Quote of the Day: Chesterton on Tradition

“Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father. I, at any rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and tradition; it seems evident to me that they are the same idea. We will have the dead at our councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones; these shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite regular and official, for most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked with a cross.”x

Status Update, One Year Post Treatment: An Anniversary Getaway to Rochester

It's been a whole year since my last radioiodine treatment.  What a busy, quick year that has been!  My last follow up appointment was in October of 2019.  I was supposed to come back in February, but given that the roads in February are not great, and we had scheduled a trip to Hawaii to celebrate a certain husband's 50th birthday, we postponed that appointment til April.  Then the pandemic hit, and no one was going anywhere in April, so.... June it was.  Eight months after my last appointment, and a year post treatment.  I've never gone this long without knowing what the cancer was doing, so I had NO IDEA what to expect.  Given that it's 2020, the year of the Apocalypse, I half prepared myself for bad news.  Didn't stress over it, just began trying to figure out when we could fit in another round of radioiodine and it's accompanying time off work.  As it turns out though, I didn't NEED to think about that!  (Foreshadowing of Good News.  Yes.  Even in 2020!)

Rob and I hit the road for Rochester, and were planning on making it our 22nd Anniversary getaway.  Quarantine has lifted enough that the kids could stay with friends, and hotels were open (although no breakfasts included.  BOO!).  We were hoping to go out to a nice, romantic dinner, but in Minnesota, restaurants weren't yet open to Dine-In, so we got Mexican food to go and ate it in our hotel room.  Not so romantic, but whatever.  We even tried to do a little shopping, as I had gotten a gift card for being an "essential worker" during all of this pandemic stuff, and I was itching to spend it.  Pier One and TJ Maxx were open, but woefully empty, with bare shelves everywhere. Apparently, TJ Maxx had been open since June 1st, but hadn't gotten a truck with new inventory in 3 months.  I had money, but very little to spend it on, which was a bummer.  Stores required masks, six feet distancing, hand sanitzer at every entrance, and sterilized carts.  Dressing rooms were closed.   Not the funnest shopping experience, but better than Walmart, which is the only option we have at home.

The Mayo Clinic also required temperature checks, masks, six feet distancing.  When we went into Dr. Stan's office, there was a pillow on the bench between his desk and I, so that I had to sit at least six feet away from him.  Rob was stuck on a bench in the corner.  Just interesting how life is run these days.

Bottom line, though, was GOOD NEWS!  My tumor marker thyroglobulin went from 2.0 to 1.9, which is in the downward direction (even if only a little), and the LOWEST it has EVER BEEN!!  WOOT WOOT!  The ultrasound showed no new growths, and the spots we knew about had behaved themselves and stayed essentially the same size.  So, it looks like treatment last year may not have cured my cancer, but at least stopped it dead in it's tracks, which is AWESOME NEWS.  Fabulous.  Great news at a time when great news is hard to find.  SO HAPPY.

That's where we're at, and I have a feeling the second half of 2020 is going to be quite a bit more pleasant than the first half.  Let's have an all new New Year's Eve on June 30th, and start this whole thing over, shall we???

The Age of Uncommon Nonsense

In the midst of a pandemic that already had people fearful, frustrated, and on edge, the death of George Floyd has ignited race riots around the country.  His death was horrible and tragic.  I have not heard a single person say "yeah, that was justified".  It wasn't.  No human being should die by having their windpipe crushed by the knee of another human being.  It's barbaric and horrible.  It's not okay in ANYBODY'S world.  We are all enraged, as we rightly should be.

Black lives matter.  Of course they do.  All lives matter.  Of course they do.  So why are we in the mess we're currently in?

