Friday (3Blog) Finds

Man, The Lost Cow by Gustave Dore in 1852 is a heart breaker; agree? Poor Bessy. To get over this tragic state here are some lovely finds.

Pannone Appétit! is a foodie blog fresh out of the environmentally friendly grocery bag this month. While the brand name in Catholic food blogs must be Jeff Young's The Catholic Foodie, happily you can't have too many cooks in the Catholic kitchen and believe me when I tell you the dishes Jason Panuone comes up with are not Cafeteria style. Jason was kind enough to comment on my post on suffering with depression and his profile link is how I found his blog.


What my two young-adult daughters will love about this blog is that not only are there simple yet creative recipes, Jeff also serves up dishes for one that look as gorgeousness as I imagine they taste. As our girls each cook one night a week for our family I am hoping they will be referencing "The culinary adventures & musings of a Catholic philosopher-librarian & foodie" because both red meat eaters and others, like me, will be satisfied. Chicken, Kale, & Red Lentil Soup, behold!

After one of Jason's scrumptious meals it's time to log on and look for something worth reading.

Heather King of Shirt of Flame is not the Catholic Anne Lamott because she is Heather King. I mentioned reading King's books to an acquaintance who said, Oh yeah, she's the Catholic Anne Lamott. No. She is her own self. 

If you want to read thoughts that are not simply a rehash of what mainstream Catholic blogs are disgorging, consider reading Heather's work. If you enjoy self effacing humour, compassionate but gutsy writing spun with that special convert slant (a slant I appreciate) Shirt of Flame, the Blog is waiting on for you.

I mentioned Anne Lamott. Over the years I've enjoyed reading Lamott who as an adult convert to Christianity (via Presbyterianism) has been something of a voice crying in the wilderness of Americanized Christendom, a breath of fresh air, a challenge to religious and even theological complacency, a champion of the poor and marginalized and a flawed but intensely real novelist, diarist and columnist. She is at times wickedly funny. 

However, Lamott also contributes to that wilderness because of her beliefs around moral issues and a feminism that puts "the sacredness of each human life, and reproductive rights for all women" in the same sentence. There Lamott and this reader part ways. Heather King isn't easily pigeonholed but unlike Lamott, while posts such as Am I My Gay Brother's Keeper? and Avoiding Both the Catholic Left and the Catholic Right or Why I am For Life Not 'Pro-Life.' seriously challenge ones thinking, King comes down solidly and consistently in support of the teaching authority of the Church, at least in what I've read. And, if she's the first to admit she is "not a theologian" I say, please Lord, give us more non theologians like Heather.

Shirt of Flame: A Year with St. Therese of Lisieux, which I took with me on a recent retreat to a Benedictine Monastery in Oxford Michigan, is King's blog's namesake or the other way around. Either way, read Heather King.

Now, one of the things I am most grateful to God for in my time as a Protestant Christian is having gained a deep appreciation for the Bible. While I have happily moved away from the ironically unsupportable sola scriptura Bible only position for our faith a practice, the passion for reading, learning and attempting to faithfully apply the truths of the sacred scriptures established in those Protestant years has remained and grown deeper. 

To this end I note the wonderful blog, Catholic Bibles by Timothy who "teach[es] Theology at a local Catholic high school" in Michigan. I've been reading his blog for some time, often finding my way there via searches related to various translations, study notes and discussions on Catholic and the Bible. One of my personal growth projects this year is to read through the bible in a translation I have not used much as well as the practice of Lectio Divina. 

I found Catholic Bibles to be a great resource in offering a balanced background on how the translation and compilation of the scriptures has been formed over time as well as keeping up to date on translation changes, comparisons, new releases including reviews of formats and editions of the various translations from a Catholic perspective. Many of Timothy's readers are well informed and add significantly to the discussion in the comment box. All translations are treated with respect and the pros and cons given their due. When you visit be sure and take the Poll on which translation you prefer.

Yes, this is who you think it is reading the Holy Book. The photo was taken by the recently deceased American born photojournalist Eve Arnold (d. age 99, January 4 2012). Source = a Google image search for, believe it or not, 'Catholic Family Bible'.

FatuousBook

Possibly erroneous thoughts from recent combox chatter on a post by Terry ---long time blogging acquaintance, fellow art-guy and probably friend if we ever met in person--- that expresses the fatuous nature of a certain social media platform. The bit's in quotes are from other commentors and I wrote the stuff in blue (wait, that's an FB colour; Freudian?).

Circa January 2012, "People barely email me anymore - they all use Facebook messages." Circa 2002, "People barely call me anymore - they all use email."

