Author: JenniferFitz

On Death and Grief

Of course you’ll pray for Allie Hathaway. And click for more quick takes at conversiondiary.com.

I spoke with a longtime friend yesterday – a grown man, forty-something, never sheltered, long acquainted with death and suffering, life and hard work, and also kind, intelligent, and spiritually pulled together.  He was distraught.  His mom had died.

1. Death is not natural.  People who say “death is natural” are full of baloney.  It is normal, in that it happens to most everybody.  But it isn’t natural.  We aren’t made for death.  We are made for eternal life.  Every death is an insult to our very nature.  A tearing apart of something that was never meant to be torn.

2. We never love as well as we would like.  It impossible.  There are too many people to love, and we are so limited by time and space and our own human weakness.  It is physically impossible to call enough, to hug enough, to help enough, to smile enough — it cannot be done.  When someone we love dies, it will nearly always come at a time when we wish we could have done more.

3. The rupture of death leaves raw, open ends.  We humans are created to live in time.  Living in time means change and growth and processes that start now and end later.  Death interrupts.  We were about to call, going to visit, starting to forgive, just remembering the birthday we forgot . . . when death leaps in and steals the chance to finish the work we had started, however imperfectly, however incompletely.  It is impossible, because it is contrary to our very nature as creatures living in time, to live each day, each minute, with every work finished, every relationship complete.

4. Agonizing over the work left undone is a shoddy plot device.  In cheap fiction, lazy writers build drama around the “if-only’s”, as if there were some merit in pretending to have super-human powers, and then flagellating yourself for failing to use them.  Yes, examine your conscience.  Yes, repent.  Yes, move forward.  Yes, start anew.  But don’t build a shrine to your own imperfection.

5. You can miss the sinner without missing the sin.  Humans — loveable, loved, wonderfully complex, maddenly flawed — can be so, so, obnoxious.  And sometimes much worse.  It is possible, normal, to grieve the loss of a parent or close kinsman who was a brutal, oppressive tyrant.  But for many of us, by the grace of God, the one we love was only very annoying, and not all the time.  We would defend to the death the honor of someone who, in life, we studiously avoided at crucial moments.

It is okay to both weep openly for the loss of a relative, and also be relieved you can now post your vacation pictures on Facebook without being asked, “Why didn’t you invite me?  And what’s wrong with Dayton for a family vacation?  Pick up the phone!”

6.  Distance changes grief.  When you are the one bearing the exhausting physical and emotional work of caring for, or overseeing the care of, the dying person, day after never ending day, death is different.  When you are immersed in the horrifying physical agony of your loved one’s never ending suffering, death is different.  It comes as a release.  At least she can be happy now.  At least he is free of his affliction.

When you are far away, or when death comes too soon and too suddenly, you do not love less. But you grieve differently.  You are not the one crushed in the winepress, begging for mercy however terrible.  You are the one who is hungry for more of the life you remember, the part of life that still feels possible, because you have not been flooded with misery until all hope has been washed from your imagination.

These are two sides of the same hope.  When life offers nothing, we finally set our sights on eternal life.  When we find ourselves hating the taunt of eternal life, because we still have some shred of joy here on earth?  It is a testament to reality.  We are not made for death and separation.  We are not meant to have to imagine a world of happiness, we are meant to live in it.

7. Jesus wept.  If anyone was certain of Heaven, Jesus was.  If anyone, on the day Lazarus died, had reason to hope, it was our Lord.  He held in his hands the power to raise Lazarus to earthly life and to eternal life, and he knew he would do both.  It is not a mark of insufficient faith if we mourn the death of someone we love. It is not short-sightedness, or an unhealthy attachment to earthly pleasure, if we are troubled at the end of life on earth.  There is no special merit in putting on a big smile and singing happy-clappy songs, as if the mark of true faith were an inability to feel pain.  Do we hope? Yes.  Is joy inadmissible in the face of death?  By no means.

To be a carpenter is one way to live out the calling to be fully human in our work.  Making sure there’s enough wine for the wedding is one way to be fully human in our concern for others.  They are not the only ways.  But they are important models. Left to our own flights of fancy, we might decide building houses or throwing parties was somehow too earthly to be a spiritual work.  We might admire the way this great theologian or that austere hermit set aside all earthly concerns and seemed to live only for heaven, and suspect that those whose lives were more immersed in earthly realities are the second-rate Christians.  As if to be fully human is to fail to notice the very earth on which humans were placed from the beginning.