I'm a middle aged white woman in the midwest, surrounded primarily by other white people.  I am far from an authority on what goes on in other places.  I can't put myself, by any stretch of the imagination, into the shoes of an inner-city black man. There's nothing in my reality that allows me to imagine that.  Maybe that means I shouldn't have an opinion on this subject.  That's fair.  Maybe I shouldn't.  But I do have an opinion on the human race, because I am a member of that human race.  I have friends and acquaintances of all races, nationalities, and religions, as well as all socioeconomic statuses.  As an observer of humanity,  I find it inconceivable that others in this day and age care anything at all about the color of another person's skin.  In a way, I think the "racism" charge, the charge that this nation is divided by the hatred of another person's skin color, is a distinctly inaccurate depiction of what is going on.   Skin color in and of itself means nothing.  If that was the case, then there would be just as much outrage from Indian-Americans, or Pakistani-Americans.  We would see police pulling over the college professors in their Subaru Outbacks.  But we don't.  The fact that we call this an issue about skin color, in my opinion, misses the point.  This is not an issue about skin color at all.  It's an issue about cultural differences.  And at it's core, I feel it's an issue about FEAR.

This may not be a popular opinion, but if we're going to make any progress at all in this country, then we have to confront the root causes, and not just riot, or protest, or abolish the police, or say "be nice to each other".  Platitudes are not going to fix the problem, and riots sure in the heck are not going to fix anything.  If we feel like the problem is just people being mean to other people because of the color of their skin, we're not going to fix a thing.  If we don't understand motives on both sides, nothing will ever heal.  We have to look at some hard facts that we may not want to look at, or admit.

Yes, there is privilege.   Some people are born with intact families, who provide economic stability and a moral code.  I was lucky enough to be born into such a family.   I didn't even realize it for the longest time, how blessed I was.  I always knew I had parents that would support me, and have my back should life throw me a blow.  Others don't have that.  That gives me an undeniable leg up.  A HUGE leg up.  I had both a mother and a father. I did not live in insecurity or fear.  I knew peace and love as a child. I've worked hard, yes.  I wasn't handed everything on a silver platter.  No one can take that from me.  But I've also been supported every step of the way by a loving family, and it has made ALL the difference.    I... am privileged.  Others are not.  It's not an issue of money, either.  I have known dirt poor families that work their fingers to the bone just to survive, but who love their families and teach them right from wrong.  These are families I look up to, regardless of their bank accounts, because of the quality of their character.  I don't care about what labels they wear, or what kind of car they drive, if they are good people, they have my respect and trust.

If 94% of deaths of black Americans occur at the hands of other blacks... we can't ignore that fact and pretend that cops are not aware of this.  It's the reason racial profiling exists.  And it's why there's more suspicion towards a person of color.  It shouldn't be that way, absolutely it shouldn't, but this "racism" did not form in a vacuum.  Then we need to look at WHY there is more violence and crime in communities of color.  People act out of desperation and fear.  Desperation and ignorance and insecurity leads to poor choices.  It just does.  My privilege is that I had parents who taught me how to make good choices, and others have not had that.  Or they have, but their environment has overruled their parental influence.  Or, the others around them in the environment have acted in such a way that their character is ASSUMED by those in authority.  There begets racial profiling.
   
Of COURSE it all started with slavery in this country.  Of course it did, in our circumstance.  One set of humans treating another set as property and less than human is mortifying, sinful, and inhumane.  It was inhumane when the Romans did it, when the ancient Egyptians did it, when the Native Americans did it, when the African tribes did it.  America does not own the concept of slavery by any means.  It's wrong in any culture, at any time in history.   But we're 240 years out from our abolition.. why have we not put it behind us?  Because even if the legality is gone, the idea persists.  One side sees the other as less than human.  As an "other".  We are not "WE AMERICANS".  We are "African Americans" or "European Americans" or "Asian Americans".   Until we see each other as "we" instead of "them"... things will not heal.  Until we have built trust, and that trust has been earned on both sides... things will not heal.  Until there is more than "understanding", but a common culture, a common set of moral codes again... things will not heal.  Until every child is given the same opportunity of a loving family who teaches and supports... things will not heal.  We need a common set of ideas that unites us, instead of separating us.  We need individuals to have equal opportunities (not equal results.. equal opportunities).  We need intact, stable families to be the cellular make up of our society once again.  We need a common compass, a common dignity.

And until we look at things deeper than a slogan, or a meme, or a skin color... things will not heal.

Chesterton, as always... says it best.

