Thanks once again to our host, the very patient Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy.
Click and be amazed.
1.
Really Real:
I was going to continue my slacker non-blogging, but Potty Race pushed me over the edge. I had no idea video games could be so . . . realistic. First time I’ve ever said that about something Barbie.
2.
Really useful:
Chickens eat fire ants and highway grass. So basically, as long as they keep that up, the new arrivals have a home for life.
Dogs eat chicken feed. Luckily, there’s plenty of highway grass and fire ants, so the chickens won’t starve.
3.
Really cool:
Grayson Highlands State Park is air-conditioned. The entire mountain. Truly wonderful — so pleasant I didn’t mind camping in the rain, because at least it wasn’t hot. The ductwork must run underneath North Carolina, because I’m pretty sure the actual air-conditioning unit is located here in central SC, where it’s pumping a reliable jet of hot air, especially during peak hours. It would be pretty easy to disguise a giant heat pump as an office building. They look about the same.
3.5
Really interested in the will of God:
Please pray for a special intention, writing edition. You’ll get the other half of this take as soon as I have good news to report. Which there will be, the big question your prayers are directed towards are the who and the when. Thanks!
***
And with that, I’m back to regular life. Have a great week!
(And yes, you can post links. I am, by the way, reading comments. Oh, about once a week, but I am. And trying to reply as well.)
Thanks once again to our host, Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, always good, sometimes surprising.
Click and be amazed.
1.
My niece is here this week, so the topic ought to be Teenage Girls, but there’s not much to say. Other than: They’re fun and interesting and get along great with younger cousins, and also they sleep late. Which I don’t mind.
2.
But look, two good magazines:
One is the magazine of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, and this was a pleasant surprise – sort of a Catholic National Geographic with a bit of the best of The Economist mixed in. The articles are substantial, and cover the history and contemporary issues in the regions CENWA serves. Not a light read — one of the articles this month is a history of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, starting in the middle ages and detailing, regime by regime, the power plays and organizational shifts ever since.
PG warning: Though there are no graphic descriptions of the horrendous things that go on in these lands far away, difficult topics are named by name, no glossing over or glamorizing.
Highly recommended.*
Liguorian is the other end, intellectually, of Center-Catholic reading spectrum. Like Reader’s Digest for Catholics, only without the edge. Good all-purpose, inoffensive but unapologetically Catholic magazine, targeted towards your average man in the pew. Encouraging and inspiring without being too in-your-face. Gentle. For your parishioners who aren’t quite ready for The Register or Catholic Answers.
3.
We brought home from the library the season one DVD’s of the HBO-BBC series The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. I haven’t read the books. But hey, what a cool show! Yes it runs sappy, and yes, I think you ought to watch along with your kids and provide a little parental guidance on the moral issues. But here’s what I love: Africa seen through the lense of the African middle class. How refreshing to see AIDS, or the ivory trade, or child sacrifice and witchcraft, or polygamy, or marital infidelity — through the eyes of someone other than PBS, NPR, Bill Gates or George Bush. And religion! Ha! People who can be overtly Christian on TV! Love it.
Moral note: The No. 1 Detective does not always resort to the police and the law for resolution to crimes uncovered. The Anglo-Saxon concept of Weregild comes in handy.
3.5
Glow in the dark rocks. I’m not sure whether I’m succeeding as hostess to the 17-year-old. I tried to explain that we don’t really do anything fun here, so it’s hard to think up activities. But listen, no visit to the inferno is complete without a trip to the third floor of the
***
Well that’s all for today. Tuesday is Link Day for all topics, help yourself if you are so inclined. Limit yourself to one link per comment in order to avoid the spam dragon. Have a great week!
*FYI – CENWA itself is a bit of a disaster to deal with for the small-time donor. Nothing egregious, just your normal incompetence in the administrative offices in New York; the flurry of solicitations, set aside and kept dry for use in the paper-stove, could keep a small house warm all winter. But the magazine is great.
