Thought For the Day: Committment

 "Commitment is doing what you said you would do, after the feeling you said it in has passed."

— St. Camillus

What I Learned from my Grandpa

 My Grandpa Phil was a dear, upright, honest man who I loved very much, and miss every day, even 21 years later.  He died April 24, 2000, at the age of of 81 years old.  I was recently cleaning out a closet and found the program from his funeral.  In it, I had written the following, and I'm copying it here so it doesn't get lost.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM MY GRANDPA:

1. Kiss anyone who walks through the front door, just in case they're a grand kid.

2. Everyone can have the nickname "honey".

3. Reminisce often.

4. Always get a good night's sleep.

5. When you pray, pray from the heart.  It's okay if you tear up.

6. Do the dishes after every meal.

7. Every family gathering is a photo opportunity.

8. People's names may come and go, but music will stay with you forever.

9. Be generous to a fault with those you love.

10.  Say "I Love You" often.

11. If you can't remember whether you've said good bye or not, say it again.  You'll get another free kiss out of the deal.

12. The meal's not done 'til you've licked the plate clean.

13. A daughter is never too old to call you "daddy".

14.  Live and enjoy each moment as it happens.  It really doesn't matter if you remember it later.

15. Love Jesus with a humble and gentle spirit.

16. Never miss a chance to dance at a grandkid's wedding.  Eighty year olds can still boogie (they just get bursitis afterwards). 

17.  If you can't remember something, just smile and admit it.  "I don't remember things as well as I used to". 

18.  Catch a wink of sleep wherever and whenever you can get it.

19.  Always put your family above anything else.

20.  If you've loved and lost, don't be afraid to love again.  God just may fill the void with another "soul mate".  

Quote of the Day:

 

From Bishop Barron: Recovering the Strangeness of Easter. Published in the Wall Street Journal

 I have always been drawn to the tombs of famous people. When I was a student many years ago in Washington, D.C., I loved to visit the graves of the Kennedy brothers on that lovely hillside in front of the Custis-Lee Mansion. In Paris, I frequently toured Père Lachaise Cemetery, the resting place of, among many others, Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Abelard and Jim Morrison. When on retreat at St. Meinrad Monastery in southern Indiana, I would often take a morning to visit the nearby Lincoln Boyhood Memorial, on the grounds of which is the simple grave of Nancy Hanks, Abraham Lincoln’s mother, who died in 1818. I always found it deeply moving to see the resting place of this backwoods woman, who died uncelebrated at the age of 35, covered in pennies adorned with the image of her famous son.

Cemeteries are places to ponder, to muse, to give thanks, perhaps to smile ruefully. They are places of rest and finality. The last thing that one would realistically expect at a grave is novelty and surprise.

Then there is the tomb featured in the story of Easter. We are told in the Bible that three women, friends and followers of Jesus, came to the tomb of their Master early on the Sunday morning following his crucifixion in order to anoint his body. Undoubtedly they anticipated that, while performing this task, they would wistfully recall the things that their friend had said and done. Perhaps they would express their frustration at those who had brought him to this point, betraying, denying and running from him in his hour of need. Certainly, they expected to weep in their grief.

‘Jesus is Laid in the Tomb’ by contemporary American artist Laura James, 2002.

PHOTO: LAURA JAMES/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

But when they arrived, they found to their surprise that the heavy stone had been rolled away from the entrance of the tomb. Had a grave robber been at work? Their astonishment only intensified when they spied inside the grave, not the body of Jesus, but a young man clothed in white, blithely announcing, “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.”

The mysterious messenger’s communication was, to put it bluntly, not that someone had broken into this tomb, rather that someone had broken out. In St. Mark’s version of the story—which is the earliest that we have—the reaction of the women is described as follows: “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them.”

If the grave of a hero is customarily a place of serene contemplation, the tomb of Jesus is so disturbing that people run from it in fear.

If the grave of a hero is customarily a place of serene contemplation, this one is so disturbing that people run from it in fear—and thereupon hangs the tale of Easter. Especially today, it is imperative that Christians recover the sheer strangeness of the Resurrection of Jesus and stand athwart all attempts to domesticate it. There were a number of prominent theologians during the years that I was going through the seminary who watered down the Resurrection, arguing that it was a symbol for the conviction that the cause of Jesus goes on, or a metaphor for the fact that his followers, even after his horrific death, felt forgiven by their Lord.

But this is utterly incommensurate with the sheer excitement on display in the Resurrection narratives and in the preaching of the first Christians. Can one really imagine St. Paul tearing into Corinth and breathlessly proclaiming that the righteous cause of a crucified criminal endures? Can one credibly hold that the apostles of Jesus went careering around the Mediterranean and to their deaths with the message that they felt forgiven?

