Music/Stuff Today

Via Aurgasm



The Akara Project

Compare and Contrast

This is my painting. Yes, I know...no great shakes. I'm not trying to be an artiste here. Just having fun with my kiddos. A couple of days later, my little girl does this in crayon:

Look familiar? 

Art/Stuff Today

Via the Whitney Museum of American Art
Fairfield Porter, The Screen Porch, 1964. Oil on canvas, 79 1/2 × 79 1/2 in. (201.9 x 201.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Lawrence H. Bloedel Bequest  77.1.41

What do you think they're talking about? Perhaps the teenager is waiting for instructions from her mom before her and her sister go playing hide and seek in the forest. I can almost feel the hot summer air, the buzzing of the crickets, the 'creak, creak' of a porch swing just out of frame. It makes me yearn for the long summer nights.

Edit: Thanks to Kim for catching my error. :-P

We are unfaithful whores

We have put our trust in men and governments instead of trusting in our true Savior Jesus Christ.

We have sold ourselves and our consciences for temporal security, instead of keeping ourselves pure for eternal security.

We have become anxious of the things of this world, seeking to be soothed by the voices of this world, instead of being anxious to please the Lord and soothed by His Words.

We have whored ourselves out, seeking love and security anywhere else but our true home in God.

We are Gomer.

Instead of abandoning all principles, all morals, and our fidelity; we need to practice fidelity to God and His Commandments all the more. We need to turn away from the illusory images of the world, seeing them as they truly are: the devil's ugly disguises dressed up to be their most alluring. We need a deeper conversion to Christ.

I invite you, in this time of turmoil in our country, to take courage in our faith, to cling ever more tightly to the Cross, to His Words and His commandments. Our Lord has won, for us! Let us be faithful to Him, turning away from sin and despair. It may be hard to keep our joy, our peace, and our hope when all the world around us is saying that our lives should be drudgery, lackluster, and hopeless because we follow Christ. But I reject that notion!

"The baptized know that the decision to follow Christ can entail great sacrifices, at times even the sacrifice of one's life." (Pope Benedict XVI's Homily at Benin)

It will also entail the sacrifice of family, of friends, of honor, and of prestige - things that many people do not want to give up, because it will also entail giving up temporal comforts.

"Today, so much still binds us to the world of the past, so many fears hold us prisoners and prevent us from living in freedom and happiness." (Pope Benedict XVI's Homily at Benin)

The devil still tries to remind us of how "good we had it" when we were mired in sin - and so we fear living a fully Christian life, because we fear that we are missing something "good". But all "good" comes from our Creator!

"Let us allow Christ to free us from the world of the past! Our faith in him, which frees us from all our fears and miseries, gives us access to a new world, a world where justice and truth are not a byword, a world of interior freedom and of peace with ourselves, with our neighbors, and with God. This is the gift God gave us at our baptism!" (Pope Benedict XVI's Homily at Benin)

Yet we cannot see that our fear is leading us to miss out on the fullness of life. Instead of feeling that we are the ones missing out, we should feel compassion for those whose lives are the true drudgery - because they do not have the hope that we do. They have fallen for the illusions of the world, they are the ones trapped in an endless cycle of sin.

"I urge you, to strengthen your faith in Jesus Christ, to be authentically converted to him. He alone gives us the true life and can liberate us from all our fears and sluggishness, from all our anguish." (Pope Benedict XVI's Homily at Benin)

We must remember the hope we have - and not to get bogged down by the hopelessness of those around us - no matter if they are family, friends, loved ones. We do have a hope, and though it may seem like the world is crumbling, we have a steadfast faith in Jesus and His Church.

Be filled with peace for He has overcome the world!
Stand with the U.S. Bishops against the HHS
Sign the Petition to Stop the Birth Control Mandate
Conscience Protection
Call your representatives

Poetry/Art/Music/Beauty/Stuff Today

Winter Is the Best Time

by David Budbill

Winter is the best time
to find out who you are.

