All In Good Fun: Taskmaster

This is a British comedy show that you can see here on YouTube. It is ostensibly a game show but really is watched for the comedy.

Taskmaster Greg Davies set a series of simple and bizarre challenges to five comedians who are the contestants.  The tasks – usually performed alone, but sometimes in teams – are funny and challenging.

The first season included such things as doing something that will look impressive in reverse, cooking a meal using ingredients representing every letter of the alphabet (this one had us looking up what begins with X), making a huge block of ice disappear, and drawing a picture while riding on the back of a trotting horse.

Part of the fun comes in listening to the contestants justify their methods and results — they are comedians, after all, and can get hilariously creative as they think outside the box.

We just finished season one and I'm delighted to see that there are eight more seasons awaiting us.

Queen of the Court of Carnival Flowers

Helen Guenther, Queen of the Court of Carnival Flowers in San Antonio, 1911
via Traces of Texas

To the Victor Belong the Spoils!

My hero!

I was worried I was going to have to get to know the neighbors over more than a cup of sugar. Going door to door to borrow a roll of toilet paper is more of an ice breaker than I really want. But we'd been searching stores since last Friday without success.

Then Tom returned triumphant! He snagged one of the four packages at the store!

And there was great rejoicing!

Under lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, Italians break out in song from rooftops, balconies and windows.

ROME — It started with the national anthem. Then came the piano chords, trumpet blasts, violin serenades and even the clanging of pots and pans — all of it spilling from people’s homes, out of windows and from balconies, and rippling across rooftops.

Finally, on Saturday afternoon, a nationwide round of applause broke out for the doctors on the medical front lines fighting the spread of Europe’s worst coronavirus outbreak.

“It was from our hearts, to say thanks and show that we can get past this,” said Emma Santachiara, 73, who came out onto the terrace of her apartment in the Monteverde section of Rome to clap with her granddaughters.

Here's a lovely story from the New York Times, which is free (woohoo!) so go read it all. It will lift your spirits! (Thanks to Patsy for pointing it out.)

Inspiration – Daily Mass from Bishop Barron's Chapel

From Word on Fire:

Friends, in an effort to continue the practice of our faith in these trying times, when many parishes have closed due to restrictions around the coronavirus, we invite you to join us online for daily Mass from Bishop Barron's chapel, celebrated either by Bishop Barron himself or by Fr. Steve Grunow, CEO of Word on Fire.

The video will be posted below at 8:15am ET each day.

Finally, please continue to pray for all those affected by the coronavirus.

There's also a link to a virtual tour of the chapel. Get it all here.

We are merely here as pilgrims

We are now at the end of 1761. Today the New Year of 1762 had begun. How many saw the beginning of the year that has just gone but did not live to see its end! We should give thanks to God that we are allowed to see its conclusion. But do we know whether we shall see the end of this year? Certainly, many will not see it. Who knows if we shall not among this number? A year must dawn for us that will be our last.

We should awaken our faith and strive for the remainder of our lives to live according to the maxims of our faith. Why should we wait until death overtakes us and finds us living according to the maxims of the world? Let us awaken our faith to realize that this earth is not our true home but that we are merely here as pilgrims.

Our faith will give us confidence in our difficulties, teaching us that whoever prays will be saved. May our faith make us always live with the thought of eternity. Let's keep ever before our eyes this great thought - everything in this world comes to an end, whether it be prosperity or adversity. Eternity alone never ends.

St. Aphonsus Liguori

This seems just as appropriate for right now as for the beginning of a new year. Faced with a pandemic, appropriately happening during Lent when we repent and turn again toward the Lord, we are nudged (or shoved) into self-reflection. We're not so different from the folks in 1762.

Receiving Line

Belinda Del Pesco, Receiving Line

UPDATED: Help in coping with corona virus — Homeschooling Help, Free school age audiobooks, free Magnificat online

Free audiobooks for those home from school

B.J. Harrison from The Classic Tales podcast has a great resource.

Do you have kids at home right now? I've decided to release a few titles for free through my website to help those who may be home from school. The titles are selected for those in grades K-12.