Another strategy of domestication, employed by thinkers from the 19th century to today, is to reduce the Resurrection of Jesus to a myth or an archetype. There are numberless stories of dying and rising gods in the mythologies of the world, and the narrative of Jesus’ death and resurrection can look like just one more iteration of the pattern. Like those of Dionysus, Osiris, Adonis and Persephone, the “resurrection” of Jesus is, on this reading, a symbolic evocation of the cycle of nature. In a Jungian psychological framework, the story of Jesus dying and coming back to life is an instance of the classic hero’s journey from order through chaos to greater order.

Novelist and theologian C.S. Lewis at Oxford, 1946.

PHOTO: HANS WILD/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES

The problem with these modes of explanation was well articulated by C.S. Lewis: Those who think that the New Testament is a myth just haven’t read many myths. Precisely because they have to do with timeless verities and the great natural and psychological constants, mythic narratives are situated “once upon a time,” or to bring things up to date, “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.” No one wonders who was Pharaoh during Osiris’s time or during which era of Greek history Heracles performed his labors, for these tales are not historically specific.

But the Gospel writers are keen to tell us that Jesus’ birth, for instance, took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria and Augustus the Emperor of Rome—that is to say, at a definite moment of history and in reference to readily identifiable figures. The Nicene Creed, recited regularly by Catholics and Orthodox Christians as part of their Sunday worship, states that Jesus was “crucified under Pontius Pilate,” a Roman official whose image is stamped on coins that we can examine today.

Moreover, the Greek word used most often by St. Paul to characterize his message is euangelion, which carries the sense of “good news.” The myth of the dying and rising god and the story of the hero’s adventure might be intriguing and illuminating, but the one thing they are not is news. Paul wasn’t trading in abstractions or spiritual bromides; he wanted to take everyone he spoke to by the shoulders and tell them about something that had happened, something so stunning that it changed the world. And at the heart of his euangelion was anastasis, resurrection.In a speech recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, St. Peter tells his listeners about Jesus, a man from Nazareth, who did great things in Galilee and Judea, who was put to death and whom God raised from death. Then he adds, almost as an aside, that he and the other Apostles “ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.” This is just not the way mythmakers talk.

Faith in the Resurrection does not delegitimize political power, but it relativizes it, placing it decidedly under the judgment of God.

Christians have been teasing out the implications of this good news for two millennia, but I will focus on just three themes. First, for believers, the Resurrection means that Jesus is Lord. The phrase Iesous Kyrios, Jesus the Lord, is found everywhere in Paul’s letters and was likely on his lips regularly as he preached. A watchword of that time and place was Kaiser Kyrios, Caesar the Lord, meaning that the emperor of Rome is the one to whom ultimate allegiance is due. St. Paul’s intentional play upon that title, implying that the true Lord is not Caesar but rather someone whom Caesar put to death and whom God raised from the dead, was meant to tweak the nose of the political powers.

It goes a long way to explaining, too, why Paul spent a good amount of time in Roman prisons and was eventually decapitated by Roman authorities. Faith in the Resurrection does not delegitimize political power, but it relativizes it, placing it decidedly under the judgment of God. The Gospel writers obviously enjoyed the delicious irony of the sign that Pontius Pilate placed over the cross, “Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews.” Intended derisively, it effectively made Pilate, Caesar’s local representative, the first great evangelist.

A 5-year-old girl prepares for Easter at the Parish of the Epiphany Episcopal church in Winchester, Mass., 2015.

PHOTO: JOHN TLUMACKI/THE BOSTON GLOBE/GETTY IMAGES

A second key implication of the Easter event is that Jesus’ extraordinary claims about himself were ratified. Unlike any of the other great religious founders, Jesus consistently spoke and acted in the very person of God. Declaring a man’s sins forgiven, referring to himself as greater than the Temple, claiming lordship over the Sabbath and authority over the Torah, insisting that his followers love him more than their mothers and fathers, more than their very lives, Jesus assumed a divine prerogative. And it was precisely this apparently blasphemous pretension that led so many of his contemporaries to oppose him. After his awful death on an instrument of torture, even his closest followers became convinced that he must have been delusional and misguided.

But when his band of Apostles saw him alive again after his death, they came to believe that he is who he said he was. They found his outrageous claim ratified in the most surprising and convincing way possible. Their conviction is beautifully expressed in the confession of Thomas the erstwhile doubter who, upon seeing the risen Lord, fell to his knees and said simply, “My Lord and My God.”

A third insight that we can derive from the Resurrection is that God’s love is more powerful than anything that is in the world. On the cross, Jesus took on, as it were, all the sins of humanity. Violence, hatred, cruelty, institutional injustice, stupidity, scapegoating and resentment brought him to Calvary and, it seemed, overwhelmed him. Like a warrior, he confronted all those forces that stand athwart God’s purposes—what the theologian Karl Barth called “the nothingness,” what the author of Genesis referred to as the tohu-va-bohu, the primal chaos.For believers ever since, if the crucified and risen Jesus is divine, there is a moral imperative to make him unambiguously the center of our lives. But we also have the assurance that God has not given up on the human project, that God intends fully to save us, body and soul. One of the favorite phrases in the writings of the Fathers of the Church is Deus fit homo ut homo fieret Deus, which means, God became man that man might become God. No religion or philosophy has ever proclaimed a more radical humanism than that.

