Where to Find Me, Fall 2021

Last week I ran into a local reader and subscriber at this blog, who naturally wondered where the heck I’ve been. Sick leave is the answer, I’m still on it, hitting about a 25% attendance rate at everything that counts as normal-life.

(No, it’s not COVID. Thanks for asking.)

What I didn’t know he didn’t know (and therefore other subscribers here may have the same question) is that I’ve also blogged at Patheos, and I resumed writing there this summer. My presence there is erratic, heavy on controversial topics, and exists because never-blogging does not work for me. (I have a second disorder called Can’t Shut Up.)

So if you have a disorder called Can’t Get Enough of Ornery Bloggers, you can subscribe at patheos.com/blogs/jenniferfitz and I can take the edge off.

Otherwise I’m largely offline. My Facebook presence is zero; I do tweet headlines and hit the the “like” button on things, but even when it seems like I’m itching for a fight, I’m really not. You’re certainly welcome to follow me there, @JenFitz_Reads is the active account.

How to Find a Great Speaker for Your Evangelization Event

I am doing zero speaking gigs at this time — no phone interviews, no zoom meetings, no radio shows, I’m pretty happy if I hold a conversation at all, with anyone, definitely not booking your parish or diocesan event. But of course you’ve read my book, or at least looked at the cover, and now you just have to have me, right? Nah. Here’s what you need to do:

  • Work through the book with a small group of picked volunteers from your parish or ministry. There are discussion questions at the end of each chapter, so you don’t need to prep anything.
  • Highlight the parts you really, really, really want your larger audience to know.
  • Pick the top three most important parts, and make slides about them.
  • Now, presto, you have a speaker able to address what is most needed in your situation.

You can always do a second talk on three more points another time. Visiting guest speakers make people feel good? But they don’t cause change. Change happens when individuals who are connected with each other in an enduring manner decide to take action on a single, mutually important goal.

You and your small group of locals who read the book together will know, in a way that neither I nor any other stranger can know, what the top three most pressing concerns for you are today. Bring those three concerns to your audience. Use the book to help you find the words and the explanations to communicate the things you already know but maybe struggled to articulate.

Then: Equip your audience. Maybe that’s just giving the encouragement people need to do what they already wanted to do, but were unsure about. Maybe it means removing obstacles. Maybe it means offering resources at your disposal. I can’t do that for you either. But you can do this.

The How-to Book of Evangelization is not a memoir of my amazing ministry, and it’s not a fool-proof recipe that you can replicate mindlessly. It’s the testimony of thousands of ordinary Catholics just like you who have each identified one area where God was specifically calling, and they made the decision to answer that call.

Like them, the only way for you to learn how to evangelize is to try it. You don’t need a speaker for that. You need an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ in the Catholic faith; you need prayer, fasting, and integrity; and you need to say yes.

That’s it.

The book has lots of information on ways that other Catholics just like you have managed to change lives and bring people closer to God. Evangelization is a skill, just like making friends is a skill: Some people are naturally good at it, most of us benefit from receiving a little mentoring. I profile or quote a number of major players in evangelization today, so if you want some tips on where to find a speaker or resources, dig in.

But even though I love to travel and I love to teach, I’m kinda glad that God’s seen fit to toss me in the closet for a while at just the wrong time. It’s not the wrong time. Me writing the book was about the fact that I care about this topic, I had spent years studying this topic, and I have the ability to write things down. Now that it is written down, you have what you need from me.

Enjoy and God bless.

File:Peterborough (AU), Port Campbell National Park, Worm Bay -- 2019 -- 0863.jpg
Worm Bay at Port Campbell National Park, Peterborough, Victoria, Australia

Photo: Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Peterborough (AU), Port Campbell National Park, Worm Bay — 2019 — 0863” / CC BY-SA 4.0

Saying Goodbye to the Person You Don’t Want to Be

It’s resolution season, but I want to talk about something deeper and more difficult. Resolutions are good. Less sugar, more sunlight, regular bedtime . . . some of these small changes can bring out a happier, more energetic, more you person, one you hadn’t fully understood was hiding inside. If you’ve resolved to start flossing, your dentist thanks you. Run with it.

But what if the thing you are struggling to let go of is tied to your very identity?

New Year’s resolutions don’t involve identity changes, I hope. If you have said to yourself, “I am a person who binges on junk food, and my very self would be annihilated if I were to limit that behavior to Sundays and solemnities, for that bag of Reese’s cups (the large ones loaded with peanut butter, like the Good Lord intended, not those pathetic minis) are who I am, and I should cease to be the person God created me to be if I didn’t help myself to the snack bowl every hour on the hour . . .” If you have said that to yourself, then I guess you have a situation on your hands, don’t you?

But usually resolutions are more about polishing and refining, bringing into the limelight the person you have already determined is the better you.

What if the change you are struggling with involves an aspect of yourself that feels essential to who you are? What if you examine your life, and discover your besetting sin, the thing that makes you most miserable, the thing you sometimes confess but usually rationalize, what if you discover that you love that sin because you view it as part of your very self?

To let go of that sin would be to lose your life, you fear.

That’s harder.

It takes precision surgery to be able to say, “I could still be meticulous and conscientious without being a slave to obsessive anxiety.” Or “I could still be passionate and spontaneous without following my every whim with no regard for what gets lost in the frenzy.” Or “I could still be a firm, authoritative, responsible parent without losing my temper when my children misbehave.”

My only message here is: It’s okay to free yourself from the part of “you” that is destroying your relationships and making you miserable. It’s okay to say goodbye, as many times as it takes, to that aspect of yourself that isn’t about your God-given calling, but in fact is overshadowing and dragging that calling down.

It’s a process. You didn’t get into this jumbled-up identity overnight. Even when you firmly resolve, “I am going to hold onto my talents and passions and spiritual gifts, but I am no longer going to let the vice I’ve been sheltering keep hogging up this space in my soul,” even then, the vice is so strongly planted that it will take years of persistent weeding (or a miraculous healing) to root it out.

So my new year’s wish for you is that, if you have been mistakenly embracing one of your faults as if it were integral to your self, that you’d muster the courage to bid it good riddance. Show it to the door. And when it comes back again and again, insisting it belongs in your heart and you can’t survive without it, kindly tell it you’ve had enough and it needs to move on.

***

In light of that pep-talk:

(a) If you are a Catholic writer, media personality, or social media conversationalist of any type, amateur or pro, and

(b) if the fault you’ve been confusing for your very identity as a communicator and evangelist is the “charism of being a jerk”, but,

(c) you don’t want to be bitter and angry and obnoxious anymore, then,

(d) please consider joining me and a number of others for a small, free, online retreat-conference being hosted later this month.