Thanks once again to our host, Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who won’t mind if I’m slow on registering with Mr. Linky due to my temporary change in vices while I’m out here in the desert. Right Larry? Maybe?
Click and be amazed.
1.
This afternoon at lunch Dad saw me coveting the editorial page of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and quick shoved a library book in my hands before a fight broke out:
What the monks already told you. Explained.
I’ve read as far as Chapter 4, and Kahneman has explained several of his and his colleague’s discoveries about human thinking and behavior that are, reportedly, surprising. I’d read a few of them elsewhere, so I wasn’t surprised when he introduced me to them. What surprised me was this: It’s all straight from the playbook of any Catholic priest worth his salt. Practical Tips for Advising the Penitent 101.
2.
Here are some samples.
Revolutionary Scientific Discovery: People can be primed to think and behave a certain way. For example, seeing images or hearing words related to a particular theme (money, old age, happiness) causes people to embody habits and values related to that theme, without even realizing it.
What Your Priest Told You: Read your Bible, watch EWTN now and again, and throw away that trashy magazine. We are influenced by what we see and do, so pick your influences wisely.
Revolutionary Scientific Discovery: Willpower takes effort. It’s hard to resist temptation when you are exhausted from another task.
What Your Priest Told You: Take care of yourself, get a good night’s sleep, and don’t surround yourself with temptations.
Revolutionary Scientific Discovery: You can only concentrate on one task at a time.
What Your Priest Told You: Fill your time with wholesome activities so you aren’t so tempted by sinful ones. If you feel tempted laying there in bed, get up and go do something else.
There’s more just in the first four chapters, but that’s a start. Great book so far, I’m going to try to find a copy when I get home. For those of you who don’t want to read 481 pages of summaries of scientific research, just go talk to your priest. He already knows what it says.
3.
I have really enjoyed wandering around the World Series of Poker.
Yes, that surprised me too.
3.5
. . . paper towels. They are our new controlled substance. I have to keep them hidden away in our bedroom, thus harnessing the power of sloth to defeat the temptation to extravagance. Otherwise we’d go through a roll a day, easy. Even though we have a basket of perfectly good dish towels right on the counter. Which each get used once before being tossed in the dirty laundry by certain people I live with . . . I’d lock them* in the bedroom, too, but I can’t tolerate that much sogginess.
***
Well that’s all for today. Tuesday is Link Day for all topics, help yourself if you are so inclined. I’m still out of town so comment moderation is slow, but as long as you limit yourself to one link per comment you’ll escape the spam dragon and your brilliance will eventually see light of day. Have a great week!
*The towels, not the children. There is no way I’d store my children in my bedroom. They’d use up all the paper towels.
It’s not about the people. To a man my fellow parishioners, and everyone I’ve met in my diocese and anywhere I’ve traveled (except that one cranky priest one time, but come on, everybody has bad days) — everyone is really very nice. Kind, caring people. No complaints. None.
Still, it’s lonely.
4.
And it isn’t a strictly Catholic problem. I’ve had multiple Evangelical friends — and if Catholics are a little shy and reserved, trust me, Evangelicals are not — I’ve had a number of non-Catholic friends wander from congregation to congregation in search of companionship. Someone to notice them. To care about them. To view them as something other than a potential nursery worker, or those people you smile at in the pews but really if they fell into a crevasse tomorrow, no one would much realize.
5.
Part of the problem is geographic. I see church people on Sunday, but the rest of the week we retreat to our different neighborhoods spread throughout the city. I can distinctly remember the last time I ran into an acquaintance from church outside of Mass — it was several months ago, at Publix — and interestingly, the time before that was maybe six months prior, same lady, at the library. But they just moved to Seattle, so that’s over. Oh wait — and I ran into the dad of one of my students at McDonald’s this winter — I had turned to look because I was struck at how polite he was, the way he spoke to the counter lady.