Jesus fought, not with the weapons of the world, not with an answering violence, but rather with a word of pardon.

But he fought, not with the weapons of the world, not with an answering violence, but rather with a word of pardon: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.” The Resurrection of Jesus from the dead showed that this spiritual resistance was not in vain.

When he appeared to his disciples, the New Testament tells us, the risen Lord typically did two things: He showed his wounds and he spoke the word Shalom, peace. On the one hand, Christians should not forget the depth of human depravity, the sin that contributed to the death of the Son of God. Whenever we are tempted to exculpate ourselves, we have only to look at the wounds of Christ and the temptation evanesces.

But on the other hand, we know that God’s love, his offer of Shalom, is greater than any possible sin of ours. Christians understood this precisely because human beings killed God, and God returned in forgiving love. In achingly beautiful poetry, St. Paul expressed this amazing grace: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

In the Greco-Roman culture of the first century, the term euangelion was used to signal an imperial victory, the “good news” that Caesar had conquered. With characteristic panache, the first Christians twisted the term for their own purposes. In the Resurrection of Jesus, God has won the victory over sin, over corruption and injustice, over death itself. This is the Good News that issued forth from shock of the empty tomb on Easter morning, and that has echoed up and down the last 20 centuries

How God Works

 So a year ago, for my husband's 50th birthday, we all went to the Big Island of Hawaii.  We stayed in Kona and had an absolute blast.  Well, one Sunday, as we were walking by the Catholic church, we noticed a bunch of students on the sidewalk praying for the 40 days for Life campaign.  We were so impressed with these students, and their calm but determined demeanor as they prayed in public on the street.  My attention was drawn to them, and I heard one of the students say that they were with YWAM.  I didn't know what that was.  Later in the trip, we passed by a college campus, called "University of the Nations", and I was curious about what THAT was as well, and told my husband that I had a feeling the students we saw on the street praying were from this university.  Turns out I was right, as a quick Google search showed.  It's a Christian University that trains missionaries.  We also drove by a "Kalani" street, and I took a picture of the road sign, and sent it to my friend Beth, whose son's name is Kalani.  Kalani is of Hawaiian heritage.  Long story short - I texted Beth repeatedly from Hawaii about this "University of the Nations", and YWAM, and how I felt like this would be such a great place for Kalani to come for college.  Just seemed like such a natural fit.  

A year later (tonight), Beth texted me to ask the name of the student group I texted about for her son all those months ago.  When I told her YWAM from Kona, she sent me a "mind blown" emoji.  Apparently, she never mentioned to Kalani about my texts last year.  This past weekend, though, he met up with some Youth With a Mission students from Kona who came HERE to the Keweenaw.  They met and talked, and Kalani tonight came to his mother and said that he feels God calling him very specifically to go to school in Kona!  Hello.  The very same place I felt he needed to be a year ago - even though I really don't know Kalani at all.  

Sometimes, God isn't so subtle.  Sometimes He uses peripheral people to confirm a message He's speaking into someone's heart.  Sometimes, something random isn't random at all.  

Crazy.  

A Meditation.

 

Is a seed meant to be a seed?

Is a seed’s destiny fulfilled if it stays in its hard shell, intact, complete, whole?

Is it content in its dormancy, oblivious in sleep?

Maybe.  Maybe. 

But how does the seed awaken? 

It drowns. 

It drowns. 

It drowns.

It softens. 

It cracks. 

It is torn asunder. 

It is destroyed.

Only then does something new emerge.  

Something greener, and more alive.  

This new thing; it digs, and burrows, as it surges forth from the old.

Sprouts root to anchor itself, but it does not stop there.

For its journey is upwards. 

 It searches, seeks, orients itself. 

 Hidden under, in the dark, how does it know which way is up?  For if it stays underground, it creates its own demise.

How does the seed know which way is up?

When it finally bursts from the bonds of  earth,

exploding unfettered from the soil,

 it is not pushed  from below but pulled from above.  

The sun draws this new thing to itself, and it grows and broadens and branches. 

 The tender, vulnerable shoot inches ever higher, ever closer.

The slight becomes full,

pale verdant

the malleable solid

 ‘til it is immense and broad,

rugged against howling winds, immovable, roots grasping the earth, leaves singing aloft,

 the home of birds, the food of squirrels,  protection for the exposed.  

It reaches higher, a bridge.

This strange journey is not one from young to old,

 but from old to new,

From inert to alive.  

Not from here to there, but from this to that.

 The seed is no longer merely of the earth, but also of the heavens.

If the seed holds on too tightly to itself, it stays a seed.

