#7QT: O Larger Town of Bethlehem

{one}

Home sweet home! Grace and I flew to PA on Monday, met my MIL and found:

• a fantastic grocery store
• half-day daycare options (one super close to the hospital!)
• a house (also close to the hospital!!!!!!!!!!!)
• a beautiful historic downtown
• a few colleges
• Catholic churches
• a friend!
• lots of area to explore and scenery to enjoy - truly charming
• the Peeps factory

Little lady loved PA; she got up extra early to enjoy her time there.

{two}

A little bit about Bethlehem, PA: it was founded in 1741 on Christmas Eve by Moravians, on 500 acres of land from William Penn. Be still my little American Studies heart.

Moravians are the hipsters of Protestantism - they started their crusade 60 years before Martin Luther did, and 100 years before Henry VIII started getting busy. The founder of the Moravians was burned at the stake for heresy in 1415 so... do you think they still hold that against Catholics? Because I was hoping to find a babysitter or two on campus. Fortunately, the area was flooded with immigrants (across the river... they could not live on the 500 acres for many moons), so there are plenty o' Catholic churches in the area.

Freedom of religion, yay!

{three}

This house is going to be an adventure. Built in 1886, it is now lived in as a twin. Its gorgeous interior is in need of a paint job in some places, a bit of woodwork repair, and a few appliances - namely, a fridge, a dishwasher, and portable A/C units. Maybe it's the HGTV magazine I bought or the Young House Love book I got for my birthday, but I'm excited. The house does have a washer/dryer, more than enough space [my want/need] + a one car attached garage, and Will can walk to the emergency room [his want/need].

Front hall

Get excited for house fix-up pictures. They're coming to a blog near you.

{four}

I'm taking a free class on Dante's journey from Hell to Heaven and it starts Monday! You should join me! Starting with the Inferno, we're reading one canto a day, watching one video lecture a day, and writing one response a week. It's my summer indulgence! It's offered by Holy Apostles College & Seminary, a really incredible school.

Desperately Seeking Beatrice.

{five}

David McCullough (aaaaaaamazing historian) was asked about the five things to teach high school students. I love all of these.

It's been really great thinking about teaching in the fall. I'm looking forward to showing kids how history is more than a string of dates and events, but an intricate web of Who and What and Why. The motivation, the intrigue, the insults, the scandal and the common good. If you can memorize, cool. But if you can make connections? Even better. History is not a straight line - it's a wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey ball of people, places and things. And I love it.

{six}

More love:

The problem facing the humanities, in my view, isn’t just about the humanities. It’s about the liberal arts generally, including math, science, and economics. These form half of the so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) subjects, but if the goal of an education is simply economic advancement and technological power, those disciplines, just like the humanities, will be—and to some degree already are—subordinated to future employment and technological progress. Why shouldn’t educational institutions predominately offer classes like Business Calculus and Algebra for Nurses? Why should anyone but hobbyists and the occasional specialist take courses in astronomy, human evolution, or economic history? So, what good, if any, is the study of the liberal arts, particularly subjects like philosophy?  Why, in short, should plumbers study Plato? 

My answer is that we should strive to be a society of free people, not simply one of well-compensated managers and employees. Henry David Thoreau is as relevant as ever when he writes, “We seem to have forgotten that the expression ‘a liberal education’ originally meant among the Romans one worthy of free men; while the learning of trades and professions by which to get your livelihood merely, was considered worthy of slaves only.”

Clap clap clap for "Why I Teach Plato to Plumbers" by Scott Samuelson, The Atlantic

{seven}

I also love that learning cursive is a mind good and not just an aesthetic pleasure - like these purple tulips.

Happy weekend! Linking up with Jen! I am actively awaiting my copy of Something Other Than God to arrive...!!

#7QT: home is where the food is

What a week. I'm exhausted!

{one}

I found a realtor this week. I said a small prayer before scouring the bowels of the internet for a good one, and I cold-called an awesome lady who laughs and chats as much as I do, talked up Bethlehem, and sent me 20+ houses to peruse that night. Good vibes.

I'm giggly excited over living in a house, and establishing our third home as a family. Fine, I'm really excited to decorate... and our own space, with no neighbors to listen to (even though they do have good taste in music). I'm in love with IKEA's look book, and finally having more space to spread out instead of using our kitchen table as my desk, our bedroom and nursery as extra storage, and better baby-proofing the kitchen and bathroom areas.

{two}

On that note, any tips on selling furniture? I was thinking Craigslist. We have a couple things it would be better to sell than move 18+ hours north.

{three}

A professor of mine in college, Dr. Bart, taught me English literature and that gardening is life's greatest sport. While living down south, I've had the opportunity of admiring everyone's lovely garden, or at least the perpetual greenness of the grass and the leaves in the [palm] trees.

I love Kate's "yes!" to doing something beautiful.

I think gardening will be an excellent start to cultivating a love of imperfection. I might start here.

{four}

Speaking of beautiful - these pictures! I melt. (And!! Don't miss the baby and french bulldog slide show at the end.)

If you're into craft brew, twins, and trans-Atlantic rivalries, this story is for you.

"Six Little Known Musical Portraits of the Sea" - I think the title says it all! Epic.

Brittany writes on her top seven vocation reads - what would you add to it?

No big deal: Hillsdale College grad here, and we can really say "We're Number 1!" They forgot to list me under notable alumni, though... weird.

But I read all these books for my thesis!! Notable and quotable, I am.