Not so, says He who gave us this world.  I made it good.  Every rip, every flaw, every sorrow that mars a once-perfect world?  Our Lord grieves.  We are not alone.

Soldiers Breastfeeding in Public

UPDATE: In the combox, Larry L. explains the mysteries of military rules that civilians tend to miss.  This story explains it well:

Reference on uniforms and the idea of changing clothes…. True story and a friendlier than most of my military stories…. During lunch I run down to the bank to deposit some cash(in uniform). I get stopped walking into the bank.(navy federal) and get told I am not allowed to go into a civilian location in working uniform. I go back to my ship and no kidding…. you are not allowed to wear your working uniform anywhere but to military locations. If stopping to get a soda at the local 7-11 you can’t do it in “working” uniform. “Dress” uniform perfectly allowed though.

Thanks, Larry L.  Makes perfect sense.  In that special military way.

***

Original Post:

Since I was so pointed in my criticism of  Time Magazine’s pornesque breastfeeding cover photo, I wanted to observe that this photo that showed up in Yahoo news this morning is just a plain old breastfeeding photo, nothing to get freaked out about.  The mom with twins is not so discreet,  which I don’t care for.  I wouldn’t stick it on a billboard, any more than I’d post a mom doing wholesome mom things but wearing a dress or swim suit with similar amounts of cleavage showing.

(I would put that picture in a brochure for new mothers, which would be an appropriate place for a little technical instruction.  I’ve noticed in the past that sometimes formula companies will issue “breastfeeding guides” in which the explanations and images of breastfeeding positions are so uncomfortable and impractical that if you tried them, you’d be sure to give up and switch to formula.)

–> Even for nursing in public, I am far more inclined to give a pass to the breastfeeding mom-o-twins than any of the other 10,000 utterly avoidable situations where women not feeding children decide to create a temptation for hungry babies everywhere.  On that day when every other woman in the US manages to cover it up?  We can have a talk with the moms of multiples about whether there’s a more discrete way to do the one thing those breasts were actually made to do.

Bad journalism in an effort to stir up controversy:

“Also forbidden while in uniform: eating, drinking, . . .”

Er . . . no.  I imagine they meant to say something that was true.  But they didn’t.  Maybe, if I read the whole sentence and guess about how it’s punctuated, what they mean is “eating while walking” and “drinking while walking”.  Maybe?

Anyhow, I’m not military and so my thoughts on what soldiers do in uniform counts for very little, except that sheesh, yes, mothers need to feed their children.  If you’re going to have soldiers who are mothers of babies and toddlers, this is all part of the package.

Breastfeeding your baby is not some optional thing that ought to be saved for leisure hours.  It’s the normal way of feeding a baby.  It’s wonderful that safe, healthy alternatives exist for moms who can’t do it the usual way.  But it would be mighty bizarre to insist that every mother do the artificial work-around to solve a non-existent problem, just because someone’s got it in their head that normal isn’t normal.

3.5 Time Outs: Busy Beavers

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who is also taking it easy today.  Post-holiday light blogging.  But scroll down he’s got some interesting stuff there — Where is the Daddy War? caught my attention.  I’ll come back to serious topics a different week.

Click and be amazed.

1.

This morning I emerged from the bedroom, and found an assortment of children in PJ’s huddled around Sesame Street.  Not surprising.  An odd collection of blankets and pillows and trash paper spread about the coffee table.  Not surprising.  My five-year-old sitting there with paper in her mouth.  *That*  I had never seen before.

2.

“Why do you have paper in your mouth?” I inquired.

“We’re beavers.”

Ah.  Beaver teeth. I had heard rumors of bunny teeth being made last week; after a weekend playing at the river, beaver teeth is the next logical thing.

I looked again at the coffee table.  Everything covering the table was brown.  Around it on the floor?  Blue. And the bits of crumpled up tissue paper were either rocks or whitewater, depending on who you ask.  The kindergartener crawled over to a length of 4″ PVC pipe with a green t-shirt top, made a buzzing noise as she chewed with her paper beaver teeth, and felled the tree.  They only have one tree to chew, so they re-erect it after each meal.

3.

This is why I homeschool*.  Because every now and then I can borrow Rocky Mountain Beaver Pond from the library, and all the kids abandon their regular school work in order to watch, even though they saw it already when they were in K5 or 1st or 2nd grade and in theory the big guys should find it boring by now, but they don’t.