It won’t fix you overnight. You’ll probably discover that some of the people in attendance, people like you who don’t want to be nasty online Catholics anymore, but also have no intention of abandoning their passion for communicating the truth and engaging in rousing, high-spirited discussions on controversial topics . . . you’ll probably discover some of your fellow retreatants are people you passionately despise.

And that’s rough, because we’ll be providing opportunities to overcome your bitterness and reconcile with those wrong-headed dunderpuffs who had the nerve to show face at your life-changing retreat.

If you’re feeling brave, please join us.

File:Wilsons Promontory National Park (AU), Big Drift -- 2019 -- 1683.jpg
Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Wilsons Promontory National Park (AU), Big Drift — 2019 — 1683” / CC BY-SA 4.0

The Person You Were Made to Be

SuperHusband got me an early Christmas present, and it’s created a vocational challenge for me.

The gift was a Kindle Paperwhite. I did not anticipate wanting one of these, because I love paper books and dislike reading on machines. But my shelf-builder-in-chief asked if I’d be interested, and after polling my internet friends for advice about e-book readers and doing some math on our ability to physically store the quantities of books we can anticipate coming into my life over the years ahead (because I’m like that) we decided to give it a try.

Wow.

So this machine is not like other digital devices.

A Kindle Paperwhite, I have learned, is good for exactly one thing: Reading books full of words.

It is excellent for that application, which is perfect for me, because I like to read books full of words.

It is no good for picture books, so I will still have some future shelving needs, thanks.

It doesn’t make phone calls, text the kids, tweet hot takes, or surf the internet — all of which make it easier to focus on reading books. Even its relationship with the Kindle Store is tortured at best.

But if what you want to to is send yourself e-books, and then read them efficiently and comfortably any place you go, this little machine is magic. If you are the kind of person who needs — needs — to pack a backpack of books to bring along when you go places, just in case, this machine is a game-changer.

But it completely fails at any other job except being the one thing that it is.

And that, friends, is what I have been thinking about over the past month.

What am I made for?

Another thing SuperHusband and I did this autumn was host a campfire study of Rerum Novarum.

It was a small group (surprise), but it was so, so, so much fun. For me. SuperHusband kinda got into it? But also he got worn out. A couple months of reading and discussing, a paragraph at a time, a 19th century encyclical on applied economic policy . . . it was a little more than he bargained for. It turns out we are not exactly identical to each other in our taste for Sunday evening R&R.

So I could be irritated at him, or I could value who he is a person — someone different from me, which is a godsend when it’s time to make bookshelves, because my carpentry skills leave much to be desired.

Likewise, there’s me to learn how to value. I’m in a transition phase of life. The baby is a freshman in high school, so I’m starting to consider what ought to be next on the horizon, and also I’m constantly evaluating what these final years of kids-at-home should involve for me. In an interesting twist, my kids (ages 14-20) and I are in parallel phases, all of us wondering: What do we with ourselves next?

And we all have to answer some important questions. One of them is: What kind of person was I made to be?

Myself as Buried Treasure

The Kindle was pretty easy to figure out. For one thing, it’s just a machine. It doesn’t grow and breath and change over time. It doesn’t have to discern whether this limitation or that failure is something it needs to rectify, or whether it’s just a part of its programming. Its creators do all that fine-tuning, no cooperation or discernment from the machine required.

Also, the Kindle is marketed. We know it’s meant to be an e-book reader because it says so in the sales hype.

We humans, in contrast, are like mystery-gadgets. Imagine going to Best Buy and pulling down an unmarked box with some kind of computer in it, and you take it home, open the box, look it over, and try to figure out how best to use the thing.

No manual. No labels. You can see its size. You can see whether it has, or doesn’t, various input devices. You can experiment until you figure out how to power it up, and how to keep it charged. (Does it even have a battery, or does it need to always be plugged in?)

Then you have to guess: Does it make phone calls? Does it create spreadsheets? Play music? Would it do those things if we found the right software? If we connected to the right source? If we added a peripheral to assist it?

And if doesn’t do the thing, does it need to be re-charged, does it need to be repaired, or is it just not made for that?

That’s what being human is like. You are custodian of some combination of God-given abilities, talents, and spiritual gifts . . . but what are they? Given your time and place, your friends and family, your collection of external resources . . . what makes you go? What do you excel at, and how should you use that excellence?

What can you do well enough? What can you not do at all?

How do you need to be cared for? What will damage you? What will make you thrive? What will either damage you or make you thrive, depending on proportions and timing?

Being a Magic Book

I call my new machine The Magic Book. As in, “Has anyone seen my magic book?” or “Don’t worry if you’re running late, I’ve got my magic book along, I don’t mind waiting.” A compact, lightweight, waterproof book-that-holds-all-books is magic to me.

Because of the kind of person I am, I can easily reload the magic anytime it runs low by visiting the Free Magic supplier. It’s nice.

But, other than early 20th-century detective novels, the thing I am thinking about lately is this: I am also magic.

I’m made to do amazing things. Some of them I know about. (Example: ability to cause good dinner out of disparate leftovers.) A lot of it I am still trying to understand, because who you are and what you are made for is different at mid-life than it was at twenty.

Indeed, the whole question of What kind of magic am I? is one that is always there for us, because unlike the machine, we are constantly growing and changing, and our tactical purpose — What should I be doing with myself right now? — is constantly shifting.

So you can be like, “I don’t know what to do with myself!” or you can be like, “Hey, look, there’s magic in here! Give me a little time to figure out how it works.”

And that’s where I’ve been lately. Thanks for sticking around.

File:Pingüinos de El Cabo (Spheniscus demersus), Playa de Boulders, Simon's Town, Sudáfrica, 2018-07-23, DD PAN 40-42.jpg

This is today’s Wikimedia Image of the Day. It’s a panoramic view of penguins on the beach in South Africa, and if penguins aren’t a perfect example of the need for respecting one’s limits and abilities in the discernment process, I don’t know what is. On-theme: Longtime readers will be no more surprised than I was to learn the photo credit is Diego Delso, delso.photo, License CC-BY-SA. Heh.

Book Review: 101 Ways to Evangelize by Susan Windley-Daoust

Susan Windley-Daoust is a theology professor, spiritual director, and now Director of Missionary Discipleship for the Diocese of Winona-Rochester. She graciously sent me a review copy of her new book 101 Ways to Evangelize: Ideas for Helping Fearless, Fearful, and Flummoxed Catholics Share the Good News of Jesus Christ, and having read it, I can give it unqualified “buy” recommend.*

Since my evangelization book covers similar ground, what I’d like to do with this review is explain how the two books fit together and who would benefit from each. (If you’re curious, SWD’s review of my book is here.)

