Hey and here’s more good new media, h/t to Fr. V. I think this one fits into that whole ignatian-imagination-meditation topic we were on the other month. I never really thought about what 40 days in the desert really looked like, until someone drew me a picture:
And I tell you I don’t watch TV. Ha. Yes I do.
Julie D. at Happy Catholic reminds us to promote catholic media today. I’m lousy at these coordinated things — such an excess of self-discipline and order required. My thought one week ago, as I lay in bed calculating the hours until midnight: It’s not necessarily that I am a slave to my passions. Sometimes I’m just a very reliable servant.
But often, yes, slave.
Rather than be organized, then, I’m going to just give you a few of my top favorite underrated blogs. My list of well-known favorite catholic sites is in the sidebar.
Brandon at Siris is not only much smarter than me, he is also the true boy scout of internet-philosophers. Here is where he answers my question about Intentio.
John McNichol barely blogs, but that’s because he is actually writing books. Which I guess makes him “old media”, but gee, who else out there is taking care of catholic boys in need of more action/adventure novels? Do you really want your son glued to some blog, when he could be reading chestertonian steampunk instead?
Christian LeBlanc explains the catholic faith to sixth graders, which I suppose makes him too smart for the internet, too. But since most of us internet Catholics really need a proper sixth-grade religious education still, he posts his lessons on his site, and also links them to Sunday Snippets.
And my last under-rated catholic blog to promote today is my friend John Hathaway’s. If St. Therese of Lisieux were a married American catholic man with Asperger’s and Marfan syndrome, who really dreamed of being a missionary priest to Haiti but instead was homeschooling his four kids, teaching college English, and doing all things lay-carmelite, that would be John. You begin to see why I like the guy. (And his wife, but she is too sensible and too busy to blog.)
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Speaking of underrated means and methods, here’s this bit of reflection is from a non-catholic blog, written by an evangelical missionary in Haiti, whose husband has been in prison for 5 months now. Could just as easily be the wife of St. Thomas More writing here:
What? Huh? Glory in suffering? But you know what, it’s true. One thing I’ve noticed is when you are suffering God doesn’t usually take the problem away immediately. He’s not a magic wand to take away all your troubles. You suffer and you suffer more when you are a Christian. I have suffered so much in the past 5 months. However I have noticed that thru my suffering I have changed, how I react has changed, and how I communicate has changed.
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Catholic Media Promotion Day facebook page is here. You can make your list on your blog and then post the link on their wall, or just recommend some links directly on the wall.
In reading and talking with assorted friends elsewhere, the details of the various lenten penances keeps coming up. What if you’re a vegetarian, do you have to do something extra? What if your favorite meals are meatless anyway? What if you are forced to go to a barbeque buffet on a friday (social obligation, large gathering, no one studying your plate)? What if your life is such absolute misery right now that though you had planned extra penances on top of the obligations, you are too sick to pull them off?
And meanwhile, here are the Orthodox, who don’t play around with their fasts.
My thought is this: Just do what the Church says.
The church doesn’t ask the impossible. We’re told when we fast, to eat enough to maintain strength. There are exemptions for people with medical needs that prohibit fasting or abstinence.
The Catholic Church takes sort of an opposite tack from the Orthodox, but either approach makes sense. Catholics are given a bare-minimum assignment, and reminded that we who can do more, should do more. Always. How we fill in that blank is up to the individual to discern. The Orthodox go hard and strong as a blanket policy, and then your priest directs you on how to modify your observance of the fast per your state in life and spiritual maturity. Two sides of the same coin: What you can do, you should do. What you cannot, you cannot.
As Catholics, I think our Lent Lite approach helps focus us on one thing: Obedience.
Not creativity, not “spirit of the law”, not Who Can Be the Saintliest. If you are vegetarian, it is easy to obey. If you are at the barbeque buffet forced to eat nothing but rice and mushy greenbeans and the little protein bar you stuffed in your pocket because you knew this was going to happen, well that’s a little harder. (The Orthodox are laughing at you, of course, as you offer up your macroni-and-cheese-eating, but never mind. They are laughing at all of us.)
