refreshing limeade
dancing over cool ice cubes
nectar of the gods.
joy envelopes me
reading erudite monkey
my soul is lifted
If there were a cynicism and insult meter, this program would easily be the most sarcastic, cynical program on television. House himself is constant barrage of bitter, sarcastic wit. His co-workers have little choice but to answer -- and work -- in the same terms. House won't even turn it off for strangers or patients. Add to this the fact that for most of the hour, the doctors are openly guessing what the disease-of-the-week might be in something not unlike a parlor game of "20 Questions." Yes, they conduct tests and use the most technologically sophisticated diagnostic techniques and they are all very bright, but in almost every show you will hear some version of "We have no idea what this is," and "Let's try this and see if it kills them." ...The Internet Monk does a much more thorough job of analyzing "House" than I ever would ... but he articulates a lot of things that I have thought about after each episode.
Dr. House isn't a one-dimensional ogre, however. He has relationships, a history and an inner life. Already, we know he has an ex-wife, an ex-lover (now his supervisor at the hospital) and the romantic interest of one of his young female associates. Why would anyone ever love such a character? It's a marvelous question. Why is grace, grace? House deserves no friends or lovers, because he gives them all nothing except his bitterness, sarcasm or silence. The fact that House needs to be loved, and is a walking advertisement for what humanity without love can become seems to be part of the answer. House would have fit in well on the 70's show "M.A.S.H." or in Joseph Heller's "Catch -22." Cynical and sarcastic, but in the end, you realize these characters had to cope with themselves and their fears, with the war, its hypocrisies and its losses. Their twisted adaptations weren't their ultimate human face, but it was the one that came to dominate in the day to day.
FAMOUS CAT OWNERSInexplicably not included, Happy Catholic - Truffles. (Next week, of course, will be famous dog owners.)
Samuel Johnson - Hodge
Edward Lear - Foss
The Kennedys - Tom Kitten
Charles de Gaulle - Gris Gris
Cardinal Richelieu - Perruque
The Simpsons - Snowball II
John Lennon - elvis
Churchill - Margate, Jock
Alice (in Wonderland) - Dinah
Mark Twain - Beelzebub
T.S. Eliot - George Pushdragon
Nicholas I - Vashka
Schott's Original Miscellany by Ben Schott
Don't you just love the international spectrum of the crowd and that Benedict XVI made a point to address his brothers and sisters in more than the usual 2 languages?? I was moved that he entrusted himself to OUR prayers immediately. I never appreciated that I personally could be of that much assistance to the Pope!I might have to look into the history of the Chicken Dance ...
I guess they're dancing in heaven! Maybe The Chicken Dance, in honor of Benedict's German heritage??;-)
frida kahlo and haikus go together like manchego and quince paste, so, this was bound to happen. my friend julie submitted the first haiku with the appropriate picture -
I don't believe you
I will not look behind me
There is no monkey
i could not help but be inspired and pen the following haiku -
how silly you are
frida is not behind me
no, i will not look.
There is a puzzled attitude among many in St. Blog's Parish about all the media attention to the papal election. Each person behind a blog has ideas about who they think would be right for the next pope, but there is also a kind of serenity and faith: that the Holy Spirit is in charge and that a great Pope could be elected, or a mediocre one, or even bad Pope. Believing Catholics take as a matter of dogma and doctrine that "The gates of Hell will not prevail" against the Church, and that the Holy Spirit will somehow prevent the Pope and the Church from falling into error.That's exactly it ... and that is how my friends all feel. At a prayer meeting on Saturday practically every person had a different way of saying it but the common prayer was for the Holy Spirit to have His way with the cardinals on who would be the perfect good shepherd to next lead our Church.
Of course many among the faithful are offering prayer, sacrifice, fasting, and/or mortification for the intention that the electors will listen more to the Holy Spirit than to the temper of the times.
Alicia Huntly, Spero News
The Christian should not leave his faith aside in any circumstance. Non-sectarianism. Neutrality. Old myths that always try to seem new. Have you ever stopped to think how absurd it is to leave one's Catholicism aside on entering a university, a professional association, a cultural society, or parliament, like a man leaving his hat at the door? (St. Escriva, The Way). This attitude is equivalent to saying -- in politics, in business, in leisure or in entertainment, when I am with my friends, when it comes to choosing a school for my children -- that here in this situation God has nothing whatever to do with it; in these affairs my Christian faith must not exert any influence, for none of this comes from God or is ordained to God.
Nevertheless, the faith casts light on the whole of existence. Everything is ordained to God. But this ordination must respect the particular nature of each thing. It is not a matter of turning the world into one big sacristy, or homes into convents, or the economy into a benevolent institution. Without naive simplifications, the faith should inform a Christian's thought and action, because he should never in any circumstance, in any moment of the day cease to be a Christian and to behave and think as such.In Conversation with God: Lent and Eastertide
![PopeJohnPaul[2]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vmFnoKxlNM35X_ZVI9pO6hN7TakQLWdPNAKUiykQSJDFkrN-Mz72sFRglfrOupC7GHsF3oRCQroVCp3vIh0L8Y_moYjgpmbbLqvSbix-ld-TL4rE5N=s0-d)
Mary, model of contemplation
10. The contemplation of Christ has an incomparable model in Mary. In a unique way the face of the Son belongs to Mary. It was in her womb that Christ was formed, receiving from her a human resemblance which points to an even greater spiritual closeness. No one has ever devoted himself to the contemplation of the face of Christ as faithfully as Mary. The eyes of her heart already turned to him at the Annunciation, when she conceived him by the power of the Holy Spirit. In the months that followed she began to sense his presence and to picture his features. When at last she gave birth to him in Bethlehem, her eyes were able to gaze tenderly on the face of her Son, as she “wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger” (Lk2:7).