Book cover image: Jesus Christ as a puzzle, mostly put together but with a few pieces still to go.
Cover art: 101 Ways to Evangelize by Susan Windley-Daoust

Overview of 101 Ways to Evangelize

Susan Windley-Daoust’s book is a compact, quick read, forty pages cover-to-cover. In it she provides a brief five-page introduction to the importance of evangelization and what evangelization is, and then launches into a well-organized series of sections that, combined, list 101 specific evangelizing activity ideas.

If you are familiar with the stages evangelization and discipleship laid out in Sherry Weddell’s seminal work Forming Intentional Disciples, the 101 suggestions are outreach ideas geared primarily towards people in the Curiosity, Openness, and Seeking stages of coming to Christ.

Image: The five thresholds: Trust, Curiosity, Openness, Seeking, Intentional Discipleship.  Ideas in the book relate primarily to Curiosity, Openness, and Seeking.
Screenshot of Amazon preview showing where the ideas for the book fit into the five thresholds of evangelization and discipleship.

The first three suggestions of the 101 ideas are preparatory work for any evangelizing activity; the remainder are outreach or ministry ideas that can be done by parish groups, by street evangelization apostolates, or by individuals.

Each suggestion is very specific, such as “praying with college students before exams” or “free clinics, or referrals for free healthcare.” The suggestions cover a wide range of types of missionary activity covering all the physical and spiritual works of mercy. Most of the 101 suggestions get a paragraph of explanation, but where needed, there’s longer discussion including caveats and alternative formats.

Who’s the perfect audience for 101 Ways to Evangelize?

This mini-book is ideal for parish groups or individuals who are sold on the idea of evangelization, raring to go, and are looking for inspiration during the brainstorming process. For a ministry leader, this is a book that you can hand to the members of your group, perhaps ask them to focus on a few particularly relevant sections, and quickly build enthusiasm and a consensus on where to get started.

To assist with this, the companion site Creative Evangelization offers a variety of support resources. At Gracewatch, you can purchase the book in bulk in various formats, including a PDF with license to print.

101 Ways to Evangelize vs. The How-to Book of Evangelization

Inexplicable though it seems to me, I am wiling to entertain possibility that some readers of this blog don’t actually want to collect every single book on evangelization that they can. So here’s the run down of how the two books compare.

The How-to is a massive, bird’s-eye view of the entire process of evangelization and discipleship, from trust-building through sending out new disciples as evangelizers themselves. In contrast, 101 Ways provides a snapshot of the why and how of evangelization, and then focuses on generating ideas for specific evangelizing activities.

101 Ways has loads of ideas for street evangelization and parish outreach events. The How-to does include some sample activities, but is more focused on explaining the principles and strategy behind how parish evangelizing works in different contexts. I would definitely pick up 101 Ways if you are specifically looking for outreach ideas, because that’s 99% of what the book is, and Susan Windley-Daoust has not played in coming up with suggestions.

The How-to is big. 300 pages big. It’s a better choice for people who either want to learn about the topics outside the scope of 101 Ways, or who want to dig deeper into why different types of evangelizing activities work the way that they do. For many people in your parish, 101 Ways will be a better fit: It’s short, quick, and action-oriented.

If you’re in parish leadership charged with some aspect of making big-picture decisions about parish strategy, you want The How-to, because it will help you understand how different aspects of evangelization and discipleship fit together. It will help you make strategic decisions, and it will help you communicate with parishioners by giving you the words you need to explain how xyz ministry fits into the big picture.

But when it is time to mobilize the troops, 101 Ways will be a much better book for parishioners who aren’t big readers and who just want to get moving on outreach-oriented activities and events.

101 Ways is smaller and cheaper than The How-to. Oh, come on, we all know that matters!

For your personal needs, it’s just a question of what type of book you want and what kind of content you’d like to read. For a parish purchase, I’d say that The How-to is the one you give to your ministry heads, that you stock a copy or two in the parish library for people to borrow as-desired, and that you might purchase a dozen copies to be re-used with study groups over the years. In contrast, 101 Ways is the one you purchase in bulk for everyone in the parish, stick in the literature rack, or leave in the hymnal holders in the pews for people to peruse and perhaps prayerfully consider for inspiration.

Is one book better than the other?

Nope. Two different books for two different needs. You can read the samples at Amazon, but I’d say both of us have a similar style in terms of readability. We’re both coming from the same school of thought in terms of what evangelization is and how it’s done.

If you read 101 Ways to Evangelize and your appetite is whetted and you want to learn more about the huge topic that is evangelization and discipleship, check out my book. In contrast, if you loved my book, you’re all inspired by the conclusion and now you are raring to go, you’ll like 101 Ways to Evangelize for the many, many, many different specific outreach ideas to get you started.

It’s a win-win.

***

*You might wonder why my reviews on this blog are overwhelmingly positive. Very simple: If it’s not a good book, I don’t waste my time on it. In order to get reviewed here, a book has to (a) be interesting and well-written enough to entice me to read the whole thing, and (b) be of sufficient value to my readers that it’s worth my taking an hour to put together a review. I read, or begin to read, plenty of books that never manage to clear both those hurdles.

Custody of the Eyes, Revisited

Today’s topic is not a newsflash, but there might be someone out there who could benefit from hearing it again, this time with a little common-sense consolation thrown in.

***

So I’ve been running experiments on myself, and can confirm: Custody of the eyes works wonders.

You may recognize the term from chastity talks. For some of you, your introduction to the term was not during a kind of chastity talk you found very edifying; others may have had the opposite experience.  Anyhow, we aren’t talking about sex today.  Not even one bit.  Deep breath.

***

If you’re new to the term, “custody of the eyes” means taking steps to avoid leading yourself into temptation.  It refers specifically to choosing not to look at things that tempt you, but the concept expands to all the senses, physical and otherwise.

What kinds of things, other than sex since we are not talking about sex, might be tempting?

  • Eating that one kind of chips in the variety pack that your kids weirdly don’t like, even though they are the best flavor, and doing that eating despite the fact that there is no medical evidence your body would benefit, for any reason whatsoever, from eating another such chip again in your life.
  • Arguing manically with your beloved internet friend who is usually awesome, but happens to be horribly, horribly wrong about something. In your opinion.
  • Buying that perfect wardrobe item that you do not need because your closet is already full of other good-enough shoes and clothes and hats, ahembut it’s a really good deal and it is so cute/practical/snazzy/fantabulous, but seriously: You don’t need it, and that money would do more good applied someplace else.

