When Some People Would Reach for the Bottle ...

I, on the other hand, head straight to the bookstore. (I may have mentioned this before...). I have noticed this for a while, beginning with when Tom had a series of back surgeries many years ago when the girls were tiny. I came out of that with several large, expensive cookbooks that I really had no interest in after the strain of the situation was over.

This tendency made itself very obvious yesterday when some family stuff came up and I felt under a certain amount of stress. I had to literally fight myself out of driving straight to a bookstore. Sometimes I can get away with just walking around looking at books and not find anything to buy. I have a feeling that I'd have been buying something whether I liked it or not yesterday ... heck, in a real emergency, I can even make do with Target's book area.

As a tipple goes, that's not too bad I suppose. But if you have a lot of stress in your life, you can spend a lot of money and wind up with some terrible books!

Worth a Thousand Words

TSUBAKI, Camellia japonica, at Koto-in Daitokuji Temple, in Kyoto from Kyoto Daily Photo

This is an instance where we do need some words. Check out the link above to see why the camellia bud (not flower) is often used in tea ceremonies.

Thank You, God, For Not Accepting the Summa Mamas Sacrifice

They offered up their blog to God ... and He gave it back to us. Whew!

As a consequence, we have their Easter Egg shoe parade to brighten our eyes and hearts.

Welcome back, Mama T and Smock Mama. You haven't been gone long, but I missed you the whole time.

A Little Useless Information

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information. - Oscar Wilde

SOME LEFT-HANDERS

Lewis Carroll • Tiberius • Prince Charles • Paul Klee
Gary Sobers • George VI • Paul McCartney • Bob Dylan
Albert Einstein • Nietzsche • M.C. Escher • Bill Clinton
Bill Gates • Fidel Castro • Queen Victoria • H. G. Wells
Cole Porter • Pelé • Phil Collins • Elizabeth II

Schott's Original Miscellany by Ben Schott

And Happy Catholic.

Worth a Thousand Words

Portel del Angel via Barcelona Photoblog

Blogathon for LIfe

Susan Brennan has come up with an interesting way for bloggers to support the culture of life in New Jersey.

Good Counsel Homes, Inc. is a non-profit organization that serves pregnant women throughout the State of New Jersey and New York by providing much needed services including shelter, food, medical care, education, job skills, social skills, counseling, parenting, nutrition and computer classes. Good Counsel Homes currently has five homes and is in the process of opening a new home in South Jersey. ...

I am inviting you to sponsor the walkathon through your blog. Doing so is free and can be achieved by a simple post, but you are welcome to blog about it as much as you want. In fact, I am immensely excited to see the posts that this Blogathon may generate. If you agree, I will set up a web page assigned exclusively to your blog... Your blog name (however you wish it to appear) will be on our walkathon t-shirt.

Susan is organizing the May 31 walkathon and you can see more about it here. If you have a blog, pass the word and help raise this money for this very necessary project.

Let's Show a Little Pug-Love

My good friend, Hey Jules taught me that pugs are adorable and lovable as I have watched her adopt her two little dogs and post photos of their hijinks over time.

Now, she is putting out a plea on behalf of Midwest Pug Rescue which is need of financial aid.

As many of you know, Petee came to live with me through this wonderful organization. They take in any and all abandoned pugs and give them the required care to enter back into society as a healthy and happy pug. To do so requires an ongoing source of income and they just don’t have the sources to always meet these huge financial needs.

Between the rising vet bills and the rise in abandoned dogs, they are quickly approaching the breaking point.

Even five dollars can help make a difference. If this speaks to your heart, do go drop a few dollars in the pot to help this cause.

Worth a Thousand Words

Hoopoe, taken by Remo Savisaar

Today We're Coloring Easter Eggs

Some Easter Colors by Qiang-Huang

We like to get creative with it. Do you like this panda egg that Tom did?

No, I kid. It's from Mental Floss where they have six amazing examples of elaborately decorated eggs.

