Mawwwage ...

...is what bwought us togethew that day. Mawwage, that bwessed awwangement, that dweam within a dweam. And wove, twue wove, wiww fowwow us fowevah... So tweasuwe youw wove.

Four years. Wow.

I wish Sen. Biden could find some shame and humility

But I guess that's hard to do when you give incoherent gobbledygook for answers, the same nonsense you and Rep. Pelosi gave on MTP that was entirely discredited, and still receive fawning headlines like "Biden balances his faith with social responsibility" Give thou me a break!

"To sum it up, as a Catholic, I'm a John XXIII guy, I'm not a Pope John Paul guy." -- Joe Biden

"You keep using that word. i do not think it means what you think it means." -- Inigo Montoya

Paul finds the door to fairyland

We welcomed Paul Vincent Lester into the world and our family at 3:26AM on Thursday.

As Paul was on the threshold of birth, in a moment of calm between the violence of contractions, our midwife said “I always wonder what they are thinking at this point.” I’m not sure what he was thinking right then, but I think in the days leading up to birth babies begin to “get it”. They begin to think, “this is all very lovely, but there must be something more.” Perhaps Paul was thinking along these lines:

By the Babe Unborn

By G. K. Chesterton

If trees were tall and grasses short,

As in some crazy tale,

If here and there a sea were blue

Beyond the breaking pale,

If a fixed fire hung in the air

To warm me one day through,

If deep green hair grew on great hills,

I know what I should do.

In dark I lie: dreaming that there

Are great eyes cold or kind,

And twisted streets and silent doors,

And living men behind.

Let storm-clouds come: Better an hour,

And leave to weep and fight,

Then all the ages I have ruled

The empires of the night.

I think that if they give me leave

Within the world to stand,

I would be good through all the day

I spent in fairyland.

They should not hear a word from me

Of selfishness and scorn,

If only I could find the door,

If only I were born!

Welcome Paul, my son. You found the door. I’m your dad, and my job is to let you know, as big and wonderful as this new world seems, there’s one more Door to go through! Just like your heart began to long for more than the dark of the womb, you’ll begin to notice that the fixed fire in the air and deep green hair growing on great hills point to one more Place, your final destination. Let’s find that door together Paul, and be born once again.

Chastity, Obedience, and Broadband Access

"Even the patience of our brothers was being tested by our slow internet."

--Fr. Daniel Van Santvoort O.Cist., quoted in this week's Time Magazine, explaining his Welsh monastery's decision to get broadband access.

Indeed. Job put up with a lot. But slow internet? Heaven forbid. I'll go out on a limb and predict that this monastery has fewer than five novices over the next ten years. Look, the Lord giveth broadband access, and the Lord taketh away the heart of Monastic life. I'm struck by that word "even" in the quote. The assumption is that the monks, by nature of their vocation, are very patient people. So if the internet makes them impatient, it must be an authentic trial and beyond what they should be expected to sacrifice. An alternative vision, if I may, Fr. Daniel – if your patience is being tested by your dial up connection, you’re doing a bad job of being a monk. You’ve created a life where every minor annoyance is a distraction from your Beloved, when the very vocation you’ve chosen is supposed to keep you turned towards Him. The horse left the barn pretty far back in your list of compromises.

I'm harping on this even though it violates an important spiritual suggestion I heard recently from a friend: "when it comes to following the Lord, keep your eyes on your own dang paper!" I'll justify it on account of what I'll call "trickle down gospel living", or the "universal call to mediocrity".

In “The Restoration of Christian Culture” John Senior advocates that the universal practice of Christian laity ought to be a “tithe of time for prayer”; about two and a half hours per day. After recognizing what the reader is thinking – “how is that possible?” he first blames lax contemplative religious for not keeping their vigils and praying less than eight hours a day, and then active religious and secular priests for not being faithful to the breviary and praying less than four hours a day. The lack of commitment of prayer from those whose vocations are designed to be more focused on prayer than work, leads those whose vocation are focused more on work than prayer to throw their hands up and strive for what is only a pittance. Of course, Senior also recognizes a whole slew of economic, cultural and technological realities that prevent the typical Christian from praying two plus hours, but he asserts that had we been committed to prayer we never would have let them become an issue in the first place.

The monks with broadband are the same thing. They proclaim in Time magazine that simple living is just dang hard, and the message the world hears is why should we try at all? Of course, a factual commitment to simplicity and poverty is positively essential for a committed prayer life. And the more the message of materialism is heard and taken to heart, the less it will even occur to us that we ought to be praying.

St. Anthony of Egypt, Ora Pro Nobis

St. Benedict, Ora Pro Nobis

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Ora Pro Nobis

The weekend's haul

You know you're a nerd when ....

You have a spreadsheet to track your garden production, and can compare it to other worksheets from 05, 06 and 07. AND you are thinking that simply tallying the numbers of vegetables picked really isn't enough ... that next year you need to go to weighing everything, which will also allow for accounting of herbs and leafy vegetables not included in the current data.

This is what my poor wife has to live with.

The coolest eggplant ever and other garden progress

Rosey loves Eggplant. I've expanded my palate significantly over the past few years, but haven't completely come around on it yet. So our garden features just a single eggplant plant (do you need to repeat the plant, or is the plant an eggplant and the fruit also an eggplant?). I didn't think it was going to do well. I planted it right next to one of our mutant sprawling tomato plants and it kept getting covered up and shaded by the tomato plants mighty vines. After some makeshift trellising the eggplant got some regular sun and has started bearing fruit. This is the first one picked:


Isn't that the coolest? Twin eggplants? I think it looks like a Hippopotamus.

Zucchini is also making its way to the table.

Our early planted plum tomatos are going from green to orange. The others, including several volunteer plants from the compost, are bearing fruit nicely a few weeks behind.

The beans and spinach are long gone, but the lettuce has been very heat resistant. I've finally let it go to seed, but the remaining leaves still look appetizing.