It can only live fully if it is willing to die.

Thought of the Day: St. Robert Bellarmine

 

"The school of Christ is the school of love. In the last day, when the general examination takes place ... Love will be the whole syllabus."
— St. Robert Bellarmine

A Poem, by Rudyard Kipling

 Do not hold tightly to the things of this earth, but know your place in it!

If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

On the Power of Love... Thomas a Kempis

 

"Love is a strong force — a great good in every way; 

it alone can make our burdens light, and alone it bears in equal balance what is pleasing and displeasing. 

It carries a burden and does not feel it; 

it makes all that is bitter taste sweet. ...

 Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing higher, nothing stronger, nothing larger, nothing more joyful, nothing fuller, nothing better in heaven or on earth;

 for love is born of God and can find its rest only in God above all He has created.

 Such lovers fly high, run swiftly and rejoice. Their souls are free; they give all for all and have all in all. 

For they rest in One supreme Goodness above all things, from Whom all other good flows and proceeds. 

They look not only at the gifts, but at the Giver, Who is above all gifts."

TRUTH, Compliments of Archbishop Fulton Sheen

 

"There are ultimately only two possible adjustments to life; one is to suit our lives to principles; the other is to suit principles to our lives. If we do not live as we think, we soon begin to think as we live. The method of adjusting moral principles to the way men live is just a perversion of the order of things." Archbishop Fulton Sheen

On the Fate of the Church, by Cardinal Francis George

 Because I see this transition happening before our very eyes:

“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his

 successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor

 will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help

 rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human

 history."

Because Fulton Sheen was Wise Beyond His Time

 “The first direct, human limitation of infant life in the history of Christianity took place in the village of Bethlehem through an infant-controller whose name was Herod. The prevention of infant life was simultaneously an attack upon Divinity in the person of God made man, Jesus Christ our Lord. No one strikes at birth who does not simultaneously strike at God, for birth is earth’s reflection of the Son’s eternal generation.”    Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Three to Get Married)

Status Update: 4 years In

 Went back to Mayo last week for a 6 month (well, 7 month because of COVID) follow up.   We're four years into this cancer gig... starting to think it's just going to be a part of my life from here on out.  Rob went with me, and we made it a little mid-week getaway, which was nice.  He did ALL the driving, and luckily the roads were good, even in mid-January.  We did a little shopping, went out to dinner (restaurants are open in Minnesota!  They aren't in Michigan - so we took advantage).  Had an ultrasound, some blood work, and then met with Dr. Stan the Man.  

Results: Status quo.  Which means good.  The one nodule they can visualize with ultrasound stayed essentially the same size and is poorly vascularized, which means that radioiodine in June of 2019 effectively stunted the growth - which is AWESOME.  Tumor marker went from 1.9 to 2.2, but that's not much of a change.  Basically, the stuff is there but behaving itself, and that is GOOD NEWS.  I asked the doctor about the COVID vaccine.  I know this is an mRNA vaccine that hijacks a cell's own "factory" to create the COVID spike protein for an immune response.  What happens if the vaccine enters a cancer cell?  There's no research on the effects of this vaccine on cancer patients, so I've held off, even though I could get it through the hospital.  Was just hoping for a little more research and data to be determined before taking it, but Dr. Stan said "either the cancer cell will make the spike protein or it won't.  There are no other things that it can do with the mRNA".... such as make the cancer go super active, which is what I was afraid of.  So, I guess there's no good reason NOT to get the vaccine at this point, although I'm still a tad nervous about how new it all is.  There is no research on long term effects for a vaccine that took 10 months to create.  But... it should be good.  This is all besides the point.

Dr. Stan also asked if I wanted a referral to an ENT to see about a procedure to "bulk up" my paralyzed vocal cord.  "Well, " says I.  "My single working vocal cord is super loud.  I can yell at my kids just fine.  I can swallow most things most of the time.  The only thing I can't do very well anymore is jog."

"Do you want to jog?" asks he?

I thought about it for a hot second.  "I'm almost 50 years old.  No.  I don't want to jog anymore.  I can walk and ski and snowshoe and hike.  That is fine.  I don't need to jog anymore."

So that's that.  He said if I ever did want to take up jogging again, to let him know and we'd do the procedure, but at the moment, I feel like I'm very functional and we should just leave well enough alone.  

So good report, good little mid-winter getaway with my husband, and all is well in cancer land!

From The Mouths of Babes

 If we thought 2020 was bad... 2021 is starting to one-up it, and it's only been around for a week and a half.  Tensions in the country are running uber-high, the pandemic proceeds as it will - even with a vaccine - and many businesses are struggling.  Quite frankly, our country is a mess at the moment.  An utter mess.  Thankfully, though, school began again for the kids this past week, which means that I get to be back working face-to-face with kids, which is how I prefer it.  