Trace even the Puritan mother back through history and she represents a rebellion against the Cavalier laxity of the English Church, which was at first a rebel against the Catholic civilisation, which had been a rebel against the Pagan civilisation.  Nobody but a lunatic could pretend that these things were a progress; for they obviously go first one way and then the other.  But whichever is right, one thing is certainly wrong; and that is the modern habit of looking at them only from the modern end.  For that is only to see the end of the tale; they rebel against they know not what, because it arose they know not when; intent only on its ending, they are ignorant of its beginning; and therefore of its very being.’

This Expresses My View Exactly

I didn't write this, but it expresses how I feel about the current world predicament we are in perfectly.  We live in such a binary mindset these days, that it doesn't leave room for AND and BOTH.  We CAN be careful, yet open up our economy.  I believe it is possible with American ingenuity.  We don't have to be at each other's throats about this.  Read the whole article here.

It’s as though everything in life has become politicized to the point of a sort of binary tribalism. You’re either a liberal or a conservative, a lockdown proponent or a COVID truther, and so on. It might as well be a choice between the Jets or the Sharks: “When you’re a Jet you’re a Jet all the way from your first cigarette to your last dying day…”

With all the confirmation bias, there’s little room left for nuance, for the seeking of a position that bridges the gap between extremes. There’s evidently no virtue in the mean, no merit to navigating the tricky course between the shoals — acknowledging, for example, that some precautions should be taken for the purposes of public health and safety but that severely damaged economies might well kill even more people than the virus. There is a seeming failure in our discourse to recognize it’s OK to believe both — and to figure out how best to act accordingly.

Thought For The Day

"If we wish to make any progress in the service of God we must begin every day of our life with new eagerness. We must keep ourselves in the presence of God as much as possible and have no other view or end in all our actions but the divine honor."
— St. Charles Borromeo

A Poem for Quarantine, Courtesy of Longfellow

Prophetic thought For The Day, From then Joseph Ratzinger (future Pope Benedict XVI)

The church will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning.

She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes ... she will lose many of her social privileges…. As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members….

It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek…. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain…. But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.” -- Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), from his book Faith and the Future (1971)

Thoughts on Lent and Quarantine

It seems apropos that we are on quarantine during lent.  Quarantine, after all, comes from the Italian words "quaranta giorni", meaning 40 days.    Back in the 14th century, ships arriving in Venice from other infected ports had to sit at anchor for 40 days before landing, to prevent the spread of disease.  Lent is our 40 days of waiting, preparing.  We are quarantined in more ways than one.

Of specific hardship during this time of isolation is the suspension of the sacraments in many parts of the world right now.  Catholicism is not merely a spiritual practice.  Catholicism by nature is concrete, a melding of the spiritual and physical, because it is founded by Christ, who was both divine and human.  The sacraments are a physical sign of an invisible grace.  And right now, the Church Militant is being denied the grace we so desperately need, because we are not allowed to participate physically in the mass and sacraments.  This feels like a blow by the evil one, a siege of sorts - a starvation of the soldiers of Christ, in the heat of battle.  Of course we can watch mass online.  We can pray.  We can read and meditate on the scriptures, and participate in any number of private devotionals.  God has not abandoned us, He will never abandon us.  He has promised us that. But this time without access to the sacraments feels like a spiritual deprivation.  We have grown used to having ready access to the Eucharist - daily if we want!  We have had access to confession whenever we have needed to unburden ourselves of guilt and sin.  We have been able to baptize our children, sacramentally marry our spouses, and receive anointing with every serious illness.  More than any other time in history, the sacraments and the grace they provide have been available to us, and maybe... maybe it was all too easy.  Maybe we took them for granted because they were so readily accessible.  Maybe we forgot their importance, did not appreciate the strength they instilled in us, because they were always right there  if needed. And now that they're gone, for the time being at least, we feel their absence painfully.  The strongest spiritual weapon available to us has been taken away, worldwide, by an invisible foe.