Thereafter Mary's gaze, ever filled with adoration and wonder, would never leave him. At times it would be a questioning look, as in the episode of the finding in the Temple: “Son, why have you treated us so?” (Lk 2:48); it would always be a penetrating gaze, one capable of deeply understanding Jesus, even to the point of perceiving his hidden feelings and anticipating his decisions, as at Cana (cf. Jn 2:5). At other times it would be a look of sorrow, especially beneath the Cross, where her vision would still be that of a mother giving birth, for Mary not only shared the passion and death of her Son, she also received the new son given to her in the beloved disciple (cf. Jn 19:26-27). On the morning of Easter hers would be a gaze radiant with the joy of the Resurrection, and finally, on the day of Pentecost, a gaze afire with the outpouring of the Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14).
Mary's memories
11. Mary lived with her eyes fixed on Christ, treasuring his every word: “She kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2:19; cf. 2:51). The memories of Jesus, impressed upon her heart, were always with her, leading her to reflect on the various moments of her life at her Son's side. In a way those memories were to be the “rosary” which she recited uninterruptedly throughout her earthly life.
Even now, amid the joyful songs of the heavenly Jerusalem, the reasons for her thanksgiving and praise remain unchanged. They inspire her maternal concern for the pilgrim Church, in which she continues to relate her personal account of the Gospel. Mary constantly sets before the faithful the “mysteries” of her Son, with the desire that the contemplation of those mysteries will release all their saving power. In the recitation of the Rosary, the Christian community enters into contact with the memories and the contemplative gaze of Mary.
The Rosary, a contemplative prayer
12. The Rosary, precisely because it starts with Mary's own experience, is an exquisitely contemplative prayer. Without this contemplative dimension, it would lose its meaning, as Pope Paul VI clearly pointed out: “Without contemplation, the Rosary is a body without a soul, and its recitation runs the risk of becoming a mechanical repetition of formulas, in violation of the admonition of Christ: 'In praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think they will be heard for their many words' (Mt 6:7). By its nature the recitation of the Rosary calls for a quiet rhythm and a lingering pace, helping the individual to meditate on the mysteries of the Lord's life as seen through the eyes of her who was closest to the Lord. In this way the unfathomable riches of these mysteries are disclosed”.
It is worth pausing to consider this profound insight of Paul VI, in order to bring out certain aspects of the Rosary which show that it is really a form of Christocentric contemplation.
The root of the Pope's thinking - that there are eternal truths no one can change even if one wanted to - is completely incomprehensible to the progressivist mindset. There are no absolute truths, everything's in play, and by "consensus" all we're really arguing is the rate of concession to the inevitable: abortion's here to stay, gay marriage will be here any day now, in a year or two it'll be something else - it's all gonna happen anyway, man, so why be the last squaresville daddy-o on the block?
We live in a present-tense culture where novelty is its own virtue: the Guardian, for example, has already been touting the Nigerian Francis Arinze as "candidate for first black pope". This would be news to Pope St Victor, an African and pontiff from 189 to 199. Among his legacies: the celebration of Easter on a Sunday.
Why, the pope asked, had God lifted a Pole to the papacy? Perhaps it was because of how Poland had suffered for centuries, and through the 20th century had become "the land of a particularly responsible witness" to God. The people of Poland, he suggested, had been chosen for a great role, to understand, humbly but surely, that they were the repository of a special "witness of His cross and His resurrection." He asked then if the people of Poland accepted the obligations of such a role in history.
The crowd responded with thunder.
"We want God!" they shouted, together. "We want God!"
What a moment in modern history: We want God. From the mouths of modern men and women living in a modern atheistic dictatorship.
The pope was speaking on the Vigil of Pentecost, that moment in the New Testament when the Holy Spirit came down to Christ's apostles, who had been hiding in fear after his crucifixion, filling them with courage and joy. John Paul picked up this theme. What was the greatest of the works of God? Man. Who redeemed man? Christ. Therefore, he declared, "Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe, at any longitude or latitude. . . . The exclusion of Christ from the history of man is an act against man! Without Christ it is impossible to understand the history of Poland." Those who oppose Christ, he said, still live within the Christian context of history.
Christ, the pope declared, was not only the past of Poland--he was "the future . . . our Polish future."
The massed crowd thundered its response. "We want God!" it roared.
As you know, the two Marian events/devotions to which John Paul was most committed, and most identified, were the Divine Mercy, and Fatima. The Church's celebration of the feast of Divine Mercy began at sundown today, the First Saturday (cf. Our Lady of Fatima's request) of April. Because he died after sundown in Rome but before midnight, he passed on the one sliver of time in the entire year -- maybe even in years, given that Easter is not on a fixed date -- when both Fatima and Divine Mercy intersect.From Dallas News writer Rod Dreher
The husband ought not to seek only his own interests, but also those of his wife; and she, those of her husband. Parents should look after the interests of their children, and these in turn look after the interests of their parents. The family is the only community in which man "is loved for himself," for what he "is" and not for what he "has" ... Respect for this fundamental norm explains as the apostle hiimself teaches, why nothing should be done out of a spirit of rivalry or for vainglory, but rather through humility, because of love. And this love, which is opened up to others, makes members of the family true servants of "the domestic church," where all desire the good and the happiness of each one; where each and every one gives life to this love with an urgent search for that good and that happiness.
Pope John Paul II
Homily of the Mass for families
Found in "In Conversation with God: Lent and Eastertide"
