Pansy and Peony

Kat wonders to which religious orders the Houses of Hogwarts correspond: Hufflepuff = Benedictines; does Ravenclaw = Dominicans or Jesuits?

I've been blessed to have many people point out with interest, reviews of Eat Pray Love before I made the mistake of innocently watching the movie. I have tried to read the book as it sits next my bed and stopped and started and stopped. I could tell you what I find offensive, but so many people are doing much better job than I am, so I'll share.

First, via Dinka, we have Time Magazine's review. Dinka was also generous enough to quote the money phrase on her Facebook page:

His take on Liz's year abroad as a whole, in fact, might have been that beautiful white people enjoy listening rapturously to moral lectures and fortune-cookie affirmations delivered by the old, the unattractive or the darker-skinned.

Next, Barbara Nicolosi at Church of the Masses with Fawn Pander Blather:

At its core, Eat, Pray, Love relates the tedious pilgrimage of a selfish, immature narcissist (don't think of that as a redundancy as much as an emphasis) who manages to evade true spirituality (in the sense of sacrifice and repentance) true connection with other persons (in the sense of sacrifice and repentance) and plot points (in the sense of sacrifice, and well, repentance.... Note to self: There's a great new talk on the core of the successful transformational story arc there....).

The events of the past year (and I promise I will post an update, I just have yet to figure out how to find the words) have left me with negative 300 tolerance of the notion of ending marriages to "find yourself". It's an open wound for me. I'm pretty much outraged that modern culture finds this acceptable. I could write a million entries on what's wrong with this concept, but for now I'll just say I have a real problem with hit books and movies celebrating such selfishness.

The last is Eat, Pray, Love...why bother? I think this one spoke to me most of all:

For me, it was a morality tale of a different kind: a warning against spiritual smugness. As I watched EPL, I wondered to myself, “How could someone so hungry for answers spend four months in the cradle of Christianity and not encounter a single soul who could — lovingly yet with an appropriate sense of urgency — show her the truth path to God? She found language lessons — what about FAITH lessons?”

I didn't understand this at all, and it disturbed me. I saw it as a slap in the face of my Italian/Catholic culture, which sort of brings us back to the Time Magazine quote.

I suppose I'll try again to read the book. Julia Roberts annoys the heck out of me, so I'm almost 100% sure I'll skip the movie.

A review of Theodore Dalrymple's book on sentimentality:

In his new book, he argues that sentimentality is the virus that is eating away at modern life. It destroys the sense of responsibility; it undermines human relationships; and it has a close affinity with aggression and violence.

[It] lies, [Dalrymple] says, in the Romantic idea that feelings must be expressed, and that passions and desires are innocent – which means that they deserve instant gratification. Tact, consideration, self-control and fortitude are cast aside: they indicate 'repression’, which is bad for you. Good manners are thus reduced to an undesirable psychological condition. But the cult of feeling can have more dramatic consequences than that. As Dalrymple notes, the lynch-law of the media now dictates that anyone who fails to show sufficient feeling in public (the Queen after Diana’s death, Kate McCann after the disappearance of her daughter Madeleine) will be denounced and denigrated.

This is what makes sentimentality so much worse than a mere windy emotionalism: at its core is a special kind of self-righteousness. You do not just have a feeling, whatever it may be (caring passionately about 'kiddies’, for example, even if the children in question are completely unknown to you); you have a warm glow of superiority in expressing that feeling and hence a righteous hatred of those who do not show it too. 'There is’, Dalrymple observes, 'always something coercive or bullying about public displays of sentimentality.’

Saw this at Lifehacker: Make your own spice blends with what you have instead of paying for a can of Old Bay or pumpkin pie mix or whatever.

Spotted in a combox at Insight Scoop: (emphasis added by me)

"Only the other day I saw in an excellent weekly paper of Puritan tone this remark, that Christianity when stripped of its armour of dogma (as who should speak of a man stripped of his armour of bones), turned out to be nothing but the Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light. Now, if I were to say that Christianity came into the world specially to destroy the doctrine of the Inner Light, that would be an exaggeration. But it would be very much nearer to the truth. The last Stoics, like Marcus Aurelius, were exactly the people who did believe in the Inner Light. Their dignity, their weariness, their sad external care for others, their incurable internal care for themselves, were all due to the Inner Light, and existed only by that dismal illumination. Notice that Marcus Aurelius insists, as such introspective moralists always do, upon small things done or undone; it is because he has not hate or love enough to make a moral revolution. He gets up early in the morning, just as our own aristocrats living the Simple Life get up early in the morning; because such altruism is much easier than stopping the games of the amphitheatre or giving the English people back their land. Marcus Aurelius is the most intolerable of human types. He is an unselfish egoist. An unselfish egoist is a man who has pride without the excuse of passion. Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows any body knows how it would work; any one who knows any one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners." --G.K. Chesterton

Seven Quick Takes is being hosted at Betty Beguiles this week.

