Saturday afternoon found me in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and in need of a trip to the confessional. (No, I’m not scrupulous. Just wretched.) Holy Cross Catholic Church is about the size of a large convenience store, done in the style of 1970’s Neo-Traditional with a vigorous nod to Appalachian folk art. Like the town itself, it is everything lovely and nuts and comfortable and joyful about American popular culture, Southern style.
For all that the parish embodies Americana, Holy Cross has something I’ve almost never seen in any of the many parishes I’ve visited: A greeter at the door during the hour for Confessions.
It makes sense of course. If you know you’re likely to have visitors, it’s logical that you’d want to be ready for them. I showed up, and the usher, with name tag and friendly welcome suited to his post, pointed out where the confessional was and where the line was forming and generally made sure I was all set.
Pigeon Forge is a small town in a rural county, and on any given Saturday the bulk of the Catholics on the ground are probably not parishioners. I don’t think people usually come to Pigeon Forge for the purpose of confessing, though if you wanted to make the trip for that purpose, I can vouch for the place in that regard. I do know that a lot of people come to Pigeon Forge for other reasons, and every single one of those visitors is a dreadful sinner just like the rest of us. A few of them perhaps want to give the soul a good sprucing up after a visit to the Nike Clearance Store (or whatever else it is people do in town — evidence is I did that).
I suspect the parish has a particular charism for the Sacrament of Penance and for Divine Mercy. In addition to the artwork in the nave and sanctuary, on the Lighthouse Media display rack in the lobby, there were exactly two talks on CD available for you to take home: Scott Hahn’s “The Healing Power of Confession” and a Spanish-language version of Scott Hahn’s “The Healing Power of Confession.” Somebody wants you to be good and forgiven.
FYI if you dislike face-to-face confession, be assured that as you step into the combination classroom / office / confessional / room-with-a-view, there’s a solid screen with a kneeler so you have the option of confessing anonymously if you so desire. If you’ve ever sat in line at the parish, you know why I’m making that assurance. Don’t panic when you see people sitting in the window. You have other options.
Nah, I don’t think so. When you meet Phil, one of the things that stands out is that he almost certainly has miserable health problems. A lot of the clients have that look. From the way Phil has trouble walking, you might guess, for example, that he’s got a spinal injury or something.
Something else you notice after spending a little time in the same room, and getting to wash his clothes and to observe the care he puts into straightening himself up at the shaving sink, is that this is a guy who cares about his appearance. He knows odds are against him, and he’s making the effort. He doesn’t want to be that unkempt crazy street person.
No one who comes into the shower-laundry does. That’s why they come.
So today from my post at the machines I notice the odd whiff of urine-fresh-scent, and it seems to pick up when Phil walks by, and sure enough when I glance over at him sitting waiting his turn for a shower, evidence is he either dropped a cup of water in his lap or he’s the guy.
He does what any sane person would do in his position: He stays cool and pretends it didn’t happen. Maybe no one will notice. Maybe people will think he spilled his ice water.
What else is he going to do? In a minute he’s going to be able to shower and put his clothes in the wash and take care of the situation, but until then he’s stuck. And I’m telling you: Phil is not a guy who wants to be sitting there with wet pants. He just isn’t. He hates it as much as you would.
***
Here are two things about being homeless:
You have to scratch together every bit of help from seven different places.
Poverty doesn’t wait until you’re ready for it.
When people with good stiff bootstraps visualize homelessness, they visualize a weekend with the Boy Scouts. Be hard-working and resourceful! No-match fires and a foraged meal? Sure! Except of course that if the Scouts went on a camping trip but you were in no condition to go, your mother made you stay home.
Poverty doesn’t check to see if you’re feeling well.
If you are homeless or nearly, depending on your area there may well be help for you with food and clothing, with shelter if you can get along in a group, and sporadically with medical care and so forth. I’m not aware of any programs that stock incontinence supplies. I checked our supply shelves — we don’t. You have to have cash to cover that one.