Perhaps you face other temptations as well.  They could be temptations to do something that is always sinful under all circumstances, or they could be temptations that are sinful only because of how they affect you personally (example: a calmer spirit might be able to discuss that contentious issue without getting worked up into a frenzy), or they could be temptations that aren’t objectively sinful at all (buying that hat, if it’s part of your responsibly-budgeted splurge fund, and also it’s an awesome hat), but which sabotage your other, better goals.

We aren’t, on that last point, talking today about scrupling, where you obsessively worry that some harmless action is gravely sinful.  We’re just saying: For whatever reason you’ve determined that xyz action is not the way you want to live . . . and yet you’re tempted to do it anyway.

Enter one tool to include in your spiritual toolbox: Custody of the eyes.

***

“Custody of the eyes” means you take steps to change the way you are living in order to not be as tempted as you otherwise might be.  In emergency-mode, it means that if you’re walking past the hat store, look the other way.  My, what fabulous road work the city is doing this morning!

But you don’t want to live in emergency-mode all the time.

This is what it’s like living in the land of temptation, true story:

  • You’ve determined, for good, sound, scientific reasons, that you would be happier and healthier if you did not eat the chips.  Not the lousy chips, and not the fabulous flavor of chips that your children weirdly do not eat, even though the manufacturer has so generously included them in the variety pack that is the best price at your local mass-market merchant.
  • 99% of the time, you are able to practice amazing willpower! You walk by the chips, sitting out on the kitchen shelf where your children can easily access their school lunch supplies, and you don’t even think about grabbing just one tiny bag of chips even this once.
  • Alas, given enough minutes/hours/days/months, you must run the chip-gauntlet 100 times. Your 99% success rate in avoiding temptation is not quite enough.

You don’t need to beat yourself up over this.  It’s a tiny bag of chips.  You aren’t allergic.  They aren’t actually made of poison, despite the inflammatory rhetoric you read on that one healthy-eating website.  It’s fine. But why live this way?  Why constantly add to your already busy day that mental struggle?  You want to eat fewer chips because you are certain you’ll be happier and healthier that way, and yet having to constantly look at the chips and make yourself not eat them isn’t exactly filling you with joy.

You don’t have to choose between those two fates.

You can put the chips in your teenager’s ancient minivan and instruct her to take them to school and give them to her friends — the ones who have the sense to know what the good flavors are, thanks.

***

Practicing strategic avoidance is life-changing.

When you make small changes to reduce the number of times in a day you have to battle against yourself, you free up so much energy for other efforts.

When you don’t or can’t make those changes — we aren’t in control of the whole world and all that happens around us — you are left working harder to accomplish less.

So let’s talk about a healthy philosophy of can’t.

***

You are not the supreme ruler.

In your life there are many things you can control.  Maybe you can change your route to not walk past the hat store.  Maybe you can uninstall the social media app that’s always sucking you into the outrage machine.  Maybe you can move the deep freezer with the kids’ ice cream in it out of your new library in the old garage and down the hall to the laundry room you don’t visit nearly so often (sorry kids, I am not your ice cream bank; readers, we’ll discuss my laundry backlog some other time).

But you cannot necessarily always make the change you wish you could.

You might be able to convince your colleagues not to put the snack tray out in the hallway next to your desk, but maybe you can’t.

You might be able to automate some of the social media work you do, but maybe it’s impossible to carry out your career in a communications industry without actually, go figure, communicating with people.

You might be able to drop catalogs into the recycle bin without ever looking at them, but maybe you also have to sometimes purchase necessary items, and you really can’t help that the best vendor also sells hats.

You probably face a mixed bag of struggles.  Whether you’re working through serious addictions or just trying to live a somewhat more tranquil life, there is only so much reorganizing of your life that you can do.

Do the amount of temptation-reducing that you can, of course.  Be creative. Be willing to take drastic measures if you’re struggling with a danger to your spiritual, emotional, or physical health.

After that? Give yourself credit for the battles that are still left.

***

Living your life in emergency-mode temptation-fighting is exhausting.  If your choice is, for example, paying the bills by going to that job with the perpetual snack tray always sitting out, or serenely sinking into bankruptcy due to unemployment, you have to go do the job.  You have to spend all day passing the snack tray and telling yourself no and walking quickly and trying not think about it.

That stinks.

It’s hard work.

Realistically you are not going to have as much emotional energy for other spiritual activities after you’ve put so much willpower into avoiding the snacks as best you can using the only tool available to you at this time.

Acknowledge it.

Acknowledge that at this time in your life, you are running a spiritual marathon ten hours a day.  By fighting the good fight you are getting stronger — even if one time in a hundred you pass the snack table and cave — but you are getting stronger by working out.  Just like physical exercise, the spiritual and emotional exercise of resisting temptation is tiring.

Your capacity for that work can grow, but it can’t be instantly expanded to infinity.

So if your circumstances are such that you must constantly battle temptations you can find no way to avoid, applaud yourself for the work you are doing.

***

And of course, final note for those readers who aren’t presently dealing with this kind of practical struggle . . .

If you have been blessed with a low-temptation lifestyle, avail yourselves of the three pillars of the spiritual exercise regimen: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.  Otherwise your soul will grow flabby for want of spiritual work.

Horses grazing in mountain pasture at Parco Naturale Tre Cime.

I was going to find a good hat picture to illustrate this post, but today’s Wikimedia Image of the Day is too beautiful to skip.  Photo of horses grazing in Parco Naturale Tre Cime by kallerna, CC 4.0.  Click through and scroll down for some related close-ups.

How’s it Going, Jen? Mid-August 2020 News & Links

A few quick updates as I hopefully get back into the swing of things?  Maybe? Here’s all that’s been going on since I last fell off the internet:

(1) I took a leave of absence from social media because I had started losing my temper at people who were wrong.  The break was surprisingly beneficial — I say surprising because my primary mode self-correction consisted of watching Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D. Best I can tell, it’s what happens if you cross C.S. Lewis with Tom Clancy with Hollywood Sci-Fi with an Evangelical Presbyterian. Season 3 is when it gets blatant.

Didn’t see that coming, though, tip: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. is a straight-up pro-life morality tale, except seedy and brilliant — if you happen to like campy sci-fi comedy-adventure infused with a potty-mouthed and hilarious Theology of the Body theme.  (Parental supervision strongly recommended.  None of this is for little kids.)

(2) Had to take a healthy, athletic teenager to the ER for extreme shortness of breath on exertion associated with a respiratory virus of unknown nature.  She’s fine now. Also, our ER experience provides a few theories on why certain minority communities might be experiencing a higher rate of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality.  –> All is not well in public health, guys.

