Peony Moss: April 2003 Archives

Note to self:

Make wedding soup and freeze in individual portions, so as not to be caught unprepared when the next wave of colds hits the house.

How do we keep our kids from embracing the slacker life?

Over at HMS, Kevin Miller blogs a National Review Online article by John Derbyshire. Derbyshire discusses teenage children rejecting sports, school, their parents' values, their parents -- period.

Derbyshire points to the lure of a popular culture that glamorizes the bohemian life, in which it doesn't seem to take much hard work or talent to be rich and famous. (Just look at all those people who want to be the next American Idol.)

But is the glamour of pop culture the root of the problem? I have a cold today, and my head is swimming, so I'm not able to coherently suggest what else might be going on. Kevin mentiones an earlier Derbyshire column about fatherhood ("my children bore me so I delegate some of the child-rearing duties") that might provide a clue.

can't....form...sentences! I'll be curious to see what you think. I hope Greg Popcak comments on this, too.

This whole Santorum thing just shows how stupid we have become.

I wrote a little bit in the comments box, but I just wanted to share some particularly obtuse commentary from Sam Donaldson, roughly:

I don't get how Rick Santorum can say he doesn't have a problem with homosexuality, but does have a problem with homosexual acts. Can you say you disapprove of adultery, but have no problem with adulterers?

Perhaps part of the problem is that, in the popular mind, there is no difference between the orientation and the act. (In the popular mind, after all, chastity is freakish.) If Senator Santorum has something like, "I don't have a problem with people who experience same-sex attraction", would that have been a bit more clear?

"Intelligence is making distinctions." -- Hilaire Belloc

Peony's Friday Five

1. What was the last TV show you watched? If by "watched" you mean "was in the room while the show was on" that would be Dragon Tales. If you mean "selected and sat down to view" that would be last Tuesday's Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

2. What was the last thing you complained about? The garbage men skipping our trash pickup this morning. (Second time this month! What's up with that?)

3. Who was the last person you complimented and what did you say? I told my little Hambet what a good job he did in class this morning. He even said his name in the Hello Circle!

4. What was the last thing you threw away? Today's junk mail.

5. What was the last website (besides this one) that you visited? et cetera

Oh no!

Sinead O'Connor to retire from the music business!

What will we listen to? Whose CDs shall we buy? To whom shall we turn for intelligent, well-reasoned, morally grounded social commentary?

Seriously, when was the last time this woman had a hit record? I didn't know that she was even still in the music business.

In other entertainment news, I saw a few minutes of Michael Jackson's "home movies" last night. This guy is tragic. He reminds me of one of those animals bred in captivity that never can be released into the wild (for one thing, his nose would fall off completely.)

Culture of death watch: Women and babies to the back of the plane, please

An American passenger feels threatened by a Canadian mother's breastfeeding? Give me a break!

Thanks to jesus gil for the link.

There seems to be blame to go around in this situation, but is irrational accusation really the best response to personal inconvenience?

I have never been hassled for nursing in public, thank goodness. I don't get why people get so agitated about it in a society where women expose far more of their breasts wearing stylish clothing than they do nursing babies. The only place I've ever seen nursing mothers with their breasts exposed have been in illustrations (mostly photo illustrations for formula advertorials baby magazines.)

Coming soon to our blogroll!

Sparki has Fonticulus Fides up and running! What a cool title! I'll be permalinking tomorrow (right now hubby needs the computer.)

Thanks to Davey's mommy for the heads-up.

UPDATE: The link is up.

Bored with collecting quarters?

Nickel to Get Commemorative Back Side

The back side of the new 5-cent coin will commemorate the bicentennial of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase and the 1804-06 Lewis and Clark expedition. The U.S. Mint hopes to issue the nickels late this year or in early 2004....

My husband will be interested in this story. He is collecting the state quarters and Roosevelt dimes. I'm all for things like this -- I like things like commemorative stamps and coins, though I'm not a collector.

Several years ago George Will wrote a column in which he suggested that US currency depict American writers and artists instead of political figures -- for example, Mark Twain on the one dollar bill.

I like the Sacagewea dollar coins too. I hope they're still around if I have the opportunity to give gifts of money to little children. Woudn't it be the coolest thing to find a shiny gold coin under your pillow or in your shoes or Christmas stocking?

Unfortunately, I suspect dollar coins will be widely accepted in the US only when the dollar bill is withdrawn from circulation -- tough love from the US Mint!