And then instead of telling thirty kids, “Make a diorama about Beavers,” my kids build a live-action diorama in the living room when I thought they were just goofing off being edu-tained.

3.5

What is the proper place for the pink bunny and the purple hippos and the real live family cat, in a living room Beaver pond?  The negotiations are fascinating.

 

***

Well that’s all for today.   I’m catching up on the plugged-in life after the long weekend, so be patient with me as I work through the inbox.  I noticed over at CWG there’s a nice set of Memorial Day posts from today on back through Saturday, go take a look.

Tuesday is Link Day for all topics, not beavers only.  Help yourself if you are so inclined.   Post as many as you want, but only one per comment or the spam dragon will eat you up and I’ll never even know.  Have a great week!

 

*Other people have more impressive reasons for their educational choices.  But seriously.  I’m in it for the beaver pond.

About that picnic . . .

From the blog that’s Memorial Day all century long:

Early last week I got an e-mail from one of the Veterans Collaborative coordinators asking if I would be willing to speak to the staff of  her agency about Memorial Day.  One of their missions is to support military families and she had been surprised and a little horrified to find that many of her colleagues did not know the meaning of Memorial Day.

Read the whole post here.  And subscribe.  There’s always something excellent chez Lee Ann.

By Andrew Bossi (Own work) [CC BY-SA 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons

7 Quick Takes: Girl Topics

1.

An internet friend pointed me to Ova Ova, a fertility awareness site.

It’s sleek, modern, and explains the basics of NFP.  In addition to the usual caution that FAM is secular-feminist amoral NFP with all the completely different set of issues that surround that world (and much that is good and true as well), let me also say quite vigorously . . .

2.

Please do not use condoms during your fertile time.

3.

Unless you’re trying to conceive, that is.  Recall that 100% of condom failures occur during that one week of your cycle when you are actually fertile.  Which means the condom effectiveness rates are massively overstated — 75% of the time, the condom isn’t doing anything at all, it’s just a decoration.

I completely understand that couples who don’t have moral objections to NFP might be tempted to use a condom during the non-fertile time of FAM, as “back-up”.  Sure, whatever, this is not the place to lay into someone who’s willing to try NFP, or something like it, but is not 100% on board.

But listen: When you know you’re fertile, if you have a serious reason to avoid?  Avoid.  Maybe you could watch cable or something.  Not that channel.  A different one.  Or how about hard physical labor?  And separate bedrooms states.  That works great.

4.

Okay, backing up a decade or three and completely changing topic, my daughter loves PrincessHairstyles.com.  The YouTube channel is hair4myprincess. Given too much time on the internet, very little competition for the hall bathroom, and two younger sisters as willing victims, a girl can get pretty good at this stuff.

Weirdly, although this is the same child who is also the junior photographer, I can find no pictures of her handiwork on the PC.  Sorry.

5.

I’ve got a couple of trips planned this summer, including the Catholic Writer’s Guild conference, where of course I’ll want to take lots of photos.

Small hitch: I own no camera.

Ellen Gable, Sarah Reinhard, and an empty space waiting for . . .

Solution: I’m renting the 10 y.o.’s camera – 25 cents a day. It’s a good deal all around.  I need a few lessons in how to use it first.

6.

Don’t forget to pray for Allie Hathaway.  Thanks!

7.1

I am so tempted to just leave the review for le Papillon here from last week.  It doesn’t seem to be generating sufficient enthusiasm, so I persist in my mission.   Here’s the picture to remind you that you should watch this film next time you get the chance:

7.2

Back on Tuesday (aka: Man Day), I posted part two of my Teen Boys and Chastity Bleg.  If you are visiting here from Conversion Diary, might I ask you to take a look?  You might know a gentleman who has a few ideas to add.

7.3

The difference between Catholic blogs and Evangelical blogs is not the statues or the rosaries.  It’s the liquor*.  If you didn’t see it already, visit Darwin’s Give That Woman a Drink.  You can count on the Darwins for good Catholic drinking posts.  My grandmother always had an old fashioned at the family get-togethers.   Now I know what’s in them.

*Kids: Drunkeness is a sin.  So is disobeying legitimate civil authorities.

The Kolbe Reviews: Geography

For Geography, Kolbe uses the Map Skills series from Continental Press.  It’s rare that a teacher with a passion for a topic is wholeheartedly enthused about a particular textbook, but I am in love.  Love.  LOVE.