(3) I’ve got two more here at the castle who’ve succumbed to a respiratory ailment of unknown nature, possibly the same one as the teen, possibly something else. In the effort to keep those three distanced from the remaining residents, I was doing an awful lot of zig-zagging around providing food service and so forth.  That’ll keep you busy.  I finally gave two men a kitchen in the camper in the yard so they could do some of their own cooking.  Mr. Boy was appreciative, SuperHusband is not amused. Heh.

(4) Oh oh! and during all that?  Our 18 y.o. came back from college for the one week we get to see her until Thanskgiving, we think, and it was absolutely vital, if she wished to return to school, which she does, that she not catch any kind of respiratory ailment.  Huge thanks to the friends who housed her, fed her, and did airport shuttle so that she could limit her time with us to sitting outdoors and far away.  Fun times.  People prayed for us, though, and it was fine.

So that’s been most of it.  In writing news:

NCRegister: “On the Limits of Identity Politics” If you missed it, it’s up and some people liked it.  There should be another piece running soon on a Catholic approach to the problem of gender dysphoria, but I don’t see it yet?  Next in my queue is an essay I’ve been failing at pulling together for an embarrassingly long time, but which introduces Cathy Lins, who specializes in parish mental health ministry, and who has a brand new forum here: Trauma-Informed Parishes. Go say hello to Cathy and soak up everything, because she knows what she’s about.

FYI the rumor that I “started a new job” at the Register is a product of Facebook’s determination to turn everything, at all, ever, into click-bait hype for your friends.  What happened is that I realized I had put my blogging status at Patheos and here at the Conspiracy in my “about” details, but that the Register was missing.  Crazy me went to rectify that oversight and next thing we know everyone’s congratulating me on my new promotion.

Um.  I’ve been promoted to someone whose author bio is slightly more accurate? Kinda?

Books I finished reading, highly recommend, and plan to review in the days ahead:

Blorging: Ads aren’t functioning as well as usual (possible cause: widespread power outages?) so it’s a great time to wade through my latest entries at the mosh pit of religious plurality, if you haven’t taken the plunge lately:

  • “Speaking of Clerical Corruption” 

    We the laity are capable, if we work together, of investigating allegations like the ones above, and we are capable of creating landing places for discarded priests, seminarians, and religious to build new lives for themselves after they are persecuted for whistle-blowing.  It’s too big a job to be done by one person, and too important a job to be left solely to one faction or another among the increasingly fragmented faithful.

  • “Education vs. Childcare vs. Public Goods”

    Because of these harsh economic realities, there is tremendous pressure for schools to open back up, full-time as-per-usual. Parents need the low-tuition* childcare that schools provide, and to not provide that care is to leave parents in a serious bind.

    Catholic social teaching has a different answer, and yes I know when I say it most people will swear it’s preposterous, but here me out below. There’s another way, and its worth considering.

  • “Breathtaking Beauty in Church Controversies over Kinda-Boring Stuff”

    If you are like me, you never for a moment even considered the possibility that the I in “I baptize you . . .” was a make-or-break part of the baptismal formula. (I also never contemplated varying from it.) It was simply there, and it seemed logical, and what else was there to know? Now we have something to ponder. What’s going on with this one little pronoun the CDF is so worked up about? Turns out the answer is more interesting than I had guessed.

And today, prompted by this morning’s readings, and weirdly taking a twist into presidential politics (I didn’t see that coming even if you did): “How to Treat Gentiles and Tax Collectors”.

–> If you don’t care to think about the voting question, scroll directly down to the bottom to see the photo that inspired me to wrap up my meditation on what to do about terrible Catholics with a link to the Epic Vacation series here at the Conspiracy, because, top of page 2 of the E.V. category, I was reminded of my “What it Takes Not to Be a Nazi” photo tour and reflection on visiting a WWII cemetery, many memorials, and a concentration camp in eastern France.

Book reviews!  Spoiler alert: I answer the question of what to do about terrible Catholics in those 300 fun-filled pages of The Beast. So far there’s one review up at Amazon, which I dared read because the reviewer kindly gave the book five stars. I quote the review in full:

Jen Fitz’s clear, sensible advice for the modern evangelist is a must-read. She has years of experience with dealing with many situations a lay Catholic may experience in explaining their faith. The book is well-organized and helpful for anyone who wishes to learn more about how to spread the Gospel.

Thank you, anonymous reader!

FYI – if you’ve read the book and would like to say something good about it, I’d be most grateful if you’d say so over at Amazon, where book publicity ekes out its living these days.  Even more? I’d like you to loan your copy to someone who could use the inspiration or affirmation.

Thanks!

Ella the Snow Dog - adorable cream-colored puppy looking up at the camera in a field of snow

Today we illustrate our post with this photo of Ella the Snow Dog (CC 2.0) because:

  • Presently the 9th grader’s multi-year campaign to get a dog is gaining momentum but also hit a snag in the road called “Parents are doing their best to make sane, responsible decisions,” and
  • It’s mid-August in the Deep South, so even though it is unseasonably cool (low 90’s!?!!), “snow” is a very popular theme around here.

FYI because I love you, I scrolled through many pages of search results for “cute dog photo” in Wikimedia to bring you the very best.  You’re welcome.

PSA: About the Time I Had to Rescue My Kid from Drowning

It came to my attention after my previous PSA that I’ve never told, here on the blog, the full story of the time my four-year-old nearly drowned.  (She’s fine.) I write about this because it’s water season (in the northern hemisphere, anyhow), and for US children ages 1-4, drowning is the leading cause of accidental death.  Of all the things you worry about in your little kids, this one is, statistically speaking, one that *needs to be worried about*. I’m going to tell our story, and then you will know what you need to do in order to keep your young children safe while they are at the pool.

Spoiler: You, personally, watch them every single second.

As you’ll see, that is not me being dramatic and overbearing. That is just *how it is* with young children at the pool. Here’s the story.

Quiet Pool, Lifeguard on Duty

I had four kids in back-to-back swimming lessons at the local YMCA, and so while the youngest had her lesson the older kids would play in the pool, and then they’d switch.  We were at an indoor pool and I wasn’t myself swimming.  I was dressed business-casual (this gets relevant later) — my good real-leather loafers, slacks, tailored t-shirt, probably even make-up and jewelry. The pool was about four feet deep at the shallow end, and my kids aren’t that short.  The four-year-old was just inches shy of being able to hold her head above water — so she didn’t play there.

