Since the arrival of the chickens, I’ve been noticing how much better we understand the English language now that we have two hens in our yard. So here’s the discovery today: Our chickens, who are indeed chicken when it comes to many things, managed to scare away the cat. Because apparently, in addition to being catty (which we knew – ouch), she’s also a fraidy-cat. I guess that tells you how to rank your insults, when measuring cowardice.
3.
I already knew, before Sunday, that Brandon who writes at Siris is the smartest guy I read. (I only read him some of the time — he exceeds me mightily more often than I like.)
But so, here’s the thing, and I’m not sure how bloggable this is, because I don’t want to embarrass too many philosophers in one day, or alienate real-life friends . . . I had a different philosopher tell me this, and I paraphrase: “I noticed sometimes you link to Brandon’s blog. He’s the smartest guy I know. He teaches at this community college, and he doesn’t publish except on his blog . . . and he’s the smartest philosopher out there.”
Book department update: I’m editing like a crazy person trying to make my book deadline AND be happy with the final product. Meanwhile, this morning at Mass the reading was about Peter walking on water, and not walking on water, and yeah, just what I needed. Pleasantly surprised later this afternoon when good things happened exactly where I was afraid everything was going to fall through.
(Um — even though it didn’t matter? I have special nervousness powers. But you know, the thought of trying something and failing? It’s daunting. It is.)
In defense of Peter: Neither chickens nor cats would’ve gotten out of the boat to begin with.
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And with that, I’m back to regular life. I’ll keep y’all in my prayers, and I’m trying to work through my blogging backlog in addition to doing all the other stuff I need to do, so look for me to pop in with this or that, time permitting. 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, who has not kicked me off his minion-list despite my poor attendance.
Click and be amazed.
1.
Please keep Sandra L. of this combox in your prayers today. She has a super-miserable tough day today, and it won’t be an easy week either.
2.
Please pray for the strength and consolation for a friend’s sister-in-law, who is very close to death, and for all her family. They’ve moved up a planned wedding of one of the children to this weekend, in the hopes the mom will be able to attend before she dies.
3.
<Insert your intention here.> I know there are plenty of other needs out there.
3.5
Still need prayers on the writing front. Whatever God wants is AOK with me. But knowing what that is and being sure it happens? Pray! Thank you.
***
And with that, I’m back to regular life. I’ll keep y’all in my prayers, and I’m trying to work through my blogging backlog in addition to doing all the other stuff I need to do, so look for me to pop in with this or that, time permitting. 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, 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!
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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.)
Most weeks, I really like the Tuesday / Friday method of staying on track. It helps me remember to post stuff. This is not that week. I say that during the Wed-Thurs interregnum, Jen F. and Larry D. can split the difference. In castle news this week:
1. Child Vomits At Church.
Thank you Mrs. S. for cleaning the front pew while one parent whisked sick child home and the other disinfected the sacristy bathroom. Thank you, Lord, that:
The other two altar servers had already left the pew to go do whatever it is they do during the offering.
Mrs. S, veteran mom, had chosen to sit next to Mt. Splashmore.
Mr. O., who himself had blessed the altar-area in the same manner during his days as an altar boy, was sitting behind us and volunteered to watch two little girls while parents did more pressing parent jobs.
No one else has gotten sick.
Nice usher guy was helpful, too. He showed us the plastic toolbox in the usher’s closet labeled “Vomit Kit” — apparently this is all part of the life of an usher. Though by that time I’d already snagged disinfectant and paper towels from the kitchen, and begged extra trash bags from the nursery. Mothers don’t think the way ushers think.
2. Sandra’s Married!
And she told me I should wedding-blog. Which I will. A different day. Teaser:
Lovely, lovely ceremony.
Historic location + period dress = coolest combo ever.
Halloween-themed reception . . . oh I know you crabby apples are raising an eyebrow at that, ’cause I did too. But it was just perfect for the couple, and not at all like you think.
More later.
3. Exciting writing news, almost ready to be announced. If I seem like I’ve wandered off the edge of the earth, um, yes, I have.
3.5. McKissick Museum. For all your glow-in-the-dark geology needs.
4. Check out the Catholic Writers’ Guild blog this coming Sunday, Christian LeBlanc has a cool post scheduled. And Julie Davis writes on Saturday, I think, and she’s no slouch either. It’s a good CWG weekend.
5. Latin.I think we’ve found a solution. I’ll let you know in two months.
6. And with that, I’m going to sneak back into hiding, and leave the internet to you. If I’m lucky I might get a backlog of assorted posts run, but I’m not placing any bets. Have a great weekend.
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
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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.
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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.
Over at the Catholic Writers Guild blog, I just queued up a good troll-baiting guest post (Not mine! For once I’m mostly innocent!) to go live first thing in the morning. And I gave our regularly-scheduled bloggers a private talking-to about how EASY it is to write on this topic. So we’ll see how they do.
I’m going to keep this post sticky for the next two weeks, so if you post something on the theme of freedom, or have an on-topic link you’d like to share, feel free to put it in this combox.
Thanks once again to our host, Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who likes lawn tools. I think he’s serious about that.
Click and be amazed.
1.
Vice is on my mind this week, as I head out to Las Vegas to drink mudslides go on a very spiritual retreat with a group of NFP-lovin’using, mostly-Catholic ladies (and a few spouses). I’m also going to spend a few days with my dad and stepmom*, and have lunch with one of my favorite Orcas Island Fire & Rescue diesel-genius people.
SuperHusband is staying home to suffer mind the children. He’s going to pawn part of that job off on our unsuspecting friends.
2.
So, vices. We inherited one of these:
But we didn’t really need an ice box, what with already owning a big white electric-powered refrigerator. Also, the ice wagon hasn’t come to our block in ages. So we store other things in it.
3.
Which is how we started calling it the “Vice Chest”. Because at first we stored our liquor in it.
Then we had a child, and needed to store the liquor up high out of reach, and my brother gave us a television. And after a few years of owning a TV, it occurred to us that the magic box was not strictly limited to playing home videos (original purpose) or Raffi (new best friend). Rather than sitting home bored out of our minds because you really can’t take a toddler and a newborn to the symphony or the jazz club or art house cinema, and you really can’t do a whole lot else useful with a baby, toddler, and one on the way making you puke all hours . . . we could acquire a DVD player, and watch something other than hand-me-down Raffi videos.
And that buying a DVD — even at full retail — was cheaper than hiring a babysitter.
So the Vice Chest went from storing liquor to storing DVD’s. The name still fit.
3.5
And then I rearranged a year or so ago, and the Vice Chest moved to our bedroom, and all it held was old extension cords behind the top left door, and the poor piece of furniture was moping for lack of a mission. Until this spring I discovered the new controlled substance in our home, and now it holds
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Well that’s all for today. Tuesday is Link Day for all topics, help yourself if you are so inclined. Post as many as you want, but only one per comment or the spam dragon will eat you up and I’ll never even know. Have a great week!
*Not as much my stepmom this round, because she has a sideline gig** cashiering at the World Series of Poker. My dad says it sounds like crickets in there. Literally. Silence and the squeak of chips.
**Technically her profession is running medical laboratories. And then for fun in the winter she works for H&R block doing taxes. We could basically say she is an exceedingly resourceful and hard-working fun hog.
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.
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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.