Personally, I'm comforted by the fact that the mass is being said daily, all over the world, whether we lay people can participate or not.  Privately, in churches and rectories the world over, our priests continue to offer the sacrifice of the mass.  It cannot be stopped, no matter how this pandemic tries, and we need to trust and rely on our good priests for the moment in that regard.  They are continuing the battle for us right now.  And I remember the story of the Christians in Japan, who were converted through the efforts of St. Francis Xavier and the Jesuit missions in the 1500's, only to be thrown out of the country soon after, with Christianity severely repressed.  When Japan reopened to foreigners again 250 years later, missionaries found that the church had survived intact, all that time.  Without priests, without the sacraments save marriage and baptism, under constant persecution... but intact nonetheless.  For two hundred and fifty years.   Generations upon generations.  God does not abandon His children.  We are never alone.

So we live through this Holy Saturday, this time when the Church seems still and silent, with doors locked.  It feels for all the world as if Christ is in the tomb.  He is not.  He continues His resurrection daily with every private mass.  Easter is here, still. 

This too shall pass. 

Meditation for the Day: What God sees, that we are

"Set free from human judgment, we should count as true only what God sees in us, what he knows, and what he judges. 

God does not judge as man does. Man sees only the countenance, only the exterior. God penetrates to the depths of our hearts. 

God does not change as man does. His judgment is in no way inconstant. He is the only one upon whom we should rely.

How happy we are then, and how peaceful! We are no longer dazzled by appearances, or stirred up by opinions; we are united to the truth and depend upon it alone.

I am praised, blamed, treated with indifference, disdained, ignored, or forgotten; none of this can touch me. I will be no less than I am. 

Men and women want to play at being a creator. They want to give me existence in their opinion, but this existence that they want to give me is nothingness. It is an illusion, a shadow, an appearance, that is, at bottom, nothingness. 

What is this shadow, always following me, behind me, at my side? Is it me, or something that belongs to me? No. Yet does not this shadow seem to move with me? No matter: it is not me. 

So it is with the judgements of men: they would follow me everywhere, paint me, sketch me, make me move according to their whim, and, in the end, give me some sort of existence ... but I am disabused of this error.

I am content with a hidden life. How peaceful it is! Whether I truly live this Christian life of which St. Paul speaks, I do not know, nor can I know with certainty. But I hope that I do, and I trust in God's goodness to help me."

— Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet

Thought for The Day

"Keep the joy of loving God in your heart and share this joy with all you meet, especially your family. Be holy."

— St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta 

Putting Sola Fide to rest...

"For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified."

Romans 2:13

Not sanctified (made holy) by actions, but justified (saved).  But how is this?  Does faith have no part?  Are we merely to "do the stuff" to be saved?

"For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."

2 Peter 1:5-8

Peter and Paul, those two stalwart pillars of the Church, show us the way.  Faith is the base, the root of everything, and grows with the support of goodness and knowledge, into action, which is LOVE.  Love is a verb and a noun.  In truth, the noun and verb cannot be separated, because love by it's very nature is a movement, an action.   Works are love, rooted in faith, or they are nothing.  Faith alone is as those who merely hear the law.  It's not enough.  TRUE faith is action, it's being God's hands in the world.  Joan of Arc showed me this.  In her trial, she was asked if God sent her to raise the seige of Orleans, and she said yes.  The inquisitor asked if God wasn't powerful enough to raise the seize on His own.  She responded  "In the name of God! The soldiers will fight and God will give the victory!"

God worked through her, as He desire to work through each of us - our job is to cooperate and be willing vessels.  

On Relics and Joan of Arc

I'm rereading one of my favorite books, Mark Twain's "Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc".   How I love this book.  It was Twain's favorite of his own works, and very rightly so.  It is the most personal of his books, the closest to his heart.  Twain writes in the first person, taking on the persona of "the Sieur Louis De Conte", one of Joan's childhood friends who is with her as her scribe throughout her endeavors.  It is obvious to me that Twain has inserted himself into the story as this loyal and loving friend, signing his name "SLC", which are the same initials as his own (Samuel Langhorne Clemens).  Joan is dear and intimate to him.  She is not merely a subject.  As such, he brings the peasant girl to such vivid life... he understands Joan, from the inside out.  He has such a sense of her faith, her convictions, that I assumed he must be a believer himself.  A quick google search showed that, outwardly at least, Mark Twain was very critical and resistant to formalized religion.  But in Joan, his muse... he understood.  It rings with every word, every vivid description.  There's no way he could portray her as he does without comprehending in very sharp detail her true inspiration; her true motivation wasn't France (in the larger picture)… it was God.