Part of it is structural. Our parish has five masses in a weekend — if someone’s missing, for all you know they just slept in an hour, or decided they like the 8:00 AM organist better. You might see an announcement in the parish bulletin if someone’s dead or nearly dead, if the next of kin notified the parish office. For all I know, I run into fellow parishioners everywhere, and never even know it, because we aren’t at the same Mass.
Part of it is architectural. You want to say to hello someone after Mass, but they slip out the other door. I used to go down to coffee and donuts, but the room is acoustically alive — too loud and you can’t hear anyone, so conversation is strained.
–> Something my parish does right: We have a fabulous playground right next to the church building. So the parents of young children do have a natural way to meet up and chat after Mass. Which I love, and have made many friends that way.
Part of it is economic. I keep befriending people who move away. I’m sure it’s not me. Sometimes I when I introduce myself to someone, I feel like saying, “Are you going to move or drop dead* in the next two years? Because I’d sure like some friends that stick around.”
Part of it is personality and state of life. I’m an introvert. I want one-on-one conversations about substantial topics. Just throwing us all into the gym for a giant spaghetti supper or pancake breakfast, and calling it parish-togetherness because we’re all in the same room? No thanks. But I’m not at a stage in my life when it’s easy to get out for a small-group bible study, or meet someone for coffee, or pick up the phone and talk for ten minutes without having to break up three fights and answer seven urgent questions, two of which really were urgent, and one of which involved the dog throwing up.
6.
Loneliness is no reason to leave the Church. It’s not a social club. It’s a place to worship the one true God, to prepare your soul for Heaven, to gear yourself up for serving others here on earth. The little Christs come to serve, not to be served.
And this is why I’m such a thorn in everyone’s flesh about solid theology programs. Because my goodness, I don’t care how wonderful your youth program is, or how great your ladies’ monthly luncheon is at making lonely widows feel at home, sooner or later as a Catholic you’re going to be in the pit. You’ll be the odd person out, the one nobody remembers to call, the one for whom there is no parish ministry that fits your life and your abilities.
Faith formation can’t be all about relationships and togetherness, or there’s no reason to stick around when the group doesn’t meet spec. If there’s one question religious ed needs to answer, it is: “Why should I bother coming to Mass when my parish is horrible?”
[My parish is not horrible. Far from it. I am usually so happy to be home after having to go visit some other place. Like the church with the horrid dentist-office decor, or the one with the oppressively low ceilings, or the one with no vacant seats up front . . . but I do kinda like the neon lights in the ceiling that change to match the colors of the liturgical season, out at my Dad’s parish in Las Vegas . . . though their traffic pattern for the communion line is inscrutable.]
7.
Solutions, anyone?
I do feel an amazing kinship with the lady I always see at adoration and who I run into other places around the parish, even though we rarely get to talk to each other, but you can just tell she’s your friend, and she has masses said for everyone including my grandfather when he died, even though she’d never met or even heard of him before it was listed in the parish bulletin. Most of the time it is enough to just see familiar people, to have that sense of home, even if you don’t really know them.
But sometimes you want more. Real live friends that you see outside of Mass.
I know the playground-after-Mass method works. And I’ve made friends teaching religious ed, volunteering is good that way. Haunting the local Catholic bookstore will make you at least be friends with the owner there (they go to another parish). Slowly, slowly, we build up friendships with other families through trying to set up dinner together this week, a park date that week . . . but it’s long work, and we’re all so busy, and our lives so separate that every get-together has to be planned, and often the effort evaporates when some small thing throws a wrench in the works.
***
Anyhow, all that to say, that if we aren’t welcoming to our members — really welcoming, not just smile-smile handshake-handshake — how exactly are we perceived by outsiders? As with catechesis, so with relationships: The new evangelization starts in the pews.
*Pleasantly few people I know actually drop dead after meeting me. God bless modern medicine.