This is the best thing going.  It’s an 8×11 glossy full-color paperback.  The fourth grade book has about 42 lessons, the sixth grade book has sixty. So throughout the course of the year, students do one or two lessons per week, depending on how you divide it out.  Each page is its own self-contained lesson.  The student reads the explanation and then answers the questions using the map on the page.

What I love:

Self-contained and self-teaching.  Once or twice there has been an assignment that required using a separate map (ie, “a map of your state”), and we’ve pulled out the globe as well.  My sixth grader considers this to be the fun page — like doing one of those puzzle games on the children’s menu at the family restaurant.  My fourth grader can read the lesson and do the work by herself 90% of the time.

Real maps from around the world.  There’s never an assignment using a fictional map to illustrate a point.  The Kolbe course plans periodically call for map-memorization (state capitals, etc.), but just doing the work in the book is an education in world geography all on its own.

Spiral curriculum.  You can start the series on grade-level, even if your student has never done geography before.  The fourth and sixth grade books cover all the same essential concepts — the difference is that the sixth grade lessons delve into each topic with a little more detail and little more difficulty. I believe Kolbe stops using the books after 6th grade, though there is a final book for grades 7 or 8.  If your older student has never studied geography and needs to be brought up to speed, just pick up the last book and it’s all there.

To study geography, or not?

Kolbe advises parents to skip geography if the overall course load is too overwhelming.  I partially disagree:

  • I think it’s fine to do geography some years but not all, or to spread one book over two years.
  • But geography matters, and is a skill of its own separate from the subjects it supports.  History and earth science make no sense if you don’t also know geography.  And trip planning?  Let’s just say it’s no fun traveling with people who can’t or won’t read maps.
  • In my experience, struggling students are sometimes helped by easing off the overwhelming subject, and exercising the brain elsewhere.  The geography in this series requires math, reading comprehension, writing, and visual processing skills.

So in our family, my inclination is to reduce the number of assignments from the National Catholic Reader (but still do some of the better selections) and hold onto geography, at least most years.

The Kolbe Course Plans

The course plans call for students to do two assignments per week.  There are no quarterly exams.  Other than a few “memorize this” or “practice that” assignments, the plans simply divide the book so students know how many pages to do each week.  So if you are not enrolling with Kolbe, I’d skip these plans and write your own chart of how many pages to do.  Or just open the book and circle pages.

Write in the book, or not?

This is not a reproducible, so photocopying assignments violates the copyright.  There are some assignments that require students to label the map in the book. We chose to have the kids write their answers on separate paper (works 85% of the time), if there was a map to label, we’d just do that assignment orally, and the student could point to the answer on the page.  The glossy pages are fairly durable, so the book should hand down as well as any other text.  Given the option of buying the book themselves or writing on a separate sheet of paper, both kids decided to save their cash for better purposes.

What else do you want to know?  I’ve got the fourth and sixth grade books on hand, and the course plans, so ask away.

 

 

World Communication Day & Promote Catholicism Day, part 2

Time for part 2 of the  Catholic media fest:

Then, on Thursday, May 24, please share the fruit of that day of prayer and silence with everyone, by posting your answer to the question: “What in Catholic Media has had an impact on me during the past year?” Share it on the New Evangelizers website at: http://newevangelizers.com/forums/topic/catholic-media-promotion-day-2012/

Half of you may have noticed, my efforts at internet silence were not so successful.  So this will be fruit-of-the-noise as well.

1.  Have I mentioned how much I love the printing press?

I’ve got an old version of one of these guys, not the hardback, and the spine’s peeling away.  I think most of my friends who do book repair are also solidly anti-Catholic, which makes it awkward to ask for advice.

2. SuperHusband swears by the iBreviary. It is indeed super cool.  I mean, yes, wow.  But I still prefer paper.

3. Review Books.  Yesterday in my failure to sit on my hands, I stumbled on RAnn’s list of Top Ten Sources for Review Books.  My current title from The Catholic Company is Benedict of Bavaria.  I picked it because that little voice told me I should, and my brain informed me that it was time I made myself read something substantial for a change, and this looked like it.  Ha!  I love being wrong.

“Substantial” is my code word for “thick” and “slog through long paragraphs written by people who need to get re-acquainted with the period key, and also not use the word ontological quite so much”.  Not so.  Eminentally readable, and super interesting — quite the departure from my usual association of Pope Topics = Too Smart for Me.  I love the printing press.  Love it.