{five}

I'm entering that stage of postpartum living where I actually try to look decent every day. That might sound like a laugh ("lofty goals today, Julie!"), but, you know what? It is. Because Grace doesn't judge me or my extremely comfortable yoga pants. As an esteemed professor once told our class, "It takes just as much effort to put on a regular pair of pants as sweatpants."

Well... yes and no. But the point is there. I consider myself dressed once my pants are on. Next step: where are the good looking nursing tops??

My exciting discoveries of the week are two-fold:

• Uber Chic for Cheap website is a goldmine, especially the postpartum section -- it is not lost on me that everyone is goo-goo for the preggo mom, but not the mom who is nursing and just trying to look decent in her new body shape.
• The Jones Market is an etsy store with lovely, baby friendly necklaces. My MIL bought me a similar one, and Grace likes it so much that I might need to supplement my jewelry, which always steps up a girl's glamour.

What I'm really trying to say here is: It's a completely different game dressing yourself when it's just for you and the baby, and it's really time to start winning that game.

{six}

Happy six months to this little lady!

Because I'm happy!

"Oh hai, Dad!"

{seven}

Food has been on my mind a lot recently. I've been reading two cookbooks by James Beard, and I think I need to spend more time studying cuts of meats. Ham hocks? Where do I even get that?

Red beans: I'm ready.

This week, I cooked*:

Sunday: Nothing. Chinese food, y'all.
Monday: fish stew + rolls
Tuesday: petite steaks, pesto pasta, rum cake (Will's birthday!)
Wednesday: red beans and coconut milk rice {this last part was a huge, huge mistake to fix in the rice cooker}
Thursday: plain cajun rice and meaty red beans
Friday: more fish stew tonight
Saturday & Sunday: more red beans and fish stew

What will the menu be next week? I'm thinking of fixing little omelets in muffin tins because, as I sleep train Grace, mornings are getting harder [than usual]. This Amish cinnamon bread looks enticing as well. And maybe this soup for Friday? Lisa Schmidt is hosting Soup & Stories over at The Practicing Catholic -- for delicious soups and warm stories, check it out! I'll be posting there on April 11.

*plus sides of carrots or spinach salad; I'm thinking of sauteing corn and carrots this weekend.

Happy Friday!! UK vs. UL game tonight... game on. Joining with Jen on a plane!

#7QT: The Music In Our Heads

Join Jen and friends here!

ONE

When my baby sleeps, her arms go up and her hands flick, like she's conducting a great orchestra invisible to the rest of us. I'm currently playing Appalachian Journey for us to keep tempo while she naps/ stares off into space and I write. For the past few days, as we've been driving east, then north, then south, and then back home west, it was a lot of RUSH, classic radio hits, and, sometimes, her wails synchronizing with the car speeding along the highway. And after the wails come the coos, the mouth noises, and a mama singing the "Grace-Grace-GraceGrace" song.

I like to imagine Grace has classical music swirling around in her head, something dramatic and exciting and beautiful, but I imagine it's something more like this:



"Mama, Dada, boop-boop, shoo-wawa!"

TWO

Bright Maidens are at it again! Join us for our November prompt - "How To Cultivate A (Truly) Grateful Heart"!

Write up a piece on your blog and share it on our FB page; we'll share it at-large. At the end of the month, we'll put all the pieces into one post and share them again for all to enjoy!

We're officially over 700 likes by this past weekend - do you like us too?

THREE

Want to know what your body goes through when you've run a marathon? Wonder if you're up for it today? Here, wonder no more! Pretty sweet infographic, I must say. I'm not one of those people who wants to run a marathon (although rumor has it that child birth is like it, but longer), but I used to run for fun and sports, so the concept still intrigues me. 5ks sound fun to me! Do they have baby harnesses for runners or is that what strollers are for? (Says the lady who was just cleared for exercise.)

FOUR

"I Learned Everything I Needed to Know About Marriage From Pride and Prejudice", The Atlantic Monthly
"Men Without Hearts" The American Conservative
"An Interview with Simcha Fisher, Author of A Sinner's Guide to Natural Family Planning", Ignitum Today

FIVE

" 'Too many Christians... have a tendency to make an ideology, an abstraction, out of Christianity. And abstractions have no need of a mother.' Here again what is said of Mary applies to the Church. The motherhood of the Church no longer means anything to our systems - but we, in order to free ourselves from their abstraction, need to return to our mother." -Henri de Lubac, Motherhood of the Church

(H/T Christine! A very cool lady and one of my favorite blogs.)

SIX

Grace is modeling the newest gift - a bib (and onesie, which is currently too big) from my high school alma mater! It's currently almost as long as her, but it should last her for a long time!

Future Lion?

SEVEN

Sneak peek into life right now... off to eat lunch before going on a walk with Will!

Happy weekend!

TGIS

It's the weekend. And what a looooovely weekend it's been too.

• My sister Katie is home from Africa today! She's also the birthday girl today. Wish her a good one.
• Carrots for Michaelmas blogger Haley's husband Daniel wrote an awesome response about kids bringing the party to church.
• Rod Dreher asked his readers to recommend 3 books about one religion, and list in order of preference. Here is Leah's response (and more background) and now, here are mine:
• An Affair to Remember by Graham Greene (fiction)
• The Imitation of Christ by St. Thomas a Kempis
• Introduction to Christianity by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI (as Joseph Ratzinger)
• Comedian vs. Smart Phone - the saga continues at TIC. 
• How do you like my new blog look? Because I am actually very happy with it... and I did it! (With a friendly thanks to my friend Kate for helping me with re-sizing the header picture.)
• Talk to me about meat for dinner. What kind of meat dishes do you like? How do you decide? Do you think it's worth buying meat at Whole Foods/Fresh Market vs. "regular" grocery stores? How much of your budget (% or $$) do you allot for meat?