Welcome Home, John C. Wright...Updated

I was raised Lutheran, and drank in anticatholicism with my mother's milk, so I assure you I am aware of most or all the objections, subtle and obvious, which you consciences in good faith might raise. The shock that came to me when I looked into Catholicism is that the Catholics do not teach what my teachers told me they teach.

I have wondered for some time if John C. Wright, science fiction writer and a former atheist, were Catholic. His remarks often gave off a Catholic vibe but I figured if he were Catholic that he'd have mentioned it before now.

Now I am thrilled to find out that after three years of consideration he will be entering the Catholic Church this Easter. I especially enjoyed reading his reassurances to Protestant, pagan, and atheist friends which shows just how thoroughly he did consider it all. Do go read.

Congratulations and welcome home!

Update
Anyone reading the comments on Wright's post may have noticed another favorite science fiction author (of mine, anyway) in the comments ... who confirmed that Michael Flynn is indeed Catholic. I suspected as much after reading Eifelheim ... that consideration of what creatures have souls was practically channeling some of the great thinkers of the Church, if they had been thinking about large, insectoid aliens who crash landed near them.

O My People ... Tonight is the Veneration of the Cross

If you haven't gone before, I highly recommend it. here is what I wrote last year.

Update
And here is what Practicing Catholic wrote about it from this year. She has much of what Fr. L. talked about which was simple and yet devastating ... and true.

I will simply add that this year they chanted all the liturgy, not just the Gospel. I must say that when the young man chanting the first reading and the responsorial approached the lecturn, he was a vision to behold. I nudged Rose and she got a big smile on her face. Of course, he had a gorgeous voice so both our eyes and ears were pleased. I even recovered enough to meditate on the readings being chanted. Which may have been a miracle.

One of the things that really struck me last night during the long and beautiful recitation of the prayers, was that all the time that I was wondering what was the truth, was there really a God and how did one know it ... the Church had been praying for me all along. I was wonderstruck and grateful.

Seriously, toward the end of the service, I felt as if I had been drenched in the day, simply soaked it up until I could hold no more. It was a truly wonderful way to go into this empty day of Holy Saturday. I am truly looking forward to the joy of Easter morning. (The vigil service is just too long for me ... I go with the women to the tomb on Easter day. Or maybe with Peter? He wasn't up so early ...)

A Couple of Things from Holy Thursday

Yes, I know I said I was checking out. But I just wanted to share a couple of things.

I have written before about what happens during the Mass on Holy Thursday and also of the feelings I have had.

This year was very different for me in a couple of ways.

First, I was fixing dinner and rather absent mindedly realizing that I hadn't tried that hard during Lent. Not quite "wasted" it but close enough. I tossed off an off-handed prayer (yeah, the kind that always boomerang ... God is just waiting for me to ask) that he do what I needed to bring me closer to him.

Not ten minutes later the phone rang. It was my mother-in-law asking to be taken to Mass that evening. First of all, I know it sounds shameful that we already hadn't planned to take her, but she had taken to always having something "wrong" whenever it we'd call to say that we were coming on Sunday morning. Quite often, because of her short-term memory loss and the routine of her assisted living home she doesn't even realize what day it is. So I'd kind of mentally scratched her off the list of people to check.

No problem. We would set our routine into high-gear and get her. Then she asked about Stations of the Cross for Good Friday. Rose knew that they would be at 3:00. Of course, the time that has been commemorated always as the time that Christ died. I had planned to spend that hour in quiet meditation and prayer. For the first time ever, I'd actually remembered to try to do something at that time. I had been mentally patting myself on the back.

The Stations of the Cross. I'd had one or two experiences with them a long time ago. Maybe I was Christian then? Maybe not. What I remembered was a lot of up and down kneeling and sore legs the next day. It had left me with a permanent bad taste in my mouth. Although I always find myself attracted to written (and spoken ... thank you Laura H.) meditations for the Stations. I have a permanent bad attitude about attending the Stations of the Cross.

Now my mother-in-law was determined to go. And I mentally looked up at heaven and shook my fist at God. Oh, thank you sooo much! And mentally, I could hear the gentle, amused laughter and "You asked. I'm just answering."