I am horrified by the modern representations of Joan as some kind of proto-lesbian feminist schizophrenic.  That wasn't who she was.  That is modern people stealing her history to apply it to their own causes, and it makes me sick every time I see it.  Twain, though, captures her as I know she was, because her testimony during her trial shows it, and it rings so true.    Twain describes Joan as a study of contradictions - a small girl with a powerful purpose; humble but undeterred and confident.  Bashful but brazen.  Gentle, and yet a fierce warrior.  Honest to a fault, and yet cunning.  Uneducated and illiterate, but brilliant.  It is seeing the tenderness and meekness of who she is at her core that we can see the work of God in her.   That fascinates me.  And seems wholly accurate and true.

As I'm reading this portrait of Joan, I'm drawn to know more about her.  I wonder about the actual words she spoke, recorded in her trial transcript.  I wonder where her sword is, her helmet, her armor.  Given that she was burned to death (except her heart and her intestines, and possibly one fragment of bone that did not burn), and her ashes thrown in to the Rhine, there is no grave site to visit.  But there is this desire to see, to touch, to be in the same place, to know that she is true, to know what she was like, what her world was.  There's this desire to have something tangible to link our time to hers, to link across the ages something concrete. In Joan's case, tragically, the French Revolutionists largely destroyed the artifacts that had been saved and treasured for centuries, in their anti-religion zeal.  But my desire to see such things remains, and I realize that for all of Christian history, this has been the case.  It is why we have relics.

Christianity, more than any other world religion, is TANGIBLE.  It is CONCRETE, because Jesus was tangible and concrete.  God came down to earth as someone we could see, and touch, and hear.  A man that we could break bread with, and left his mark upon the planet, in verifiable ways.  God gave us our senses, created us to experience reality through seeing and hearing and tasting and smelling and feeling.  And then He came to us, in time and space, so that we could interact with Him in just the way He created us to be.  God is pure spirit, but for US, He came as a child, who grew to a man.  And for those generations who got to be in His presence, how did they pass on this experience?  Not just with words in a book, as important as those are.  But also with concrete things.  "Here, child.  These were the nails.  This was his cross.  This is where he was buried.  These were the cloths that He was buried in.  See, remember, and believe."  Just as a family heirloom gets handed down from generation to generation, so did these tangible bits of the greatest story ever told.  And as the story continues into the present day, as the work of salvation takes fruit in Christ's bride the Church, those palpable things provide the illustrations.   They are the perceptible bridges that link us to our own heritage.  They ground us in time, place, reality.  And that is a powerful, powerful gift.

Relics seem to be a very Catholic phenomenon, and at times rather morbid or superstitious.  But truly understanding human nature, it can be seen why we crave them, why we need them.

On Sin

"Thus sin renders the soul miserable, weak and torpid, inconstant in doing good, cowardly in resisting temptation, slothful in the observance of God's commandments. It deprives her of true liberty and of that sovereignty which she should never resign; it makes her a slave to the world, the flesh, and the devil; it subjects her to a harder and more wretched servitude than that of the unhappy Israelites in Egypt or Babylon. Sin so dulls and stupefies the spiritual senses of man that he is deaf to God's voice and inspirations; blind to the dreadful calamities which threaten him; insensible to the sweet odor of virtue and the example of the saints; incapable of tasting how sweet the Lord is, or feeling the touch of His benign hand in the benefits which should be a constant incitement to his greater love. Moreover, sin destroys the peace and joy of a good conscience, takes away the soul's fervor, and leaves her an object abominable in the eyes of God and His saints. The grace of justification delivers us from all these miseries. For God, in His infinite mercy, is not content with effacing our sins and restoring us to His favor; He delivers us from the evils sin has brought upon us, and renews the interior man in his former strength and beauty. Thus He heals our wounds, breaks our bonds, moderates the violence of our passions, restores with true liberty the supernatural beauty of the soul, reestablishes us in the peace and joy of a good conscience, reanimates our interior senses, inspires us with ardor for good and a salutary hatred of sin, makes us strong and constant in resisting evil, and thus enriches us with an abundance of good works. In fine, He so perfectly renews the inner man with all his faculties that the Apostle calls those who are thus justified new men and new creatures."