Quiet, contemplation time,
away from the rushing world,

cold time, dark time, holed-up
pulled-in time and space

to see that inner landscape,
that place hidden and within.

"Winter Is the Best Time" by David Budbill, from While We've Still Got Feet. © Copper Canyon Press, 2005. Reprinted with permission.

Via The Writer's Almanac

What An Ass

Today's blog post is brought to you by a bunch of assholes:

Let's Talk About "Fair Share"





Abortion Clinic Openly Advertises for Illegal Products

Cedric the Entertainer on Black, Female, Republican: Wack Black Bitch

Art/Music/Beauty/Stuff Today

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Spring

Made in United States

1900-1902

Designed by John La Farge, American, 1835 - 1910. Assembled by Thomas Wright, American (born England), 1858 - 1918. Painted by Juliette Hanson, American, active 1881 - c. 1920.

Opalescent glass, painted glass, lead
8 feet 4 inches x 5 feet 9 1/2 inches (254 x 176.5 cm)

Art/Beauty/Music/Stuff Today

Via 

Kite-Flying

Mommy & Daddy are flying a kite.

On another note, WEMM is getting better at branching out her mediums, so I'll have some crayon pictures and paint pictures up soon. (Don't ask me why we have such long skinny legs.) 

Enjoy the simple things in life! 

Lent Has Come Early

I think I have skipped Ordinary Time this year and went straight from Christmas season to Lent. I feel very much called to be interior right now and not external - hence my absence from this blog and other outlets - and so many things I want to write about, I just end up thinking about instead, ruminating over them in my mind and heart.

This is going to make for a long Lent, considering that it doesn't start for another month (give or take) and I feel like I'm already trudging the Via Crucis. By the time Easter Sunday comes, I'm betting that I'm really going to feel like rejoicing.

Open Tabs

I've been remiss in my reading lately, so here's what's open this afternoon:

Lots of people talking about the girl denied a transplant because she is developmentally delayed. Aggie Catholics,  The Anchoress goes on a righteous rant, CMR, Frank Weathers, and here's the full link.

Low-gluten hosts - read the combox, as it is very informative on what is allowed.

On a totally different subject, DC Comics has a new sucktastic logo.

Yuengling Brewery (whom I've never heard of) is now America's largest brewer...Miller and Bud are foreign owned, which I find incredibly sad.

Susan writes about a book she just finished reading...now I have another to add to my growing pile!

A priest protecting the Eucharist...I hope that if I'm ever in a situation to protect and/or defend Jesus present in the Eucharist that I will do so.

And a story about the good deed of a stranger - 3 years later.

Calah writes about hair woes...I can sympathize as I tested out a product for Amazon and have been rewarded with limp and awful hair that is still in recovery over a month and a half later.

Stuff No One Told Me is a great little comic that I love to read. I just read a comic about a month old about the comic's sister who tried to commit suicide. Read it.

Newt Gingrich on jobs and racism and poverty.

I tell you, it's going to be hard to raise my little girl in this age.

I've read the book Freakanomics, and thought the part about the economics of abortion was particularly disgusting. Here's a great response from the folks at Truth & Charity.

Two very different but both disturbing reactions to Martin Luther King Jr Day yesterday.

Nature in Sports

The guy that takes the most awkward photos of celebrities ever

Through His Mother's Eyes

(From Adoration on New Year's Eve)

Dearest Jesus,

I know that to grow closer to your mother is to grow closer to you; yet I find myself struggling to enlist Mary as my mother & my aide. What can I do to want to imitate Mary, what can I do to see her as  Mother to my soul? How can I grow closer to her and thereby closer to you?

I do not think it a coincidence that I am hopeful/hoping for a renewed relationship with Mary on the eve of her feast day as Mother of God.