Love so great for a person so small...

And now, an excerpt of a reflection by Pope Francis (as Jorge Bergoglio) on the lepers' encounter with Jesus (today's Gospel is Luke 17:11-19); as found in October's Magnificat (emphasis mine):

Everything in our life, today just as in Jesus' time, begins with an encounter. ... 

We cannot understand this dynamic of encounter which brings forth wonder and adherence if it has not been triggered...by mercy. Only someone who has encountered mercy, who has been caressed by the tenderness of mercy, is happy and comfortable with the Lord. ... 

In front of this merciful embrace...we feel real desire to respond, to change, to correspond; a new morality arises. ...Christian morality is simply a response. It is the heartfelt response to a surprising, unforeseeable, "unjust" mercy... The surprising, unforeseeable "unjust" mercy...of one who knows me, knows my betrayals and loves me just the same, appreciates me, embraces me, calls me again, hopes in me, and expects from me. This is why the Christian conception of morality is a revolution; it is not a never falling down but an always getting up again. ... 

Jesus is encountered, just as two thousand years ago, in a human presence, the Church, the company of those whom he assimilates to himself, his Body, the sign and sacrament of his Presence. ...It is a question of starting to say "You" to Christ, and saying it often. It is impossible to desire it without asking for it. And if someone asks for it, it is because in the depths of his being he feels attracted, called, looked at, awaited...There from the depths of my being, something attracts me toward Someone who looked for me first, is waiting for me first.

I hope you all are enjoying a blessed weekend!

Let's Give Chivalry Another Chance

As seen at The Atlantic:

Chivalry is about respect. It is about not harming or hurting others, especially those who are more vulnerable than you. It is about putting other people first and serving others often in a heroic or courageous manner. It is about being polite and courteous. In other words, chivalry in the age of post-feminism is another name we give to civility. When we give up on civility, understood in this way, we can never have relationships that are as meaningful as they could be. 

If women today—feminists and non-feminists alike—encouraged both men and women to adopt the principles of civil and chivalrous conduct, then the standards of behavior for the two sexes would be the same, fostering the equality that feminists desire. Moreover, the relations between the sexes would be once again based on mutual respect, as the traditionalists want. Men and women may end up being civil and well-mannered in different ways, but at least they would be civil and well-mannered, an improvement on the current situation.

Read more here!

Oh, and here's one more gem: "There's No Perfect Time to Start Having Kids"

No Catholic Happy-o-Meter?

Gregory Wolfe, in his essay "Ever Ancient, Ever New: The Catholic Writer in the Modern World":

By the end of the novel, Sebastian and Cordelia are also living stunted and sad lives. But, as happens so often in the fiction of Evelyn Waugh, a throwaway phrase contains the core of the novel’s meaning: “happiness doesn’t seem to have much to do with it.” 

For Waugh, the notion that the life of faith ought to lead inevitably to worldly prosperity and what the pop psychologists call “wellness” is both unrealistic and dangerous. In a fallen world, afflicted by evil and stupidity, happiness can never be a gauge of fidelity to God. To think otherwise is to confuse happiness, with its bourgeois connotations of comfort and freedom from any burdens, with blessedness, or what Catholics call the “state of grace”. Catholics, Waugh believed, have always clung to the foot of the cross, profoundly and intuitively aware of what the Spanish philosopher Unamuno called “the tragic sense of life”.

Evelyn Waugh

As quoted in "Happiness Vs. Blessedness" by Ron Dreher (in The American Conservative)

H/T Wesley Hill's tumblr, writing in the dust

All Equals in the Republic of Baseball

Tomorrow is George Will's 71st birthday and his son Jon's 40th birthday. This fact is pointed out to the public in Will's most recent column because his almost 40 year old son has Downs Syndrome and lives quite well.

As some of you may know, in our present time, 90 percent of Downs babies are aborted.

Back then, institutionalizing and sending away the baby away to be adopted were also viable options. Downs babies had an average life-span of 20 years.

Will wrote, "The day after Jon was born, a doctor told Jon’s parents that the first question for them was whether they intended to take Jon home from the hospital. Nonplussed, they said they thought that is what parents do with newborns."

Jon is George Will's first child: "The eldest of four siblings, he has seen two brothers and a sister surpass him in size, and acquire cars and college educations. He, however, with an underdeveloped entitlement mentality, has been equable about life’s sometimes careless allocation of equity. Perhaps this is partly because, given the nature of Down syndrome, neither he nor his parents have any tormenting sense of what might have been. Down syndrome did not alter the trajectory of his life; Jon was Jon from conception on."

More Will on his son: "Judging by Jon, the world would be improved by more people with Down syndrome, who are quite nice, as humans go. It is said we are all born brave, trusting and greedy, and remain greedy. People with Down syndrome must remain brave in order to navigate society’s complexities. They have no choice but to be trusting because, with limited understanding, and limited abilities to communicate misunderstanding, they, like Blanche DuBois in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” always depend on the kindness of strangers. Judging by Jon’s experience, they almost always receive it."

Read the whole thing here.

There are family pictures too; a box of tissues and confetti (to throw about after reading such awesomeness) are not included.

"This year Jon will spend his birthday where every year he spends 81 spring, summer and autumn days and evenings, at Nationals Park, in his seat behind the home team’s dugout. The Phillies will be in town, and Jon will be wishing them ruination, just another man, beer in hand, among equals in the republic of baseball."

