Well Said: Never mistake for malice ...

Never mistake for malice that which is easily explained by stupidity or incompetence.

attrib. to Napoleon Bonaparte

That certainly is the charitable way to interpret many of the frustrations that people put in our way.

Worth a Thousand Words: James Abbott McNeill Whistler

James Abbott McNeill Whistler by William Merritt Chase
via Art Renewal Center Museum

Worth a Thousand Words: Joy of Life

Joy of Life
taken by the incomparable Remo Savisaar

Well Said: The test of bureaucracy

If the first person who answers the phone cannot answer your question, it is a bureaucracy.

President Lyndon Johnson

We'll ignore the irony of the purveyor of that wisdom, shall we? It does make me think again fondly of the three companies I can call who are unfailingly polite and always have the answer: Discover, Chase Bank, and Republic Wireless.

Most others fall far short.

Blogging Around: Random Things

Going Whole Hog

Doriana Giustozzi and Raffaele Petterini have adopted a 100lb boar, Pasqualina in Foligno, Italy. The caring couple gave the hog a home after finding it desperate, undernourished, and close to death in the woods. Now the bulky animal gallivants freely around their house.

There is a delightful slideshow for this story in The Telegraph. Thanks to T for the heads up on this after seeing the Wild Boar photo here last week.

Roses = Secrecy

Sub rosa literally means "under the rose" in New Latin. Since ancient times, the rose has often been associated with secrecy. In ancient mythology, Cupid gave a rose to Harpocrates, the god of silence, to keep him from telling about the indiscretions of Venus. Ceilings of dining rooms have been decorated with carvings of roses, reportedly to remind guests that what was said at the table should be kept confidential. Roses have also been placed over confessionals as a symbol of the confidentiality of confession.

I had no idea that roses symbolized secrecy. For that matter, I never knew the meaning of sub rosa, while I'm busy breaking silence! This is from the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day which I receive in email. It is only email subscription I have and I read every one of them. They almost always have some interesting tidbit I didn't know.

How Do You Keep Your Wedding Vows When Everything Changes?

That was only the beginning of what felt like a series of deaths over the next several years. Al came home after six weeks in the hospital. He walked with the aid of a leg brace, a cane, and a gait belt. He had almost no use of his left arm. I comforted myself with the thought that on the inside, he was the same old Al. My sweet, funny, and compassionate husband was still alive, and that’s what mattered most. Over time, however, I started to see that he had changed on the inside as well.

Al suffered from chronic brain fatigue that made him need to take long naps. He was often confused, and his short-term memory was impaired. Most difficult for me was the decline in his emotional capacity. Not just our physical intimacy but our whole relationship no longer had the same depth. The closeness I had shared only with Al, my partner for life, seemed to be gone.

A powerful and thought provoking article from Word Among Us.

Worth a Thousand Words: Transfiguration

Icon of transfiguration (Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery, Yaroslavl), 1516

It was not the feast of the Transfiguration last weekend, but the Transfiguration was the Gospel reading. One thing that struck me when listening to the reading was that Jesus went up to pray. To pray.

Is this what his prayer was always like? Glowing, God's glory all around him, praying with saints all around him? It is fascinating to meditate upon this.

I love this icon because it strives to portray the unportrayable, but taken together with the Gospel (which strives to describe the indescribable) perhaps we can get a glimpse of Jesus at prayer.

Well Said: Religion and Politics

I have heard that in some debating clubs there is a rule that the members may discuss anything except religion and politics. I cannot imagine what they do discuss, but it is quite evident that they have ruled out the only two subjects which are either important or amusing.

G.K. Chesterton,
Appreciations and Criticisms of
the Works of Charles Dickens

Worth a Thousand Words: Solitude

Frederic Leighton (1830–1896), Solitude

Well Said: The nicest white people that America has ever produced

So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years...The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.