Maybe I'm just looking at a relationship with Mary from the wrong angle and that's why I'm having such a tough time? I just need a different perspective and then perhaps my attitude will change.

Related: Your Allies in War

If you run a red light, you should get the death penalty

I'm kidding. Mostly.

Right now, where I live, it's an ubiquitous problem - probably 90% of the lights I'm at, someone runs the red light. And it drives me absolutely crazy how people so blithely run them - when they've got kids in the car, even! The other day, a lady in a suburban ran my green light - that had been green for over the '3 second' rule they teach in drivers ed (Do they still teach that? I dunno..I'm old). And she wasn't even speeding! Gah.

And our city doesn't want to do anything about it - they've been hit with so many lawsuits lately that I think they're just afraid someone else is going to sue them if they install those red light 'gotcha' cameras. Sigh.

It's Your Pride, Stupid

As people are running around quoting themselves silly over Mr. Beiber's (noted for his spiritual knowledge... oh wait.) exalted "I am spiritual but not religious/don't need church" baloney - I'd like to remind everyone that Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ did not leave us a Bible - He left us the Church. And if you don't have the church - you're deluding yourself into thinking you are keeping yourself on the 'right' track with God. How would you do that by yourself, without a church and without a leader? That's when you get into all sorts of trouble, making excuses for yourself and for your sinful lifestyle because you have no one to check you.

See also: We are Family
and Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus by Marc Barnes

Edit: If you can't make your point without calling names, then I'll delete your comments. Sorry. For the person who also made another comment responding to the name-calling, I didn't realize that your comment would also be deleted, and I can't remember who left it. My apologies.

If you believe that I can't possibly know why people leave the church, you're wrong. I'll leave it at that. If you don't want to believe that Christ left us a church - filled with people, sinful though they may be - that's your choice. You'd be wrong, but that's your choice.

Grieving

How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold.

Last night I watched the ending of The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, in a long, long time - certainly it's been since before my mom died.

When Frodo speaks these words, it was like he was speaking them for the first time and I finally understood what he was saying.

Your Allies in War

"How did John arrive at such a total admiration and at such an absolute idea of the person of Jesus? ...it is due to the fact that he had Jesus' mother nearby: he lived with her, prayed with her, and spoke with her about Jesus. It is striking to think that when he composed the phrase, 'And the Word was made flesh,' the evangelist had beside him, under his own roof, the one in whose womb this mystery had taken place.
    "Origen wrote that John's gospel is the first fruits of the four gospels and that no one can understand it unless he or she has lain on Jesus' breast and received Mary from him as his mother. Jesus was born 'by the power of the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary.' In different ways, the Holy Spirit and Mary are the two best allies in our effort to draw near to Jesus, to bring him to birth, by faith, in our lives each Christmas." (Remember Jesus Christ, by Fr. Cantalamessa, p. 41)

I think this passage is a good explanation of why we need Mary if we want to grow & persevere in the spiritual life. Sadly it is also a reminder of the two persons that most evangelicals/Protestants seem to leave in the cold. I'm not sure if "they" think that Mary and the Holy Spirit just brought Jesus the one time or what...an idea which is just silly, for what it's worth. There is so much to learn from Mary and from the Holy Spirit in preparing ourselves to receive Christ.

I often forget how powerful an intercessor Mary can be - or not forget exactly, but shunt away (outside of the liturgy, that is). The Rosary isn't really my 'thing' and it's often hard for me to think of Mary as an accessible mother/wife figure, seeing as how she was sinless & all. So, to me, Mary can be this distant image of perfection that is way out of reach.

On the other hand, maybe I've just been hanging out with the wrong crowd. Do you ever notice that saints hang out with other saints? Maybe part of the reason John wrote/lived as he did was because of being around Mary all the time - and her influence and holiness helped him to grow in holiness. Then why wouldn't inviting her into my home help me to also grow in holiness - especially in my vocation. I'm not sure how to get out of the rut of the Rosary, but this is something to ponder.