1. I love coffee. I love cake. I love coffee and cake. I love coffeecake. I love coffee and coffeecake even more when I'm enjoying it with friends. And doesn't coffee and cake taste even better when eaten off cute dishes?

2. I never used to give much thought to cocktails, but between my sister introducing me to Cosmopolitans and some radio show's putting daiquiris into my head, I've been having fun this summer exploring the world of the blender and the shaker.

3. Which puts me in mind of this treasure from the early days of St Blog's: Tom of Disputation's Assumption Swizzle. "...drink only for cheer, lest it lead you to sin, and drink only one, lest it lead you to dormition. "

4. Which makes me think of this fine piece of literature:

Seriously, this book is a scream. Maybe the Assumption Swizzle will make it into the next edition.

5. We have one of these living in the shrubs around our front door.

6. Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria, has over 1 million residents. Did you know that? I didn't, until this week.

7. I have so many quotations posted at Happy Catholic starred in my Google Reader. Here's a couple:

We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink. -- Epicurious

The Magi set out because of a deep desire which prompted them to leave everything and begin a journey. It was as though they had always been waiting for that star. -- Pope Benedict XVI

For the Staple-to-Forehead file:

The life of prayer is much deeper than the intelligence or the senses can perceive. Even when prayer is poor and distracted, provided that it is made with sincerity and faith, God can communicate secretly with the soul. He puts into it the treasures of light and the power of peace that is often made manifest at other times in life instead of just during prayer itself. And if one perseveres despite times of aridity, there will always be moments when God visits and makes his presence felt.

The Beltway Mosses are happily settling into our new home (which needs a nickname, I suppose). My husband's after me to hang pictures, but there are two rooms I want to paint before I hang pictures.

So it's off to Lowe's this morning, coupons and paint chips in hand. Here's my question: I have about half a can of primer left from a previous project. I need primer for this project, but much more than half a can. Do I...

a. mix this primer with the new primer (which will be of a different brand)?

b. paint one wall with this primer and the rest with the new primer?

c. Stop anguishing over half a can of three-year-old primer, toss it, and start fresh?

Now that I write it all out... I think I'm going to go with c.

Now: should I prime the ceiling?

The other day I accompanied my five youngest children and three of the the neighborhood children along with their mother to the park. During a break in the shade, the 11-year-old boy looked at my left hand and asked "you're married?!?" I stared at him blankly for a second because I never had a child ask me this with such interest. Ever. He was genuinely intrigued by my answer. (Of course my immediate second thought was to answer "yeeeaaah...I guess you can say that...by the grace of God..." But that's another story altogether. Or is it?)

Cisco chimed in "you ask me that everyday! I keep telling you my Dad's not my step-dad, my mom's not my step-mom!"
"I know, I just wasn't sure. Everybody-most people-have a stepdad or a stepmom."
Then Matthew went on to ask what a stepparent was and how he would be afraid of having a stepparent.

Interestingly enough, I thought his mother was married because she referred to her live-in boyfriend as her "husband". I have been seeing this more and more-"this is my husband. This is my wife,". No, you're not. No ring, no license, no same last names, kids perhaps, but nothing holding you down whether you want to leave or go.

Facebook is an interesting place because you really see how people's lives are unfolding through their status'. I know I'm no exception. I currently can see an old friend who has children with their live-in significant other and the relationship is not doing well. Come the end of the school year, that person is leaving. Lots of people are replying that it's not good to stay for the sake of the children. I believe there is truth to this. A relationship that can't be saved won't get better because there are children. But while I think children are not necessarily an incentive to stay in a lousy relationship, they are a good enough reason to assess what the problem is and turn a lousy relationship into a good one, if it's at all possible. Marriage is a good reason to do this, period. Do the same rules hold true when there is no marriage? I want to say "no." If the original idea when a couple first got together, when love was easy before life made it a bit more challenging, was never to commit, why would that change for the better when the rose colored glasses are removed?

Of course this brings me back to the very logical reason why abstaining until marriage just makes plain old sense. Why have children, be tied to people that it may turn out you don't even like? Marriage certainly is not a sudden sure all; it's hard. I know there are little things each day that when you are so wrapped up in this other person's life, it's so easy to feel slighted by common, everyday mistakes. What happens when you take commitment out of that equation? If I were cooking dinner, doing laundry, taking care of children each day for someone who won't commit, I'm sure by month six, I'd be throwing the spaghetti at his head instead of placing it lovingly in front of him each night. By month six and 2 days, each and every moment would be a chorus of "why won't you marry me? Why won't you marry me? Why won't you marry me?" "Oh, you like those white socks? Imagine if you married me you'll have that everyday for the rest of your life!" By month 7, all respect I may have had for this man will be lost, and the disdain I have will clearly show. By month 8, I'll be so resentful that I'm being used, I'll be off doing "my own thing".