An interesting read is coming:

Over at HMS Borg, Emily Stimpson is going to be posting from her 30 page paper, The Language of Motherhood in the Body, the Spirit, the Church, and the Trinity. Installment One is up today: "The Stirring Cry for the Mother.

I hope she will also post her paper on eating disorders. That sounds like it's going to be interesting, too.

Taking candy from a baby

I liked today's Bleat very much.

Mad Libs: "Life with a two-year-old" edition

Remember Mad Libs?

Here's one from a friend (mother of two sons, one two and a half and the other eleven months) that just about sums up what's going on at her house and ours:

_______ ran out of sight and stole a _____ that was suppose to be out of reach and put it in the _______. Mommy screamed "________" and grabbled the little one's _______ to keep it from happening again. There was a loud ______, signaling that the ______ was smashed into ________ pieces.

Thanks, Lynn! (and by the way, your hobbit name is Myrtle.)

Cute baby picture alert!

Over at Honk! Davey's daddy has posted an Easter picture-- and Davey's wearing the puppy outfit!

Hello there!

We had a nice Easter but oh, I'm so glad to be back!

We left for Pittsburgh on Friday afternoon. The drive up was a bit rocky; we ran into a lot of traffic (particularly around Frederick, Maryland, which is turning into a big traffic mess.) Then in western Maryland we ran into very dense fog. Once we got through that, it was time for the roller-coaster ride through the mountains of US 40 -- and poor Hambet got carsick. So we didn't roll in till pretty late. At least I got a chance to read the new encyclical on the way up. That has got to be one of the coolest things about being a Catholic in the 21st century -- being able to get the latest from the Holy Father with just a couple of mouse clicks.

The rest of the weekend went well. Hambet laid on the charm with a trowel and had his grandma wrapped two and three times around his little finger. Grandma did the Italian grandma thing and did her best to stuff us like geese. We had a good trip back (no carsickness, thanks to a different route and a touch of Dramamine.) Even the Pennsylvania Turnpike, one of the ghastliest roads in the USA, wasn't too bad.

This morning Pansy and I installed the new Easter "Regina Caeli" template. I'm looking forward to surfing around St Blog's and seeing who's returned from their Lenten blogbreaks; I also have much to do around the house. Maybe I'll get a chance to sneak out to the garden today. I'm seeing more and more little sprouts (lettuce, carrots, and spinach.) Two more eggplants sprouted, too!

Blessed Easter!

Ta Ta for Now.

We are leaving tomorrow to spend Easter with my husband's mother. I have quite a pile of stuff to do to get ready (mostly laundry.)

A blessed Easter to all -- especially to Sparki, a frequent visitor to our comments box, who will be received into the Church this Easter Vigil!

I'll see you all Easter Monday.

Peony

my love is....

Prepare your favorite recipe for a double crust pie. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Combine 3 cups one-inch slices rhubarb, 1 cup sugar, 1/2 tsp grated orange peel (optional), 3 Tbsp flour, a dash of salt.

Line your pie plate with the first crust, add your rhubarb filling, add the second crust. Bake at 400 degrees about 40 to 50 minutes.

This recipe is from an old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. The current edition's recipe for rhubarb pie involves froufrou ingredients (sour cream?), but it does have a recipe for a basic rhubarb crisp.

When my mom (who was raised on a North Dakota farm) makes rhubarb pie, she uses more rhubarb than 3 cups but just guesses the amount (update -- around 5 cups) -- she likes a nice heaping full pie that mounds up in the middle, not one of those sad sunken pies. She just tosses in sugar until it looks right -- the rhubarb is lightly frosted with sugar but not wallowing in it. I don't remember whether or not she uses flour, I will have to get back to you on that after Easter.

This old cookbook calls for a lattice crust, but my mom just uses a top crust.

I had trouble with my (inexpensive) pie pan discoloring when the rhubarb juice hit it. Next time I make a rhubarb pie I'm going to use a Pyrex pie plate.

I am not an accomplished pie cook at all; I need to work on mastering pies.

Last night's Buffy the Vampire Slayer

OK, so who saw it and wasn't at least a little creeped out? I was going to start a thread on this but Victor beat me to it.

My husband and I weren't sure whether this Caleb guy is meant to be a serious reflection on evil as a perversion of good, or just a lazy evil minister character. We were also wondering if Xander's fate doesn't have a clue to a possible spinoff premise.

My husband is still suspicious of Giles.

I did like the Star Trek and Falcon Crest jokes. And I am still holding on to the silly hope that Buffy will wake up and marry Xander. Maybe they can run off to England and start the Slayer Academy, and do occasional guest appearances on the spinoff.