I asked one of the kids I see for therapy how his Christmas break was.  He was full of tales of Legos and new watches, and being out on the frozen lake.  It made me smile.  The darkness hadn't encroached on his little world, and that made me happy.  We were walking along the school hallway, he in his walker, coming up to maybe my upper thigh - me towering above him, bending down to try and here his quiet voice muffled behind his mask.  And then he stopped, looked up at me, and said in his high-pitched way...

"Did you see the Star of Bethlehem right before Christmas?  It hasn't showed up in like 800 years.  But it came this year!  I know it was cloudy so we couldn't see it so well, but it was still there.  And it was God telling us that Jesus is still here with us, that He'll never leave us!"

It was so out of the blue, so unexpected, and so what I needed to hear, that I had to turn my head so he wouldn't see that I had started to cry.    And then he went back to talk of Legos and school, and other mundane things, completely unaware of how he had just pierced my heart.

God talks through these little ones.  He really does.  And He hasn't left us alone, even in 2021....

Thought of the Day: Archbishop Fulton Sheen

 “The gravest danger to American democracy is not from the outside; it is from the inside – the hearts of citizens in whom the light of faith has gone out. Keep God as the origin of authority and you keep the ethical character of authority; reject Him and the authority becomes power subject to no law except its own.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen

From Tucker Carlson. EXACTLY WHAT I THINK.

Amid the bombardment of images of what took place at the U.S. Capitol Wednesday, too little time has been spent thinking about why it happened. Anyone who is trying to understand the significance of what’s going on right now ought to watch video of the last moments of Ashli Babbit, the woman who was shot and killed in the chaos.

Footage, which can easily be found online, shows Babbit standing in a hallway right off the House floor with an American flag tied around her neck. The scene around her is chaotic. People are bumping into each other, yelling, trying to get through the door into the chamber. Suddenly, with no warning, there is gunfire. You hear a shot and Babbit falls. People in the hallway scream. The camera closes in on her face. Babbit looks stunned. She’s staring straight ahead. You can see that she knows she’s about to die, which she did.

So what can we learn from this? It’s not enough to call it a tragedy. Imagine for a second learning that was your daughter. The last time you spoke to her, she was heading to Washington for a political rally. Now, she’s dead. You’ll never talk to her again. That’s what we’re watching, and we may be watching a lot more of it in the coming days.

Political violence begets political violence. That is an iron law. We have to be against that, no matter who commits the violence or under what pretext, no matter how many self-interested demagogues assure us the violence is justified or necessary. We have a duty to oppose all of this, not simply because political violence kills other people’s children, but because in the end it doesn’t work.

No good person will live a happier life because that woman was killed in the hallway of the Capitol today. So our only option, as a practical matter, is to fix what is causing this in the first place.

You may have nothing in common with the people on the other side of the country (increasingly, you probably don’t), but you’re stuck with them. The idea that groups of Americans will somehow break off into separate peaceful nations of like-minded citizens, is a fantasy. The two hemispheres of this country are inseparably intertwined, like conjoined twins. Neither can leave without killing the other. As horrifying as this moment is, we have no option but to make it better, to gut it out. 

The second thing to consider, and it’s related to the first, is why Ashli Babbit went to the rally in the first place. She bore no resemblance to the angry children we have seen wrecking our cities in recent months — pasty, entitled nihilists dressed in black, setting fires and spray painting slogans on statues. She looked pretty much like everyone else.

So why was she there? We ought to think about that. If you want to fix it, you have to think about that.

The only reason this country is rich and successful is because for hundreds of years, we have enjoyed a stable political system. The only reason that system is stable is because it’s a democracy, responsive to voters. 

Democracy is a pressure relief valve.   As long as people sincerely believe they can change things by voting, they stay calm. They don’t burst into the House chamber. They talk and they organize and they vote. But the opposite is also true if people begin to believe that their democracy is fraudulent, that voting is a charade, that the system is rigged and it’s run in secret by a small group of powerful, dishonest people who are acting in their own interests. Then, God knows what could happen.

Actually, we do know what could happen, because it’s happening right now. It’s happened in countless other countries over countless centuries. And the cycle is always the same because human nature never changes.

“Listen to us!” scream the population.

“Shut up and do what you’re told,” say their leaders.

In the face of dissent, the first instinct of illegitimate leadership is to crack down on the population, but crackdowns never make it better. They always make the country more volatile and more dangerous. The people in charge rarely understand that. They don’t want to, they don’t care to learn or listen because all of this conversation is a referendum on them and their leadership. So they clamp down harder.

This is the Romanov program, and it ends badly every single time. But that doesn’t mean they won’t try it again. Of course they will, because it’s their nature. It’s how we got here in the first place.

Millions of Americans sincerely believe the last election was fake. You can dismiss them as crazy. You can call them conspiracy theorists. You can kick them off Twitter. But that won’t change their minds. Rather than trying to change their minds, to convince them and reassure them that the system is real, that democracy works — which you would do if you cared about the country or the people who live here — our new leaders will try to silence them.