That stuff’s expensive. Price it yourself — everyone pays out of pocket, not just homeless people. There’s a lot of help to be had for homeless people, but none of it involves handing out cash. So if the problem’s new or infrequent, financially the calculus may well lean heavily towards hoping that if you have an accident it happens right before you go in to get your weekly shower.
*Heck no, I’m not telling you people’s private business. All names and identifying info are totally changed.
Artwork: The Dressing Table, 1879, Gribkov. Via Wikimedia [Public Domain].
Julie Davis sent me a preview copy of her new book, Seeking Jesus in Everyday Life, and I am very thankful to have read it. I’m mildly abashed to find myself in it, but I’ll take it.
What is this book?
When people talk about “having a relationship with Jesus” other people are left a tad lost. A friend had a relative who’d just turned to God for the first time in the midst of a serious end-of-life crisis, but now what? How do you help someone who’s ignored God for a lifetime to even know how to pray? I recommended this book.
Starting with “Beginning to Pray” as the zero point, Julie walks the reader from I’ve-got-nothing all the way into the depths of the Christian life. Each page has a quote from Julie’s epic quote journal, and then her reflection on what we weak-kneed penitents might do with that idea. You can see sample pages on Amazon to get the idea.
Who would like this book?
Because it is such a true and grounded and approachable way to learn, or re-learn, to relate to God, I’d consider it a go-to for most new Christians.
As someone who knows and practices a whole pile of Catholicism, but often poorly, I found it helpful to start from the beginning and pray through the book a bit at a time.
I suppose the answer is: Are you ready to hit the reset button on your practice of the faith? Here it is.
Is it true Julie lets just about anybody into her quote journal?
Yeah, I think so. She seems to follow the Adam’s Ale “Finding the Truth Wherever it May be Found” rule.
In contrast to her first book of quotes from films and other pop-culture sources, which I recommend for different reasons, this one is a collection of quotes from spiritual writers. The contributors include some ordinary people like me, some super-big names from all the centuries, and a fair bit of God Himself. It’s just whatever she’s read and found helpful, so there will be runs of this or that author.
The book doesn’t attempt to be a representative tour of the Greatest Hits of All Time; rather, it’s a tour of the human soul, and the quotes are ones that shine a light on this or that experience common to most ordinary Jesus-seeking Christians.
I’m quite certain, giving my presence there, that to be quoted is not an endorsement of every single thing a given author ever wrote (God excepted), it just means she found that particular quote helpful in some way.
#1 Fr. Gonzo finishes strong.I probably shouldn’t call him that, it might encourage him. The man who gave me this thing forty-something days ago decided to launch, his words, the “Mother of All Easter Vigils.” If that man left out even a single speck or jot of an option, as found or legitimately inferred in ye olde Roman Missal, please, not a word. Also next year, I’m having a nap and a cup of coffee before the vigil. Or else just doing like last year and going to the Sunday evening Easter Mass, which was quite nice and ought to be offered more widely.
#2 There was a bacon accident. Sometimes people are like, “Oh you’re a homeschooler? Could you make me a craft and a casserole?” These are the very same people who would squirm if I said, “Oh you work in an office? Could you make me a 1040x and a manuscript proposal?” So anyway, I tried making bacon in the oven Sunday morning, and I did it by following the directions on the package. More or less.
The difficulty is that it came out perfect.
Perfect bacon is cooked to the point of extreme crispiness, just short — but nearly to the point — of crumbing at an untoward glance.
Sadly, the man I married and many of our offspring are under the impression that bacon is meant to be sort of chewy and moist. I’m okay with that. All bacon is good to me. I will totally put on my inner St. Therese and eat wet bacon. No problem. Canonize me now.
But I accidentally cooked the bacon too long, and it was extremely, very, astonishingly good. The difficulty is that there wasn’t any spare bacon to undercook for the other people, and that was kind of sad. I’m open to continuing practice on this art until I nail it. Eight weeks of Easter calling my name.
#3 First child trained in the ways of the IRS! It’s pleasant having Easter after the taxes go in. I literally dropped off four envelopes at the post office on the way over to the Vigil. Mr. Boy got A Real Job last summer, which means he had a real tax return (two – one federal, one state) this spring. I had him do the process step by step on his own, and then I’d check it and show him what he did wrong (if anything — a 1040EZ isn’t that hard, even if it’s more complicated than it used to be), and he’d fix it, and we’d move on to the next thing.