Happy birthday to the Will men!

We Lepers

"Illness, indeed leprosy, continues to provide the great metaphor for sin. In A Burnt Out Case, Graham Greene, at a time when he seemed unsure as to what or even whether he himself believed, found that the stark fact of the hideous contortions of leprosy made illness at least indubitable. The cure that haunts the novel suggests something far more than being restored to the condition of most of us. It was possible to think of lepers as victims, selected without rhyme or reason for their tragic fate, but it is not some evil that merely happens to us, that befalls us, that haunts Graham Greene."

-- from "We Lepers" by Ralph McInerny

Close to Home

Q: You mention that it is good for abuse victims to pray for those who have harmed them, but acknowledge that doing so may be impossible without stirring up up painful memories. What do you recommend for those kinds of situations? 

A: I once got a very helpful tip from a Sister of Life. I was talking to her about how I felt that I owed it to God to pray for a certain person, but that it was painful for me to think about this person. The sister advised me to commend this person to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to say to Mary, “Please place this person inside your Immaculate Heart, so that every time I’m praying for the intentions of your Immaculate Heart, I am praying for him.” 

--Jen Fulwiler interview with Dawn Eden

Divine Mercy: One Year Later

Today is the second Sunday of Easter, also known as Divine Mercy Sunday. Last year, Osama bin Laden was killed and Pope John Paul II was beatified.

Here is my reflection ("Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?") at The Imaginative Conservative.

"But child, you are not yet in your homeland; so go, fortified by My grace and fight for My kingdom in human souls; fight as a king's child would; and remember that the days of your exile will pass quickly, and with them the possibility of earning merit for Heaven. I expect from you, My child, a great number of souls who will glorify My mercy for all eternity." -- from Sr. Faustina's Diary (1489)

For my Bright Maidens Lenten post series on the spiritual works of mercy, see here.

Pax tecum!

We Few, We Happy Few

Happy St. Crispin's Day!



H/T Why I Am Catholic

Then, the famous speech of course:



[The text of the speech]

A New Center for Natural Law by Hadley Arkes

SlutWalkers, Occupiers, and Idiots by Tim Mulroon

Under the weather, which makes no sense today because the sun is shining outside. Still, sleeping, drinking water and off to get some applesauce and more medicine too.

Happy Tuesday!

The Power and the Glory

"Seven Stanzas at Easter" by John Updike 

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

Related reads - "How the Mass is a sacrifice, and why so many deny this doctrine" from The New Theological Movement and "The Eucharistic Theology of Early Church Fathers" at The Sacred Page.

What a Wonderful World

It's Wednesday and I like alliteration, so here are The Weepies:

"World Spins Madly On":



"How Will He Find Me?":



And a little Wilco:

"Hummingbird":



"Jesus, Etc.":



And because there is power in words:



"Ideas lead to idols; only wonder leads to knowing." -- St. Gregory of Nyssa

Why not?

Have a wonder-filled Wednesday!

[Also: just found out my Bright Maidens saving sex for marriage piece got picked up by National Catholic Register and The Pulp.It today, so all visitors from there, howdy-do! Thanks for stopping by; feel free to stay for a spell and do say hello!]

You are Precisely My Cup of Tea

Last night, I helped out at Cast Your Nets, a high school event put on by the Vocations Office of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. I was put on PowerPoint duty. My finger performed exceptionally well tapping the arrow keys. I think I might have found my true calling in life!

Fr. Kyle asked if I went to Franciscan University of Steubenville, a Catholic college in Ohio and I replied, Nope, I went to Hillsdale College in Michigan. Not as exciting in Catholic spheres, but that hasn’t been the first time someone has thought I went to a Catholic college. Nope. I didn’t even look at Catholic colleges, unless they had a lacrosse program.

My alma mater's religious ratio is (about) 60 percent Protestant, 40 percent Catholic (with about 1300 students in toto). I was blessed to graduate with many friends on campus, but, of my top ten closest friends, seven are Protestants and three are Catholics. (I know, the numbers are so Biblical!)

What Google Ad Preferences Taught Me About Myself

I am obviously not dedicated to the cause, seeing as I skipped last week, but here is me making up for my delinquency:

(Take Two!)

ONE

From my book shelf: Fr. James V. Schall's 'The Unseriousness of Human Affairs' (which is utterly fantastic):

"If we lack truth, especially if we deny truth is possible--the relativist position that dominates almost every university faculty today--nothing else that we lack will really matter much."

"It is a crime against humanity to make the materially poor also spiritually poor, to given them hope of only bread rather than every word that comes from God."

"The great source of public immorality is always private immorality, or to put it differently, there is no such thing as a sin that does not have public consequences, no such thing as a sin that does not require repentance and hence acknowledgment of the intrinsic disorder it puts into the world. Intellectual poverty is rooted in, and tends to, moral poverty, to an unwillingness to know the truth in action, to recognize the distinction of right and wrong and, more importantly, to live it."

"I consider utopians of every sort, therefore, to be intellectually poor, however sophisticated their systems. They are modern Pelagians who do not see any need of grace, who do not see any need of an independent truth by which they might correct their ideas about what the would should be like. And behind all these lofty theories is almost always a sinful, deviant heart bent on rejecting that conversion of soul from which all social reforms ultimately derives."

 

TWO

Last week and this week were major letter mailing weeks. I have been very bad about mailing letters these past few months to people whom I did not specifically promise one too, but the implied that I would, which is almost as bad. The Catholic guilt finally got to me and letters have been sent to places likes Happydale, Maryland, Santa Barbara, Clemson, Georgia and even to France, to my Little studying-abroad. It was fantastic!  Mail is like sending a little present, if one considers thought a gift.

