Worth a Thousand Words

Georgia Girl by Karin Jurick
Click through the link to see more engaging art from a HC favorite.

If Ancient Rome Had the Internet ...

... lifted from Miss Cellania.

The destruction of Pompeii in 79 AD is the most viewed video at YouTube. The first comment is..."OMG so cool! Volcanos ROCK!"

Attila the Hun has his own MySpace page. Nobody ever rejects his "invite a friend" emails.

The domain "gladiator.rome" sells for the record sum of 1,000,000 denarii.

"Naked Cleopatra" is the top search term on Google.

Unfortunately, the Queen of Egypt dies an early death after misunderstanding IT's call to embrace an ASP solution.

Websites like "handsome-literate-male-british-slave.com" pollute the search listings thanks to generous commissions at the "slaves.co.rome" affiliate program.

Roman programmers moan about projects outsourced to cheap coders in Mesopotamia.

The Colosseum is renamed the eBay Colosseum, with free wireless hot spots outside the lions cage restaurant.

Nobody invents a spam filter good enough for the House of the Vestals.

An Inspirational Story of Love and a Prayer Request

There was no resentment whatsoever. While I know what they have experienced hasn’t been easy on them, you would never know it. Even Sam’s attitude, mind you he is only four years-old, was unique in and of itself.

After having spent a wonderful afternoon getting to know an amazing family, I drove off speechless. I have never in all my life met a family like them. I wonder if I ever will again either.

Tisha is the one who is going under the knife, not me, but as Jonathan told me their story, and as I looked into his eyes, I saw gratitude therein. Amazing gratitude. I shall never forget what I saw.

Little Sam Gappa has been fighting cancer most of his life. He is four. One would think that the burden that places upon a family and the child himself to be almost insupportable. However, that is not the case. The above excerpt was written by the husband of the woman who is donating a kidney to Sam. He is a witness to the Gappa's faith.

The Gappas are part of our parish and, although I have never met them, my dear friend Stevie keeps me updated on their progress. Here is a place where you can get her perspective on what it has been like to care for Sam throughout the ordeal.

Tomorrow, Sam gets his kidney transplant. The donor is a young mother of three young children. Go to Stevie's place, Wheelbarrow Manor, to read more about this inspirational story. I will borrow a bit of what she excerpted because I am so struck by the sheer love and generosity that makes Sam's transplant possible.

What kind of person would offer up a kidney to someone she doesn’t know? The kind of person who, too, has a four year-old son. The kind of person to whom God has been very good. The kind of person who believes in Galatians 6:10. The kind of person who believes in Romans 8:28. The kind of person who would hate to experience what Sam’s parents have experienced. The kind of person who has a respect for life.

The kind of person who is following her Master.

Please pray for all involved tomorrow as this kidney transplant finally happens.

Worth a Thousand Words

Monarch
by photographer extraordinaire, Hey Jules
(click through on the link for a larger look)

Ready to Go On Retreat?

The Anchoress is going on retreat for August and taking us with her.

So far The Anchoress has been sharing with us some of her best ... I will dare to call it classic ... writing which I remember but only dimly. It is good to see these pieces, whether for the first time or as a reminder of what is important.

Check it out!

The Faithful Traveler and the Miraculous Medal Shrine

Two of my favorite books are Catholic Shrines of Western Europe and Catholic Shrines of Central and Eastern Europe, both of which are subtitled "A Pilgrim's Travel Guide. I have often wished for as comprehensive a guide to the United States. Lo and behold, here comes The Faithful Traveler to fill that need, beginning in Philadelphia.

I am not much for watching travel DVDs, unless they are those that Michael Palin has done with clever commentary and an interesting theme (such as traveling around the world in 80 days). However, Diana von Glahn sent me a review copy of this DVD so I dutifully sat down to watch it, expecting to sample a bit and skip around before quitting. Unexpectedly I liked it so much that I watched the entire thing, including extras, and then told Tom he will have to watch. (He is much less resistant to this sort of thing than I am.)

First of all, Diana's screen presence is charming. She is serious about the subject yet there is always the hint of an underlying merriment that is most inviting.

Secondly, I didn't expect this to be a partial Catholic history class with plenty of fascinating information about the origin of the Miraculous Medal as well as about the Philadelphia shrine. Additionally, in order to make sure that viewers understand the concepts well, there is are brief explanations of Catholic concepts along the way (such as why Catholics venerate Mary or that the medal is not superstitiously viewed "as a good luck charm"). This means that the DVDs can also be passed on to nonCatholics who might have questions or be interested in the shrine. A nice touch.