Where she played was on the broad, shallow concrete steps leading down into the pool, about an 8′ x 10′ area with handrails on both sides and the middle. I had her play on the first three steps, which were shallow enough for her to sit or kneel on, but she could stand with her head fully out of water on the fourth step.  The way the pool was constructed, if you stepped off that last step, at all times you were in immediate reach of either the last step, a bar, the wall of the pool, or all three.  She knew how to paddle to the wall from water over her head, and how to hold onto the wall to stay above water.

Still, she was in the habit of playing only on the shallowest area of those broad, flat steps with the non-slip surface.

That day, though, she asked me if she could play down on the bottom step.  “Are you sure?” I asked.  She was sure.  “Okay. Be careful.”

And down she went to play in slightly-deeper water.

Drowning is Silent

During this time, I was seated nearby on an Adirondack chair watching her.  Not reading.  Not checking my phone.  Not chatting with other parents. Just watching the kid.  Still, you glance around.  There are the other kids having their lessons (yes, I kept an eye on them, too), there might be people setting up for water aerobics, maybe a lifeguard on break passing by.  It was a quiet weekday morning off-season, and my attention was directed towards watching the four-year-old, but of course you sometimes aren’t focusing 100%.

What happened to my daughter is that she slipped off that last step.

I became aware that she was bobbing up and down in the 4′-foot area just slightly too deep for her.  She looked like a kid practicing a bobbing-excercise, except she wasn’t. As her face would almost surface, she was not getting air, and she was very clearly not doing this for fun.  But to someone who didn’t know her, you might have thought she was just splashing around, and splashing very quietly at that.  You did not hear a word of struggle.

Pro Technique: Pull Kid Out of Water

Fortunately, a pool is a relatively easy place to see someone drowning, and it’s a relatively easy place to effect a rescue.  –> If you’re at a pond, lake, river, or ocean, in all but the shallowest water you really do need life jackets, because it is much, much more difficult (often impossible) to find a drowning body, and it’s much more difficult to pull someone out, in open water.

The pool, though, is pretty straightforward: I stood up, marched down the steps, and picked up my child in my arms.

She breathed.

Good.

I carried her up to the deck of the pool and listened to her breath a bit more.

If you see your child starting to drown and can go grab your child immediately? You’re in great shape.

That only works if you are personally watching your child the entire time.

Does it need to be you? What about the lifeguard?

I’ll tell you about the lifeguard.

The Lifeguard Has a Whole Pool to Watch

I stood there on the deck, dripping wet, leather loafers soaked, business-casual clothing soaked, holding my kid and deciding what to do next.  Something you should know is that your child can seem fine but still be at risk due to water in the lungs.  So when the lifeguard on duty hopped down from his chair to come speak to me as I stood there having just rescued my kid, he looking visibly unsettled as he approached, I assumed it was to tell me he was going to have someone to listen to lung sounds.

Instead what he said was, “Um. I’m sorry, Ma’am. You’re not allowed to wear street clothes in the pool.”

I was speechless.

He had not seen anything of what had just happened.

I had literally identified a drowning swimmer and rescued her, and the lifeguard had not seen it.  He had no idea that someone had nearly drowned in his pool, on his watch.

How could that happen?!

Remember that drowning is silent.  My rescue was silent, too. I didn’t spend time shouting or flagging down help, I went and grabbed the kid.  Maybe the lifeguard really was a horrible lifeguard.  More likely: You can only focus on one place at a time.  As he scanned the pool, he happened to miss what was happening in one corner while he was looking elsewhere.

If you want to make sure your kid gets rescued in time, you have to be watching.

Parenting Young Kids is Hard

I will tell you right now that having four young children back-to-back did not make it easy to take the kids to the pool.  SuperHusband’s not really a pool guy (he’s a river guy, hence the name of this blog), and so we weren’t one of these families where both parents go hang out at the pool all summer long.  Watching four children in the pool by yourself is mentally exhausting, because if you don’t want to miss one going down, you literally have to count heads one-two-three-four, focusing from kid to kid in a non-stop cycle the entire time your children are at the pool.

–> Not just while they are in the water, but any time they are near the pool.

I didn’t love this.  I do not miss the years of being so, so tired of counting heads while other people were relaxing and having fun at the pool.  But if I weren’t absolutely obsessive about this, I could easily have had a drowned kid.  Instead I had a child who was very scared, but who got a clean bill of health from the pediatrician when we stopped in for a lung-check immediately after.

There is No Such Thing as 100% Failsafe Parenting

From the time your child is conceived, your child is in danger of death.  The death rate for human beings is 100%.  No matter how safety-obsessed you are, eventually you have to let your child out into the world.  As I write, my rescued four-year-old is now a teenager at the pool with her older sister, and they drove there together themselves.  Bit by bit as a parent you have to let go.  You have to let your children take risks. You cannot protect your child from every possible danger.

Still, you can improve your odds by putting your efforts into making risky activities as safe as possible, and being especially careful with the most-dangerous situations.

Cars are insanely dangerous, by the way. For US children ages 5-19, a motor vehicle accident is the most likely cause of accidental death.  And yet: Your 1-4 year old child is more likely to die by accidental drowning than in a car accident.

Anyone can get into a freak accident.  As parents we have a duty to do all we reasonably can to equip our kids with good skills and good decision-making support (including waiting on freedom-privileges if our child isn’t ready), and then one day we have to hold our breath and let our kids go out and do their thing. As parents we have to weigh costs and benefits, recognize our own limitations, and acknowledge that, at any moment, despite all our most diligent efforts, we could find ourselves in the horrifying situation of having just lost, out of the blue, a child more precious to us than anything else this world has to offer.

Let me emphasize here: You aren’t a bad parent if your child dies.  You aren’t a terrible person if your child dies of something that might have been preventable, but for some reason or another you just didn’t know or weren’t able to prevent the thing.  You cannot save your child from every possible danger.  You cannot.

Life is hard.

Watch Your Child Near Water

But still: Your young child is not able to make good decisions about water safety.  Your young child also lacks the emotional wherewithal to stay calm, cool, and collected in a terrifying situation.

When my daughter almost drowned? She was literally an inch from perfect safety.  All she had to do was take *one* step.  There is absolutely no reason she couldn’t have saved herself — except that she couldn’t.  She was four-years-old, and scared, and forgot everything she knew.

Fortunately someone was watching her, and so in the end she was fine.

Summer and Swimming Pool, children playing in the pool.

Photo of kids at a pool courtesy of Wikimedia CC 4.0.

PSA: Anaphylaxis for First-Timers

Thought I’d share a little mild excitement we had around our house yesterday (everyone’s fine), because if you don’t live in the world severely-allergic people, and you don’t have first-aid training on the topic, a sudden introduction to the world of severe allergic reactions (that’s what “anaphylaxis” is) can leave you responsible for making life-and-death decisions, and maybe not even knowing it.  Hence today’s PSA, while it’s on my mind.