This week I have also been working on Christmas cards. My mom sends out lots of Christmas cards to family and family friends every year and I decided I would send out Christmas cards this year too! I started looking around for local cards (to support the small businesses), but was generally dissatisfied with the selection out there. My oldest friend Bi started her own company called Prippie earlier this year and one day, while perusing her site, I saw she was doing stationary! Well, that settled it. She designed a card for me and I placed my order! I am crossing my fingers I can get them sent out by early next week... my hand keeps cramping up. I know; I can be a total pansy.


Me and Bi are like peas and carrots

THREE 

Last week, Jill, a friend from college, posted a link for Gmail users and, upon clicking on it, I was vaguely amused by the list of general topics I am interested in according to Google analytics; topics like Law and Government, News, Campaigns and Elections, Humanities and Philosophy. All very interesting topics, yes? Then I read this: Demographics - Gender - Male.

Oh no, no, no. Google, you are mistaken. I am definitely a female.

A little indignant and wanting answers of why Google would say my gender is a male (my Gmail does start with "julie"- which is not an androgynous name), I clicked on the question mark, which told me, "Based on the websites you've visited, we think you're interested in topics that mostly interest men."

Not sure whether to be infuriated or laugh over the mishap of gender recognition, I gchatted another college friend, ZS, and told him what Google told me; I told him I was not sure how to take it. He replied "I don't imagine you google hollywood relationships enough." Always the insightful one, ZS.

Still not satisfied, I gchatted Jill herself, and she apparently had the same results. Then she said what I was thinking: "Kind of sexist, in a way."

The worse part is, however, that I am not even sure how to make Google Ad Preferences think I am a female. How many hours of internet searches would convince Google I am a girl? And what kind of searches? It begs the question that, even in the age of physical female liberation, are we still considered silly creatures mentally? Women want equal pay and reproductive rights, but they can't think seriously about life. And if a person can't think seriously, how could they be expected to act so? 

This makes me think of one of my favorite lines from Jane Austen, at the end of 'Pride and Prejudice,' when Mr. Bennett forbids Kitty from leaving the house unless she can prove she has spent 10 minutes in a rational manner! Always the pragmatist, Mr. Bennett.

FOUR

A very happy Advent to all of you! I know, this should have been first in my list. OSV posted a wonderful list of "Ten Ways to Make Advent more Meaningful":

Reflect on Advent as a time of waiting. The idea of waiting is not popular in our culture of instant gratification, but it creates in us a new kind of self-discipline that helps us to appreciate the present moment and look to the future with peaceful anticipation.

Turn your breathing into a prayer. Take a few deep breaths throughout the day and imagine that God's love is flowing through you to every part of your body. As you exhale, let go of tension, worry and anything else that is not of God.

Long for the Lord. Make it a habit of silently praying, "Come, Lord Jesus."

Unite with Mary. Set aside time once a day to join Our Lady in praying the Canticle of Mary (see Lk 1:46-55).

Do something nice for someone every day. It might be an encouraging word, a phone call, a note of appreciation or a little act of kindness.

Get rid of grudges. Use Advent as an opportunity to let go of any anger or resentment that you might be holding onto.

Pray for patience. If you find yourself becoming anxious or upset, ask the Lord for the gift of patience. Then make a conscious effort to be a more patient person.

Offer up something painful or difficult in your life. The best way to transform trials and tensions is to turn them into a prayer.

Receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Attend your parish penance service and take advantage of the opportunity to cleanse your soul in preparation for the coming of Jesus.

Think about the special gifts and talents God has given you. How are you using these gifts?

FIVE

I saw Harry Potter 7 1/2 with my family last weekend. I liked most of it, except for one unnecessarily graphic scene and Dobby's death. No, I did not cry when he died. Apparently I am in the minority when I say it was overdone and I was unmoved. I did shed a tear when Hermione wiped her parents' memories; I was not expecting that scene in the first two minutes of the movie. I like how true the movie's script stayed to the book. I spent half the movie squeezing my sister's hand though because I was so scared. Yes, scared. Yes, I've read all the books.

Nevertheless, I am way more excited for the new Narnia movie: yay 'Voyage of the Dawn Treader'!

SIX

Not a huge fan of the title of this video ("The Advent Conspiracy" -- it is too hip for my lingo!), but the Advent message here is clear and meaningful to the spirit of the liturgical season. 

SEVEN

If you do not read The New Criterion, I suggest you pick up a copy. Even perusing through it will make your soul soar with its fine prose, wit and insight. Here is a Notes & Comments piece from the November issue, called "Speaking of multicultualism... On Chancellor Merkel's recent comments."

Do you suppose Angela Merkel, the trenchant German Chancellor, reads The New Criterion? We ask because she seems to share our antipathy toward “multiculturalism,” that spurious doctrine, born in the hothouse of Western universities, that proclaims the glories of “diversity” and egalitarianism but is really a blind for anti-Western, and especially anti-American, animus. “All cultures are equal,” chant the multiculturalists, like characters out of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, “but some are more equal than others.” It is one of the great rhetorical ironies of the age that what travels under the name of “multiculturalism” is really a form of mono-cultural animus directed against the dominant culture—our culture, the culture of the West. In essence, as Samuel Huntington noted in his book Who Are We?, multiculturalism is “anti-European civilization. . . .