"FB is essentially narcissistic." But personal blogs in general and a blog post on the wanton waste of FB and our vital comments on same aren't? Heh, heh, down girl, just having fun.

"...lewd and suggestive photos young girls post of themselves in massive numbers [on FB]" Golly, I must be using the wrong FB.

"Even tv bores me..." Haven't had one in decades myself. However, I have an eReader and love it so that'll no doubt add years to any purgatorial stop over.

"It is definitely the technology for a selfish generation." Well, not to visit the telephone again but you should have heard what my cranky old Methodist Gran had to say about that contraption back when I was 13.

Well, it's been fun...

P.S. The Word Verification and I am not making this up is, wait for it, "wayholy"

OK, silliness aside, plenty of people use FB and other social networks for a kind of networking that does not involve silly amounts of personal disclosure or an inordinate waste of time. What do I mean by plenty? Um, one in every 1,000? Me anyway. 

I hardly use FB except to scandalously promote my own blog posts and to follow along with those whose stuff I want to read and not miss. The best way to reach people and be reached by them is to use the method in which they choose to be reached. Not to go all religious on us or anything but I kind of think of St. Paul preachin' it in Athens by the statue to the 'Unknown' god and quoting a contemporary poet to move his hearers from the known to the Unknown.

I know authors who promote their books and other writing via FB and G+. I know Catholics who have a group to support Catholics and promote the faith because "Catholics Are Christians." I know artists, even casual amateur artists like the folks on the Every Day Matters FB Group who share their art and love for creating. I know grandparents who use FB to stay in touch with family and actual, real in the flesh, friends. For people who use it that way they might even say it's a godsend. 

I find it hard to get all bent and grumpy about this these days. I've been a crank about stuff like this in the past so I'm not looking for halo props here. I'm just trying to learn to live and let live a little more than I used to. I think that is the main thing behind my wanting to say anything about this at all. Make sense?

Oh, I do have one social network that I truly value. I do. Plurk. Not all of it. Just my/our corner of it. It's a very small group of people and most of us a) are faithful Catholics, b) keep our profile and messages set to private, c) do note some silly things and some ephemera but mostly we share one anothers prayer concerns, burdens, joys, victories. It's a warm, supportive place.

P.S. Posting on social media...man, this must be hump day or what?

Prize Fight, by Albert Bloch. Source.

Depression, who needs it?

Depression. It's no joke. It suffocates. It exacerbates. It stilts and stigmatizes. It eats creativity and absorbs light. It doesn't suffer foolish advice or pop gospel fixes. It never sleeps and when you suffer you don't sleep much either.

It makes the sufferer look inconsistent, careless, apathetic, undisciplined, without focus. It makes reading all those psalms about God's care and provision for his own really hard to take. It causes one to stop starting and it does this over and over. It hinders faith and compounds self doubt. It makes a lie of what is true and good. It isn't any fun. It makes a person small. It can cause a person to be in constant need of affirmation. It takes lives and loves. Sometimes it does this suddenly but mostly it does it over a long period of time. It is very skilled at laying waste. It thrives on being medicated. It makes you chase after things, things that don't materialize and then it slaps you up the side of the head as if to say told you so. It can seem like an easy out but, I assure you, it is not mere excuse.

All of those things roll around together, the propagate, the become the unholy children of the Big D and feed mercilessly on their host.

Even so, IT IS NOT impossible to overcome but it must be overcome each new day. No wonder alcoholism (which I do not suffer from) and depression make such killer bedfellows.

I'm just grateful I no longer live in the part of the Christian world (and I do not mean a geographical location) that pretends real Christians don't suffer from depression or that perceives it as the inherent result of sin or that automatically try to cast demons out.

Depression doesn't have to win in the end, after all we are told we are more than conquerors through him who loved us [Romans 8:37]. But it's blanking hard. The promise is there and I've experienced it,

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! [1 Cor 5:17]

However, I've long since stopped believing this happened once, positionally in-Christ perhaps once but in actual practice it happens over and over, daily, especially as we receive Christ in his sacraments.

A part of my on again off again web presence has been due to this battle. I don't really know that is anything to apologize for but I do want to say thank you to readers old and new. I am sorry for great ideas I've had that I've not followed through on. That has probably cost me, friends, potential earnings and stuff. Yeah.

I have so much to give to others and to the Church. And to my family. And, if it doesn't sound sacrilegious and, even if it does, I have so much to give myself. I see that. I've seen that. People always say that but then the big D comes and I doubt, I stagnate. Me, is my worst enemy.  No one is harder on myself than me. No one pays for that most than those who are closest to me. As the years go by I understand my deceased father better, his suffering and trials. He died 11 years ago this March. His birthday was yesterday. Maybe that's why I'm opening up about this now? Someday I'll tell you about the posthumous and spiritual healing that took place. Well, I believe it did.