Chris Rock, New York Magazine interview

The Reign of God 6: Jesus, Israel, and the World

Continuing with the excerpt, which ended in Part 5 saying that one would have to prove Jesus did not view Israel as a sign of blessing for all nations.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

It would then have to be proved explicitly and in detail that Jesus only appeared in Israel because that was his place of origin, because he was naturally shaped in some way, like every human being, by the history of his people, but that otherwise he had set himself apart from Israel's history of election. And yet there is not the faintest evidence of such a thing. It simply cannot be produced. Precisely where Jesus (like John the Baptizer before him) calls into question the participation of Israel, or part of Israel, in ultimate and definitive salvation (cf. Matt 8:11-12) he presumes Israel's salvation-historical function. But above all there is an overabundance of texts to show that Jesus did not abandon the fundamental constant we have described. I will speak of those texts at length in the following chapters. Most important of these is the choice of the Twelve--a demonstrative sign-action showing that Jesus cared about the twelve tribes of Israel. The Twelve are a visible sign and, of course, also an "instrument" of his will to gather all Israel. And why? For the sake of Israel? No, for the sake of the world!

The principle behind this is pointedly formulated in James's speech in Acts 15, aided by a mixed quotation based on Amos 9:11-12:

After this I [the Lord] will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David, which has fallen; from its ruins I will rebuild it, and I will set it [the tent] up, so that all other peoples may seek the Lord--even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been called. Thus says the Lord, who has been making these things known from long go. (Acts 15:16-18)

The sense of this combined quotation is that the fallen Israel must be rebuilt precisely in order that the Gentile nations, over whom the name of the Lord has been called out, may seek and find God. They cannot perceive him otherwise. The ultimate goal of the rebuilding of Israel is the coming of the Gentiles. Jesus thought no differently.

Obviously this resolute will of Jesus to gather all Israel (for the sake of the nations) had everything to do with his proclamation of the reign of God. The two are inseparable...

Jesus of Nazareth by Gerhard Lohfink

The Name of God is Mercy by Pope Francis

The Name of God Is Mercy by Pope Francis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was a gift from a friend and it was the book I began Lent with. The first part of the book is a Q&A between a Vatican reporter and the pope. As usual, Pope Francis is personable and clear answering the series of questions about mercy and its centrality in our Christian faith.

What might surprise many readers is that Francis spends an equal amount of time talking about sin, repentance, confession, and reconciliation. One can't receive or even recognize mercy unless one knows why it has been extended. That means you've got to know you did something wrong. And then fully receiving mercy means you will respond to the love that has been offered. This isn't just the easy mercy that secular society thinks of when the word is used. It is the real, full-blown deal that changes lives.

Also of interest to many will be that Francis continually mentions his predecessors as bearing the same message to the people. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Paul VI, etc. and their writings are continually referenced. People often act as if Pope Francis's ideas are completely new and different when, of course, it is the same Catholic faith simply shining through a different person. It's part of what makes Pope Francis interesting to watch. He's not easy to fit into the categories with which so many want to label him.

The last part of the book is the text of Pope Francis's Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy. It is as if the first part of the book is Francis talking you through his points and then the last part is the more structured presentation.

I found this book inspirational and an easy read. It is another look into the mind of this pope who so many admire and a window into the ways of true Christian life. May we all move closer to being authentic examples of it!

The Reign of God 5: A Basic Biblical Constant

Continuing with the excerpt, which ended in Part 4 with Israel as the experimental nation to show others God's salvation.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

That, or something like it, is the description one must give of the meaning of Israel's election, looking back especially at the stories of the patriarchs in Genesis but also at any number of other key biblical texts such as Exodus 19:5-6 or Isaiah 2:1-5. At any rate, this election and its function for the world form a basic constant in the Old Testament. According to the Old Testament, salvation and the reign of God cannot otherwise exist in the world.

But then the question arises: is this basic constant of the Old Testament abandoned in the New Testament? Is it no longer valid there? has it given way to a vague and placeless universalism? Anyone who says or even hints at such a thing will have to prove it. He or she will have to prove that for Jesus, Israel was indeed no longer the sign of blessing (or of judgment) for all nations but that he had separated himself internally from Israel and preached an absolute salvation, that is, one divorced from Israel-- with "people in general" as the immediate audience for his message.

Jesus of Nazareth by Gerhard Lohfink

Next Part 6: Jesus, Israel, and the World

Worth a Thousand Words: Blow in my ear...

Taken by Valerie of ucumcari photography,
some rights reserved

7 Women: And the Secret of Their Greatness by Eric Metaxas

7 Women: And the Secret of Their Greatness by Eric Metaxas

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Just as he did in 7 Men: And the Secret of Their Greatness Eric Metaxas shares the brief biographies of seven inspirational women. Some are familiar, like Mother Teresa and Rosa Parks. Some I had never heard of, such as Saint Maria of Paris and Susanna Wesley.