They will remain free for the duration of the COVID-19/Corona virus outbreak.

You can find the free selections by tapping this text link.

Please note: new customers will need to create an account and will be automatically subscribed to our newsletter. I'm sorry I don't have a way around this. Feel free to unsubscribe immediately.

Further note: One of my distributors has approached me, and we are issuing a longer list of free audiobooks to schools. If your school has access to digital audiobooks, they may have access to a longer list of free audiobooks from myself and other publishers.

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HOMESCHOOLING HELP

How to Homeschool Temporarily (in the Event of Quarantine)

I liked the original post from Darwin Catholic when it first came out. Now I see there are further explanations, which I myself would find valuable were I in the unfortunate situation of having to take on my children's schooling. As I have a friend who is now faced with that very thing — and who has the same exact feelings I would have in her place — I submit these pieces which seem very helpful.

• How to Homeschool Temporarily (in the Event of Quarantine)
• How to Homeschool Temporarily, Part 2 -- the Little Kids
• How to Homeschool Temporarily, Part 3 -- The Middle Grades

Bonus: I also really liked Darwin's post about breaking infection connections. So here's Social Networks and Pandemics.

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Free Online Magnificat

During this challenging time, many of the faithful may be unable to attend Mass.
Magnificat is honored to provide complimentary access to our online version to help people pray from home.

Get it here. Just click on the magazine page image to read it.

Just one more reason to love Whataburger ... and Texas

Photo: Anita Kay Duran / Facebook

Whataburger Delivers Food To H-E-B Workers Working Long Hours to Keep Shelves Stocked

Whataburger decided to help out their fellow Texans working at H-E-B in New Braunfels by bringing them food.

H-E-B has been dealing with a ton of customers panic buying as fears of coronavirus grow, which has led to a major shortage of supplies and tons of long hours for H-E-B workers trying to keep the shelves stocked for customers.

The long lines didn't stop Whataburger workers from helping, though. They brought tons of food to their fellow Texans in their time of need.

Texas Memes

Sunday in a Time of Canceled Mass

In Dallas all Masses are cancelled through March 29 and we were pondering how to keep the day holy in a special way.

We're going to:

• Read the Mass readings aloud (courtesy of Word Among Us which I have on my Kindle, but you can get them at the USCCB)
• Listen to Bishop Barron's Sunday homily (read or listen at Word on Fire)
• The Our Father and our own prayers of the faithful, ending with the Act of Spiritual Communion below.

I especially wanted to share this prayer with everyone, which is wonderfully appropriate for now ... but really is good for anytime. I came across it in A Year With the Eucharist and was struck by its beauty.

My Jesus, I believe that you are present in the Most Holy sacrament. I love you above all things: I desire to receive you into my soul. Since I cannot now receive you sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart. I embrace you, and I unite myself entirely to you, as if you had already come. Do not permit me to be ever separated from you.

Jesus, source of all my good, my sweet love, wound, inflame this heart of mine, that it may always burn for you.

Act of Spiritual Communion,

Alphonsus de Liguori

You are all in my prayers as we go through uncertain days together.

Panic in a Time of Corona Virus

I always thought I'd read so many apocalyptic scenario books that I'd be ready for quick decisions in a panic.

Then I went to pick up a prescription at the local grocery store and was bemused by how full the parking lot was. Was surprised at no carts. Was amused at every single line open and full. Aha. This is that panic I'd been hearing about.

Then Hannah called, saying that she was at our favorite store and all the bread and meat were flying off the shelves.

Which is how I found myself vaguely wandering the aisles with a bag of lemons, three onions, and four pork chops. Wondering, what do I buy now? (I mean - without a list how do I even do this?)

All that reading of World War Z, The Stand, etc. did me no good at all!

You want bonkers? Dabangg delivers.

This masala film delivers entertainment and action, though not always in a way that we can agree with. Hannah and Rose discuss the 2010 Salman Khan film Dabangg, about a corrupt cop who lives fearlessly. This is the end of their cop movie series.