It is basically an anti-Western ideology.” Multiculturalists claim to be fostering a progressive cultural cosmopolitanism distinguished by superior sensitivity to the downtrodden and dispossessed. In fact, they encourage an orgy of self-flagellating liberal guilt as impotent as it is insatiable. The “sensitivity” of the multiculturalist is an index not of moral refinement but of moral vacuousness. As the French essayist Pascal Bruckner observed, “An overblown conscience is an empty conscience”:

Compassion ceases if there is nothing but compassion, and revulsion turns to insensitivity. Our “soft pity,” as Stefan Zweig calls it, is stimulated, because guilt is a convenient substitute for action where action is impossible. Without the power to do anything, sensitivity becomes our main aim. The aim is not so much to do anything, as to be judged. Salvation lies in the verdict that declares us to be wrong.

Multiculturalism is a moral intoxicant; its thrill centers around the emotion of superior virtue; its hangover subsists on a diet of ignorance and blighted “good intentions.”


Wherever the imperatives of multiculturalism have touched the curriculum, they have left broad swaths of anti-Western attitudinizing competing for attention with quite astonishing historical blindness. Courses on minorities, women’s issues, and the Third World proliferate; the teaching of mainstream history slides into oblivion. “The mood,” Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. wrote in The Disuniting of America, his excellent book on the depredations of multiculturalism, “is one of divesting Americans of the sinful European inheritance and seeking redemptive infusions from non-Western cultures.”


But multiculturalism is not only an academic phenomenon. The attitudes it fosters have profound social as well as intellectual consequences. One consequence has been a sharp rise in the phenomenon of immigration without—or with only partial—assimilation: a dangerous demographic trend that threatens the identity of host countries, in Europe as well as the United States, in the most basic way.


These various agents of dissolution are also elements in a wider culture war: the contest to define how we live and what counts as “the good” in the good life. Anti-Americanism and the charge of being “Eurocentric” occupy such prominent places on the agenda of the culture wars precisely because the traditional values of Western identity are deeply at odds with the radical, de-civilizing tenets of the multiculturalist enterprise. This is something that seems to have been vividly borne in upon Ms. Merkel. The attempts to build a “multicultural” society in Germany, she recently acknowledged, have “failed, utterly failed.” Immigrants, she said, in a speech that stunned the bien pensants, need to do more, much more, to integrate into German society, including learning German.


Kudos to Ms. Merkel for having the courage to articulate this home truth: that immigration is fine, but that there should be no immigration without assimilation. We suspect other European leaders are coming to the same realization, though whether they can muster Ms. Merkel’s forthrightness remains to be seen. Given the dour demographic realities in Europe, it may be a recognition that is too little too late. But it is nonetheless heartening to see this blunt political reality publicly acknowledged for what it is.

In other news, I've spent the week explaining to my dog that this is NOT Take Heidi to Work Week just because my sisters keeps telling her it is. Tonight, I have another Kappa sister's wedding and tomorrow a Happydale friend and his date will be attending a wedding here in my hometown and staying at my casa. That combined with summoning the endurance to keep writing should provide me with a fun and interesting weekend! I hope y'all have the same! Check out Conversion Diary for more and Happy Friday!

The Rescuers Down Under

I found this wonderful site called MercatorNet, which "offers lively news and articles promoting human dignity." What I like best about this site is that the news comes from Australia; the perspective they offer is invaluable.

I wanted to share this article I found as a whole because it is one of the best defenses of the traditional, normative family unit I have read recently, most likely because I can see natural law theory in her arguments. I also like how she uses the UN to support her arguments. Oh snap!


Please tell me you have all seen this movie...!


"12 things your MP never told you about the family…" by Rita Joseph

As the same-sex marriage issue surfaces again in the Australian Parliament, a seasoned human rights advocate and expert on United Nations texts reminds politicians that they have international obligations relevant to this debate. Here Rita Joseph sets out “12 facts your electorate has a right to know before you consult them on same-sex 'marriage’.”

1. Our Federal Government has a solemn obligation, under international human rights law, to ensure that all domestic marriage laws comply with universal obligations in the International Bill of Rights to protect marriage and the family. Under Article 50 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Federal Government has primary responsibility for ensuring that all State and Territory laws comply with universal human rights obligations to protect marriage and the family.

2. Article 23 of the ICCPR guarantees, first, protection by society and the state for the family as "the natural and fundamental group unit of society" and second, "the right of men and women of marriageable age to marry and to found a family".

3. In the event of the introduction of State or Territory laws that tamper with these protections, the Federal parliament has a constitutional external powers authority (and duty) to enact a general overriding law restoring marriage and family obligations originally promised in Article 23.

4. This article, according to the UN Human Rights Committee (General Comment 19), "implies, in principle, the possibility to procreate". (A General Comment is the most authoritative of all the prescriptions that may be issued by the UN human rights monitoring bodies.)

5. With specific regard to "the right to marry and to found a family", there is, of course, no requirement to procreate but rather a more exacting requirement for the two rights holders of this right to have "in principle, the possibility to procreate" through their marriage. This term, "in principle, the possibility to procreate", rules out definitively any genuine legal right of two persons of the same sex to marry.

6. The "in principle, the possibility to procreate" requirement relates back to the original protective concept of "special care and assistance" for motherhood, childhood and the family in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 25.

7. This obligation to protect motherhood, childhood and the family is codified in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 7 where our Australian government has promised to ensure and protect "as far as possible, a child's right to know and be cared for by his or her parents".

8. There are no credible grounds for claiming that current Australian laws protecting marriage are discriminatory. International human rights instruments have long recognized the concept of a "special protection" that "shall not be considered discriminatory" (e.g. Convention on the Elimination of All Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Article 4). The significant legal distinction that acquits any Covenant law from the charge of being discriminatory is that it "aims to protect"—the child, the mother, the family...