It is well worthwhile to start doing your taxes on your own right from the beginning, and to keep with it year after year as things slowly get more complicated. Pays off in the long run.
#4 Fedex is a wondrous thing. It’ll be three kids and I on the big trip this summer, and I ordered those three some useful books to prep for the trip and work on their French.
FYI of all the suppliers I found, Decitre.Fr had the best deal on international shipping if you’re looking at many low-budget books rather than one expensive book. Each kid received a book on the Mass. The boy received two history books and an atlas. The girls each received a coloring book on Alsace (primary destination), a second coloring book on a relevant topic (history for one, all-things-Christian-faith for the other — between the two, they’ll have encountered most museum, historical site, and art-related vocab), and a book of personal interest for motivating the reading practice (cats or rabbits).
I went with cheap books because I wanted them physically light and compact, and intellectually not too intimidating. That also allowed for a slight overflow on the order, so duds could be culled and everyone still get good books. –> Not true duds, but a couple of the books that looked nice on the internet turned out to be either too little-kid or else too difficult for a beginning student of the language; I set those aside for me.
Anyhow, on international orders there’s not an option (with Decitre) to have books sent in sub-packages, and I knew a few of the books would take a couple weeks to be ready to ship. So when I got the shipping notice Spy Wednesday, I figured it would be a late Easter? Nope. Packaged Wednesday morning, queued at CDG by Wednesday evening, onto a plane and into my local Fedex office Thursday morning. I went out for a walk Thursday morning, and as I was coming back to my yard at 9AM the Fedex mini-van showed up with a package for me to sign.
You didn’t used to be able to get foreign books this easily. I like the modern world.
#5 Journaling Bibles. So that left one child with no books in her basket, because: Poor planning. The Easter Bunny was pretty pleased she’d gotten to Aldi to pick up Not-Slave-Labor chocolate, thanks. So then the bunny remembered this argument from a month earlier. The girl is in the FCA at school, and apparently all her friends have “journaling” or “notetaking” Bibles. These are Bibles with wide margins or other white space where you can essentially illuminate your own manuscript.
Could she have one for Confirmation please? And how about right now, so the Holy Spirit can get to work ASAP?
The difficulty is this: Apparently Catholics have given up on illuminating, or else we just don’t publish trend-Bibles — I’m sure our publishers are full of good excuses for the lapse. The situation is bad enough that Catholic Icing has a great tutorial about how to convert your Catholic Bible into a journaling Bible by covering up the footnotes with bits of paper.
A girl I know does not want to cover up footnotes with bits of paper
Thus in the spirit of Easter is For Heretics, Too, I caved. On the way home from Costco with all the Easter food, I did check my local Catholic bookstore to see if there was something, anything, that I could pass off as a journaling Bible, but no dice. (There are lots of great Catholic Bibles out there, by the way. Just not ones for coloring in.) But after that, into the breach: Walmart for Bible-shopping it would be.
[Sheesh, guys, I’m buying some unapproved-translation, books-missing Bible for coloring in, I’m not shelling out a lot of money on this, really??]
Walmart is smarter than a Catholic publisher. They carry a mass-market, paperback version the HCSB Illustrator’s Notetaking Bible, and it’s easy to find if you go to the book section — shelved both with Bibles and with adult coloring books, since it’s both a Bible and a coloring book. The inside looks like this:
My child wasn’t looking for one that was pre-illustrated, but we both secretly like it. Some of the illustrations are very apropos, such as the image of Christ Crucified in the margins next to Isaiah’s Suffering Servant prophecy. I could do without Mary With Rosy Cheeks, but Catholics have done far worse to the Blessed Mother and somehow the Church still stands.
My teenager spent her afternoon working on her Bible. Her younger sister said, “We should have brought these to that retreat last month!” I think I can work with this trend.