Tell me, dear reader, how do you stay close to Mary? What is your perspective on her influence in your life?

A Beautiful Read

"BG45" has a great post up about relevance & youth & church:

This idea of being hip and relevant has spawned countless megachurches. We don't want hip and relevant. Because "relevant" isn't really relevant. Jesus Christ is. Don't water down the Gospel. Tell us we're sinners. Tell us that Jesus died for our sins. Don't tell us God wants us to be rich. Tell us that He calls for us to suffer and be persecuted for His name. 

I don't want to go to a church and find myself there only for some sort of "relevant" music extravaganza. I don't want to go to a church and be told that Jesus wants me to be rich. I don't want to go to a church and be told that Gospel is a morality tale, or that Jesus was a great teacher. I want to walk into a church and be told that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He died for my sins. I want to walk into a church and not be wowed by the audio-visual equipment, but wowed by the attitude of gratitude and reverence that the people there have.

I'm excerpting just a bit here, because this is a wonderfully written piece, but this passage especially struck me. "Because relevant isn't really relevant." YES! Because what is relevant today will pass into obscurity tomorrow and fade in the future. Jesus Christ, His life, death and resurrection is relevant day after day, partly because it is so unheard of - and to be honest, any person who has studied their Bible knows why the Jews crucified Him for blasphemy...what He said and did were outrageous! His words still have the power to sway us and to change us! (I swear I didn't mean those sentences to rhyme.)

I pray that I can become a person as BG says at the end - a person of such gratitude and reverence that others are drawn in, because my life, my being has been changed by Jesus Christ. Amen.

A few things

On children 'playing Mass':

1. Use your common sense people. Of course your little darling isn't excommunicated for playing Mass.

2. If a child (girl or boy) is playing Mass and the parents encourage/allow - don't you think they will also know better than to let their little girl believe she can be a priest too? As she grows older, they will form her correctly.

3. Girls understand the concept of 'pretend' you know.

4. Why wouldn't the Novus Ordo be fun to play at? Because it's in English? Because it's not the Latin Mass?

5. Prickish attitudes totally turn me off...some of the comments to that piece are absolutely mind-blowing! No wonder there is an explosion of scrupulousity these days...a parent who read that combox might think they are sinning if they allow their daughter to 'play Mass.'

I'm grumpy today...family issues have me ticked off.

In a Union of Love ("I may praise Thee")

Guest post by Micah Murphy of  Fiat Men


...that with Thy saints, I may praise Thee, forever and ever. Amen.

In our last meditation, I ended with the note that we will be with Christ in heaven.  I would like you to ponder, today, and consider the saints with whom we will share our blessed inheritance.  Not like an earthly inheritance will this be, no. All earthly things, when they are shared, must be split and divided, or used jointly, but since heaven is all about gaining God, and God is love, then the rule of sharing love applies to heaven.  When love is shared, it is given, and given completely, and yet the giver still enjoys the gift.  Much like fire is love.  A flaming candle lights another wick and the fire spreads to the second, but does not diminish from the first.  In heaven, we will share our inheritance like a candle shares a flame, and we will share it with all the saints in glory.

It is, after all, the Communion of Saints. The saints are in union together, and what is a union but a giving of self, and dwelling with one another?  In heaven, we too will be saints, canonized or not, and we will lay prostrate around the Throne of God, upon which sits the Lamb who was slain, whom we have had the privilege to bear in ourselves, to receive on our tongues in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, but then in heaven, we will not simply have faith in His presence. We will see Him in flesh, and we shall converse with Him who made us and died for us - the soul the sanctifies, the body that saves, the blood that inebriates, the water that washes, and the marks of once patiently taken suffering that will comfort us for all eternity.  It is He with whom we are one, and in Him, with all the saints.

Who better than the saints, our brothers and sisters in Christ, to carry us to heaven on their prayers?  Let us ask for their intercession in every moment of our lives, and we shall not be disappointed.

