Peony Moss: July 2009 Archives

1.

Thanks to all those who send me kind words after my car accident. Looks like I'll be driving that loaner for a few more weeks. Wondering what good God wants to bring out of this.

2.

As I write, Hambet is trying to assemble some kind of Bionicle-type creature and is starting to pitch a fit. I am doing my best to ignore the fit.

3.

On the President's press conference: I tuned in just in time to hear his comments on tonsillectomies, red pills, and blue pills. My take: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?! Mr President, if you don't understand the problem, please don't take it upon yourself to fix it.

4.

I saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince last Saturday with my pal Iris. Slughorn (and his hourglass!) were great. Ron? TOO. FUNNY. Severe lack of Snape, though! I liked the way they set up the Sectumsempra scene but they should have shown the aftermath. I wish they'd done more with The Book and how Harry grew so fond of "the clever boy who had helped him so much.". And with the ROR -- how in the world is Harry going to find the diadem in movie 8?!

5.

Google Chrome: It loads SO QUICKLY. Love it.

6.

Crockpot happiness continues to elude me. I'd love to have crockpot Tuesday, but Tuesdays used to be chicken, and all the chicken recipes I've tried have been disappointing. The crockpot meal everyone loves is chili, and the tomatoes seem kind of repetitious after our usual Monday night spaghetti. Seems like everything I like best in the crockpot is either very time-consuming to prep, involves tomatoes, or both. Maybe I'll try bean soup next Tuesday.

7.

Funny how every hour of Adoration seems to go more and more quickly.

Here's something to help you follow it: Straw Man Bingo

The idea of a word, for a contingent being, implies the existence of one who is not myself (the one to whom I speak) and the existence of a truth that is not myself (that about which I speak). Language is a robe for love. -- Anthony Esolen

I was in a car accident this afternoon. Everyone's fine except my car, which is fixable but in the body shop. I'm just rattled.

God is very pleased with those who recognise his goodness by reciting the Te Deum in thanksgiving whenever something out of the ordinary happens, without caring whether it may have been good or bad, as the world reckons these things. Because everything comes from the hands of our Father: so though the blow of the chisel may hurt our flesh, it is a sign of Love, as he smooths off our rough edges and brings us closer to perfection. -- St Josemaria Escriva

Te Deum laudámus:
te Dóminum confitémur.
Te ætérnum Patrem,
omnis terra venerátur.
Tibi omnes ángeli,
tibi cæli
et univérsæ potestátes:
tibi chérubim et séraphim
incessábili voce proclámant:
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus,
Dóminus Deus Sábaoth.
Pleni sunt cæli et terra
maiestátis glóriæ tuæ.
Te gloriósus
apostolòrum chorus,
te prophetárum
laudábilis númerus,
te mártyrum candidátus
laudat exércitus.
Te per orbem terrárum
sancta confitétur Ecclésia,
Patrem imménsæ maiestátis;
venerándum tuum verum
et únicum Fílium;
Sanctum quoque
Paráclitum Spíritum.
Tu rex glóriæ, Christe.
Tu Patris sempitérnus es Filius.
Tu, ad liberándum susceptúrus hóminem,
non horrúisti Virginis úterum.
Tu, devícto mortis acúleo,
aperuísti credéntibus regna cælórum.
Tu ad déxteram Dei sedes,
in glória Patris.
Iudex créderis esse ventúrus.
Te ergo quǽsumus,
tuis fámulis súbveni,
quos pretióso sánguine redemísti.
Ætérna fac cum sanctis tuis
in glória numerári.
Salvum fac pópulum tuum, Dómine,
et bénedic hereditáti tuæ.
Et rege eos, et extólle illos
usque in ætérnum.
Per síngulos dies benedícimus te;
et laudámus nomen tuum
in sǽculum, et in sǽculum sǽculi.
Dignáre, Dómine,
die isto sine peccáto nos custodíre.
Miserére nostri, Dómine, miserére nostri.
Fiat misericórdia tua,
Dómine, super nos,
quemádmodum sperávimus in te.
In te, Dómine, sperávi:
non confúndar in ætérnum.

