Our second grandchild — Gemma Rose — should be arriving tomorrow. We've got the fun of taking care of 4-year-old big brother during the weekend. And then I will be helping out with the baby household.
Until I return, I've got years and years of back-posts including movies and books. This is your chance to peruse the archives!
Please pray that all goes well before, during, and after arrival of little Gemma.
“Presume competence,” said the disability advocates, and so I did. I learned to discard “normal” and embrace “possible.” It wasn’t easy. My daughter needed 10 times the support of a typical kid. It also felt like the truest, most human work I could do: to love someone into whomever they would become.I was so touched, especially looking at Richard Dawkins' eugenics stance (carefully couched as kindness) versus Heather Lanier's hard earned joy which reaffirms the point of life and power of love. It is also a good reminder that there is so much we can't know when we try to see into the future. Sometimes what we find there is great beyond our ability to imagine it.
I was learning. Meanwhile, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins tweeted that it was immoral for a pregnant woman to knowingly carry to term a child with Down syndrome because, according to him, disabilities decrease happiness and increase suffering. I was appalled.
When Fiona reached kindergarten in 2016, I fretted: Would her teachers think the same? That her life wasn’t “worth it”? At a standard public school, among kids twice her size, would she be dismissed as incapable, rejected as less-than?
I couldn’t know that in one year, her gross motor confidence would climb. ... I couldn’t know that in the company of typical, talking peers, my daughter’s verbal language would explode.
On her first day of kindergarten, I couldn’t know any of this—just as I couldn’t know that, on the day I learned of my daughter’s diagnosis, I was being handed a gift: the knowledge that the point of life isn’t to achieve things. It also isn’t, as Richard Dawkins implies, to avoid suffering. It isn’t even to “be happy.” ... This belief in the virtue of the “happy” and suffering-free life sterilizes and shrinks us, minimizing what makes us most beautifully human.
The point of this human life, I believe, is love. And the ridiculous and brave and risky act of love turns my heart into taffy, stretches it across the broad spectrum of human feeling. I hurt, I long, I exalt, I rejoice. And yes, my chest sometimes aches from the work of raising a rare girl. But the ache in my chest is a cousin of joy.
Heather LanierWall Street Journal, July 25, 2020
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| Shichi-Go-San, via Calligraphy in the View |
Shichi-Go-San is a traditional rite of passage and festival day in Far east.
For three and seven year-old girls and three and five year-old boys, held annually on November 15.
Shichi-Go-San is said to have originated in the Heian Period (794-1185) amongst court nobles, who would celebrate the passage of their children into middle childhood.
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| Hello Kitty Shinkansen, Calligraphy in the View |
Based on a real story. When Tony Lip (Mortensen), a bouncer from an Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx, is hired to drive Dr. Don Shirley (Ali), a world-class African-American pianist, on a concert tour from Manhattan to the Deep South, they must rely on “The Green Book” to guide them to the few establishments that were then safe for African-Americans.I rewatched this recently before an upcoming discussion at A Good Story is Hard to Find. I found myself falling in love with it all over again. More than anything it is a buddy road movie. They aren't buddies at the beginning but we recognize all the famiiar beats. The joy of the movie is in seeing the way those beats are hit in order to reveal the two men.
Confronted with racism and danger—as well as unexpected humanity and humor—they are forced to set aside differences to survive and thrive on the journey of a lifetime. Winner of Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Ali).
The strength of the two main performances buttressed by a strong supporting cast, were wonderful. And the main story, spotlighting the power of personal connection, was highly enjoyable. It deserved the Oscar - this is the sort of movie Hollywood seems to have forgotten to make anymore.
If you haven't seen it the you're in for a treat.
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| Jesus scattering seeds of faith, Peter Pöppelmann Dresden-Strehlen, Christ Church |
An agricultural parable found only in Mark. Jesus compares the mystery of natural, organic growth to the expansion of the kingdom of God. The kingdom will visibly mature like grain, but the spiritual forces behind it will remain invisible. The parable of the Leaven in MT 13:33 elucidates the same mystery.A note for reflection adds what we already know about this parable's larger meaning, but what is good for me to remember.
Morally (St. Gregory the Great, Hom. in Ezek 2, 3), the maturing grain signifies our increase in virtue. First, the seeds of good intentions are sown; these gradually bring forth the blade of repentance and ultimately the mature ear of charitable works. When established in virtue, we are made ripe for God's harvest.
The Gospel of Mark
(The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible)
Despite the many seeds apparently sown in vain, God is at work to produce what will finally be revealed as a stupendous harvest. The parable illustrates the "mystery of the kingdom" that Jesus mentioned in 4:11. The reign of God will not come about through unmitigated success and uninterrupted growth. An unexpected but necessary part of the plan is the setbacks and failures that give Jesus' disciples a share in the mystery of his own suffering.=====
In episode 344 of A Good Story is Hard to Find, we discuss Green Book, starring Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen.
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| Alfred Dedreux, Pug Dog in an Armchair, 1857 |
Birdie Binkowitz is just a little bitter. As a young actress, she was the toast of Hollywood, definitely destined for greatness. Then the dragons had to rise up from their thousand-year slumber, take over Earth and ruin everything. Twenty years later, Birdie is living her worst life in her hometown of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, working at her father's Seed and Feed (and Bagels).