— Venerable Louis Of Grenada

More on the Incarnation, by St. Bernard of Clairvaux

"And so the idea of peace came down to do the work of peace: The Word was made flesh and even now dwells among us. It is by faith that he dwells in our hearts, in our memory, our intellect and penetrates even into our imagination. What concept could man have of God if he did not first fashion an image of him in his heart? By nature incomprehensible and inaccessible, he was invisible and unthinkable, but now he wished to be understood, to be seen and thought of. But how, you ask, was this done? He lay in a manger and rested on a virgin’s breast, preached on a mountain, and spent the night in prayer. He hung on a cross, grew pale in death, and roamed free among the dead and ruled over those in hell. He rose again on the third day, and showed the apostles the wounds of the nails, the signs of victory; and finally in their presence he ascended to the sanctuary of heaven. How can we not contemplate this story in truth, piety and holiness?"

Augustine on Genesis

“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. 

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.

 If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?

 Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion [quoting 1 Tim 1:7].”

― Augustine of Hippo, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Vol 2

On Incarnation

"Now man need not hide from God as Adam did; for He can be seen through Christ's human nature. Christ did not gain one perfection more by becoming man, nor did He lose anything of what He possessed as God. There was the Almightiness of God in the movement of His arm, the infinite love of God in the beatings of His human heart and the Unmeasured Compassion of God to sinners in His eyes. God was now manifest in the flesh; this is what is called the Incarnation. The whole range of the Divine attributes of power and goodness, justice, love, beauty, were in Him. And when Our Divine Lord acted and spoke, God in His perfect nature became manifest to those who saw Him and heard Him and touched Him. As He told Philip later on: Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father [John 14:9]."

Venerable Fulton Sheen

St. Patrick’s Breastplate

I bind unto myself today The strong Name of the Trinity, By invocation of the same, The Three in One and One in Three.  I bind this day to me for ever. By power of faith, Christ's incarnation; His baptism in the Jordan river; His death on Cross for my salvation; His bursting from the spicèd tomb; His riding up the heavenly way; His coming at the day of doom;* I bind unto myself today.  I bind unto myself the power Of the great love of the cherubim; The sweet 'well done' in judgment hour, The service of the seraphim, Confessors' faith, Apostles' word, The Patriarchs' prayers, the Prophets' scrolls, All good deeds done unto the Lord, And purity of virgin souls.  I bind unto myself today The virtues of the starlit heaven, The glorious sun's life-giving ray, The whiteness of the moon at even, The flashing of the lightning free, The whirling wind's tempestuous shocks, The stable earth, the deep salt sea, Around the old eternal rocks.  I bind unto myself today The power of God to hold and lead, His eye to watch, His might to stay, His ear to hearken to my need. The wisdom of my God to teach, His hand to guide, His shield to ward, The word of God to give me speech, His heavenly host to be my guard.  Against the demon snares of sin, The vice that gives temptation force, The natural lusts that war within, The hostile men that mar my course; Or few or many, far or nigh, In every place and in all hours, Against their fierce hostility, I bind to me these holy powers.  Against all Satan's spells and wiles, Against false words of heresy, Against the knowledge that defiles, Against the heart's idolatry, Against the wizard's evil craft, Against the death wound and the burning, The choking wave and the poisoned shaft, Protect me, Christ, till Thy returning.  Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me. Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.  I bind unto myself the Name, The strong Name of the Trinity; By invocation of the same. The Three in One, and One in Three, Of Whom all nature hath creation, Eternal Father, Spirit, Word: Praise to the Lord of my salvation, Salvation is of Christ the Lord. 