What happened Wednesday will be used by the people taking power to justify stripping you of the rights you were born with as an American:   Your right to speak without being censored, your right to assemble, to not be spied upon, to make a living, and to defend your family.

These are the most basic and ancient freedoms that we have there. They’re why we live here in the first place. They’re why we’re proud to be Americans. They’re what make us different, and they’re all now in peril.

When thousands of your countrymen storm the Capitol building, you don’t have to like it. We don’t. You can be horrified by the violence, and we are.

But if you don’t bother to pause and learn a single thing from your citizens storming your Capitol building, then you’re a fool, you lack wisdom and self-awareness, and you have no place running a country. We got to this sad, chaotic day for a reason. 

St. Charles Borromeo... on worship during a plague (From "The Orations Did Not Stop")

 ….the clergy are told to prepare each household for the devotional activities devised for the extraordinary circumstances by teaching them a variety of prayers, litanies, and Psalms ahead of the quarantine. During the quarantine, bells across the parish were to be rung seven times a day, approximately every two hours, to call the households to prayer. Once begun, the bell would be rung again every quarter hour, until the fourth bell signals an end to the hour of prayer. While the bell rings,

litanies or supplications will be chanted or recited at the direction of the Bishop. This will be performed in such a way that one group sings from the windows or the doors of their homes, and then another group sings and responds in turn.

To ensure that these prayers are carried out properly, the decree continues, a member of the clergy or someone trained in these prayers (possibly the head of the household) should also come to a window or door at the appointed times to direct the prayers and stir up enthusiasm for this devotion. To further facilitate these devotional activities, Borromeo instructed the parish clergy to be supplied with books ‘that contain certain prayers, litanies, and oration, which will be made freely available, in order that he may go and distribute them to his own or other parishes’.

… Borromeo’s directive to sing at doors and windows was evidently put into practice and impressed a number of chroniclers. In his Relatione verissima, Paolo Bisciola reports:

[W]hen the plague began to grow, this practice [of singing the litanies in public] was interrupted, so as not to allow the congregations to provide it more fuel. The orations did not stop, however, because each person stood in his house at the window or door and made them from there […] Just think, in walking around Milan, one heard nothing but song, veneration of God, and supplication to the saints, such that one almost wished for these tribulations to last longer.

Advent: Healing and Hope

 "Advent’s intention is to awaken the most profound and basic emotional memory within us, namely, the memory of the God who became a child. This is a healing memory; it brings hope."

— Pope Benedict XVI

The Prophetic Archbishop Fulton Sheen

 What I see happening in our country today, he predicted a generation ago.....

“Apart from an outside supernatural assistance society goes from bad to worse until deterioration is universal. Not evolution but devolution is the law of man without God. With all of our boasted mechanical civilization a day might come when our modern towers of Babel would be as forgotten as the first, when Americans would cease to exist as a race as the Babylonians and Medes have ceased to exist, when Washington would be a contested locality like the capital of the Aztec civilization, and when the Constitution of the United States would be the hopeless search of the world’s archaeologists.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (The Prodigal World)

Wisdom

 “Formerly, man lived in a three-dimensional universe where, from an earth he inhabited with his neighbors, he looked forth to heaven above and to hell below. Forgetting God, man’s vision has lately been reduced to a single dimension; namely, that of his own mind. Where can the soul go, now that a road block has been thrown up against every external outlet? Like a city which has had all its outer ramparts seized, man must retreat inside himself. As a body of water that is blocked turns back upon itself, collecting scum, refuse, and silt, so the modern soul (which has none of the goals or channels of the Christian) backs upon itself and in that choked condition collects all the sub-rational, instinctive, dark, unconscious sediment which would never have accumulated had there been the normal exits of normal times. Man now finds that he is locked up within himself, his own prisoner. Jailed by self, he now attempts to compensate for the loss of the three-dimensional universe of faith by analyzing his mind.”

Archbishop Fulton Sheen

The Price of a Pandemic (In an Election Year)

 

Americans are overwhelmingly soft in this day and age, and in the grand scheme of things, we have very little to complain about, so I shouldn't.  Our family has job security, a roof over our head, food on our table, and each other.  We have our health, comfort, and our faith which we are free to express (in highly modified form).  This alone puts us in the top 1% of the most privileged people on the planet.  I really shouldn't complain.  But I will.  Because there has been a cost to this pandemic (in an election year), and it's a very real cost.  As the election approaches in seven short days, I've got this growing sense of dread and uneasiness.  I fear for our country.  I fear that the divisions that have been drawn, that have deepened so profoundly in this 2020 year, will be irreconcilable after November 3rd.  It hurts my heart.  Can we heal after 2020?