Then, the world's smallest dragon mysteriously appears in front of the store seeking her help. He’s got a bone to pick with his fellow dragons–and he wants to hit them where it hurts.
This book was mildly entertaining during the first few chapters of set up. But I definitely cracked up when Jim (the Dragon) announced that in order to accomplish their goal, they were going to have to get a fighter, a thief, a giant, and a mage. Hey, that's dungeons and dragons quest stuff! All in modern-day Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Then it started to get fun and imaginative. My favorite character was the thief, Dottie Three Hands.
As the story went on, I became more curious about the goal of looting a dragon's lair. There seemed to be more at stake than simply getting treasure. As it turns out, that was correct and the twist was predictable but not disappointing for all that. I thoroughly enjoyed the team getting through the puzzles at the gates. I also really enjoyed Birdie's talent being that of annoying people beyond their ability to keep their minds on what they were doing.
All in all, this was a perfect summer read and I'd love it if there is a sequel.
Do not free a camel from the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.G.K. Chesterton
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| The Shocking Behavior of a Speedy Star, NASA on the Commons |
Roguish runaway stars can have a big impact on their surroundings as they plunge through the Milky Way galaxy. Their high-speed encounters shock the galaxy, creating arcs, as seen in this newly released image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.
In this case, the speedster star is known as Kappa Cassiopeiae, or HD 2905 to astronomers. It is a massive, hot supergiant. But what really makes the star stand out in this image is the surrounding, streaky red glow of material in its path. Such structures are called bow shocks, and they can often be seen in front of the fastest, most massive stars in the galaxy.
Bow shocks form where the magnetic fields and wind of particles flowing off a star collide with the diffuse, and usually invisible, gas and dust that fill the space between stars. How these shocks light up tells astronomers about the conditions around the star and in space. Slow-moving stars like our sun have bow shocks that are nearly invisible at all wavelengths of light, but fast stars like Kappa Cassiopeiae create shocks that can be seen by Spitzer’s infrared detectors.
Incredibly, this shock is created about 4 light-years ahead of Kappa Cassiopeiae, showing what a sizable impact this star has on its surroundings. (This is about the same distance that we are from Proxima Centauri, the nearest star beyond the sun.)
The Kappa Cassiopeiae bow shock shows up as a vividly red color. The faint green features in this image result from carbon molecules, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, in dust clouds along the line of sight that are illuminated by starlight.
Delicate red filaments run through this infrared nebula, crossing the bow shock. Some astronomers have suggested these filaments may be tracing out features of the magnetic field that runs throughout our galaxy. Since magnetic fields are completely invisible themselves, we rely on chance encounters like this to reveal a little of their structure as they interact with the surrounding dust and gas.
Kappa Cassiopeiae is visible to the naked eye in the Cassiopeia constellation (but its bow shock only shows up in infrared light.)
This has never been a feast that made sense to me. A feast for a church in Rome. Granted it is a very old church and the Pope's seat as Bishop of Rome. Okay, fine, but nothing for me here in America to get excited over (just to be provincal about it!).
Then I read this.
A church's walls do not make one a Christian, of course. But a church has walls nonetheless. Walls, borders, and lines delimit the sacred from the profane. A house makes a family feel like one, a sacred place where parents and children merge into a household. A church structurally embodies supernatural mysteries. A church is a sacred space where sacred actions make Christians unite as God's family. Walls matter. Churches matter. Sacred spaces matter. Today the Church commemorates a uniquely sacred space, the oldes of the four major basilicas in the city of Rome. The Lateran Basilica is the Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Rome and thus the seat of the Pope as Bishop of Rome.
That really hit me where I live. I love my church building. And the people in it. It is home and they are my family. During the pandemic shut-downs we yearned to be able to gather together with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
This feeling was strengthened when I read today's devotional meditation in the Special Feasts (vol. 7) of In Conversation with God. It talked about the history of the temple, beginning with the Tent of Meeting in the desert where Moses spoke with the Lord as to a friend. It wasn't a temple, of course, but it was the place where man could meet God. I loved that connection going so far back in salvation history.
There Christ nurtures us from the Tabernacle as he used to care one by one for those who came to him from all cities and villages. We can present him with our deepest desires to love him more and more with each passing day, and entrust to him our preoccupatoins, our difficulties and our weaknesses. We should cultivate a profound reverence forour churches and oratories since the lord awaits us there.Okay, I finally get it!
Today the world would be considerably different if Christ had not wanted to remain with us. In front of the tabernacle we can draw strength for our interior struggle and leave all our worries in his hands. On how many occasions have we returned tothe hustle and bustle of ordinary life with renewed hope! We cannot forget that the Sacrifice of infiinite value which the Lord offered on Calvary is renewed each day in our churches so as to draw down upon us form heaven innumerable graces of divine mercy.
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| Choir and apse of the Lateran Basilica |
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| Anders Zorn, White Lilies via Wikipedia |
It is always a terrible thing to come back to Mott Street. To come back in a driving rain, to men crouched on the stairs, huddled in doorways, without overcoats because they sold them perhaps the week before when it was warm, to satisfy hunger or thirst — who knows? Those without love would say, "It serves them right, drinking up their clothes." God help us if we got just what we deserved!"God help us if we got just what we deserved!"
Dorothy Day, On Pilgrimage