The music is contemporary Christian but is not some of the sappy, overly sentimental stuff that I shrink from hearing. It is either upbeat or heartfelt, but good.

My only critiques would be that the information on the extras page is not large enough to read easily and that the word "amazing" gets a bit overused. However, as a podcast who has found that her favorite "make a noise while thinking of what to say next" word is "and" I can understand this tendency.

The Faithful Traveler website is loaded with information, including a blog that has many pertinent facts that would be helpful when visiting a location. You can see samples of the dvd or order it here.

Worth a Thousand Words

American Crescent Cycle

From The Art of the Poster, 1880-1918, Lawrence University Digital Collection
Via Lines and Colors.

How to Make Your Child a Gay Activist

Let's say you, like many Christian parents, have a child with strong and lasting homosexual longings.

Someone--maybe not Jesus, but Someone--definitely enjoys it when people who are trying hard to love one another and act well toward one another end up deeply hurting themselves and each other instead. Someone loves it when Christians trying to bear witness instead cause confusion, disappointment, and pain to those they love; when Christians, trying to support family values, destroy their own families. Someone enjoys it when Christians, seeking to love and support their children, hurt those children deeply.

How do you help that "Someone"? How do you make it as hard as possible for your child to accept Christian chastity and humility, rather than seeking solace in gay pride?

Let's begin at the beginning....

Brilliant. From Eve Tushnet ... I'm not sure I got the link right but scroll around toward the top if I didn't.

Watch Out Beijing ...

... Engrish.com has their eye on Olympic signage. Can't wait to see what turns up.

Worth a Thousand Words

La Sainte Chappelle, Paris
Shown here with permission from Ian McKillip.

Click through on the link above to see more of his splendid art.

A Little Useless Information

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

KEITH • Originally, someone named Keith was from a specific place, a town in Scotland on the Isla River. First used as a surname, it became popular as a first name in the 1800s.

The Word Origin Calendar

Proud Mom Moment

Hi Rose-

Congratulations! You have been admitted to the Pilot Program for this year. Your essays were impressive and communicated a strong passion for learning and filmmaking. ...

Nice to see that Rose's college recognizes how brilliant my child is!

This pilot program is one that admits only 24 students. They will work together on core film classes. The film school is trying to see if this will be a better way to guide freshmen through what now takes quite a few different classes.

Should be interesting!

Quick Book Review: No One Sees God

No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers by Michael Novak goes on sale today. I cannot comment too much since I got my copy of the book last week ... and, as everyone around here knows we've been putting on a retreat lately.

However, I did take the time to read the introduction and first chapter, which are my test of whether I will keep the book around at all. (That's a defense mechanism designed to leave me any time at all to read book of my own choosing.) I was hooked by Novak's honest, respectful approach to how to discuss faith with atheists. It went to the top of my nonfiction stack and will be picked up very soon, after which I will do a proper review.

In the meantime, please read Steven Riddle's review. I trust him completely and this review simply whets my appetite to dive into Novak's book. Steven begins thus:

In a word--superb. A quick review of this book shows that it is the same tightly reasoned, compassionate, engaging call to conversation and, it is to be hoped, conversion from one believer to other believers and non-believers. Mr. Novak's theme in the book might well be summed up in this excerpt:

from No One Sees God
Michael Novak

In my own life, I have tried to keep the conversation up between the two sides of my own intellect. The line of belief and unbelief is not drawn between one person and another, normally, but rather down the inner souls of all of us. That is why the very question stirs so much passion. I have known people who declaim so passionately and argumentatively that they do not believe in God that I am drive to wonderment: Why are they so agitated, if, as they insist, God does not exist? Why then do they pay so much attention? Some of the greatest converts, in either direction, are those who wrestled strenuously for many year to maintain the other side

Now go read the rest of the review and then pick up the book.

Informative: The Vatican and Harry Potter

Mark Banks writes to let us know:

You may remember some months ago the Vatican’s official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano published an article on Harry Potter that received a lot of coverage both in the Catholic and Secular press. Well, with the generous help of an Italian friend I’ve managed to translate the original articles from Italian into English. The two essays that constitute the article make for interesting reading and I thought you might like to mention them and/or provide a commentary on them on HC and CMR. Clearly there’s a lot of interest in Harry Potter throughout all ages, but these essays might be of particular interest to parents still unsure how suitable the books (and films) are for their children.

Find the article here.

I am eagerly looking forward to printing this out and reading it. Much thanks to Mark for taking the initiative to make this translation available.