Metaxas begins the book by considering the way our culture often highly celebrates women who compete with men, as if there is no other way to measure a woman's value. We think of this as putting men and women on equal terms, but it actually pits them against each other in a zero-sum competition. Someone must win and someone must lose. That's hardly "equality." It is ironic that such a standard is so built into our culture that this concept was slightly startling to me. And I'm nobody's knee-jerk "feminist."

I found it amusing, therefore, when Metaxas' first great woman was Joan of Arc. Is there a better female icon for achieving greatness by doing what the boys do, but better? It turns out that one of the contradictions is the little known fact that Joan was not as we portray her these days, like Katniss from The Hunger Games. She was inexperienced, petite, vulnerable, and innocent. It was precisely her feminine, youthful qualities which affected the average fighting man to respect her victories as miracles.

Story after story shows these women just as they were, rising to the difficulties of their circumstances in ways that exemplify true womanhood. Each surrendered themselves to God and sacrificed themselves in some way for the greater good. In so doing, each helped change the world for the better.

Somehow the phrase "true womanhood" equates these days with "namby pamby" or "doormat." Nothing could be further from the truth. As you read these stories you will come away respecting how strong feminine qualities can be under adverse conditions. Examining the lives of these great women helps reset our view by stepping outside of our current assumptions and that can only help inspire all of us. It certainly inspired me.

What We've Been Watching: The Wages of Fear, Mr. Holmes

The Wages of Fear (1953)

Four men, desperate to escape a South American village, agree to drive trucks of nitroglycerin over mountain passes to where they are needed to stop an oil fire. At its heart this is both a character study and a nonstop thriller. My heart was in my mouth for a good portion of the film.

Picking this up on a friend's recommendation, I was completely surprised by my husband's enthusiastic, "I remember watching that when I was a kid! What boy doesn't love guys driving nitroglycerin over mountain passes!" He saw it in the days when the movie was dubbed and shown on Saturday afternoon.

These days, of course, we get the meticulously restored version with 21 minutes added back in and all en Français with captions. Except where they were speaking English or Italian. Those 21 minutes probably removed some jokes or rhetoric which were considered anti-American in 1953. These days we are well used to taking it on the chin, so back in they went. Unfortunately, they served to slow down the story ... a lot.

As I said, the heart of the movie is sound suspense and I was on the edge of my seat. Just let the long, slow beginning wash over you as a preamble. You won't be sorry.

Mr. Holmes (2015)

This was recommended by two very different friends and so we gave it a shot. It turned out that we liked it very much and even more so the next day when we kept bringing it up to each other.

Sherlock Holmes is very aged, living in Suffolk and keeping bees (as he sometimes mentioned wanting to do in the stories), coping with losing his memory, and forging an unexpected friendship with the young son of his housekeeper. The movie accompanies the current day with two other strands of remembered story. One is recent involving a trip to Japan. The other is older and involves Holmes' last case. The way all three strands are woven together forms a lovely final lesson in Holmes' life (I would argue that this itself is Holmes solving his last case).

It is a quiet, life affirming movie with several mysteries that kept us rapt the entire time. Well worth seeing.

The Reign of God 4: The Abraham Principle

Continuing with the excerpt, which ended in Part 3 when God begins to transform the world with an individual, Abraham.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

From all this we can already see that the people God chooses and creates cannot rest within itself. It is not self-enclosed, existing for its own sake. It is chosen out of the mass of the nations for the sake of those nations. Abraham was, after all dragged out of his family and his homeland so that he could be a blessing for many others. In the people that came from him was to be made visible and tangible what God wants for the whole world: nonviolence, freedom, peace, salvation.

Because God desires the salvation of the world, that salvation has to be tangibly present in the experimental field of a small nation, precisely so that the other nations can see that there really can be justice and peace in the world, so that they can see that justice and peace are not utopia, not "nowhere," and so that they can freely take on this new social order. Of course that puts a shocking burden on this nation: the burden of election. Because if the people of God does not do justice to its task, if instead of peace in its midst there is conflict, instead of nonviolence it works violence, instead of showing forth salvation it spreads disaster, it cannot be a blessing for the nations. Then it falls short of the meaning of its existence; then it will not only be a laughingstock for the nations but will do great harm

Jesus of Nazareth by Gerhard Lohfink

Next Part 5: A Basic Biblical Constant

Well Said: Condiments No. 4

Condiments No. 4
by Neil Hollingsworth

The Reign of God 3: Something New

Continuing with the excerpt, which ended in Part 2 by observing that the individual is the point where God can build on change undertaken freely.