4. Local Catholic Bookstores.  OSV Weekly has this cute little sidebar about “How to Read More.”  It’s like telling someone on a diet How to Eat More.  No, really, I read enough already.  If the meat thing doesn’t work out, Not Reading is my most painful alternate penance.

But the pleasure of the review programs sponsored by the big guys is that a) It supports the bookstores who provide for those who don’t have local bookstores b) sometimes I find a great book my local store doesn’t know about, and then I can pass it on, and c) I still have my book money left to spend with the local guys.

Support your local Catholic bookstore.  If you don’t have one, and your parish has a spare coat closet they can spare, consider starting one.  Nothing beats being able to browse in person, especially for kids.

5. A great book my local bookstore is about to find out about.  One of the tremendous pleasures of Catholic New Media has been getting to know other writers online.  Which is how I ended up with the announcement of this book in my inbox yesterday:

I can’t wait to the see the inside.

Another great moment in New Media e-mails yesterday . . . Julie Davis let me look at a sneak preview of a project she’s working on.  That’s all I can say right now.  But listen: There is a super-awesome, unbelievably gorgeous book in the works.  When the time comes, I will so tell the world it’s gonna be sort of annoying.  If your name is SuperMother-in-Law, I’m getting you one for Christmas.  (Not this Christmas.  You have to wait until it meets the printing press, which is still a ways off.)  With my own money.

6.  And that’s something I love about the Catholic new media: Catholic writers being able to connect with one another and collaborate on projects.  Writers in general can be a little paranoid.  What if someone else writes my book before I do?  In the Catholic world, yes that fear can be there.  But when your mission is  to evangelize, most of all there’s a tremendous sense of relief: Thank goodness someone wrote that book so I don’t have to.

When you’re still in that long aspiring-writer time of life, with 10,000 book ideas swirling in your head and a powerful desire to write them all, you don’t feel that way so much.  But once you actually go to write a whole book and make it see light of day, and you’ve gotten past the about the 4th draft of a completed manuscript, and discover how much work is required to write anything halfway decent . . . yeah, please.  Thank you all seventy-bazillion Catholic writers for being on the job.  You are so desperately needed.

7.  Um, there’s not much money in it.   Just so you know.  But listen, accounting is a great.  Engineering?  Janitorial work?  Lots of ways to support that writing habit.  And it’s all Catholic.

***

When I was first staying home to raise kids, I’d listen to Focus on the Family, and there was often mention of the incredible loneliness of the stay-at-home mom.  The internet has eased that isolation, especially for those of us introverts who would rather read and write than chit-chat at one of those mingle-y things.

Whenever you get to know somebody, no matter how, you only get to know part of them.  You never know the whole person. And at first, you only know a very small slice of the person.  The internet is only different in which slice you meet.

I love, LOVE, having a way to meet people from the inside out.  To not be distracted by their clothes or their accent or their weird habits or lack of weird habits.  To cut out the small talk and go straight to the issues . . . it takes so long at Donut Hour to find someone willing and able to hold a substantial conversation.  I love small blogs because you can have real conversation.  Yes, I’m like a moth to flame, leaving comments at Jen Fulwiler’s and Simcha’s and Msgr. Pope’s blogs.  But I always go to Darwin’s personal site, and not The American Catholic, because it’s small enough you can actually exchange ideas, and not just shout to the stadium.

So to you who write only very small blogs, let me say THANK YOU.   The big guys are doing an important work, and I’m grateful for them.  But small blogs fill a spot no one else can fill.  Keep going.

***

Also I beg you.  If it is at all within your power, please change your blog settings to allow the “subscribe to comments” feature.  Thank you.

Don’t Tread On Us

So our federal government’s gone and gotten all totalitarians-in-training on us.  Enjoy using what amendments we’ve still got left:

Feeling shy?  Freedom’s not just for Catholics!  The whole point of religious freedom is that you get to choose whether and how to practice your faith.  Is it really so important that your employer set aside money for birth control only, instead of giving you the same amount of cash into a general-use health care savings fund?  (Or just cash, if you run libertarian.)   We all love to see a ‘win’ for our own cause.  But regardless of where you stand on contraception, healthcare, or organized religion, the Bill of Rights just rocks.  Defend it now.

3.5 Time Outs: Teen Boy Chastity Bleg, Part 2

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, this bringing old meaning to Man, you’re sick.