Harems in 2012

Women! Stop whoring yourselves out for the attention of a man! Stop competing against each other in a harem, for the right to sleep with your master.

I beg of all you good and decent men & women out there, stop watching these shows that perpetuate these attitudes against women. Starve the beast and kill it when it is weak.

(I saw an ad for the upcoming "Bachelor" series, and was totally disgusted.)

Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God

www.marypages.com

Homily of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

On the first day of the year, the liturgy resounds in the Church throughout the world with the ancient priestly blessing that we heard during today’s first reading: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace” (Num 6:24-26). This blessing was entrusted by God, through Moses, to Aaron and his sons, that is, to the priests of the people of Israel. It is a triple blessing filled with light, radiating from the repetition of the name of God, the Lord, and from the image of his face. In fact, in order to be blessed, we have to stand in God’s presence, take his Name upon us and remain in the cone of light that issues from his Face, in a space lit up by his gaze, diffusing grace and peace.

This was the very experience that the shepherds of Bethlehem had, who reappear in today’s Gospel. They had the experience of standing in God’s presence, they received his blessing not in the hall of a majestic palace, in the presence of a great sovereign, but in a stable, before a “babe lying in a manger” (Lk 2:16). From this child, a new light issues forth, shining in the darkness of the night, as we can see in so many paintings depicting Christ’s Nativity. Henceforth, it is from him that blessing comes, from his name – Jesus, meaning “God saves” – and from his human face, in which God, the almighty Lord of heaven and earth, chose to become incarnate, concealing his glory under the veil of our flesh, so as to reveal fully to us his goodness (cf. Tit 3:4).

The first to be swept up by this blessing was Mary the virgin, the spouse of Joseph, chosen by God from the first moment of her existence to be the mother of his incarnate Son. She is the “blessed among women” (Lk 1:42) – in the words of Saint Elizabeth’s greeting. Her whole life was spent in the light of the Lord, within the radius of his name and of the face of God incarnate in Jesus, the “blessed fruit of her womb”. This is how Luke’s Gospel presents her to us: fully intent upon guarding and meditating in her heart upon everything concerning her son Jesus (cf. Lk 2:19, 51). The mystery of her divine motherhood that we celebrate today contains in superabundant measure the gift of grace that all human motherhood bears within it, so much so that the fruitfulness of the womb has always been associated with God’s blessing. The Mother of God is the first of the blessed, and it is she who bears the blessing; she is the woman who received Jesus into herself and brought him forth for the whole human family. In the words of the liturgy: “without losing the glory of virginity, [she] brought forth into the world the eternal light, Jesus Christ our Lord” (Preface I of the Blessed Virgin Mary).

Mary is the mother and model of the Church, who receives the divine Word in faith and offers herself to God as the “good soil” in which he can continue to accomplish his mystery of salvation. The Church also participates in the mystery of divine motherhood, through preaching, which sows the seed of the Gospel throughout the world, and through the sacraments, which communicate grace and divine life to men. The Church exercises her motherhood especially in the sacrament of Baptism, when she generates God’s children from water and the Holy Spirit, who cries out in each of them: “Abba, Father!” (Gal 4:6). Like Mary, the Church is the mediator of God’s blessing for the world: she receives it in receiving Jesus and she transmits it in bearing Jesus. He is the mercy and the peace that the world, of itself, cannot give, and which it needs always, at least as much as bread.