I would like to add that Soul Food Cinema is not only an attractive site, it is a venue for Catholics to air their opinions in essays about movies. Take a look at just how many good ideas Mark has posted that can serve as a springboard into a thoughtful essay. If you are at all interested in films and faith but don't want to have your own blog, I encourage you to take a look around and think about contributing.

Inspirational: "God gave me the opportunity to just talk, and I passed. It wasn't convenient to me at the time..."

I should say at this point that the lady was obviously homeless. She wore a sweater inside-out on a warm day and looked a bit dirty. About this time I noticed that some of her teeth were blackened.

"No, I'm not." I thought she meant to ask again whether or not I was a minister of some kind. "I'm just here on business for a couple of days. I'm from Dallas..."

"But how can I stay in touch with you?"

"I'm from Dallas. You can't really stay in touch with me." I admit I was getting a bit edgy at this point. We were approaching my hotel. The last thing I needed was a homeless woman, with what appeared to be some mental health issues, hanging around my hotel each evening waiting for a chat.

Mark's honesty touches a nerve in me ... and, I suspect, in some of you too. Go read it all.

Worth a Thousand Words

Hallelujah by Karin Jurick
Used with permission ... click through on the link to see more delightful art.

Signs and Mysteries

Mike Aquilina's newest book and I can tell you it is simply fantastic. How do I know this? I didn't work on the cover but I did lay out the inside of the book. Gorgeous illustrations from Lea Marie Ravotti and, as always, Mike Aquilina writes simply but brilliantly. I couldn't keep from reading part of it as I worked and can't wait to have my own copy to read all the way through. Here's part of the description.

Imagine the dangerous life of a First Century Christian. You've embraced your newfound faith in Christ but fear the risk of persecution or death at the hands of the pagans living around you. Then a trusted friend tells you about some of Jesus followers who secretly meet. He whispers into your ear, Look for a fish carved into the entranceway to the burial chambers beside the Via Tiburtina. You smile in gratitude.

Comparatively, modern society is awash in those same Christian symbols that kept early Christians safely connected: they appear on churches, bumper stickers, mugs even mints and stuffed animals. Yet, we are often ignorant of the origins of these symbols having lost the urgency of our spiritual ancestors hostile environment.

Noted author Mike Aquilina conducts an intriguing tour of symbols that guided the first four centuries of the Church's existence. He explains how Christians borrowed pagan and Jewish symbols, giving them new, distinctly Christian meanings. Recover the voice and urgency of our spiritual ancestors symbolic language and discover the impact the symbols still have.

Black and white illustrations by Lea Ravotti of artifacts uncovered throughout the Middle East beautifully complement the text, showing the variety of contexts in which they were found and the range of skills displayed in their execution.

Now go to Mike's place to see the first review which has him very pleased indeed. There are other good ones at Amazon.

Read my comments and excerpts here:

• Incorporating History Into the Sacraments
• Christ is ... a Dolphin?
• What You Didn't Know About That Fish Symbol

One Little Glitch in the System and Blogs Become Spam

Much thanks to The Anchoress for my prayer request for our marriage enrichment retreat when Happy Catholic was marked as a spam blog on Friday. The retreat was a fantastic success and ten more couples have re-energized their marriages and have the tools to continue enriching their lives together. Thank you for the prayers!

I've seen a few conspiracy theories out there (thought of a few myself, to be truthful) and am happy to see that Blogger reports their recent rash of "spam blog" notices as a software glitch.

You Are Not Spam

You knew that already, and now we do too. We have now restored all accounts that were mistakenly marked as spam yesterday. (See: Spam Fridays)

We want to offer our sincerest apologies to affected bloggers and their readers. We’ve tracked down the problem to a bug in our data processing code that locked blogs even when our algorithms concluded they were not spam. We are adding additional monitoring and process checks to ensure that bugs of this magnitude are caught before they can affect your data. ...

Goin' Retreatin'

Tom and I are on the presentation team for our parish's Beyond Cana marriage enrichment retreat. It begins tomorrow morning and so I'm outta here.

While I'm gone, take a look over at The Anchoress's online August retreat which begins tomorrow. I think it is going to be great!

You can also see what I've marked to read ... here:

Mailbag ...

Jeff S. writes to let us know:

TIME magazine has an interesting profile of three priests in Northern Ireland attempting to balance their faith and clerical duties with a multi-million dollar recording contract with Sony BMG. Lots of interesting issues here. They sound like they only have good intentions.