From an address to the Legatus Group:

...Most readers who follow the columns of George Will or Paul Krugman do so because they share the author’s views or because they want to know what the other side is saying. And because Will and Krugman are both opinion journalists, we expect them to argue a certain set of ideas.

In like manner, anyone reading my own writings gets a pretty clear sense, pretty quickly, of how I think about issues. As a Catholic bishop, I belong to a believing community with a widely accessible and carefully articulated understanding of the world.

In contrast, we usually know very little about the person who writes an unsigned editorial or the people who create the nightly news. And that’s worth talking about. Here’s why. In an information society, the people who shape our information control the public conversation.

Cate Flanagan in TIME Magazine:

There is no other single force causing as much measurable hardship and human misery in this country as the collapse of marriage. It hurts children, it reduces mothers' financial security, and it has landed with particular devastation on those who can bear it least: the nation's underclass.

Two lovely links within that article:

Married 50 Years: TIME Photogallery

Snapshots from a Very Special Wedding

Pope Benedict XVI gave President Barack Obama a surprise gift this evening: a copy of the Vatican’s document on bioethics and human dignity, which was published in December.

The document, “Dignitas Personae” (”The Dignity of a Person”), was issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

HT: CMR

1. Michael Jackson: even his own funeral was a performance of sorts. And how did Rev. Sharpton get involved?

Anyway, MJ needed Christ and he needed a good psychotherapist. I hope he found at least One at the last minute.

2. Sarah Palin: OODA: "You have to decode the environment before [your opponent] does, act decisively, and then capitalize on his initial confusion by confusing him some more."

And what is intelligence, anyway?

"...I saw more stupid people in graduate school and three decades in academia than I ever did who ran 100 acres without going broke-and more of the latter whom I’d trust not to bankrupt the country and let down our defenses than of the former."

3. Caritas in Veritate: Haven't read it. Don't know when I'm going to read it, since I still haven't read the first two encyclicals.

4. My "books to read" stack is approaching 48 linear inches. I need... an intervention? Something.

5. Delightful: This podcast from Greg and Jennifer "The Catholics Next Door" Willits. Parents of "Star Wars" obsessed little boys will understand why I was laughing out loud.

6. Only a couple more weeks till the next Harry Potter movie! Though how they're going to manage the adaptation after omitting from the last movie that somewhat important part about (spoiler) Snape being a spy for the Order of the Phoenix -- seeing as Snape is one of the two TITLE CHARACTERS and all -- I do not know.

7. I made this the other night, with grilled peaches and grilled mushrooms. So at least with my husband, my stock is high.

Via dylan:

And the Antichrist, with an air of scholarly excellence, tells us that any exegesis that reads the Bible from the perspective of faith in the living God, in order to listen to what God has to say, is fundamentalism; he wants to convince us that only his kind of exegesis, the supposedly purely scientific kind, in which God says nothing and has nothing to say, is able to keep abreast of the times.

Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, p. 36

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/03/AR2009070301738.html?hpid=topnews

Woah.

My hope for her? I hope that when the Republican party comes crawling back to her, she tells them to go jump in the lake.

1. I'm so bummed -- I thought my new shoes would be comfortable but instead they're killing my feet. Is it the heels or my plantar fascia?

2. Hambet is teaching me to play Lego Star Wars on the Wii. In return, I am giving him piano lessons. It's working out.

3. Hmmmm. Not sure what to say here.

4. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies!
: two hours and $12.95 I'll never get back. The joke simply isn't funny enough to last 317 pages; after a while, it's just tedious (kind of like those Saturday Night Live sketches that get flogged to death.) The Discussion Questions at the end are a hoot, though.

5. Why the Sarah Palin hatred? What unseen psychological -- or spiritual -- forces are driving this? It's so strange.

6. From Jennifer at Conversion Diary: most hysterical lead-in to a rec EVAR. (Fates, please note I said "hysterical", not "funny.")

7. Our parish recently started expanded hours of Adoration. I'm up this afternoon.