On Fear

"For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, 'Abba! Father!' it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him."

Romans 8:15-1

"When one has nothing more to lose, the heart is inaccessible to fear."

— St. Théodore Guérin

Chuckle of the Day.

It is said that Friedrich Nietzsche once challenged God, "I too can create a man." God replied to Nietzsche, "Go ahead and try." Nietzsche took a fistful of dust and began to mold it. God said, "Disqualified. Get your own dust."

-- J. Budziszewski, Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law

Thought for the Day: Love

"God cannot cease to love me. That is the most startling fact that our doctrine reveals. Sinner or saint He loves and cannot well help Himself. Magdalen in her sin, Magdalen in her sainthood, was loved by God. The difference between her position made some difference also in the effect of that love on her, but the love was the same, since it was the Holy Spirit who is the love of the Father and the Son. Whatever I do, I am loved. But then, if I sin, am I unworthy of love? Yes, but I am unworthy always. Nor can God love me for what I am, since, in that case, I would compel His love, force His will by something external to Himself. In fact, really if I came to consider, I would find that I was not loved by God because I was good, but that I was good because God loved me. My improvement does not cause God to love me, but is the effect of God's having loved me."

Fr. Bede Jarrett

From the Ever-Wise St. Thomas Aquinas

Evolutionary Thought of the Day

Francis Chan is starting to get it.

This video shows an awakening.  He's starting to get it!!  Prayers that the Holy Spirit continues to work in him!

Thought For the Day: The Big Picture

"For He became man that we might become divine; and He revealed Himself through a body that we might receive an idea of the invisible Father; and He endured insults from men that we might inherit incorruption."

— St. Athanasius of Alexandria

Back again, back again, jiggety jig

So, last week I completely lost my voice for the third time since September.  Enough enough enough.  This time it was out for 2 days, and then kind of got grumbly for the rest of the week.  I emailed Dr. Stan,  and he wants me to come back to see the throat surgeon I saw last time, just to make sure things haven't gotten worse on the vocal cord front.  To me, it's hard to quantify "worse", but since I've been totally silent three separate times in such a short amount of time, I think it's definitely worth getting checked out.  I do notice that my voice fatigues at night when reading to Reagan after about 10 minutes or so now.  Beyond that, how does one quantify such things?  I have no idea.

The parotid gland still acts up every few weeks or so.  I don't mind the salty taste in my mouth.  That's not big deal.  But when the "Charlie horse" starts in my cheek and below my jaw bone, it gets downright uncomfortable.  I've tried biting on a lemon... that's what the dentist suggested to do... and massage.  Neither seemed to work very well.  Apparently, because there's no fluid being produced by the gland anymore, salt crystals form.  The pain comes when the crystals get stuck.  So, kind of like passing a gall stone.. in my cheek.  Annoying, and ouchy.  But it only happens every few weeks or so.  I'm a big girl.  I can handle it.

Bottom line, Rob and I will be heading back to Mayo next week, to visit with Dr. Kasperbauer, the ENT who discovered the paralyzed vocal cord, and who stated last time that he COULD do ethanol ablation on that lymph node full of cancer on my one intact laryngeal nerve, but wouldn't recommend it at that time because of the risks, and the fact that he couldn't reach the other two in my chest with his needle.  Now wondering if it might be "worth the risk" of dealing with at least the one, if there's evidence of cancer invading the nerve.  We will see what he says.  We will see.

A full day at work last Monday with absolutely no voice whatsoever made me realize how impossible it would be to do my job without benefit of vocalizing.  I NEED a voice.  The text-to-speech app on my phone works some, but is not hands free and takes way too much time.  I had one little one who knew some sign language, and that worked awesome for her session, but... not all kids know sign language.  I just need to be able to talk.  So best be safe rather than sorry, and back to Mayo we go.

Please pray for good roads and good news!