I also realized during Mass that I was remembering those previous sad reflections and trying to force some sort of feeling. Just the sort of thing that I would instantly tell anyone else not to do. Whenever I caught myself I would then force relaxation and ask God for just a word to take away. I had resigned myself to my first-ever intellectual experience of Holy Thursday. Then I realized that the priest's entire homily, excellent as always, was about service to other. How in experiencing Jesus' service to us and his love, we must show it to others. And I thought of my mother-in-law. Who was asking for my service, not only in the Holy Thursday Mass but for Stations of the Cross and in other ways as well. I realized that I had fallen into a habit of begrudging service more often than forcing past it and looking for the big picture. I had gotten lazy and I had gotten small minded about it.

Well, that was a word spoken to my heart for sure. One that I would use to shake myself into new awareness. Toward the end, another sentence refined this point for me. "We are called to have our eyes opened and our hearts set afire."

Which was just what that earlier realization made me eager to do.

Nice going, Father L., preaching a homily straight to me.

Of course, you know that made me relax, thinking I had gotten the "goods" so to speak from that Mass. Then during my time kneeling after Communion and through the rest of the Mass, my heart was set afire. I thought of how Jesus says, " I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you ..." (Luke 22:15). I almost always think of that when I am kneeling waiting for the Eucharist.

Then the dismissal prayer (can't find the text right now) said something like, "May this Eucharist bring us to fullness of life and joy..."

Which was when I began brimming with exactly that. A realization of how rich and full my life was after I let Jesus take charge of it. How I was truly more "myself" than I had ever been and that I knew I would just become more and more so if I kept striving. What I felt was gratitude but most of all what I felt was pure, overwhelming joy and happiness. Which I somehow felt that Jesus was feeling underneath all the pain and agony and suffering that he knew was coming ... a deep joy at being able to bring this to us and to share it with us. (Which resonated even more this morning when I was posting the Good Friday meditation and felt a shocked recognition ... for the first time I understood that joy which is written about there.)

Which brought me to love. How can I not love Him for that? And that was what I felt more than all the others. Love.

Outta Here Until After Easter

I do have a few prepared meditations that I'll post over the next couple of days ... but essentially I'm gone until after Easter.

Have a blessed Triduum* and a wonderful Easter Sunday.

*The Easter Triduum begins on Holy Thursday with the evening Mass of the Lord's Supper, is continued through Good Friday with the celebration of the passion of the Lord on Holy Saturday, reaches its high point in the Easter vigil, and concludes with evening prayer on Easter Sunday.

The Season of Lent ends on Thursday of Holy Week. Then the Church remembers the death and resurrection of Jesus during the Easter Triduum. These three days are the most important time of the Church year.

6 Little Books That Pack a Big Punch

These small books would make good gifts for the various events that happen in the spring ... First Communion, entering the Church, weddings, baptisms, etc. ... it just depends on the occasion. In fact, I have several of these earmarked for various friends in the near future.

What Catholics Believe
and
A Pocket Catechism for Kids
by Mike Aquilina and Father Kris Stubna
These differ only in the increased complexity of information offered in the first books. Both are in question and answer format and offer very simple but clear answers to likely questions about Church teachings. Each also has a section of traditional prayers, a guide to making a good confession, and an explanation of the Mass. Both of these are small enough to easily slip into a pocket or purse. Not to mention that they are handy to have around for quick answers that one might run across ... for instance we were all at a loss when trying to remember the theological versus cardinal virtues the other day (yes, that's the sort of home we have ... don't ask!)

Meditations from the Oratory: Praying the Creed
by Father Benedict Groeschel
This is a series of meditations that are fairly short but quite powerful. Designed to be weekly meditations used by a group, these could also be used by an individual. For instance, I am planning to do one each Sunday. Each begins with a substantial Scripture reading, goes on to a brief meditation, followed by a quotation which is usually from a saint or church document such as the Catechism. A quiet time is then followed by a few questions to consider and then prayer closes the session. All of this, naturally, follows the framework of the Creed.