Dear friends, peace, in the fullest and highest sense, is the sum and synthesis of all blessings. So when two friends meet, they greet one another, wishing each other peace. The Church too, on the first day of the year, invokes this supreme good in a special way; she does so, like the Virgin Mary, by revealing Jesus to all, for as Saint Paul says, “He is our peace” (Eph 2:14), and at the same time the “way” by which individuals and peoples can reach this goal to which we all aspire. With this deep desire in my heart, I am glad to welcome and greet all of you who have come to Saint Peter’s Basilica on this 45th World Day of Peace: Cardinals, Ambassadors from so many friendly countries, who more than ever on this happy occasion share with me and with the Holy See the desire for renewed commitment to the promotion of peace in the world; the President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, who with the Secretary and the officials of the Dicastery work in a particular way towards this goal; the other Bishops and Authorities present; the representatives of ecclesial Associations and Movements and all of you, brothers and sisters, especially those among you who work in the field of educating the young. Indeed – as you know – the role of education is what I highlighted in my Message for this year.

“Educating Young People in Justice and Peace” is a task for every generation, and thanks be to God, after the tragedies of the two great world wars, the human family has shown increasing awareness of it, as we can witness, on the one hand, from international statements and initiatives, and on the other, from the emergence among young people themselves, in recent decades, of many different forms of social commitment in this field. For the ecclesial community, educating men and women in peace is part of the mission received from Christ, it is an integral part of evangelization, because the Gospel of Christ is also the Gospel of justice and peace. But the Church, in recent times, has articulated a demand that affects everyone with a sensitive and responsible conscience regarding humanity’s future; the demand to respond to a decisive challenge that consists precisely in education. Why is this a “challenge”? For at least two reasons: in the first place, because in the present age, so strongly marked by a technological mentality, the desire to educate and not merely to instruct cannot be taken for granted, it is a choice; in the second place, because the culture of relativism raises a radical question: does it still make sense to educate? And then, to educate for what?

Naturally now is not the time to address these fundamental questions, which I have tried to answer on other occasions. Instead I would like to underline the fact that, in the face of the shadows that obscure the horizon of today’s world, to assume responsibility for educating young people in knowledge of the truth, in fundamental values and virtues, is to look to the future with hope. And in this commitment to a holistic education, formation in justice and peace has a place. Boys and girls today are growing up in a world that has, so to speak, become smaller, where contacts between different cultures and traditions, even if not always direct, are constant. For them, now more than ever, it is indispensable to learn the importance and the art of peaceful coexistence, mutual respect, dialogue and understanding. Young people by their nature are open to these attitudes, but the social reality in which they grow up can lead them to think and act in the opposite way, even to be intolerant and violent. Only a solid education of their consciences can protect them from these risks and make them capable of carrying on the fight, depending always and solely on the power of truth and good. This education begins in the family and is developed at school and in other formative experiences. It is essentially about helping infants, children and adolescents to develop a personality that combines a profound sense of justice with respect for their neighbour, with a capacity to address conflicts without arrogance, with the inner strength to bear witness to good, even when it involves sacrifice, with forgiveness and reconciliation. Thus they will be able to become people of peace and builders of peace.

In this task of educating young generations, a particular responsibility lies with religious communities. Every pathway of authentic religious formation guides the person, from the most tender age, to know God, to love him and to do his will. God is love, he is just and peaceable, and anyone wishing to honour him must first of all act like a child following his father’s example. One of the Psalms says: “The Lord does deeds of justice, gives judgment for all who are oppressed ... The Lord is compassion and love, slow to anger and rich in mercy” (Ps102:6,8). In God, justice and mercy come together perfectly, as Jesus showed us through the testimony of his life. In Jesus, “love and truth” have met, “justice and peace” have embraced (cf. Ps 84:11). In these days, the Church is celebrating the great mystery of the Incarnation: God’s truth has sprung from the earth and justice looks down from heaven, the earth has yielded its fruit (cf. Ps 84:12,13). God has spoken to us in his Son Jesus. Let us hear what God has to say: “a voice that speaks of peace” (Ps 84:9). Jesus is a way that can be travelled, open to everyone. He is the path of peace. Today the Virgin Mary points him out to us, she shows us the Way: let us walk in it! And you, Holy Mother of God, accompany us with your protection. Amen.