Easter Egg Wreath by #3. Leaving a child alone with a hot glue gun has its advantages. For more on the cost of becoming a Pinterest Parent, see here. Okay, I see the photos aren’t loading anymore. I’ll fix that and update. [Update: Okay – all fixed now, I hope!] The text explains the less-pretty parts of the crafting life.
Something a lot of people involved in the pro-life movement do is to stand up for the unborn by praying outside of abortion clinics. Happily, this effort has gone in a much more positive, loving direction over the last 15 years. It’s not even accurate, in most cases, to call these “protests” anymore. Make no mistake, this presence is intended to bring attention to the defense of the most vulnerable in our society. To take an innocent human life is objectively wrong. To take the most innocent of all human lives is unacceptable. There should be no minced words about that. To be silent is false compassion – it’s spiritual and emotional euthanasia.
However, it is incredibly important to heed that ancient axiom to ‘hate the sin, but love the sinner’. We all have an obligation to point out injustice and wrongdoing. However, none of us has any right to condemn the person carrying out that act, as only God knows their heart. So, if you see or hear someone telling a woman considering an abortion that she’s going to Hell, then they clearly don’t understand the point here, nor do they understand Christ-like love.
The much more common scenario these days is people calmly and quietly standing outside abortion clinics praying. Sometimes they hold signs with slogans like, “Pray to End Abortion”, or “Adoption: The Loving Option”. We’re there to provide women in unplanned pregnancies real choices (having literature on alternatives to abortion available) and to let them know how much they (and their babies) are loved.
This reality makes it that much more bewildering when you’re standing there peacefully praying and someone drives by and gives you the finger. Admittedly, there was a time when such actions irritated me. They fed a desire deep down in my heart to give that person “what for”. While I knew that wasn’t the proper reaction, it seemed instinctive.
Then, I read Abby Johnson’s book, “Unplanned” a few years ago. For those who don’t know Abby, she was a former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic. Then, one day (through some fluky circumstances), she ended up witnessing an actual abortion at her clinic. (This was the first time she saw the product of the business she was running.) She had a visceral reaction and knew she had to quit. And she did. Since then, she’s been an outspoken voice for life, and she wrote this book.
What “Unplanned” showed me (much to my surprise) was the humanity of abortion clinic workers. Honestly, I had never given these people much thought, other than as some kind of faceless monsters. That caused my praying for a culture of life to take on a much broader focus. Only then did a human face start to appear on these folks for me. These are real human beings who deserve our love, who deserve MY love, because to cast them aside would mean I just don’t get what it means to be a Christian.
That realization also helped my attitude towards the bird flippers driving by. (You know who you are!) J All of a sudden, my immediate response when being flipped off was to have compassion. I’d immediately think to myself, “What kind of pain must that person have suffered to feel this way?” “What is the source of that anger?” And by making that pain and anger clear to me, therein lay the ‘blessing’. By having a reaction – of any sort – that person gave my prayer a target. I would launch into a ‘Hail Mary’ or a Divine Mercy chaplet asking God to rain down His love and mercy on that person. I’d pray that they find healing, peace, and the presence of God.
So, if you see me (or any of the 1000s of other regulars) standing outside an abortion clinic praying and encouraging others to choose life, it’s okay if you feel the need to tell us we’re #1 with your middle finger. But know that prayer is powerful, and that I’m calling for all God’s truth, mercy, and love to come showering down on you very soon. And I thank you for giving me that blessing – that reminder of your humanity. Please pray for me, as well. I need all I can get.
And for all you awesome pro-life prayer warriors out there, please consider this unsolicited advice. Arguments don’t help. Love, prayer, and genuine compassion (and the willingness to listen) do.
Vincent married up more than a quarter century ago and is a proud father of 5 wonderful daughters. He teaches business classes at a college in Greenville, SC, but thrives on discussing controversial topics, especially as they relate to Church teachings on sexual morality.
I always have trouble when Christians say, “Jesus had to die on the cross in order to save us.” It makes me think: I suspect God could have saved us however He liked.
But He did it this way, so here we are.
Humans are thick about the nature of God. You’ve just been created out of dust and given domain over the earth, and yet you’re unclear on God meaning what He said when He told you not to eat that one fruit. Never mind ten plagues, the parting of the Red Sea and the drowning of the Egyptian army — did God really say . . .?