Now, I'd like to impress my readership and say my best friend is Jesus but he's my God, my Lord, I know he calls me friend [it says so in the gospels] but my best friend is my wife. I don't know where I'd be without her love and belief in me. She's God's gift of grace to me. She says I'm her gift from God and I work at believing that. I know I need to be more like Saint André Bessette who allowed God to love him and then gave that love away. He was small, so small he was like a St. Thérèse of Lisieux small. Being tiny was not his curse but his blessing, it is exactly why he impacted so many thousands of thousands of souls. I know that finding the way to really be lives as God's beloved adopted son with Brother Jesus is a part of my process for meeting the Big D head on.

Structure helps too. After saying farewell to ordained ministry at our conversion structure and identity and worth all took serious hits. People think the financial suffering has been hard and they are right but it's nothing compared to the soul wrenching discord of those other things. It is a constant battle. Perfection is a very long way off, you know?

In the meantime I'll keep being as honest as I can and I will really work at not stopping this this time. I do this for my wife, our kids, our Lord Jesus and in some respect for you.

Image1: Art by Owen Swain

Image2: Moses sees the sufferings of his people - Marc Chagall, c.1966  Source.


[Edited for clarity, Jan 24 2012. I wrote fast and from the heart so there were a number of glaring errors which people kindly looked past and managed to understand my meaning, fully.]

Every 3 years Catholics 'read' the bible just by going to Mass. Right?

Wrong. Even the Catholic who attends daily Mass never mind one who actually attends all 52 Sundays in a three year liturgical cycle will complete reading (by way of hearing) the entire Bible in that same three year span. Nope.

The Coming Home Network has an excellent pamphlet for reading through the bible in a year along with reading through the whole Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC] at the same time. It is very doable. No, really.

My wife has been practising this method for three years. As former Protestants (I was an ordained minister for two decades) we take bible reading to heart. It’s great to meet and encourage Catholics to know and love the sacred Scriptures. 

If you really want to read the bible in a year but do not want to have to refer to a chart and you have money to burn, there is also a Catholic Edition (i,e, includes the 7 Old Testament books removed by the Protestant Reformers) under the My Daily Catholic Bible product name is available in a number of translations. Your reading won't be a deep and reflective Lectio Divina but you will read the whole bible in one year by reading about twenty minutes a day. 

Hey there, quit with the exscuses and you know you can find that 20 minutes.

Add about another ten minutes more and you will also be able to read the entire CCC. Wow! Won't you look like the scholar at your next KofC or CWL or whatever.

Here is the link to the downloadable, freely distributed PDF pamphlet.

OK, I've got a fish dinner to cook so, see ya later.

Move over Pokémon, here comes Popeymon

Apparently there is a new initiative out there to help the increase of priestly vocations. If you had asked me to guess it I could not have. Ready? Playing cards. You can read all about it in the post I'll Trade You Father Paul for Archbishop Listecki  by Joel & Lisa Schmidt or go directly to the original The Catholic Herald article which they cite. Can't say it isn't creative.

Now, I am good with pretty much whatever works. I'm decidedly good with what most definitely works.

This week I'be begun reading an author who suggests that the thing that would increase vocations, especially priestly vocations is victim-priests. Granted, it's an idea that is not as immediately fetching, particularly for priests. The author asks, "Could it be that one reason for the lack of vocations is our [he's writing to and about those who have received the sacrament of the Holy Order of Priesthood] failure to stress sacrifice?" Bring that up at the next deanery meeting. See how it goes. But he continues,

"Could it not also be that our [again, specifically priests] failure to be victims discourages those who enter the seminary from persevering and becoming priests?...Lacking this example, they easily come to think of spirituality as something to be practised only until the day of ordination.

 A survey among three hundred young men to determine what kind of priest inspired them most revealed that foreign missionaries ranked first, those who concerned themselves with the poor ranked second and those whose apostolic was among workers ranked third. The point is that the young prefer the heroic or sacrificial priest.

The emphasis in the quote above is mine but it is in keeping with tone and meaning of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen's entire first chapter and the overall message in his book, The Priest's Life Is Not His Own.

Yes, Fulton J. Sheen. The emphasis in the quote below belongs to Sheen.