Other families have lost income, jobs, loved ones.  Our family has not lost much materially.  We are still overwhelmingly blessed.   But we have lost relationships.  I  have lost relationships, my children have lost relationships.  There is no sense of community anywhere anymore.  Not with friends, not with our church family.   There are no Saturday  morning coffees with the girls.  There are no conversations after mass, gatherings for meals, faith formation in person, or even talks with the priest after mass.  We are allowed to go to church, but we are isolated while we do so. Our Catholic women's group is melting to nothing.  Little Flowers has dissipated.   I miss my church family.  I miss being around other moms.  I miss feeling like part of a community, especially in uncertain and trying times.  

I have lost friendships.  Being required to "isolate" early on meant that people chose their "germ pods", those that they were comfortable seeing in person, and I... am not in those groups.  Two friends have moved away, others have chosen to "isolate together", and I feel cut off.  My social circle had narrowed to just my work friends (thank God I have been able to work outside the house throughout all of this!) but now, work friends are moving on as well. That circle has shattered just as thoroughly as the others.  I am not handling it well.    How people have chosen to respond to the pandemic, their emotional and physical response to it, has caused fissures that were never there before.  Add to that political differences in this contentious year, and there are just too many differences to overcome.  Before 2020, our commonalities far outweighed our differences.  This year, our differences are all anyone can see.  Everyone is a judge now.  Everyone seems to have the right to deem whether others are "doing it right" in the decisions they are making in response to the pandemic, and the response to what is happening in our country.  Hunker down at home?  Pull kids from school?  Send kids to school?  Let them trick or treat on Halloween?  Carry on as normal as possible, or quarantine for safety? From what political perspective do you view what is going on in our country at the moment?  What movie are you watching, the blue one or the red one?  Are YOU on the "right side of history?"  

The price our children have paid is even greater.  They have paid with their future.  Their education was deemed "non-essential".  The switch to online learning caused many children, mine included, to sink into a hole they are just now trying to dig out of.  The future that my children always envisioned for themselves is having to be revamped because of this.  If my son is flunking a class because virtual learning is not a mode in which he can learn, that makes college out of reach, which makes his career goals out of reach. A child who was an A-B student before virtual learning, who is now flunking solely because of virtual learning... that makes me angry.   We have had long discussions about a "Plan B"... because he is not capable of staring at a computer screen for 8 hours and ingesting information.  This is not right.  We've asked for help, and been told the answer is to not shoot for college, to accept failing, rather than to provide learning in a way that he can learn.  A smart, capable kid, drowning in online assignments and "self-directed" learning.  My blood boils as much as my heart hurts for him.  

I see the special needs students that I work with, and see how the shut down has hurt them.  Many are in danger of losses that they will be unable to recover from, without the structure that school provides.  I saw the regression of these kids who were out of school for six months - I now have to recommend surgery for some whose deficits are too much for us to recover through other means.  Our structures to support families with special needs children just dissipated during the shut down, and I could do nothing but watch through telehealth.  It was terrible.  

There has been a physical cost to this pandemic.  There has been a financial cost to this pandemic.  Even more, though, there has been a spiritual and emotional cost, a cost in the very relationships that have held us afloat on a daily basis.  I see what is happening as a microcosm in my world, and know that it is happening on a vast scale nationwide.  

Lord, bless this country.  Forgive us our selfishness, pride, and hubris.  Forgive us our sins as a nation, for the innocent that cry out to you in anguish.  Help us to approach the future with humility, so that we might heal.  As individuals, as community, as a nation.  In your Son's holy name we pray. 

Amen.

On the Upcoming Election....

 Four years ago, I made my vote while holding my nose.  I felt like my choices were between bad and worse, and I made my own decision with many reservations, and without much hope.  I didn't know if this business man would do what he said he would do.  I didn't know if I could TRUST him to represent me and my values.

It's been another four years, and time to head to the polls once again (or to the mailbox, as the case may be in these Covid-ridden times).  This time around, I don't even have to think about.  I don't have to hold my nose (well, maybe a little).  Because I have seen what has happened over the past four years, and it makes my decision far easier than back then. 

I still think he's a big-mouth, and brash, and a narcissist.  I wish the guy would stay off of Twitter, but I understand why he does it.  He looks for a fight... all the time... but at the same time, why wouldn't he?  If he was nice and polite (like the Bushes were), they'd still try to destroy him, so he might as well fight back.  Yes, it's caused a lot of screaming and angst, and "can you believe what he SAID?"  It's caused a lot of people to loathe this man inhabiting our White House, with feelings of indescribable hate.  I keep hearing from the left that "he lied" to the American public.  And I want to say back "NO.  He didn't.  He did what he said he would do, while you all were screaming at the top of your lungs about the stupid stuff he says".  