The Godliness of God is hard for us to grasp.
Even harder, judging from the pagan pantheons and our own understandable tendency to despair in the face of so much evil, is believing that God is good. The gods of myth are fickle and self-serving; they come to our aid when it suits their own cause, not ours.
Thus the Incarnation. Here comes God in the form of a man, which the mythical gods have done in their way, but this one is different. This one loves the way that men love when they are very, very good men.
Mostly we humans like to push off thinking too carefully about love, because what we want is for the satisfaction of the present moment’s desire to be counted as “good enough.” But we do know real live goodness when we see it. We honor the sacrifices of those who have given of themselves for others. We know deep in our hearts that the very best people, the ones who embody Goodness itself, are those who care entirely about others and don’t consider what it might cost to give, they just give.
We know that.
And we’re not very bright about what God is like, so it is helpful for us to see that when God is a man, He loves the way that the very best men love.
***
There were good men living in the time of Jesus, just like there are good men living now. Men who were heroic in their willingness to do what others needed them to do, in the mission of love and justice and mercy. The Samaritan. St. Joseph. St. John the Baptist. No doubt others as well.
Pontius Pilate was given the chance to be a heroic man. His wife had been warned in a dream concerning Jesus, and passed on that message to her husband: Don’t mess with this guy. Let him go. Gentleman, recall that you chose your wife for this purpose. You elected her to be the one person whose advice you value most, so don’t squirm when she gives it.
He could have been a heroic man, sacrificing himself for the sake of love, justice, and mercy. He knew very well that Jesus was innocent — he said so himself.
Instead he chose to be the coward of cowards. What is the suffering of one innocent man compared to the danger I face? And it was danger. He was facing the end of everything, and so he pushed away the plain truth and talked himself into the crucifixion.
***
I do this all the time. I push away what I know to be the right thing to do, because I do not want to lose some good I’ve convinced myself is more urgent.
***
The difference between God and us is that He’s God and we aren’t. He’s all-powerful, our powers are limited.
We are capable of being fully human. We are capable of being entirely the persons God created each of us to be. We are capable of choosing heroic sacrifice rather than cowardice. But we would still only be men. Limited.
God-made-Man remained fully God even as He took on the fullness of humanity as well. As man, he could be fully the best sort of man, giving of himself entirely. But He was still God, and thus His powers were not limited.
***
Think of the best people you know. Perhaps you have moments when you would gladly sacrifice yourself for someone else. Perhaps you are a parent who would do anything to take on the suffering of your child so that your child can be spared. Perhaps you see someone in grave danger, and know that if you could, you would give over even your very life to rescue that person.
Sometimes we get the chance to act on that impulse, but usually we don’t. No matter how fully your heart is filled with generosity and a willingness to sacrifice, your powers are limited. You would joyfully give your life to save that starving orphan in the war-torn country, but you can’t. You are limited by distance and other obstacles. Maybe you can’t even give your life adopting some local orphan, because your means or the local bureaucracy or the other people who already require your help prevent you from being able to rescue that other one.
You and I can give everything we have, but we can’t give it to everyone.
***
We also can’t cause our sacrifices to do exactly what we want done. My abilities are limited. I can save some people in some situations, but other problems are beyond my powers. I lack the mechanism to make the rescue happen.
***
Fully Man, Jesus was the best of men. He was willing to sacrifice everything for the good of others.
Fully God, the power of His sacrifice is not limited.
He can save everyone, everywhere, everyhow.
He can breathe into dirt and cause humans to live on earth. He can hang on a cross and cause humans to live in eternity.
FYI we have a family custom of unplugging for the Triduum. Some of us will still be on the machine doing things like taxes and homework, but if you’re looking for me, I finally have a legitimate excuse for being gone. Happy Easter!
Wednesdays are traditionally the glorious mysteries. I finally got back to praying the Rosary today after a gaping hiatus caused by a succession illness (it is a physical act, and thus requires one or another physical abilities), chaos, and inertia.