 

Results of Round Two

I was so prepared to get the FINAL good news.  That hope has kept me completely at peace over the past four months, despite the irritations of radiation-induced menopause and the discomfort of parotid-gland inflammation.  I've been noticing that my voice is a little lower, more raspy when I talk, can't sing for the life of me, and I've completely lost my voice twice in the past few months... once for three days.  My voice fatigues really easily at night when I'm reading out-loud to Reagan, which limits our sessions (well, that and the mama falling asleep mid-sentence....).  So, there have been these annoying little things that are minor, but didn't phase me much at all because I was so ready to hear "you're all DONE!"

My follow up trip to Mayo was last week. Rob scheduled himself some appointments, since he was going to be there anyway. The day ran like clockwork, without a hitch.  Lab work, ultrasound, Rob's xray, EKG, Rob's doctor's appointment, and then... finally... at the end of the day.... my appointment.  When he walked into the room, Dr. Stan smiled and said "are you ready for good news?"  I was like "YES!!  Give me good news!"  I had anticipated, given his demeanor, that he had already reviewed the results and was building me up to drop the "all clear".  But actually, he pulled up the results and looked at them for the first time right there with us.  First he reviewed my chart and history, to make sure he remembered everything.  Then he pulled up the ultrasound.  "OK.  The lymph nodes are a little bigger.  But not much bigger.  Just a little.  And they don't have much blood flow now.  That's good."

Bigger?  That's not what I wanted to hear.  "Shouldn't they disappear if the radiation worked?  Wouldn't they be obliterated by the radiation?"  Not necessarily, he said.  Could be just the cancer inside was killed, but the lymph node itself remains.  OK.  I won't let "a little bigger" bug me.

The ultrasound itself couldn't tell me for sure if the cancer was still there or not, at least in the one or two lymph nodes they could visualize by ultrasound.  Whether there are two or three cancerous nodes is still vague, because the PET scan showed three, and this ultrasound visualized two.  But I know the other one off my aorta, behind the carotid, is too deep to visualize by ultrasound.  So I think there's probably a smaller node in between the two larger nodes that they're most concerned about, under my breast bone somewhere, but more near the neck so they can get an ultrasound picture if they look straight down under my collar bone.  I digress.  But because of their position limiting the full view of all three, and the fact that two of the nodes had gotten a little larger, the ultrasound alone couldn't give me the good news.  Victory would come from my tumor marker.  Come on, tumor marker.  Sock it to me.  Show me the zero, baby.

It's not zero.  It's 2.  Two is BETTER.  It was 106 last time, but that was stimulated in preparation for treatment, so not a realistic number.  That's comparing apples to oranges, because I'm definitively NOT stimulated now.  Then, my TSH (think of TSH as cancer food) was 52. That's a smorgasburg  of cancer food.   Now my TSH is below .01, so low that their lab equipment can't even measure it.  Essentially zero.  We're starving that cancer as absolutely much as we can without me throwing up and being jittery all the time, like I was a few weeks ago.  To compare apples to apples, we'd have to look at my suppressed tumor marker numbers, and those were 3.2 in May, and 9 in March.  So two is definitively better, and the lowest number I've EVER had since this whole cancer thing started.  I'll take it.  It's in the right direction.  TWO.

So, the war is not over, but this battle was won.  I was hoping for the end of the war, so have to admit to being a little disappointed.   BUT, this is good news.  I like good news.  Not the BEST news, but good news.  We will carry on.  Current plan initially was to follow up in February, but we do NOT want to drive fourteen hours round trip in February, so we moved that to April.  Roads should be better in April.  At that time, we'll do another ultrasound and blood work.  If the tumor marker hasn't gone to zero, he'll have me do the low-iodine diet again, and come back in May or June  for a whole-body scan and likely a third round of radioiodine.  If my voice starts consistently getting worse, I'm to call him before that and move everything up, bad weather or not.  He told me he doesn't want me to go back to Marshfield at all now.  We need to stay with Mayo, and I'm totally fine with that.  Dr. Stan is awesome.  Mayo itself is thoroughly impressive.  I was only going to go back to my Marshfield doctor if we had the all clear, and I just needed periodic monitoring, and only because it's so much closer to home.  We're not there yet, so I cancelled my November and December appointments with them.

Haven't written the final chapter yet, like I was hoping to, but I think we're in the "denouement" now.

God is good.  All the time.