I admit, I rarely listen to the man.  His persona (and I do believe it's a persona.  He is a reality TV star, and this over-the-top persona doesn't match the interviews he gave before all of this) is not pleasant to listen to.  But I don't have to.  Because I am voting for what he DOES, and not what he SAYS.  I am voting for the changes he is enacting, and not the individual human being that he is.  I admire his fight.  He is not afraid, and they have heaped attack after attack on him, and vilified him night and day for four years.  He's a boxer, a fighter by trade, really.  He thrives on the fight, and I hate confrontation.  It doesn't matter.   I see how the public is being manipulated, see how the media is spinning things, because quite honestly, it's all they've GOT right now.  Manipulation, crisis, fear, and self-loathing. In the absence of any real political power, they are creating mayhem, and it's all a ploy to get political power back.  So....this time, I am voting for a record of things accomplished, not just a person, and they are things I can throw my support behind 100%.  I don't care anymore that he's not "presidential".  Obama was presidential, and where did that get us? 

THESE are the reasons that the current administration gets my vote this time, without hesitation:

• Thus far, Trump has installed two (soon to be three, most likely) Supreme Court justices and 205  judges overall to the federal bench — all for lifetime appointments. Even if Trump is not reelected in 2020, his presidency will continue to have an impact on the direction of the US due to the sheer number of conservative federal judges he’s installed.  This, above all, made my 2016 vote worthwhile.
• The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The law was the biggest overhaul to the nation’s tax code in three decades, permanently slashing the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35% while also providing temporary benefits for individuals and their families.  This helped our economy to boom, and led to record-breaking growth prior to the COVID pandemic.  If we want this nation to get back to economic prosperity for its citizens, we need this man at them helm.
• The greatest increase in manufacturing jobs in the history of the US, and the lowest unemployment rate in 49 years, especially among African Americans and women.
• The First Step Act passed into law in December 2018, marking the first legislative victory in years for advocates seeking to reform the criminal justice system. The bill also aims to lower recidivism by offering more rehabilitation and job-training opportunities, and it includes provisions intended to treat prisoners humanely — banning the shackling of pregnant inmates, halting the use of solitary confinement for most juvenile inmates, and mandating that prisoners be placed in facilities within 500 miles from their families.
• The defeat of the ISIS caliphate.  The reduced threat from North Korea and Iran.  The leaders of our enemies know this man is not afraid to use force if necessary, and they haven't pushed the envelope during his Presidency.
• Trump finalized the Protect Life Rule, cutting Planned Parenthood’s federal funding by $60 million.
• He reinstated the Mexico City Policy that ends federal funding of overseas abortions. The Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance program safeguards more than $8.8 BILLION in overseas aid from being used for abortions.
• Signed a bill that allowed states to defund Planned Parenthood of Title X (family planning) funding, reversing an Obama attempt to force states to fund abortion providers.
• Defunded the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) which supported China’s population control program (which includes forced abortions).
•  Cut HHS funding for fetal tissue research
• Decreased the cost of FDA approved generic drugs
• Brokered middle-east peace deals between Israel and other mid-east countries such as Bahrain and the UAE.  

There is more.  A lot more.  But for brevity's sake, I'll stop there.  

And he is running against a man who has been around for 48 years contributing to the "swamp" of DC politics, with a vice presidential candidate whose aim is socialism, and was rated by the independent govtrack.us as the most liberal of all the Senators.  I've seen many people recently say "what's so bad with socialism?"  The idea of "helping" everyone with handouts seems appealing.  By DEFINITION, though, socialism is "(in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of Communism.".  It is further defined as "a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."  How does the "community as a whole" own the means of production?  By the government running it, that's how.  Socialism takes away the individual rights and responsibilities of private ownership, the economic system on which our nation was founded.  

I see the media pitting Americans against Americans, spewing American self-loathing as a campaign strategy  ('we were never great to begin with!')('America is racist'!).  They are fomenting unrest, fomenting a civil war, and it is part of the playbook, make no mistake about it.  This is how governments get overthrown from within.  America is under attack, with the ultimate goal of changing the very structure of our democratic republic.  I can see it so plainly; in every riot, every defunded police department, every twist of words, every cancelled social media post that doesn't fit the narrative, every illogical and repressive executive order that comes out of Lansing without input from the legislature.  

So yes, I'm voting FOR his strong pro-life stance with actions to back up his words, his handling of the economy - which is good for ALL Americans- and his appointments to the federal bench and Supreme court. Top 3.  I am also voting AGAINST socialism in all its coercive forms.  I am voting against a culture of death.  I am voting against the lunacy of destroying statues and businesses and cities without repercussion.  I am voting against the closure of businesses and livelihoods in fear of an unseen virus. I am voting against identity politics, and the "woke" mentality that glorifies and encourages victimhood.   I am voting for decency, logic, reason, national prosperity, and for common sense.  I don't see that anymore on the other side of the coin.  America is a GOOD country, founded on honorable principles.  NO.  We are not perfect, but I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.   Our country needs us now more than ever.  We, the silent majority, the American people, the ultimate "check and balance" of our Republic - time for us to speak.

This year, I'm not torn at all.  I know what I have to do.