9. Having ratified CEDAW, Australia is obliged under human rights legal principles codified in this Convention to promote full recognition of "the social significance of maternity and the role of both parents in the family and in the upbringing of children" and to enact laws that acknowledge "that the upbringing of children requires a sharing of responsibility between men and women". The formal human rights language of Article 16 of the Women's Convention links the term "parents" definitively to "men and women" and to "husband and wife".

10. Promoting same-sex "marriage" contravenes international human rights obligations for governments to provide "the widest possible protection and assistance" for the family, "particularly for its establishment" as "the natural and fundamental group unit of society" (International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Article 10).

11. Domestic opinion polls cannot legitimize contravention of the legal protection promised for marriage and children in the foundation human rights instruments. When public opinion is at odds with universal human rights law protecting marriage and children, it is public opinion that must change, not universal human rights law. Public opinion must return to respect for marriage and for every child's right to know and be cared for by his or her parents, in as far as possible.

12. Finally, public opinion, grievously deceived by relentless propaganda, is no basis for changing universal human rights protections for marriage and children solemnly agreed in the Conventions to which Australia is a party. Creative attempts, however popular, to tamper with those protections, are invalid because they contravene the "ordinary meaning" test required by Article 31 (1), General rule of interpretation of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969):

A treaty shall be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning to be given to the terms of the treaty in their context and in the light of its object and purpose.

Rita Joseph is a Canberra-based writer, lecturer and human rights advocate, specializing in philosophy of the language of human rights. As an adviser to various delegations, she has extensive experience in negotiating the texts of numerous United Nations human rights documents. She is author of 'Human Rights and the Unborn Child' (Leiden & Boston, Martinus Nijhoff, 2009)


I suppose one of my few issues with the article, however, is the "possibility to procreate" clause, since in vitro and artificial insemination, while contrary to specific Catholic teaching and Christianity in general regarding human creation and dignity, is becoming increasingly common with married couples, non-married couples (heterosexual and homosexual) and single persons alike. This idea that having children only when one wants one and by any means is, frankly, selfish and disturbing. Children are not pets, nor are they playthings. They are humans, with little bodies and bigger souls, which carries a heavy and awesome responsibility.

For other good articles from MN, I suggest Melinda Selmys' "Reorienting Sexuality" and Tim Cannon's "Marriage to no place for me-too-ism"-- both are wonderful reads.

Also: Friday, Mom and my five siblings went shopping on the secular high holy day that is Black Friday, then came out to the office with Heidi. We had a family lunch at Skyline and then got back to work. Sort of. After all, Heidi was at the office:

Happy first day of Advent!

Ah, Oui- J'taime Le Frog Prince

I love this!

"Waiting" by A.M. Juster

The other frogs consider me aloof
And mock each out-of-season mating call,
But I regard my plight as living proof
That faith can foster something magical.
So crouching patiently above the scum
With chin uplifted, eyelids low and still,
I wait for my redeeming love to come.

With numbing numbers cruelly reduced
To caviar for snacking perch and trout,
Dessert for weary birds before they roost
Or toys that idle boys have caught for sport,
It all confirms my sense of destiny.
Someday she will appear to grace this plot
And recognize the manifest in me.

(From Davey's Daily Poetry, which is really wonderful and started by an '08 Hillsdale grad. I recently subscribed to Davey's upon recommendation from a fellow Hillsdalian after describing my growing dissatisfaction with NPR's Writer's Almanac, which I used to read daily and now do not miss an iota. If you are in the market for a poem of the day or week, Davey's is a fantastic resource.)

In tandem, here is a fantastic article from Parabola entitled "Beauty Redeemed" by Trebbe Johnson, who says,

"But in other tales from diverse lands and traditions, beauty is redeemed not by the gods, time, or an antidote, but by another human—like the imperious princess. Those rescuers don’t have superpowers. They can’t turn the tortured victim into some other creature, and, in fact, it would not occur to them to try to do so, since the magic they enact is seldom deliberate. What they can do is change the ugly one back to his or her original—and beautiful—form through purely human behavior. In the process, two people transform: the ugly one whose beauty is redeemed, and the redeemer him- or herself. It is not with the petulance of a princess, but with a knight’s sense of honor, that a human act restores lost beauty in the Arthurian tale of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell."


Have y'all heard of or seen the movie 'The Human Experience' by Grassroots Films? Here is the fantastic trailer:




My dear friend Karen and I drove to Ann Arbor our senior year to see a special showing of it and were not disappointed. It follows three guys from Brooklyn on their search of what it means to be human, spending a week homeless in NYC, time down in Lima, Peru with these little, physically deformed kids who have so much joy in their hearts and lepers in Ghana, Africa, as well as sorting through their own personal issues, with Christ at the center. It is amazing, amazing, amazing.


The reason I mention it is because Grassroots Films is offering free shipping for the movie if two or more copies are bought today and/ or tomorrow. I am definitely going to buy at least two: one for me and one for Karen, who is currently a Sisters for Life postulant in the Bronx, which is where Grassroots Films is located. Maybe one more... Grassroots Films have made other fantastic and shorter films like 'Fishers of Men' 




and 'God in the Streets of New York'



I think I watch these short films every couple weeks to months. They are phenomenal, and serves as a witness to the secular culture.

Happy Thanksgiving, from my family to yours! We're having both sides of my family over to my house this year, so that should be a rollicking good time! My favorite parts of Thanksgiving are mass, pumpkin pie, the people time and the nap time. I was going to run in the Turkey Trot this year with a few friends but let's get real: 30+ people at my house does not equate time to frolic for 3.1 miles.