Totally worth bookmarking:

Have You Ever Wondered What the Letters After the Names of Religious Indicate?

Thanks to Donna Marie for the link.

WOO HOO! Finished the fourth and last garden bed today! Now they are ready to be sectioned off and, in May, planted.

Progress on the other plants, too. A second eggplant seed sprouted and the marigold seedlings are coming along great. The lettuce is just peeking above the ground too. And all four of the rhubarbs have sent up leaves -- they live! they thrive!

Rhubarb looks kind of like red celery or Swiss chard. It grows in bunches of stalks that have deep green leaves. The stalks range from green to deep magenta red. (The green ones are the most tart.) You cut the stalks in the late spring and summer, and then let the plant replenish itself for the rest of the year. Only the stalks are edible; the leaves are poisonous (although it seems in the 1800's they were used medicinally.) Sometimes around here (Maryland) you can get it fresh in the supermarket or at a farmer's market. The plant comes back, year after year. My grandmother has plants that could be 70 years old -- they're huge!

The stalks are not eaten raw, and are too tart to eat by themselves. (In The First Four Years, Laura Ingalls Wilder tells how, as a new bride, she learned this lesson the hard way. She calls rhubarb "pieplant" in that book.) But with a little sugar, they can be chopped up and stewed, jellied, baked in pies or crisps, or frozen for later. Rhubarb also marries well with other fruits, especially strawberries.

A slice of rhubarb pie is one of life's sublime pleasures. The jingle from Bebopareebop Rhubarb Pie? It's all true. I'll be harvesting my first rhubarb next May or June. I can't wait.

Veggie Wars

Envoy Encore is fighting the Veggie Wars again: which Silly Song is truly the silliest?

A couple of weeks ago (well, three, according to the library) I checked out a couple of Veggie videos (The End of Silliness? and The Ultimate Silly Song Countdown.) They have been a huge hit here with the Maryland Mosses -- even my husband, who asssured us he wouldn't like them, has been watching the videos and humming the songs. One of Hambet's longest sentences yet --uttered over the weekend -- was "Want t' watch movie 'bout Veggies, please?"

Hambet has recently started "singing". He can't really carry a tune, but I'll hear him kind of reciting lyrics in a sing-song way: "Wheels on bus, round and round"; "A, B, C, D; F, G, LMNOP, Q, S, XYZ..." A couple of days ago I heard him crooning from the back seat: "ceeee-BUUUUUUUUUUU......" He has also been heard chanting, "Cheeseburger, cheeseburger!"

C! A! P! S! CAPS! CAPS! CAPS!

At this writing, the Washington Capitals are leading their playoff series against the Tampa Bay Lightning by two games. The next game's tomorrow.

I like hockey, though I don't get to follow it very closely. When I first got married, I didn't understand why my husband (a Pittsburgh native) liked hockey; I still had the old stereotype of goons and fights on my mind. One evening, as we were watching a game together, he pointed out a player and said, "See that guy skating backwards there? He's probably going 35 miles an hour and controlling the puck at the same time."

I was impressed, and started to study hockey a little bit, to be able to share a little in my husband's interest. My husband had been agitating for cable TV so he could watch some games. After the cable guy left, my husband settled down with the TV guide, looked for games, and yelled, "What's this? Where are the Penguins?" Alas, you don't get nightly coverage of Pittsburgh games in Washington. But sometimes you can get coverage of Washington games, and that's how I started following the Washington Capitals.

Now we don't have cable or a daily paper, so it's harder to follow the teams. You almost never get to see it on broadcast TV, unless ABC gets desperate on Saturday afternoon. (Cable wasn't that great a source anyway; Washington is not a big hockey town so the basketball teams -- pro and college -- tend to get most of the local cable coverage, and the Redskins eclipse everything. ESPN tends to favor showing Anaheim, New York, or Philadelphia.)

I'm tickled that the Capitals made it to the playoffs this year and are doing well so far. In past years they've made it to the playoffs, only to find get knocked out by Pittsburgh in the first round. But the Pens aren't in the playoffs this year, so maybe the Capitals will be able to advance to the semifinals this year.

I am pleased to see that there are four Canadian teams in the playoffs this year. But if the Capitals end up facing a Canadian team in the finals, who am I going to cheer for?

Let's try it again.

We have a free account with an outfit that allows us to host pictures, but sometimes we have trouble with the pictures loading correctly.