Dozens of takes, 3.5 at a time.

1.

The reason I’m asking internet strangers, instead of my dearly beloved, for advice on teen boy chastity, is this:  The SuperHusband has ample experience with “Teen Boy”, but neither he nor I had much exposure to the whole “Chastity” thing until well after our teen years.  So while we can tell you all about the Marriage-NFP Experience, if we were to draw on our own high school experiences for guidance on how to parent our boy, well, that would not be the most successful method.

And since this is the AoA 3.5 Takes, the Man Event to exceed all Man Events, I’m going to keep on asking.

2.

Here’s the round-up of answers so far:

Darwin wrote from his own experience: Avoid Porn, Develop Aesthetics.  That was very encouraging — we have both the porn-free household and the collection of art books (really just two or three, but it’s a start).  And I never would have considered the topic this way.  I’m really glad I asked!

Christian LeBlanc (this one) writes:

I’d tell my boys that all the trash you see on the net or movies or mags has nothing to do with real men, real woman, and real sex. It’s just a way to get money out of morons. In fact it’s the opposite of those real things, and only idiots waste time on it and screw up any chance of meeting and loving a real woman like my wife, who as my children know is The Most Glorious and Beautiful Woman God Ever Created.

August from Contra Niche say:

If you teach young men to value their first born, they will get in the habit of thinking about whether or not they’d want whoever it is they are looking at (and attracted to) to be their kids mom. It is very effective, especially if you imagine a smart little five year old berating you for your lack of foresight.

Valuable reminders, and it is so helpful to hear this from a man’s perspective.  Larry D.  assures me he has a post in the works (give him time, he’s got the plague), and I’m looking forward to that.

3.

So here’s a two-part question I still need you guys to answer for me:

  • How should a boy deal with the, shall we say, overwhelming physical urges, that are known to afflict young men?
  • And how does a mother, or father, provide these bits of practical advice without making the boy die from embarrassment?

The going advice in popular culture is not so helpful, since it tends to run exactly counter to CCC 2352 and 2396.

So guys, you know how ladies fill magazines with practical tips on cutting calories and avoiding over-eating at holiday parties?  We need the pocket guide to keeping it in the pocket.  I’m going to temporarily open this blog up to anonymous comments, and as long as they are Catholic* and on-topic, I’ll let them through the moderation queue.   What works?

Please tell.

3.5

 . . . Anna knew right away: Slugs.  If you ever need a cheap date, invite a slug.

Well that’s all for today.  Tuesday is Link Day for all topics, not just chastity and garden pests.  Help yourself if you are so inclined.   Post as many as you want, but only one per comment or the spam dragon will eat you up and I’ll never even know**.

*By “Catholic” I mean “all that is true and good”.  Your own faith or lack thereof is not the question.  A commitment to purity suffices.

** If your perfectly good comment gets stuck in spam, please TELL ME.  My e-mail in the sidebar works.  I get too much spam to check the spam folder post by post, but I will happily go fish out your misfiled comment if you let me know it’s in there.

 

QUICK UPDATE: I’ve turned off the anonymous comment feature (6/7/2012).  Amazing how much spam this one post generated — apparently hit all the right keywords.  I don’t *think* any honest humans were caught in spam (yes, I read it all), but you are always welcome to e-mail me if your comment gets eaten by the spam dragon, and I’ll rescue you.  Thank you to everyone who answered, here or elsewhere.  I’ll do a round-up post soon.

World Communication Day & Promote Catholicism Day

Via Sarah R. via Lisa Hendey via I’m not sure who, but I finally got the memo.  How to join in the annual Catholic new media blog-love-a-thon:

This year, in keeping with the theme of Pope Benedict XVI’s message for World Communications Day 2012 — Silence and Word: Path of Evangelization — we’re asking you to do something different.

On Wednesday, May 23, we’re asking you to take a one-day break from posting on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Pinterest, etc… and use that day to reflect on the Pope’s words about the role of silence in communication and evangelization.

Then, on Thursday, May 24, please share the fruit of that day of prayer and silence with everyone, by posting your answer to the question: “What in Catholic Media has had an impact on me during the past year?” Share it on the New Evangelizers website at: http://newevangelizers.com/forums/topic/catholic-media-promotion-day-2012/

Because I totally needed an excuse to:

a) not post anything

and

b) write about the Catholic Media.

You too, huh?