Why is Church teaching worth standing up for? I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you about the Theology of the Body Conference in upstate SC this summer – July 6th & 7th. I won’t make it out this year — I’ll be home attending a wedding, yay! — but I was able to go to Family Honor’s TOTB conference in 2002, and it was top notch. Speakers this year include Janet Smith & Ray Guarendi . . . you can’t go far wrong with talent like that. Check it out.
Hey and if you ever wondered where my header and sidebar photos came from . . . yeah, upstate SC has a few little secrets in those mountains. Good place.
My latest at AmazingCatechists.com: “Invalid or Illicit? Keeping Straight the Sacraments,” in which I have more fun than I ought, talking about my favorite, rhyming way to keep track of whether a sacrament is illicit, invalid, neither, or both.
What I owe the world is a post about the fabulous Ela Milewsak and the National Initiative for Adolescent Catechesis. That’s coming, soonish, along with an overdue book review (two here, one there), the end of the Kolbe series, all kinds of stuff. But this other fun topic came up in conversation this morning, and I couldn’t help myself. Invalid salad. I just love to say it out loud.
Via The Pulpit I discovered this great article at Catholic Lane on the morality of genetic enhancements: “Catholic Confusion on Enhancements” which is worth a read. I’d never considered the question one way or another (we have no genes we are particularly keen to improve — want of ambition, as always), and now I know. It’s not confusing at all — the Catholic teaching comes down to the old standby, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
But the cries of, “But I just . . . can’t . . . figure this out . . .” are so familiar. It’s the line used to justify ignoring all the most obnoxious moral principles:
Torture: I can’t tell whether I’m really torturing someone or not — I guess I’ll just keep at it.
Theft: Is taking this one small thing really theft? Who knows — just don’t tell anyone and it’ll be okay.
Lying: Is it really a lie, or am I just being deceptive? Well it’s a good cause, so why worry?
You might also recall willful confusion was used back in the day for abortion — is this really a baby? — but now everyone knows it’s a baby, we just don’t worry about the very little ones no one much wants, that would be absurd. Like worrying about little white lies and tax evasion and torturing people who surely deserved it anyway.
The most entertaining sort of pseudo-confusion is about NFP. Seriously, I kid you not, people will say with a straight face things like:
“I don’t understand how NFP and contraception are different.” Um, the part about not having sex, maybe?
“But what’s the difference between using chemicals or latex to prevent conception, versus using time to prevent it?” I think if you can’t tell the difference between sex and abstinence . . . you’re doing it wrong.
These are excuses. No one who is serious about avoiding immoral genetic manipulation, or torture, or theft, or lying, or contraception, asks these questions.
Excuses are different from honest inquiry. When people are really trying to find out answers, they act differently. Honest inquirers ask precise questions: Not, “I can’t know whether taking office supplies is stealing, I’ll help myself to this case of pencils,” but “Is it okay to make personal phone calls from the office phone? I’ll e-mail the new boss and find out what the policy is.” And then are prepared to accept difficult answers: If the policy is no personal calls, I’ll wait and call later.
Excuses are different from honest mistakes. A very, very common honest mistake is believing that the withdrawal method is a legitimate and morally acceptable form of NFP. It isn’t. But between some going jokes (now dated, but these things persist), the fact that no artificial devices or chemicals are involved, and the the insidious feeling that anything with as low an effectiveness rating as the rhythm method* must be okay, people get the wrong idea.
The answer is no — a very rough approximation of Catholic sexual morality would be more along the lines of “Don’t start what you aren’t gonna finish.” The difference between the honest mistake and faux “confusion” is that the honest man might grumble about being corrected, but he won’t sit there acting like he can’t tell the difference between select body parts and a hole in the ground.
*Withdrawal and the Rhythm Method are both somewhat effective for avoiding pregnancy, though I wouldn’t want to bet on them myself. The one is immoral, the other is not. History buff though I am, when it comes to having babies, or not having them, give me nice shiny modern NFP over the quaint forbears any day.
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.
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.
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.