A nice weekend, with lovely weather. We did make it to the book sale -- no spectacular finds; I was hoping for some good Catholic books but the Religion table was pretty picked over -- not much left but stacks of Thomas "Care of the Soul" Moore and Sarah ban Breathnach books.

More digging in the garden. We finished the third bed and are halfway done with the fourth. It's taking a long time because I am double-digging the beds -- shoveling off the first 12 inches of topsoil, loosening the subsoil, replacing the topsoil, and raking in amendments. The premise behind double-digging is that it gets plenty of nutrients into the soil and improves the drainage. It seems to be working -- we got two inches of rain last week with no puddles in the garden beds. It's also hard work -- taking off 16 cubic feet of soil takes a while. Our soil is pretty poor -- the first two inches are okay, but then the heavy red clay starts, and then about a foot down is an incredibly hard layer of grey clay. I tried using a spade and then a fork to break up that layer; eventually I resorted to a small axe-like thing we found in our shed (I think it's called a mattock.)

While I've been doing all this digging, I've been turning up huge rocks, some the size of small melons. We had quite a rock pile built up on the patio, all rocks we'd pried up from the garden. We finally met our next-dorr neighbors this afternoon -- my husband was talking with them in the front and somehow the topic of rocks came up. They got all excited because they use those rocks in their landscaping. So our rocks found a new home and, three wheelbarrow loads later, everyone was happy.

More reflections on gardens tomorrow. Meanwhile, I am pleased to report that it looks like the rhubarb I planted last Saturday is starting to thrive -- two of the roots are beginning to show leaves, and the other two look like they're sending up new growth as well. Alas, not much progress to report on the lettuce, and none on the carrots....

new to the blogroll:

I have been meaning to add revolution of love to our blogroll for forever. I'm looking forward to the rest of their site going up; looks like there are all kinds of goodies to come....

See what happens when you forget to plan?

Lee Ann has been telling us all about her fantastic finds at a nearby book sale. Well, I have been neglecting to apply the principles of Catholic Time Management -- I forgot to write down on my calendar that today was the first day of the big annual book sale at a nearby school for girls. D'OH! I will have to see if my husband wants to go with me sometime this weekend (or will at least keep Hambet while I go) or I'll have totally missed the boat this year.

Yesterday we had a few hours of sunshine, so I was out there digging again in the garden. I am almost done loosening the subsoil of the third bed. Note to self: never do this again! Insist on raised beds the next time!

Another cool, rainy day today, though, so no garden work. Hambet did great in class this morning -- no crying, no snatching toys away from the other kids, eager participation in all the activities, no getting distracted by the bathroom or the pay phone.

New to our Blogroll:

El Camino Real (on hiatus for Lent)

Erik's Rants and Recipes: I thought we were going to be among the first to blogroll Erik, but I put it off and Alicia and Jeanetta beat us to it! Great minds may think alike, but greater minds are the first to strike. (I just made that up.) It's all to the good, you can check out any of our blogs and still be one click away from Erik's recipe for mushroom pasta.

Literarium and Spinsters.com

I also rearranged the blogroll a little bit, tidying up the order (alphabetical by blog title, more or less.) I also added a special section at the bottom for Silly PG-13 stuff.

More on Stockholm Syndrome

Mark Shea has an essay on it here.

Pansy fearlessly goes where Peony fears to tread

Pansy commented on my post on those who still dream in vain of women's ordination:

Speaking of femininity, why is it these women are seriously lacking when it comes to looking feminine?

Ok, I didn't want was too chicken to go there. I wish I could remember which blogeuse did that comparison of the mug shots of those nuns who were arrested for attempting to sabotage military equipment versus the lovely face of Mother Teresa. Those pictures said it all. UPDATE: It was Michelle. Thanks to Davey's mommy for the reminder.

A chilly, rainy day. The garden bed that I dug and hadn't filled in yet is now a pond.

On Saturday, when I bought my rhubarb, I picked some up for my friend (whose hobbit name is Iris Boffin of Needlehole.) Anyway, Iris had taken a day off from work today, so she came over for lunch and to pick up the rhubarb. We had a nice lunch at IHOP and then went over to the nursery and to a birdseed 'n' stuff type store to look around.

Iris and I have been friends since 1981. She is an avid gardener and knows all about animals and the outdoors. One of the nice things about my new gardening fever is that I can appreciate her knowledge so much more. It's fun to have another thing in common and to be able to swap things like fill dirt and plant cuttings. I will be consulting her for advice on bird feeders one of these days.