But obedience. Simple, unfettered, unworried obedience. That seems to be message #1 the Church wants us to learn today.
Seems timely.
[And yeah, it makes people super mad when you admit to it: That you’ll change your life in some small way for no other reason than The Church Says So. Which is kind of a perverse pleasure for us curmodgeons, thinking of who we can really shock and alarm by eating our tuna with such docility. Ha. Lent has its upsides.]
My internal dialog today:
Jennifer: I’m hungry.
Jennifer: You are supposed to be hungry.
Jennifer (wincing): Oh, that’s right.
. . . don’t look at this blog. You’ll only make things harder for yourself.
Bearing asks for advice on how to assist children with their lenten devotions:
. . . I was not a child growing up in a practicing-Catholic family. I literally do not know how to encourage a Lenten devotion without becoming Lent Cop Mom.
Seriously. Help me out here. . . .
Since I know I have a few readers here who could answer this one, and because I want to know the answer too, please go read the whole thing and then inform us.
Thank you.
I don’t do crafts. But sometimes, yeah, I do crafts. This was our activity for the 9 y.o.’s birthday party, but it would lend itself to a VBS project. So I share.
Who were the artists? 18 Girls at the party, ages 3-13. Two of the girls (ages 4 & 6) played on the back porch the whole time, the others painted. All 16 painters, including a few very energetic ones, seemed to enjoy the project and stay focused on their work.
What we did: We painted folding fans. We acquired a box each of these white fabric ones, and these wooden ones. You find them in the wedding section of the craft store, and these were 18-count boxes. We used bottles of washable tempera paint, and also offered markers and glitter-glue (already on hand). For the paint we purchased six-packs of small bottles in metallic and glittery colors, and I think this worked well because no matter how hapless the artist, your paint selection was guaranteed to coordinate.
VBS Themes? This would be a great project if you are studying a saint who lived in a time and place where folding fans were widely used. One of our guests ran back home and brought a list of Japanese words she had from school, and two painters used that for their design. –> For any VBS lesson, you could provide a selection of possible design elements that suits your theme for the day.
Paint Control: Each artist received a cheap saucer-sized paper plate for a pallette. I squirted nickel-sized samples of desired colors on each girls’ plate. The girls got the message, and when they re-filled their paint, they took just a little at a time. I issued new plates on request to a couple artists who needed larger or refreshed pallettes.
Brush Protection: Our array of brushes included old toothbrushes, cheapo kids’ water color brushes, good quality kids’ brushes, and really nice adult painting brushes. I handed out the better kids’ brushes to the girls (one thin, one thick for each to start), but they were free to help themselves to anything on the table. No brush damage! I think that fan-painting lends itself to good brush technique because of the small surfaces.
Rinse Water Management: I used short, heavy mugs and glasses for the rinse water, and filled them no more than half-way. Girls shared cups placed in the center of the table, and I renewed the water on request. Low center of gravity pays off: no water spilled.
Budget: Ours fans were on sale for well less than $1 a piece, but suggested retail was something like $18.99 for an 18-count box. So shop around if your budget is tight. I spent about $10 on paint, and used perhaps a third of it. You could no doubt do much better on paint prices. –> We will use our leftovers on other projects, but for VBS, half-used paint bottles can easily turn into waste. If you need to strictly control the budget, pick just a few colors, and don’t open a new bottle of a color until you’ve finished the old one.
I can’t remember what the paper plates cost, but they were the super cheap ones, and for 16 painters we went through maybe 20 plates. I passed out napkins or paper towels on request, used a handful of those. I already owned the other supplies — brushes, rinse water cups, markers and glitter glue. Most people just used paint. On the wooden fans, this project could be done exclusively with markers if desired.