I know, I tend to lean towards being a shrew, so maybe I'm not the best example. However, I'm not that extraordinary in many ways, and I'm sure many relationships have followed this same path.

When I was trying to decide this morning between going back to bed after I got the teenager up for her Regents and seeing the husband off to work, I procrastinated by reading article on the lovely Helen Mirren.

In it she talks about feminism and sexuality (as if there's another subject talented actresses talk about these days).

I was almost pleasantly surprised when I read this:

On women's sexuality in the seventies and eighties: "The Playboy Mansion, coke, and the rise of all tha--[Robert] Guccione and [Hugh] Hefner always pushed it as liberation, but it didn't seem like that to me. That was women obeying the sexualized form created by men--though maybe we always do that, because we want to be attractive. But I was kind of a trailblazer because I demanded to do it my own way. I'd say, 'I'm not having it put on me by someone else.'

Yes, exactly. She gets it, at least some of it. Hugh Hefner isn't what God intended for women, but just what Hugh Hefner intended for women. And it's distorted. But then she added:

I didn't want to be the sort of puritanical good girl with a little white collar who says, 'Don't shag until you get married.' "

Oh well. Missed the point. People are so worried about seeming "religious", "puritanical", "judgmental" that everyone is losing sight of "practical". Being stuck with for life, trying to raise healthy children with someone you don't like because you didn't care enough to get to know them before you started reproducing just makes no darn sense. Maybe for the Helen Mirren's of the world who have access to more material goods that can help, but not for the average working person who needs the teamwork and extra hands of two parents.

When deviancy from the ethos becomes the ethos, calling virtue bourgeois, the servant is deprived of his royal dignity as a child of God, and the king is absolved of his duty to revere those he governs. --Father Rutler

I know many of you prayed hard for us, and I can honestly said God is listening and has granted many, many graces.

This has been a difficult year and this story isn't over. Time and God will tell what's in store. I've learned a lot about myself, marriage and relationships, turning to God and humility. That part is a blessing, I do know that much.

At this point, I'm tired of thinking, tired of wondering, tired of worrying. I've just put it all in God's hands and asked Him to take the reigns.

Priests will soon be 'inundated' with exorcism requests, asserts author

“Soft forms of occultism are like Wicca and New Age,” he explained, adding that “Harry Potter contributes to that with over 400 million books being sold.” The popular book series, he claimed, has helped educate “younger generations in the language and the symbolism of the occult.”

Although many young people have treated the books merely as “entertainment,” he observed, “it actually leads them more deeply into occult practices.

I have a lot of respect for Fr. Euteneuer, so I don't want to undermine anything he has to say, but I can honestly say that I have sadly, known many people who have opened the door free and clear for Satan in their lives, and I can't think of one who did so via Harry Potter. Sometimes I wonder if people get so caught up in issues like Harry Potter and dress wearing because they are easy roads to take in our spiritual lives. Or maybe I'm not that wary of Harry Potter because even though I enjoyed it, I thought it very silly and the people I associate with find it equally silly.

HT: Patrick Madrid via Facebook

The First Things article everybody's linking to today:

There is nothing wrong, or course, with fantasy or with what C.S. Lewis called Sehnsucht, the inconsolable longing in the human heart for "we know not what." What makes Kinkade’s cottage painting so dispiriting is that rather than being created to challenge or even inspire, to evoke in some way the desire for Heaven, it’s intended only to comfort. It’s sentimental.

Sentimentality, as literary critic Alan Jacobs says in a recent interview with Mars Hill Journal, encourages us to “suspend judgment and reflection in order to indulge deliberately in emotion for its own sake.” Reflection reinforces and strengthens true emotions while exposing those feelings that are shallow and disingenuous. Sentimentalists, however, try to avoid this experience of reality and try to keep people from asking questions by giving them pleasing emotions they have not earned. The shameless manipulation of our emotions, says Jacobs, is the ultimate act of cynicism.

One of the commenters links to this article, "The Painter of Lite™"

Sentimentality, [Mark] Jefferson admits, can be harmless. A penchant for Hallmark cards and posters of kittens playing with balls of yarn is not in itself a mortal sin. But when the misrepresentation of the world takes on a particular consistency and brittleness, darker consequences are possible. “The unlikely creature and moral caricature that is someone unambiguously worthy of sympathetic response has its natural counterpart in a moral caricature of something unambiguously worthy of hatred,” Jefferson concludes.

Which is why some observers have noted a relationship between sentimentality and brutality....

Sound familiar?

"To live in perpetual want of little things is a state, not indeed of torture, but of constant vexation."

--Samuel Johnson