Nothing like having Window Washers wave hello when you're on the 11th floor

"Peonies" by Jeanne Lohmann

Grandma called them pineys, and I didn't know why.
They smelled so good, the full lush petals
crowded thick, the whole flower heavy on its stem,
the leaves dark and rich and green as shade in Chatauqua Woods
where each spring I hunted for violets. What could there be
to pine for on this earth? Now I think maybe it was Missouri
she missed, and maybe that was what somebody she knew
called peonies there, before she traveled to Ohio,
a sixteen-year-old bride whose children came on as fast
as field crops and housework. Her flowers saved her,
the way they came up year after year and with only a bit of care
lived tender and pretty, each kind surprising,
keeping its own sweet secret: lily-of-the-valley, iris,
the feathery-leaved cosmos, lilacs in their white and purple curls,
flamboyant sweet peas and zinnias, the bright four o'clocks
and delphinium, blue as her eyes, and the soft peony flowers
edged deep pink. In her next life I want my grandmother
to walk slowly through the gardens in England and Kyoto.
I want to be there when she recognizes the flowers
and smiles, when she kneels and takes the pineys in her hands.

My first article went up today on Buckeye's site. I went to mass at noon and got there late because I saw a car accident and then, on the way back, I saw a man being taken away on a stretcher from a business. Remember to pray for everyone around you. I bought a copy of Street Speech, which is the newspaper put out by the homeless of Columbus. It's very Lefty, but it's insight into another part of Ohio. I've read so many good articles today, I should have thought ahead and linked to them all for people to peruse at their pleasure, but c'est la vie. Nothing terribly surprising in the news recently; human nature never changes, just the people involved.

I'm having dinner with Kristen, the Editor of The Key, tonight. I'm going to start writing for them as well. Also considering getting my library card to get this reading/reviewing party started!

K to the A to the P-P-A

For those of you who have never been in a sorority, recruitment is the few day period in which mostly freshmen girls go through the sorority houses on campus, getting to know the girls if they do not already know, before the mutual process of elimination starts. It can be stressful, but this one is going extremely well and efficient, with the house in relative tandem.

Saturday was the first day of formal rush, which means it is Open House. Yesterday was Skit Day; tonight was Formal Desserts and tomorrow will be the Preference Party, followed by Bid Day. Yep, in less than 24 hours, we will have new members. It's a good thing I like to smile and talk, but it's always an active love for the girls to stand in the cold snow to sing goodbye to the rushees while still smiling (and in heels).

I read a great article which contained an equally wonderful and encouraging quote by Blessed Mother Teresa: "Smile," she replied, "for the smile is the beginning of love."

Today I registered for classes, finally paid off my library fine (and the rest of my tuition), bought the remainder of my books, and killed off a section of the rain forest with the amount of printing I did for my poli sci class' extra reading posted on BlackBoard (which is slightly ridiculous, since we already had to buy 12 books). I'm not complaining too much though, because it is going to be an amazing class. Lots of Hayek reading! Tres bon.

I have lots of pre-school meetings, too. I forgot how busy I get with meetings alone. One meeting I am quite excited is for The Tower Light, the literary publication on campus. I was asked to be one of the assistant editors for the Spring edition, which is going to be fantastic. My advisor sent me an e-mail, inviting me to attend his honors seminar, which I'm sure sounds like unnecessary extra reading, but I'm excited and it'll be solid.

My last semester's class schedule: Faulkner and 20th century Southern Literature, Western Heritage: Revisited (seminar), The Conservative-Libertarian Debate, The History of Science and Christianity, Thomas More and thesis.

I got edits back from my AQ article tonight and am trying not to be irked over it. I knew going into writing the piece that they wanted something very specific, and since my first final copy was sent to them before I went to Florida, I've since had to partially re-write the article again because the editor said she liked it, but she wanted more information. So I gave it to her. When I got it back tonight, I saw that she pulled a Faulkner and cut my darlings. My roomie says I need to get over it and give them what they want. I had a feeling that was going to happen, but I also feel like the article loses an essence.

Writing reflects on the writer as well, and without certain parts, I feel blah about it. I talked to a few of my sisters about it tonight, and they just teased me, the conversation ending with Betsy telling me I shouldn't be a journalist because I care too much about my words and I replied that is exactly why I should be one, and how that kind of attitude leads towards sloppy writing. Then they laughed at me and I smiled and let it go, sort of.

If there is one thing Kappa teaches you, it is to be a servant leader. Sometimes, even if it's not your job, you just need to step up and take care of it. I read this and though it was beautiful.

"We are unprofitable servants" by Blessed Teresa of Calcutta (from her book 'A Simple Path')

Do not worry about why problems exist in the world – just respond to people's needs. Some say to me that if we give charity to others it'll diminish the responsibility of government towards the needy and the poor. I don't concern myself with this, because governments do not usually offer love. I just do what I can do: the rest is not my business.

God has been so good to us: works of love are always a means of becoming closer to God. Look at what Jesus did in His life on earth! He spent it just doing good (Acts 10,38). I remind the sisters that three years of Jesus's life were spent healing the sick and the lepers, children and other people; and that's exactly what we're doing, preaching the Gospel through our actions.

It is a privilege for us to serve, and it's a real, wholehearted service that we try and give. We feel what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean, but that ocean would be less without that drop.

Off to see friends; even if it is late, and cold, and I'm exhausted, it's always good to see people dear to me.