What was on my mind as I prayed was my inability to accomplish certain tasks before me, and thus my reliance on God to take care of them. This is a good problem, because relying on me is not the wisest course, and in any case the tasks are God’s.
Here is a miracle, to give you an idea of the scope of the whole thing: I made a craft. Not just any craft; one that required both bright colors and straight lines. Also, I had to do it with supplies that I didn’t have spares of, which meant everything had to be done exactly right the first time. No sane person assigns me a job like this. Just never.
So anyway, I get around to the fourth glorious mystery, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Do you know what our Lady did during that mystery?
Nothing.
Just laid there. Didn’t lift a finger.
God did it.
This seems to be the way it works. Want me to conceive the Messiah? I can’t do that Lord, but however you want to handle this go ahead. Out of wine? Son, could you take care of this please? So you’re saying the plan is that you’re going to die on that cross–? I’m just gonna stand here, and you figure out what the system is.
It’s not that Mary does nothing. It’s that she does only the part she can do, and lets God worry about the rest.
***
Request: If you have a charism for bringing empty jars to the attention of our Lord, please consider joining the newly-formed Catholic Evangelization and Discipleship Intercessory Prayer Team group on Facebook. It’s a closed group, but any member can add new members. If you are in the work of discipleship or evangelization and would like people to pray for your mission, please join and post your requests. (Also: Introduce yourself and I’ll add you to the pinned post of who’s who at the top.) Thank you!
There are a few spares in the “forty” days of Lent, which makes up for some of the ones you might have skipped. Most years Lent doesn’t begin on the first of the month, so it’s not as obvious.
I was aware already of the way that attempting a Lenten penance can show you your weakness when you keep slipping up. You try to carry out some small laudable act of prayer, fasting, or almsgiving, and even that is too much. You are smaller than you thought.
More stark: When you stick to the penance but flail miserably at ordinary life. Not because the penance sunk you — quite the contrary. Rather, because you just aren’t ever all that good at carrying out ordinary life.
***
Outside of Lent, little lapses hide more easily. Big lapses are robbed of their sting, clothed in busyness and festivities. When all your actions are played against the bare purple curtain, the holiness-failures are radically more obvious.
Things I’ve learned:
If I have to push, push, push through a bunch of logistical challenges — not problems, mind you, just the challenging side of carrying out some good and desired goal — it wears me down. I run out of willpower.
What I think of as my “ordinary prayer life” requires my ordinary life. It requires pockets of silence and privacy and extra energy that I normally schedule into a typical day. Even if the way I “schedule” is to shove a rosary in my pocket and pray it during the silent half of never-the-same kid-errands, the space is there. When the space isn’t there, I’m sunk.
Being more tired than usual means I can’t do as much as I could when I’m less-tired. You’d think by now I’d know this, but I’m a slow learner.
And the killer: My sins run in packs. Circumstance A leads to Pressure B which leads to Reaction C which transmorgifies into Capital Sin C which, don’t let the name fool you, engenders I-can’t-believe-I-did-that-and-I-don’t-want-to-quit-either sins D, E, and F.
One of the St. Joseph’s Baltimore Catechisms for children reminds us that “venial sin is worse than the measles.” Oh yeah. This is worse than the measles for sure, and the measles are bad.
When you study buzzwords or fad words from each generation, very few stand the test of time. “Groovy”? “Hep”? “Tight”? “Gnarly”? (Really?) Nope. All of them – gone from our lexicon. However, one has stood strong for at least 3 generations. That is “cool”.
I don’t know why this specific word has lasted for so long, but I think I understand why what the word represents has endured. The idea is that you not only fit in, but that you fit in very nicely. Cool is comfortable. It fills that 3rd level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It means we are accepted and maybe even respected by the tribe.
Long ago, ‘cool’ meant being different in some sort of interesting way. The ‘differentness’ is what made the person (or the action) ‘cool’. However, ‘cool’ wasn’t usually associated with virtue or engaging in something ‘good’ or particularly healthy or virtuous. And that’s the downside – the dark side – of ‘cool’. It was never about becoming fully alive. It was never about growing as a person or being the best version of oneself. It was typically about wearing masks and aspiring to something that wasn’t worth the effort.