I would love to comment on the prayer service for women's ordination but I have nothing intelligent to say on it -- just a heavy sigh and a roll of my eyes. There is no logical way to approach this -- it takes a real conversion of heart to realize that being ordained is not the same as applying for a job or for college. You don't just walk up and say, "Here I am, I wanna stand in front of the church, wear a fancy stole, and order people around, ordain me." It practically takes deprogramming to understand that men and women are different and manifest the image of God in different ways. We're equal, yes, but not interchangeable, like the little pink and blue pegs in the Game of LIFE.

Is this another example of what Mark Shea calls Stockhom Syndrome in the Church (the laity identifying with heterodox formation)? Are these women and their supporters unwittingly buying into our culture's rejection of true femininity -- rejecting physical or spiritual maternity as "less than" spiritual paternity?

US TROOPS TAKE KEY PARTS OF BAGHDAD

The Crisis in Courtship

Jeanetta had juice -- mental and electrical -- enough to write a really greatblog on the problem of courtship.

It's such a shame. Young men and women are rushing to sex and only later getting to know each other, living with each other without getting married "to see if they're compatible." So many people say they want to get married...someday... and yet go about it in ways that seem calculated to wreck any chance of getting engaged, much less launching a lasting marriage. The unspoken pressure to delay marriage until you've finished school, started your career, "found yourself", etc., doesn't seem to be helping either.

more on the weather

I saw in yesterday's paper that a big storm rolled through upstate New York and caused a lot of people to lose their power.

Pansy, Jeanetta, hope you're okay!

The weekend went by too quickly, as usual. A grey, rainy day today, with rain and a little hail. So no gardening today. I was a seriously sleepy Mommy this morning -- the bed was so nice and warm, and my brain was so set on finishing its REM sleep....

Apologies to all, by the way, for the severe lack of content in my recent blogs. It seems like it's been garden, garden, garden, quiz, cute baby story (cute to me, anyway), garden, quiz, garden, garden. (My husband is also asking "aren't you done with that thing yet?" although he was asking that after the first weekend's work...) I'm psyched about the garden because this is the first time I've really planned one out instead of just sticking things in the ground. Anyway, I'm not done with "that thing" yet, but I should be done soon. We finished installing the mow strip this weekend. I also am about halfway through double-digging the northwest bed (future home of tomatoes and -- I hope -- eggplant.) I'll have one more bed to dig and then the heavy work will be over -- hooray!

On Saturday the nursery got some rhubarb in. I ended up planting four roots in what is now a dedicated rhubarb bed. How I hope they take! I also put in some garlic, with more to go in once I get the third bed finished.

Last week, I also tried starting some seeds indoors. So far some of the marigolds have started to sprout. No movement from the eggplant seeds, though. As for the outside beds, I see the first little sprouts of mesclun peeking above the soil.

Keeping Hambet out of the garden has been a real challenge. I've tried telling him all about the baby seeds (say that in your best little kid voice: baaaaaaaaaaaby seeeds!!!) and how we let the baby seeds sleep in the ground. I thought that was working, but last night, when I showed the indoor seedlings to my husband, Hambet got so excited about the baaaaaaaaaby flowers that he snatched one right out of the dirt to show Daddy.

Who are we to judge Christ's Bride?

"If Christ loved the Church, in spite of the iniquities she would commit, pretending to overlook them, who are we to see in the weaknesses and miseries of the Church a reason not to love her and even to judge her? Precisely we, who are so full of sin?" Father Cantalamessa asked today.

"Do we not think that Jesus knew the sins of the Church better than us?" the Capuchin continued. "Did he not know who he was dying for? Did he not know that among his disciples, one was betraying him, another denying him, and all fleeing?"

"But he loved this real Church, not the imaginary and ideal one. He died 'to make her holy and immaculate,' not because she was already holy and immaculate," Father Cantalamessa said in the presence of John Paul II and the Curia members gathered in the Redemptoris Mater Chapel in the Apostolic Palace.

more....

Spring forward!

Don't forget, Daylight Savings Time starts on Sunday.

1. How many houses/apartments have you lived in throughout your life? Eighteen. (My dad was in the military.)

2. Which was your favorite and why? Probably the center-hall colonial our family lived in in the early 80's. It had enough room for everything, it was within walking distance to school, church, and the pool, it had a big yard, nice neighbors.... As an adult, the condo my dh and I lived in before we moved to our house. Great location, convenient to everything (walking distance to Metro, even!), private, nice neighbors...it had an appealing solid feel to it, and even though it was close to two major roads, you couldn't see or hear the traffic.