Part 1
Part 2

That is precisely what the stories of the patriarchs in Genesis tell about. The first pages of the Bible had told of the creation of the world, the development of the story of humankind, and--in a few hints--the growth of human civilization and culture. But along with all that the Bible also spoke immediately of disobedience to God and thus of the growth of destructive rivalries and brutal violence.

But then Genesis 12 starts over with something new. It suddenly ceases to look at humanity as a whole and begins to talk about an individual: Abraham. God begins to transform the world by starting anew, at a particular place in the world, with a single individual:

Now the Lord said to Abraham, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." (Gen 12:1-3)

Jesus of Nazareth by Gerhard Lohfink

Next Part 4: The Abraham Principle

Worth a Thousand Words: Wild Boar

Wild Boar
taken by Remo Savisaar

Here in Dallas we seem to be experiencing perpetual spring instead of winter. Not only do I like seeing this boar in its natural element, but I like remembering what the weather should be like.

Quick Looks at 3 New Books

I haven't had time to read more than a few chapters of each of these books. Those chapters, however, are enough to put them on my "to read" list. I didn't want you to have to wait to find out about them until I'd read them and done a full review.


Transformed by God's Word: Discovering the Power of Lectio and VISIO Divina by Stephen J Binz

Bestselling author and biblical scholar Stephen J. Binz offers the first book to combine the ancient Western practice of lectio divina (sacred reading) with the lesser-known Eastern Orthodox tradition of visio divina (sacred seeing). Binz suggests a life-changing way to pray through twenty gospel readings paired with beautiful, never-before-published contemporary icons.

The book's twenty Bible passages--starting with the Annunciation and ending with Pentecost--are paired with full-color icons of each story. The original, never-before-published icons, written by Ruta and Kaspars Poikans, are displayed in the Unity Chapel at the Mary of Nazareth International Center in Israel.

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Stephen Binz's books about lectio divina. I myself have long had an affinity for icons and other art which help me connect with God so you can imagine my delight at receiving this book.

So far it is practically perfect in every way. I especially love the gorgeous icons. Their symbolism tends to be obvious enough to start me contemplating God's mystery, but Binz's notes add to the layers of meaning that I'd otherwise miss.


You Can Share the Faith: Reaching Out One Person at a Time by Karen Edmisten

Sharing the faith doesn't have to be complicated. After all, Jesus himself just started with one person. Here are practical pointers from the author's own story and those of many others to help you share your faith joyfully, casually, confidently and with compassion.

This book resonated with me from page one. I don't know Karen Edmisten has managed to write a book that sounds as if I gave her notes on what I'd write myself, but she did. Her life story is different from mine, but her Catholic way of life is precisely what I answer when people ask me "how to" be a Happy Catholic.

I admit that I read five chapters before getting pulled away. They included engaging the culture, hanging with all kinds of people, being honest about struggles, and (most of all) doing it person-to-person. Get it. Read it.


The Catholic Catalogue: A Field Guide to the Daily Acts That Make Up a Catholic Life by Melissa Musick

This collection of prayers, crafts, devotionals and recipes will help readers make room in their busy lives for mystery and meaning, awe and joy.

This beautifully designed book will help readers celebrate Catholicism throughout the years, across daily practice and milestones. Like the most useful field guides, it is divided into user-friendly sections and covers such topics as the veneration of relics, blessing your house, discovering a vocation, raising teenagers, getting a Catholic tattoo, planting a Mary garden, finding a spiritual director, and exploring your own way in the tradition.

This actually might be the perfect "Easter season" book to read. Remember, we've got 50 days of Easter after Lent is done. It certainly would be a great gift for new Catholics. It's one of those books with the practical stuff about living the Catholic life. I remember I had questions about how to do Eucharistic adoration, what the Triduum is, how to fast and "give things up" for Lent, and much more.

I did not have questions about Catholic tattoos, consecrated virginity, planting a Mary garden or Catholic tattoos, but if you do, this is your book. They cover a lot of ground!