That differentness imbued with a general lack of goodness or virtue has become sameness. When you look around these days, ‘cool’ is about blending and conformity. Challenging traditional values was once considered ‘cool’. Now, if you don’t challenge them and conform to the ‘new normal’, you’re likely to be marginalized with visceral enthusiasm. Wearing underwear on the outside of one’s clothing (or in place of outer garments) used to be reserved for Superman. (Probably not the impression he was trying to give, though.) Now, if you leave anything to others’ imagination, you’re prudish. Getting a tattoo was once a unique thing to do. Now, it’s not a matter of getting a tattoo to express individuality – it’s that you’re kind of strange if you don’t get one. (This is not a judgment on tattoos, by the way – just saying that they hold no inherent ‘goodness’ or value.)
This new definition of ‘cool’ doesn’t just lack virtue, though – it’s not even cool. It’s now about fitting the beautiful diversity of what every single person brings to the table into a very small box – and a boring box of sameness, to boot.
But perhaps herein lies opportunity to rekindle ‘cool’ in a whole new way – a way that makes goodness and virtue desirable as something ‘different’. Recall those words from 1 Corinthians 12 where St. Paul says, “For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single organ, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.’”
There is a reason each of us is different. We all have unique talents which aren’t always appreciated by others, but that shouldn’t stop us from fully developing them for the good of mankind and for the glory of God. We’re meant to strive for goodness and virtue. Becoming more virtuous means becoming more like God. Anything else is disordered and a waste of our efforts. It’s just not ‘cool’ (in this new sense, of course).
Dare to be different. Dare to be the best you imaginable. Dare to let others see God through your actions. How cool would that be?
Vincent married up more than a quarter century ago and is a proud father of 5 wonderful daughters. He teaches business classes at a college in Greenville, SC, but thrives on discussing controversial topics, especially as they relate to Church teachings on sexual morality.
As Lent winds up, I’d like to let you know about some changes coming to the blog.
Those of you who’ve been reading me since the very beginning know that I’ve gone through a series of transitions as a writer. I started out as an anonymous homeschool-blogger, just trying to share my experiences and get some practice writing for an audience. Over the years I’ve been a contributor to other Catholic blogs, magazines, and books, as well as spearheading some projects of my own.
Variety and change are the name of the game.
With that in mind, and having had a week to reflect after the refreshing and fruitful retreat I took last weekend, now seems like the perfect day to share the changes you may see here. What to look for in the future:
More Hands-On Experience.Maybe it’s the coloring book rubbing off on me, maybe it’s all the art I post, but something’s having an effect. From here on out, this is going to be primarily a craft blog. I envision the bulk of the projects involving hot glue and day-glo pom poms.
Pom-Pom photo by Mvolz (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons. This is roughly what we’re going for, only with colors that are a little more searing. These, glued to things. Everything.
More Pop Culture. Reader, you know how important evangelization is to me. And every writer (myself excepted) seems to feel that the secret to evangelization is immersing oneself in the interests of the persons being evangelized. I’m ready to take that advice. For religious purposes, therefore, from now on when I’m not crafting, I’ll be keeping you updated on celebrity news, the NFL, and How The Gamecocks are Doing This Season.
We’ll continue talking about the weather, too, but that’s not a big change.
Less Depressing Arguing Stuff. It took a lot of memes to get this through my head, but listen guys: Opinions on weighty matters are out of here like last year. Giving a reason for your hope? Some reasons are more equal than others, you know. We’re going to focus on inspiring quotes from Anonymous. Where possible, I’ll provide an attribution to St. Francis of Assisi. He probably said something like that anyway.
Same Great Sacred Art, Updated. You already know I’m not much of a traditionalist — if it’s true, beautiful, good, and approved by the Church, I can work with it, new or old. With that in mind, I’ll be sharing a lot more music videos. Trap Masses, primarily.
As for Caravaggio? Of course I’d never let that go. But from now on, it’ll be all the great works of antiquity forward, but re-interpreted in the style of “Family Circus.”
You’re gonna love it.
Look for these great new blog experiences as often as once a year!