#1 Anyone can develop a severe allergy at any time.

Let me tell you a funny family story, and then I’ll tell you about yesterday.

My maternal grandfather never in his life showed any sensitivity to poison ivy.  He grew up on a farm, he had plenty of exposure through out all his childhood and young adulthood, he was just a lucky guy that way. So the family — this was when my mom was a kid — was traveling cross-country from one Navy post to the next, and they stopped at various parks along the way.  They were out hiking and came across some poison ivy.  Someone, probably my grandmother, urged everyone to be very careful to avoid it.  And my grandfather, who could be like this, I suppose, was like, “Nah! I never get poison ivy! I’m not allergic!” and he made a point of proving it by intentionally rubbing the stuff on his skin.

Reminder: He’d done this before.  Whether as a boast or not, I don’t know, but it would not be inconceivable that as one of seven brothers he’d maybe pulled this party trick a time or two in the past.  Certainly, many times he’d known he’d been in contact and had no reaction.

Much in accord with my mother’s sense of poetic justice, that day was his day, and the bragging was rewarded with the worst case of poison ivy rash anyone in the family had ever encountered.

Morals of the story:

  • Pride goes before the fall, but also . . .
  • You can have a reaction to something that, until now, has never been a problem for you whatsoever.

Curiously, to my knowledge I’ve never had a poison ivy rash either, though I’ve never knowingly put that to the test. I’m hoping that humility and lucky genetics are quietly protecting me when I accidentally end up exposed (because: having never had the rash, I didn’t go through the phase the all other Scouts go through where they suddenly take a keen interest in that one plant-identification skill — though I think I’m caught up now).

***
My story, both from earlier this spring and then yesterday, topic now transitioning to bee/wasp stings:

I’ve never had any difficulty with insect stings.  I don’t seek out trouble, but also stinging insects don’t worry me much, because they’re an annoyance not a danger.  We do of course take action to eliminate potentially dangerous hives and nests as we identify them, for both comfort and safety reasons.  But also I delight in having bumblebees visit my garden.  Stinging things? No problem.

So. This spring while gardening I accidentally uncovered an underground yellow jacket nest in the flower garden.  I didn’t realize what was happening until after the first sting hit, and by the time I’d come to my senses and calmly exited, I had three or four stings on my wrist.

Not a problem.  Go clean up, apply miscellaneous home remedies for comfort (as if), take a Benadryl just to be careful, since it was multiple stings.  Affected area was painful and slightly swollen, and then it got better, and until then I wore my watch on the other wrist. Eliminated nest, since it was in a heavily-trafficked area and posed a potentially serious hazard if someone disturbed it. Done.  Not a big deal.

So.  Yesterday. Mowing the lawn.  I was just wrapping up the morning’s mowing, and finally dealing with an unsightly spot by the street that needed a few goings-over, because it can get a little Wild Kingdom around here.  At no time was I aware of any bees or wasps where I was mowing, because duh, I’m not going to mow over a yellow-jacket nest, we know how that goes.  (Tip: Kill the nest, live with long grass until times.  Mowing over an underground nest is courting death, that is not an exaggeration that is a fact.)

But, I did get stung by something.  Didn’t know what — possibly fire ants since it was on my lower leg, who knows — wait, no, that’s something for serious because the stinging continued.  I did that amusing-to-watch thing one does where you attempt to both exit the area and simultaneously find this moving creature or creatures, hidden, unidentified, who has turned your clothing into a guerilla outpost from which to wage war.

By the time I’d gotten to the bathroom to hose off whatever-it-was (the easiest way to get a swarm of fire ants off your body fast is via deluge), it turned out to be a yellow jacket now somehow safely dead in my shirt and having bitten my leg four times.

Okay.  Great.  Thank you yellow jacket, because three of those stings were under my shorts, and that is not a real pleasant place to have a week of misery.

Still, no reason to worry.  Took a quick shower (because just finished mowing lawn, however abruptly), took a Benadryl just to be careful, and then moved on to making lunch, since it was that time.

Remember: I am not allergic to insect stings, right?  I’ve got forty-some years of practice being stung by all-comers, not that often but often enough to know that this is not a problem for me.  I’m the person you send to deal with the stinging insect so the allergic person can stay far away.

We had a nice lunch on the screen porch, spouse and I made a mental note to locate the nest (we still haven’t found it, by the way — it’s good and hidden), and things were —

Whoa.  I happened to glance down at my legs and discovered I was completely covered in red spots.  Legs, arms, parts of my face and neck.

Now I had noticed my face felt a little hot earlier? But remember I was just out mowing the lawn in a bazillion-degree weather — being a little flushed for a while is par for the course.  Didn’t occur to me to check for hives or a rash or anything, because I have *No History* of allergic reactions to insect stings. None.

So what is our lesson #1 for today: Someone who has no history of an allergy to a thing can, at any time and without notice, suddenly develop a severe allergic reaction.

#2 So then what?

Anaphylaxis is the name for that massive, severe, allergic reaction that can happen to anyone at anytime, with no prior notice whatsoever.

A localized rash where you physically contact the thing you are allergic to is just a mild reaction.  When you suddenly get a rash all over your body, or in places far from the affected area, that’s when you’re seeing one of the (less dangerous) signs of anaphylaxis.  It’s a concern because less-dangerous signs can be the precursor to more-dangerous signs, and the more-dangerous signs are deadly.

So what do you do?

Here’s an infographic from FARE that lays it out: Recognize and Respond to Anaphylaxis Poster

Notice that they put skin reactions in the category of symptoms that call for administering epinephrine and calling 911.  That’s a little different from the protocol out of Allergy & Anaphylaxis Australia, which considers skin and digestive reactions to be part of the mild-to-moderate category, but, and here’s the money question: These milder symptoms (such as my rash) can be the lead-in to deadly anaphylaxis.

Note here: Because I have no history of severe allergy, we don’t have an Epipen sitting around the house.  There’s always a first time.

Note also: If you need to use an Epipen, you need to be transported. Even if you have one on hand and you use it and it works.  You still need to go to the ER.

So what did we do? We went Australian Rules.  (Here I am just telling you my story, not giving you advice.  See that story above about the guy who died in ten minutes even with paramedics giving epinephrine.)  I had my adult son drive me to the very-nearby urgent care affiliated with our hospital system, where as soon the nurses milling around caught a whiff of the word “Anaphylaxis” while I stood there calmly registering at the front desk, they pulled me back for evaluation and confirmed my airway was in good shape (it was, or I would have been at the ER getting my airway opened, thanks).

