Worth a Thousand Words: Sun Protection

Sun Protection, Karin Jurick

Well Said: No such thing as supernatural

There's no such thing as the supernatural. Everything, by definition, is natural. But you have to find out what the rules are.

Jack McDevitt, The Devil's Eye

We are about to become missionaries.

Yep. That’s it, in a nutshell: You and I, and the people in our parishes, and the whole church, are about to become new missionaries in a new land — in the vast, untamed and often faithless jungle where “live streams” leave no room for casting out into the deep, and bear no relation to living waters. In the neighborhoods, towns and cities where people have been so long subjected to relativistic engagement, that almost everything has become unfamiliar and strange to them.

Taking our cue from the Incarnate Word — who chose not simply to preach to us about right and wrong, but to live among us, and know us in the fullness of our humanity before he saved us — we are going to purposely push past where we are now, out of our bubbles and our safe-feeling familiarities, to meet others where they are.

The Anchoress boils down the Convocation of Catholic Leaders for us. A great piece. Read it and become inspired. I did.

Hash Brown Frittata

This one's a real find and perfect for meatless Fridays — easy, filling, cheap. Oh, and delicious!

Get it at Meanwhile, Back in the Kitchen.

Well Said: Taking Christ into the world

Sometimes it may seem to us that there is no purpose in our lives, that going day after day to this office or that school or factory is nothing else but waste and weariness. But it may be that God has sent us there because but for us Christ would not be there. If our being there means that Christ is there, that alone makes it worthwhile.

Caryll Houselander, Reed of God

Genesis Notes: Wrestling With Faith and a New Name

GENESIS 31 - 33

These are action-packed chapters. Jacob realizes it isn't safe to have such success when Laban can take it away. He packs up for home, faces down his angry father-in-law, prepares for meeting his presumably angry twin, and ... most famously ... wrestles with an angel, who gives him a new name.

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, Léon Bonnat

One thing you've got to say about Jacob. His life was never boring. Or was it? I bet that during those years of exile, working to win Rachel, supporting a growing family, finding a way around unreasonable father-in-law demands, life must have seemed mundane. Frustrating probably. Just like the way we feel when working every day, dealing with family issues, and so forth.

What becomes really clear is that those long, boring, mundane years wrought a change in our trickster.

Several things stand out about God in these chapters: First He keeps His promises. He stayed with Jacob as He promised at Bethel, even though Jacob was gone for a full 20 years. Also as promised, He gave Jacob descendants and is taking him back to Canaan safely, protecting him from Laban's wrath. Secondly, God does not depend on perfect people but uses even human failings to advance His plan. And third, He protects His own, intervening if and when it is necessary. ...

What Jacob does with his fear [of Esau's anger when they meet again] shows how far he's come in 20 years. He takes immediate action to protect his family and herds by dividing them up, and then attempts to pacify his brother and perhaps hold him off a bit by sending ahead a series of herds as presents to him. But most importantly, he prays.  ...

The young Jacob longed for what God promised him and did anything and everything in his power to get there. The mature Jacob continues to want what God has for him and does what is prudent to move ahead, but his prayer shows that he knows he is in God's hands and wants to work with him.

Genesis, Part II: God and His Family

Even though Jacob is a changed man, that doesn't mean he is done wrestling. As he is alone, the night before his meeting with Esau, a man wrestles with him. Later it is revealed that Jacob has been wrestling with God (or at the very least God's messenger). This evokes a lot of images for us, even if our own wrestling is less physical than Jacob's. Doesn't our own wrestling with God and faith leave us changed, even if our name remains the same?

I myself never realized just how imbued Jacob's story is with wrestling. Right down to the moment when Esau's wrestling hold turns into something very different.

the image of wrestling has been implicit throughout the Jacob story: in his grabbing Esau's heel as he emerges from the womb, in his striving with Esau for birthright and blessing, in his rolling away the huge stone from the mouth of the well, and in his multiple contendings with Laban. Now, in this culminating moment of his life story, the characterizing image of wrestling is made explicit and literal. ...

Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell upon his neck. This is, of course, the big surprise in the story of the twins: instead of lethal grappling, Esau embraces Jacob in fraternal affection.

Robert Alter, translation and commentary on Genesis

This series first ran in 2004 and 2005. I'm refreshing it as I go. For links to the whole study, go to the Genesis Index. For more about the resources used, go here.

Well Said: Fireworks in your brain

The Library didn’t only contain magical books, the ones which are chained to their shelves and are very dangerous. It also contained perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren’t also dangerous, just because reading them didn’t make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangerous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader’s brain.”

Terry Pratchett, Soul Music

Worth a Thousand Words: Philippine Duman

The makings for Philippine duman
via EatingAsia where you can get details on this artisanal product.

Worth a Thousand Words: A Study for a Horse and Rider

Peter Paul Rubens, A Study for a Horse and Rider
via Arts Everyday Living

Well Said: My stories affect my Christianity, restore me ...