Seminarians say, "I am studying for the priesthood." How often does a seminarian say or even think, "I am studying to be a priest-victim"? We insist on the dignity of our priesthood by quickly reprimanding those who show us disrespect. But do we ever insist on the indignity of our victimhood? We boast that our High Priest is Offerer and Offered. We say that we offer Mass, but do we ever think we are offered in the Mass? Our Lord wants no more bullocks or goats; He wants those who "have crucified nature, with all its passions, all its impulses: (Gal 5:24. Saint Augustine said there is no need to look outside oneself for a sheep to offer to God. Each has within him that which he can crucify."

The book was originally published in 1963. Does the date seem at all significant or is it just me? Written as the Roman Catholic Church was about to be tested and tried and in many respects severely beaten up by the cultural morays and theological bending and liturgical digressions (I'm trying to be gracious here, come on). Homosexual priests, naturally. Married priests, sure, must be the answer. Woman priests, whoda thunk? But Priest-Victims? Get real.

The book is "timeless classic" which means someone, seminarians?, priests?, seminary professors? diocesan vocational directors? must have been reading it. Right?

To be clear, I am not saying those trading cards won't work or that the idea is inherently flawed. No. I genuinely hope they work in Milwaukee Wisconsin.  The idea is neat, cute, engaging... I'm only saying that had our spiritual leaders followed Sheens advice and example perhaps the ingenious would be superfluous.

You may read portions of the book at Google Books on this page which even has chapter by chapter hyper-links. A note in the sidebar says "no ebook availalbe" which may be true for Google but is not true overall as the publisher, Ignatius Press has it in several ebook formats.

CNS photo of Sheen swiped from Ubi Petrus, Ibi Ecclesia

The Visitor

When I visit you say so little

sometimes nothing at all

nothing I can discern

At first this silence comforts me

but later when I leave you

its a discord that burns

When I visit you I say to much

always trying to get

mostly to get you to speak

At first is seems purposeful

my busyness, my busyness

breaks down for I am weak

I come because of hope

out of respect; obligation

not for a rebuff

I look at you

you look at me,

I wish it were enough

Should I visit you again,

overcome my disappointment

and my apprehension,

Will you please, dear God,

show me just a little

heaven?

[End]

I questioned adding an image. To use an image of a Monstrance or the Eucharistic Host or Blessed Sacrament would have been to give it away at the start. However, as I set the precedent of using images I went a-looking. 

IMAGE: "Old Man with Flowing Beard, Looking down Left" by Rembrandt. Source. 

More than cliché

Three days out from Pamplona

This past Friday we had the blessing joining a handful of folks who met informally with our former priest, a Basilian, to view his slides and hear the stories from his recent Camino pilgrimage. The Camino de Santiago de Compostela, also known in English as The Way of St James is travelled by all manner of seekers not only Catholics but perhaps they are best equipped to appreciate its history and spiritual depth.

Father has a wonderful, open heart but somehow it is more evident now. He divested himself of many things to make that journey and along the way (pardon the pun) and while on the actual journey there was more letting go. He let go of things he realized he did not need and could not afford to carry in his backpack. He let go things in relation to his much loved dad who passed away not that long ago and began to let go of other things, perhaps painful things as he first learned of the severity of his mother's illness while on his pilgrimage. He also learned of his next assignment, a parish in Mexico. He will take but two suitcases into the country and nothing may follow him, that is nothing may be later shipped by other means.


Father is in his mid fifties. He's dealt and is dealing with losses but also gains. A new language. A new mission. The shared experience of those souls he met on pilgrimage and an ever increasing and very evident love of Our Lord.


If his Camino was about "letting go" it is a lesson that is clearly not over. As a priest belonging to an Order and not a diocese, potentially being called anywhere in the world that his confrères are is both the cost and the freedom of being a part of that spiritual family.


We viewed but a fraction of the more than 400 photos he took while on the pilgrimage but most of the ones we saw were of two things and he said this was indicative of the lot; road (or path) and people. What you see little to none of are vistas, or church interiors and exteriors, or historic buildings secular or religious. What you see a lot of is road and people. The journey not the destination, yes it is cliché, and the people whom one shares the journey with. The rest is nowhere near as significant. A good lesson for me.


I love the the story recounted of walking along the designated Camino through a set of impressive buildings and hardly noticing them only to find out later that he had walked directly through the University of Navarre, Pampplona Spain, home to the internationally renowned Navarre Bible. Some Catholic bibliophiles (and I really mean biblEophiles) might consider that a kind of hallowed ground. But at the time it was just buildings and land through which the Camino and fellow pilgrims were passing. It's the Way and the people that matter. 


All manner of spiritual application can be made from this observation but you do not need me to do it nor do we need to travel the actual Camino to make the application in our lives. I am confident Fr. would agree.

Both images are from Fr.'s blog camino55