3. Do you find moving house more exciting or stressful? Why? Well, exciting things are stressful by definition, aren't they? I usually am excited about moving -- new place, new opportunities, etc -- but I hate the details of moving -- the packing, the unpacking, etc.

4. What's more important, location or price? Sorry, this is a dumb question, like what's more important, food or water? Ultimately it's location (which affects the price, of course....)

5. What features does your dream house have (pool, spa bath, big yard, etc.)? I think my dream house is a Tudor, with leaded-glass windows and a brick front walk. The garage is not the first thing you see as you approach the house. The house is not hidden, but is still somewhat private, somewhat set back from the road. The front door is painted forest green and has a gleaming brass mail slot. There is a spacious foyer and an intelligently laid out kitchen with plenty of counter space. The dining room has a nice view and is painted daffodil yellow with gleaming white trim. The family room has built-in bookshelves, a big table for reading or playing board games, and plenty of little spaces where we can do our little hobbies and still be with each other. There is a mudroom adjacent to the back yard and the garage. The back yard is very private, with big trees and a velvety green lawn, but there is also plenty of room for gardens -- including a kitchen garden, a cutting garden, a Mary garden, a St Francis garden (for birds and butterflies), a blog garden (pansies and peonies), and a rhubarb garden. As long as we're dreaming, I wouldn't mind a year-round swimming pool in its own outbuilding, a conservatory with orange trees, a couple of chickens, a dog, and a staff to help me take care of all this real estate. Why don't we just put in a private chapel and then plop this whole extravaganza in Newport, Rhode Island?

Spring Fever Continues

just trying to seize the moment and get some more gardening done. Still working on amending the soil and leveling the beds. I have four patches of lettuce planted now, and I hope to get some carrots and spinach planted this evening. The two lavender plants in the front survived our cold snap.

A friend of mine come by yesterday evening to help me get a sandbox and bring it home (too big to fit in my trunk.) I set up the sandbox this morning and turned Hambet loose. He seems to like it, and most of the sand is still in the sandbox, but he soon was more interested in digging with me in the garden.

We came in for a drink. While I was pouring, Hambet turned on the TV, said hi to Mr Rogers, and promptly fell asleep right there in the chair.

Real life is just like the spiritual life

Lee Ann was kind enough to leave a recipe for eggplant parmagiana in our comments box (by the way, I am starting the eggplant seeds indoors.) She also was kind enough to leave the URL for her blog, The Literarium. From her mega-post on Mega-Merton:

I don’t think you can have any kind of interior or spiritual life until you stop seeing things as you would like them to be, or fear they are, and start seeing them as they really are. As long as you focus on an illusion of a thing, on your idea of how it is or ought to be, you cannot respond to that thing. You can only respond to your self-created illusion. Only when you dispense with illusion and see things as they are can you respond to them and value them.

It's almost depressing to think about how many problems -- from the tiniest personal issues to international issues -- arise from refusing to face things as they are instead of how one wishes they were.

Another good one:

This is why I have never liked the stripped-down, rather morbid Spartan Aesthetic of Protestantism and modern AmCatholicism. Nothing is less conducive to a connection with the majesty of God than a plain white box. Modern churches can be more like sensory deprivation chambers than churches. Plain walls with nothing to look at, a plain altar with nothing to look at, and an overall sense of being in a nicely appointed office building are the first things I call to mind when I think about modern churches. There is nothing religious about them. There is nothing that says you are in a special, sacred place for a special sacred purpose. Boring, uninspiring buildings push you farther and farther away from God. You can’t pay attention to Him when you’ve mentally fallen asleep. Maybe this is somewhat behind the craze for garish Hindu/ Mexican religious objects. After being deprived of spiritually inspiring, artistic rituals and worship aids, people are grasping for anything that will make faith lively. By excising the religious artistic tradition of the American Church, you are left with soul-numbing modernism or artificial, imported kitsch. Too many people lapse from faith because our houses of worship are so alienating and uninspiring. Beautiful churches can plant a seed of faith that True Religion can make grow. But something has to plant that seed.

There is a church not far from me that literally is a big white box. Whenever I go there I wish I had my sunglasses with me because of the darn glare. I feel like I'm in one of those 60's science fiction dystopia movies, where after great exertion the hero has finally found the villian's secret headquarters, and it turns out to be a single brilliantly lit but eerily silent room, housing the evil pulsing brain that controls the planet.

By the way, Lee Ann also writes for The Spinsters.