I stray, and then my stories pull me back if I listen to them carefully. I have often been asked if my Christianity affects my stories, and surely it is the other way around; my stories affect my Christianity, restore me, shake me by the scruff of the neck, and pull this straying sinner into an awed faith.

Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water

Well Said: Literature

Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.

Terry Pratchett, Soul Music

Worth a Thousand Words: Five Bighorn Sheep

Five Bighorn Sheep, Colorado Nature Photography

Genesis Notes: Growth and Testing

GENESIS 29 & 30

These chapters are interesting. Jacob, avoiding Esau's anger, is off to seek his fortune. He's been used to getting his own way through trickery and his own wits. but now he's going to come up against other people who are just as wily as he is. And who are also used to getting their own way.

This doesn't make Jacob any less determined, but it does mean it's an opportunity for growth and change. When the chips are down, how do we react? It is this which forms our character.

Also in these chapters, the focus is on family. Jacob falls for Rachel, works to earn her and then is fobbed off with first-born sister Leah. We greatly feel the injustice for Jacob and Rachel. But we also now have Leah in the mix. She longs for her husband's love and is denied repeatedly. And Jacob is continually dealing with his tricky father-in-law who wants nothing more than to cheat him. This is both humbling and serves to teach lessons.

It is not done thus in our place, to give the younger girl before the firstborn. Laban is an instrument of dramatic irony: his perfectly natural reference to "our place" has the effect of touching a nerve of guilty consciousness in Jacob, who in his place acted to put the younger before the firstborn. This effect is reinforced by Laban's referring to Leah not as the elder but as the firstborn (bekhirah). It has been clearly recognized since late antiquity that the whole story of the switched brides is a meting out of poetic justice to Jacob—the deceiver deceived, deprived by darkness of the sense of sight as his father is by blindness, relying, like his father, on the misleading sense of touch. ... *

Jacob has a visceral sense of just what his actions felt like to Esau.

God shows himself in this family struggle as he has through every family we've encountered in Genesis. I think about how he reveals himself through the everyday like breeding sheep and the big events like Leah's children. No special dreams or spoken voices are needed. God's there through everything in this story of our long-ago ancestors in faith.

Jacob and Rachel at the Well, Francisco Antolínez

*Quote from Robert Alter's translation and commentary of Genesis. This series first ran in 2004 and 2005. I'm refreshing it as I go. For links to the whole study, go to the Genesis Index. For more about the resources used, go here.

Well Said: The common people and the high lords

The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends. It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace. They never are.

George R.R. Martin, Game of Thrones

Worth a Thousand Words: Return from fishing, dragging the boat

Return from fishing, dragging the boat; Joaquim Sorolla y Bastida

Save Send Delete Review of Seeking Jesus in Everyday Life

Danusha Goska has published a thoughtful and generous review at her blog, Save Send Delete.

Here's a bit:

Seeking Jesus in Everyday Life: Prayers and Reflections for Getting Closer is one of the weightiest little books I've ever read. There are just 209 pages of main text, and each page has few words. I open randomly to page one hundred and I find a three-sentence quote from the Gospel of Luke, a brief, one-paragraph quote from Saint Augustine, and ten sentences of reflection from Davis. The few words that appear on each page, though, like the words in a rich poem, are dense with meaning. They are the kind of words that cause the reader to pause and ponder. [...]

Davis wants this book to be an aid to other Christians in their prayer life. Online reviews attest to its value and success at just that. ...

I think Seeking Jesus has another use. I think this would be a great gift to an open-minded Christophobe. There are a lot of people these days who insist that all Christians are violent bigots. Jesus is certainly the main character of this book, but Davis is a very appealing sidekick. She is humble, eager to learn, thoughtful, and patient. I think giving this book as a gift to someone trying to understand a modern American Christian's interior life would be a very charitable act.

Do go read it all. It gives a wonderful overview coupled with Goska's feelings about the book.

Then stop by Amazon to pick up your own copy!

Hansel and Gretel - on SFFaudio

Jesse, Maissa, and I discuss the classic fairy tale, Grimm Brothers style, at SFFaudio. Our discussion is preceded by my unabridged reading of the folk tale.

A good time was had by all. (Except, of course, by the wicked old witch. That goes practically without saying.) Join us!

Worth a Thousand Words: Snow, Moon, Flowers

Sakai Hôitsu; Snow, Moon, Flowers

Well Said: Love and marriage and the right room

It seems like people make the mistake of thinking love is about the bedroom. It's not. It's about the emergency room. Love and marriage are about who will sit there and wait.

Stephen Tobolowsky

Truer words were never spoken.

National Catholic Register Review of Seeking Jesus in Everyday Life

A lovely review from Sarah Sarah Reinhard at National Catholic Register.

Among other things she says:

"This is about forming a friendship that will last through eternity," Davis writes. And that's exactly the foundation she's set for each reader of this volume.

Go read the rest at NCR and then stop by Amazon to pick up your own copy!