Get it at An American's Guide to Bollywood.

Distant View of Niagara Falls

Distant View of Niagara Falls, Thomas Cole
public domain from the Art Institute of Chicago

Click here to see it larger and more glorious. I remember when an exhibit of the Hudson River School came to the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth. Tom and I went to see it. Simply magnificent. I loved all those paintings.

How are we to live in the age of corona virus?

C.S. Lewis has the answer and helps us anchor us in reality. Just substitute "corona virus" for "atomic bomb" (which had just been dropped during WWII three years before he wrote this).

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. "How are we to live in an atomic age?" I am tempted to reply: "Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents."

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors - anaesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things - praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts - not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

C.S. Lewis, essay "On Living in an Atomic Age"

A Movie You Might Have Missed #5: A Perfect World

It's been 10 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.

5. A Perfect World

In Texas in the fall of 1963, Kevin Costner is one of a pair of recently escaped convicts who take an 8-year-old boy hostage on their journey, which soon becomes a journey with just Costner and the boy. The little boy has never known his father and his childish innocence sparks fatherly feelings in Costner.

Meanwhile, Clint Eastwood is the Texas Ranger tracking them down. Eastwood knows about Costner's troubled past and although he must capture him, Eastwood has a certain level of sympathy for him personally as well. Gradually we see that there is a constant contrast between the flight and the manhunt, the fatherless and those who could fill the fatherly roles. This is an understated movie but it is hard to match its examination of good versus evil, the consequences of the past on the present, and the strength of its statement against senseless violence. Also probably Kevin Costner's best performance.

Gospel of Matthew: Jesus Was Amazed

Matthew 8:5-13

There's a lot packed into this episode. Here are a few things that amazed me.

George Martin points out an important detail that I had noticed but not realized the significance of, namely the reason this episode is unique.

Jesus healing the servant of a Centurion, by the Venetian artist Paolo Veronese

10 When Jesus heard this, he was amazed--the only time in Matthew's gospel that Jesus is amazed or surprised. Jesus is so amazed that he comments on his amazement. He turns from the centurion and seys to those following him, "Amen, I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith." Jesus notes the faith of the centurion--the centurion's confidence that Jesus has such authority over afflictions that he is able to heal with a simple word of command. This is the first mention of or praise of a person's faith in the Gospel of Matthew--and the faith-filled person is not a Jew but a Gentile companion. No one in Israel--that is, no Jew--has demonstrated such faith in Jesus as has this Gentile centurion. Jesus' disciples, whom he is now addressing, are included in the no ones; they have a "little faith" (6:30) but not such faith as has the centurion. Jesus is amazed that he has found such great faith in a Gentile.

Bringing the Gospel of Matthew to Life

William Barclay looks more closely at the centurion and finds there is more that is special than his faith in Jesus.

There was something very special about this centurion at Capernaum, and that was his attitude to his servant. This servant would be a slave, but the centurion was grieved that his servant was ill and was determined to do everything in his power to save him.

That was the reverse of the normal attitude of master to slave. In the Roman Empire slaves did not matter. It was of no importance to anyone if they suffered, and whether they lived or died. Aristotle, talking about the friendships which are possible in life, writes: "There can be no friendship nor justice toward inanimate things; indeed, not even towards a horse or an ox, nor yet towards a slave as a slave. For master and slave have nothing in common; a slave is a living tool, just as an inanimate tool is a slave." ...

It is quite clear that this centurion was an extraordinary man, for he loved his slave. ...

Daily Study Bible Series, The Gospel of Matthew

This is important to remember because we so often think of slavery in a modern way, with lots of chances for the slave and the master to be friends. The ancient reality was depressingly different a lot of the time.

Lastly, I really like this thought on how to apply this to our own lives.

The Roman centurion offers us a model for approaching Jesus in prayer. He does not rush in and tell Jesus how to solve his problem. Rather, he comes to Jesus in his dire situation and humbly states his need. "Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully" (8:6). He leaves to the Lord the way the problem will be solved.

Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture: Gospel of Matthew

This reminds me of Mary at the wedding feast at Cana. Having stated the couple's need for wine, she just turns to the servers and says, "Do whatever he tells you." I myself can be awfully bossy, telling God just how a certain problem should be solved. Yes, sometimes we know what our petition is and what we need, but so often God's got a surprising solution. We need to humbly present our need and trust.

This series first ran in 2008. I'm refreshing it as I go.

Two Sisters

Two Sisters, Pierre-Auguste Renoir

One of the happiest nights of my adult life

One rainy Sunday a few years ago, Isabel, Owen, and I decided to pass the afternoon by watching a DVD of The Fellowship of the Ring, that movie about hobbits and elves and Orcs that we'd been hearing about. One hundred and seventy-eight minutes later, during which we neither moved nor spoke, we looked at each other, eyes glazed. We walked straight to the car, drove to the video store, and rented The Two Towers and The Return of the King. It was getting on dusk when I pulled into the Kentucky Fried Chicken down the hill and bought dinner.

My kids were shocked. Happy, but shocked. What was going on with Mom? KFC? I wondered that myself. But we were hungry and the chicken was hot and we had five more hours of Viggo Mortensen to watch. Fifteen minutes after I pulled into the KFC, we were back on the sofa with the bucket on the coffee table, eating mediocre chicken and mashed potatoes and biscuits and watching The Two Towers. It was one of the happiest nights of my adult life and my children get dreamy and nostalgic talking about it.

[here we're skipping her description of making perfect fried chicken from a Thomas Keller recipe, which was eaten without comment by her family after hours of labor]

Soon I was left with plates of picked-over bones and a ravaged kitchen. One of these days I will forget the evening ever happened. I suspect Mark and our children already have. But that night we ate KFC on the sofa and watched The Two Towers? That, we will never forget.

Jennifer Reese; Make the Bread, Buy the Butter

This book is so entertaining. I appreciate the analysis of whether it is better to buy or make various standard food items — granola/make, Pop Tarts/buy — but I have never made anything from it. I have read it twice, however, because the author is just so darned entertaining. And honest.

Music Lesson

David Bles - Music Lesson
via Gandalf's Gallery, some rights reserved

I love this! These days she'd be checking her smart phone, but the scenario is the same.

Arriving at Amen: Seven Catholic Prayers That Even I Can Offer by Leah Libresco

When I'm lucky, I live like the disciples in the boat in the storm—prone to fear and doubt but held safely. Frequently, though, I wind up like Peter, overextended and floundering. Once he is stuck, Peter doesn't try to take charge and undo his mistake; he keeps flailing his way toward Christ. My prayer life often feels like this kind of thrashing in Christ's general direction, waiting and trusting that he'll reach across the gap I can't close on my own.

Leah Libresco was a public atheist, blogging on Patheos. And then she converted to Catholicism. This book, though, isn't really the story of her conversion to faith, although that is briefly included.

It is a different sort of conversion story. It's the story of someone learning to live her faith, of Libresco's "what next" after taking that big step of belief.

And that involves prayer, seven types of prayer, to be specific. Ranging from Confession to the Divine Office to the Mass and beyond, we get a good look at the prayer type and her own struggles with it. I often found really helpful reminders that my responsibility is to show up and pray, not to provide the fireworks (which are up to God, Libresco tells us).

Picking up the beads and following the structure of the prayer puts me in the presence of Mary and Christ. And, really, that is the extent of my responsibility when I'm praying. It's not for me to compel their intercession or force myself to achieve an insight into their lives. I just have to keep the rhythm so that I can follow without stumbling if anyone takes my hand.

Part of the delight of this book — yes I liked it that much, it is a delight — is the way Libresco's mind connects all sorts of things that would never occur to me. Shakespeare (a lot of it), folk ballads like Tam Lin, mathematics and science, Javert from Les Mis - all are wound together to help her (and us) make sense of the way God calls us to him through prayer.

This came out in 2015 so I am coming to it late, but don't miss it. It is wonderful Lenten reading and would be good for any time of the liturgical year.