Praying in the Presence of Our Lord: with St. Thomas Aquinas
by Mike Aquilina
St. Thomas Aquinas wrote superlative poems in praise of the Eucharist. Mike Aquilina gives us both the Latin and also beautiful English translations while providing seven meditations for each. These focus on helping us pray as St. Thomas prayed, in the presence of the Eucharist. Needless to say these will be helpful for any meditative time but especially during Adoration.

Living the Mysteries: A Guide for Unfinished Christians
by Mike Aquilina and Scott Hahn
This devotional takes us through key teachings of eight of the Church Fathers. The focus flows from understanding mysteries and revelation through individual sacraments. Each of the 50 meditations has a brief introduction, the writing of the Church Father for that week, a few key sentences to "Take to Prayer" throughout the day, a phrase recommended for memorization, and a thought about applying this teaching to real life. This is the only devotional style book that Tom has ever been interested in reading which says something about its accessibility.

A Prayer Book for Catholic Families
This is a resource I really wish I'd had when the kids were younger and I was wondering how to integrate prayer into our family life. Simply written but amazingly thorough, this book doesn't just present prayers, it describes key parts of Catholic devotion. This includes the order and liturgy of the Mass, simple Morning and Evening Prayer as an introduction to the Liturgy of the Hours, the Stations of the Cross and Devotions to Mary. Although the cover looks more oriented toward those with children, this also would be a good book to give a new convert or as a practical wedding gift.

You Keep Using Those Equations. I Don't Think They Mean What You Think They Do...

"New derivation of equations governing the greenhouse effect reveals "runaway warming" impossible

Miklós Zágoni isn't just a physicist and environmental researcher. He is also a global warming activist and Hungary's most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Or was.

That was until he learned the details of a new theory of the greenhouse effect, one that not only gave far more accurate climate predictions here on Earth, but Mars too. The theory was developed by another Hungarian scientist, Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA's Langley Research Center. [...]

Miskolczi's story reads like a book. Looking at a series of differential equations for the greenhouse effect, he noticed the solution -- originally done in 1922 by Arthur Milne, but still used by climate researchers today -- ignored boundary conditions by assuming an "infinitely thick" atmosphere. Similar assumptions are common when solving differential equations; they simplify the calculations and often result in a result that still very closely matches reality. But not always.

So Miskolczi re-derived the solution, this time using the proper boundary conditions for an atmosphere that is not infinite. His result included a new term, which acts as a negative feedback to counter the positive forcing. At low levels, the new term means a small difference ... but as greenhouse gases rise, the negative feedback predominates, forcing values back down. "

NASA refused to publish his results. He's resigned from NASA, saying, "My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results."

I noticed this defection from the Global Warming camp at The Common Room.

It made me think again about the movie Expelled ... possibly because of Jay Rogers' comments which are just about a review in themselves. His actual review can be read here. I am getting more and more interested in this movie.

My Favorite of the Many Views of Abbey Road

That's no surprise is it? To see the others as well as the famous original album cover to which they all pay tribute, check out Mental Floss.

I Believe That There Is Absolutely Nothing He Can't Turn Into A Chart ...

... or graph ... or table. Some funny stuff is going on at Disputations.

Good Friday Notes

Divine Mercy Novena ... Salve Regina reminds us that today is the day to begin your novena. More details at her place.

Chanting the Passion Narrative according to Saint John ... Paraclete Press makes it possible to continue a tradition that began in the eighth century with their hosting of the Gregorian chant by monastic members of the Gloriae Dei Cantores Schola. Our church did this last year and will do it again this year. I can attest that it was truly wonderful. If you don't have such a tradition at your church, this is a good alternative.

Worth a Thousand Words

As Yellow As I Can Be, by ... photos & secrets

I Blame It All on Hypnotoad and The Egg

They really didn't put their hearts into it ... I must have a very stern talk with them before next year's Catholic Blog Awards!

Congratulations to all the winners, who you can see here.