The paint needs to dry! I used old shower curtains to cover the carpet initially, and then used them to cover the shelving where the girls put out their fans to dry while we had birthday cake.
Project Time: I estimate we spent about 30 minutes on this project? In a classroom setting, you would want to have a second activity on hand for students who finish quickly. It would also be nice to have a come-back-later option for students who chose a very detailed design and ran out of time.
Caution: Everyone wants an extra fan. Just say no.
18 Girls.
12 bottles of paint.
50+ paintbrushes.
None on the floor.
I have arrived.
This morning when you woke up, you were thinking, “Gee, Jennifer needs to clean the house, takes the kids to dance class, drop by the church to return her very overdue books from the parish library and pester the DRE about something, maybe go downtown for one errand and the post office on three, and what she really really wants to do is go the garden center and pick out some drought-resistant plants for the flower beds.”
And furthermore, you were thinking, “I wish I knew more about problems facing orphans in Haiti.”
Perfect! Here’s your article: Complexity of Orphan Care, at Sit a Spell.
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After which, although you might be planning to take the Ironic Catholic’s advice and give up hand lotion or cinnamon for Lent, I suspect she’d approve if you’d squeeze in some prayers for orphans and their parents.
That’s what my then two-year-old used to shout at his baby sister in the next seat when we arrived at our destination. The parents were not amused.
These two articles might not amuse you, either. But if you need to be really grumpy, these’ll do it.
–> I’m continuing with the regular-life-requires-my-attention-theme, so outsourcing my invective to ‘things that showed up in my inbox’.
From Christian LeBlanc, interesting link to an essay on contraception and the fall of the west.
The West lasted from AD 732, when Charles Martel defeated the Muslims at Tours, until 1960, where it fell without a battle. In 1960, the birth control pill became widely available. Many think of it as heaven, sexual nirvana, the route to self-expression, wish fulfillment, and liberation for millions of women. I think of it as Auschwitz in a bottle. It was and is genocide, as, using it, the women of my generation happily traded off 1,200 years of unparalleled growth, wealth, security, stability, scientific and ethical progress for a second BMW in the garage.
I’m not persuaded of author’s provocative conclusion (“Islam is the only way”), but the irony is there. In the 19th century the French quit reproducing — yes, before effective contraception became widely available — and by the late 20th were wringing their hands over the cultural impact of all the muslims they’d imported to do the labor of the children they’d never had. Germany has followed suit, and the US isn’t far behind.
(Though, luckily for our culture, we are importing truckloads of macho catholics with their awesome mariachi masses. Maybe God does love us more? Kidding. Really. The French have Brie — if that isn’t love, I don’t know what is. But yes, I do like a rousing Spanish mass now and again. Perks up the excessively-somber soul. And as much as I am moved by the beauty and devotion of faithful muslims at worship, no, I can’t slip down to the corner mosque for a mini-revival.)
Anyhow, key point of link for me is this: You can’t refuse to bear children, then get all shocked and horrified at the presence of the people you imported to do the work of the offspring you never had. You want someone t0 mow your lawn and do your dishes? Either rear yourself a pair of middle-schoolers, or hire someone else’s.
[Teenagers everywhere are now saying aha! You really did raise me to be a slave! The mother points out that she does a thing or two for her own children that she doesn’t do for the random low-wage stranger. Indeed, here may lie a bit of the problem: rather than a steady flow of youngsters who do the grunt work for a decade and then move on to greater work, we attempt to create a society divided between perpetual overlords and perpetual economic-teenagers. And then are shocked, just shocked, when the daring, hard-working, self-sacrificing immigrants turn out to be just like our own children — ready to move up in the world after a spell.]
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Your other link is this article from the HSLDA, from Swedish parents who moved to Finland in order to homeschool. I will use this as my cue to get off the internet educate a few fresh faces of my own.
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PS, castle news: We got a new roof. Looks a lot like the old one, only much, much younger.