So, Noting Again: If you might need an Epipen, you need to get medical attention.

Since my reaction did not involve my airway, the physician overseeing all this went with a period of observation to make sure I didn’t segue into delayed-onset of breathing difficulties, and in the in meantime began a course of treatment for the symptoms I was having; after everyone agreed I was good to go, I was discharged with instructions and a follow-up plan.

This is where I copy and paste authoritative instructions . . .

These are the emergency guidelines from from Australia Allergy & Anaphylaxis:

If you believe someone is experiencing anaphylaxis you MUST GIVE the adrenaline (epinephrine) autoinjector (e.g. EpiPen®) according to instruction on the ASCIA Action Plan.

If you DO NOT have an adrenaline autoinjector:

Lay person flat – do NOT allow them to stand or walk

If unconscious, place in recovery position

If breathing is difficult allow them to sit.

CALL AN AMBULANCE

ADRENALINE IS LIFE SAVING medication for someone experiencing a severe allergic reaction/anaphylaxis.

Antihistamines DO NOT stop the progression of an anaphylaxis. Antihistamines only help to decrease itching and reduce mild/moderate swelling of the face, lips and eyes.

DO NOT SHOWER as this may contribute to a drop in blood pressure which can escalate the severity of an allergic reaction.

ALWAYS give adrenaline autoinjector FIRST, and then asthma reliever puffer if someone with known asthma and allergy to food, insects or medication has SUDDEN BREATHING DIFFICULTY (including wheeze, persistent cough or hoarse voice) even if there are no skin symptoms.

[FYI I removed the phone number for CALL AN AMBULANCE since that varies by country.  But if you were curious, in Australia its 000. Travel tip: Learn the local emergency number in places you are visiting abroad.  You could tape it to your cell phone, for example, since otherwise you’ll probably forget it.]

And now a few practical suggestions from my own brain . . .

If you’re not an “allergy person” the first time you experience a severe allergic reaction is gonna be a shocker.  The whole page from which I excerpted above has yet more suggestions on how to manage terrible situations.

A couple points I’d like to emphasize:

  • Don’t be alone.  If you are experiencing milder symptoms, you have no way of knowing what and then is going to be like.  Maybe nothing, but maybe something that requires someone helping you right away.
  • One of the realities of a milder allergy-emergency is that you could have a panic attack that mimics airway symptoms, especially if you are alone and worried.  Getting yourself not-alone and then into a place where you can get epinephrine if you need it is a good way to cause the panic attack to subside.
  • If you present at the ER with milder symptoms and probably you just need to be observed and plan a course of treatment and follow-up for your nasty rash, LET THE THE STAFF KNOW IMMEDIATELY ON ARRIVAL that at any time you might start with airway symptoms, because that’s how anaphylaxis rolls sometimes, and they need to know that so that if you are all the sudden frantically banging on the glass begging for help, that is what is going down, don’t mistake me for SuperKaren, get me to an airway.
  • You don’t have to shout.  Tell them nice and calmy and firmly and make them repeat it back so they definitely understand. Also write the word “Anaphylaxis” on your intake card, first thing before you even write down your name, so the nurses wake up and do their thing.  Don’t just write “weird rash.”  You’re not there because you’re worried your skin isn’t pretty.  You’re there because your milder-symptoms could turn into deadly symptoms in the next few hours, and these are the people who can keep you alive if that should happen.
  • Of course be calm and polite if your breathing is fine and the staff are doing what they need to.  But put that word ANAPHYLAXIS in front of their face so that they know to do all the things.
  • Don’t worry that you are bothering anyone by “overreacting” if your symptoms are confusing and you aren’t sure if your allergic reaction is serious or not.  This is what your local emergency-care providers are there for, and also they get paid, so it’s not like you’re interrupting tea time or something.

Okay, that’s today’s PSA.  Share it around if there’s someone you know who needs to see this.

Signs and symptoms of anaphylaxis

Image courtesy of Wikimedia, CC 1.0. Here’s a link that gives you the text and more info re: Signs and Symptoms of Anaphylaxis.

 

This is my Brain on Skunks

My friend shared this photo of two skunks visiting her parish:

Two skunks sneaking into parish, reported on St. Paul the Apostle, Seneca, SC, Facebook page
Skunks always appear far closer than photographer desires.

My brain immediately started composing this addition to Marty Haugen’s contemporary classic:

Gather us in, the striped and the sneaky,

We’re coming in, so try to relax;

Be not afraid that we’ll make you stinky,

Avoid sudden movements and give us your snacks.

In fairness, my brain will also circle around and make some kind of connection to the readings, and evangelization, and how Jesus loves even troublemakers like you and me —  all that jazz.  But yes, for the rest of my life, this is the verse I’m going to hear in my head when Gather Us In starts up.

Thank you, skunks; thank you, brain; thank you, Mom and Dad for years of family camping trips so yes, I know just what the skunks want and no, reader, you shouldn’t have put that in your tent.  Tom Zampino, your spot as the Conspiracy’s top poet remains secure.

OSV Book Launch Webcast – Transcript Draft

Thank you to everyone who came to the webcast today!   A link to the recording is forthcoming (whenever it’s ready to go — I don’t know how much work is involved in that, so I’m going to assume OSV’s tech people are superheros and it might not be this. exact. instant, but the event went well so it’s not headed to the circular file, we know that).  I did confirm that OSV’s software does not have an option for creating captions, so here’s the first pass at a transcript:
Jennifer Fitz Webcast Notes – Temp Draft – June 30, 2020

There are some typos in there — surprisingly few — and I am proud of myself for using the spirit of self-control to not fix them live on the air while viewers waited, so you’re welcome, but as a result I was only able to go back and fix the one that was especially terribly bad, but not the others that are harder to remember and will take more time to find again.  So a better draft will be issued at a later date.  This is still word-for-word ten gazillion times better than you get off YouTube’s auto-transcript function, though if you want I could replace every theology term with a brand of beer in order to give you that experience?  If you like?  Nah. You do it yourself.

We did have time for some open Q&A at the end, and that is not in my notes above, but I will write up better, more succinct and accurate answers to all the questions we covered in the Q&A so we have that.

***
Meanwhile, a follow-up question: Would you be interested in more webcasts in the future, and if so, what would like me to talk about?  Ideally topics that don’t involve more embarrassing stories about myself.  Thanks!  (You can weigh in at the discussion group.)

The How-to Book of Evangelization: Everything You Need to Know But No One Ever Taught You by [Jennifer Fitz]

Got the word today that my book is shipping, and by that they mean my Christmas Present author copies are on their way. Woohoo!