhelming either.

Extreme Makeover: Women Transformed by Christ and Not the Culture by Teresa Tomeo

Someone lent this to me and it offers a great perspective from a women who bought the feminist ideal who tells of her conversion. Another great introduction to faith, supported with statistics and research.

The Catholics Next Door: The Adventures of Imperfect Living by Gregg and Jennifer Willits. You can check out their video here and their take on why they wrote the book.

I'm off to download to the Nook ;)  Hope some of them are LendMe's!  Happy Reading and NFP Week!!

Breaking the Silence

We are in a time right now when the word "contraception" is exploding over all media outlets. With the HHS mandate all over the news, many are curious as to why contraception is offensive to some people.

So now more than ever we have to break our silence, our fear, our reserve, and offer our fellow sisters and friends a chance at happiness and truth and real love. Who doesn't want all those things? ;)
 
Let us be silent no more!

I think Archbishop Charles J. Chaput nailed it:

"Living within the truth means living according to Jesus Christ and God's Word in Sacred Scripture. It means proclaiming the truth of the Christian Gospel, not only by our words but by our example. It means living every day and every moment from the unshakable conviction that God lives, and that his love is the motive force of human history and the engine of every authentic human life. It means believing that the truths of the Creed are worth suffering and dying for.
      
Living within the truth also means telling the truth and calling things by their right names. And that means exposing the lies by which some men try to force others to live...The world urgently needs a re-awakening of the church in our actions and in our public and private witness...we really need to believe what we say we believe. Then we need to prove it by the witness of our lives. We need to be so convinced of the truths of the Creed that we are on fire to live by these truths, love love by these truths, and to defend these truths, even to the point of our own discomfort and suffering.
       
We are ambassadors of the living God to a world that is on the verge of forgetting him. Our work is to make God real; to be the face of his love; to propose once more to the men and women of our day, the dialogue of salvation... Let us preach Jesus Christ with all the energy of our lives. And let us support each other - whatever the cost - so that when we make our accounting to the Lord, we will be numbered among the faithful and courageous, and not the cowardly or the evasive, or those who compromised until there was nothing left of their convictions; or those who were silent when they should have spoken the right word at the right time."

                                         - Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, "Speak into the Light", Magnificat, July 9, 2011, pp. 129-131

Those are some pretty strong statements - I would say fightn' words. I love his brilliant analysis of our culture and our call withing our Catholic faith to not remain silent! In lieu of National NFP week, I wanted to post some resources that could help strengthen our convictions.

1. www.1flesh.org : WOW. Started by two college girls, super edgy, full of ads, videos, statistical information, and testimonies. Love it.
2. www.Iusenfp.com : Everything from the science of nfp, explanations of methods, and actual charts to download.

3. www.goodnessreigns.com/vote/ :NFP promo video Contest. Let's just say I watched with my jaw ajar...some were more interesting than others, A for effort, watch and be amused.

4. This guy's nfp testimony or this guy's nfp testimony from lovely Grace's blog...because sometimes our the men need just as much convincing.

5. Breaking the Spiral of Silence :Speaking of breaking the silence..a conservative think tank out of Princeton developed an incredible dvd to break the silence in your parish or community about these very issues. Check out the link and watch the video that states: A social phenomenon where out of desire to avoid reprisal or rejection, people go along with what they think is the popular opinion - even if they object to that opinion personally. Instead of voicing their opinions, they remain silent.

So no excuses! Let us be informed and versed and ready for the next, "what is nfp" conversation ;)

NFP over Chocolate Martinis

I know, doesn't that just speak enticing? It was. Who wouldn't listen to a medical discourse on natural family planning with a martini in hand right? ; )  Needless to say it was a great way to start National NFP week off with a bang!

Chocolate Martini with Hoho garnish.
Disclaimer: Drink may be dangerous during times of abstinence.

This past weekend Andrew and I were invited to attend a nfp presentation given by Doctors, Todd Bowman, PhD and Don Bell, MA on the neuroscience of increasing intimacy while practicing nfp for the post contraceptive couple. They discussed Pair Bonding, a process of building our "bonding contacts" that we create the resilience to overcome the stresses of life, as well as what roles the hormones Oxytocin and Dopamine play in our sex lives and ultimately our marriage. I'll post more details about this later this week!!



The event was hosted by Dr. Laurie Heap, mother of four, in her lovely Kansas City home Friday evening. We gathered there with dozens of doctors, couples, and promoters of natural family planning around the area. Of course, it can never hurt provide loads of appetizers and drinks like grapefruit martinis while we listened to cunning edge medical research being applied to natural family planning, supper classy and smart ;)

Laurie, and her KU martini glass, on the left.

                                             

Did I mention homemade ice cream with blueberry sauce was served for dessert?  

We came away with incredible information and refreshed with meeting some stellar fellow nfp couples.

This is Elizabeth. She is the 9th in a family of 10, a nurse, and expecting her 5th boy in August! I can't wait to do an NFP Women Bio on her!!

I spotted her feather earrings and had to meet her ;)

I'm convinced more and more, that it isn't just my mother's thing, not just some personal private way I am faithful to the church's teaching, not a stale method of rules and charts from marriage prep class, but an awe striking, undeniable method to ensure a deeper stronger love life and the foundation to unbreakable family life.

Women are longing for this, families will thrive and SURVIVE with this. The more we share its truth and capabilities, the more the world around us will change for the better.

As my favorite man said before, " The level of any civilization is the level of its womanhood. This is because there is a basic difference between knowing and loving. In knowing something you bring it down to the level of your understanding. An abstract principle of physics can be understood by an ordinary mind only by examples. But in loving we always go up to meet the demand of the one loved. If you love music you have to submit to its laws and disciplines. When man loves woman, it follows the nobler the woman the nobler the love, the higher the demands by the woman, the more worthy a man must be. That is why a woman is the measure of the level of our civilization."  Venerable Fulton Sheen, The World's First Love

If you change the heart of a women, you change her family, the cell of society. Let us all renew the call we all have to bring others, especially women, our friends and sisters, to the truth about the gift of their sexuality!

Happy NFP Week!