Category: A Sampler of Posts
-
Science and history: Part one of a series.
I’ve been asked privately to write publicly about my perspective as a “person with a strong scientific education and worldview… coming to know or believe in God’s reality and divinity.” With an eye toward the “lack of scientific evidence for the divine;” an eye toward the “lack of a need” to rely on supernatural or…
-
Taking liberties with Jeremiah on St. John’s Day: For the mothers.
Do you ever feel like you are fighting your children, and your children are fighting you, all day long? + + + From the Office of Readings for today, the Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist: Jeremiah 1:4-10, 17-19 The word of the Lord came to me thus: Before I formed you…
-
Fitness Friday: Do what you like?
I think I've mentioned before that I don't actually like running very much. Although I do admit that I can sort of see the fun in going for an easy run — that is, if there is such a thing as an easy run, which is only possible if you have endured many not-so-easy ones. Anyway,…
-
Sightseers.
A little background, first. + + + One of the things I took away from my in-depth reading of Introduction to the Devout Life was the importance of making a distinction between sins and weaknesses. I wrote here: Sin and weakness are distinct problems, and so St. Francis means to give distinct advice about…
-
Gluttony: Drawing the line.
So, I said a few posts ago that I would try to write some ideas about what is, and what isn't, gluttony. This is one of those posts where I become an armchair theologian. I might be on to something, or I might be completely wrong. Take it with a grain of salt! Aquinas's definition…
-
The demon that feeds on fasting.
It just goes to show: Never brag. A couple of days ago I wrote a weight loss update in which I mentioned that when I tried to drop a pound, I hadn’t been able to do it without effort, and (not really wanting to make the effort) I hadn’t pushed it. “But I’m holding…
-
Switch.
Readers who have been interested in following some of the threads about personal change — becoming an athlete, overcoming gluttony, detaching from time, and maybe even beginning the devout life à la St. Francis de Sales — might be interested in a quick-read book I just finished, one that Mark got for free at work…
-
Tagged: Ephesians 5. (Part II – Okay, but like I said, what does “wives, submit to your husbands” mean?)
So Darwin tagged me and asked that question about Ephesians 5, and I went and wrote a post of several paragraphs of, er, scriptural analysis. Which everyone knows is the easy part. Now I’m sitting down to try to answer the hard part. Even though I liked my fellow taggee Dorian’s ranty post about it…
-
Tagged: Ephesians 5. (part 1 – general considerations)
Darwin tagged me yesterday morning, along with several other married women bloggers, in a post asking opinions about Ephesians 5. For context, read his whole post — but the main question is, what are we to think of "Wives, be submissive to your husbands?" Here are a few points, in no particular order. No, I don't…
-
More on the body-person dissociation.
I wrote a couple of days ago about the idea, common among Christians but incompatible with traditional Christian theology, that the body after death is "just an empty shell" and that the "real person" is completely absent from the body. (Christian orthodoxy, on the other hand, looks forward to "the resurrection of the body" and…
-
Separation.
Katie Allison Granju struggles with the imagery of her son's cremation. I don’t remember much of that period immediately after Henry died, but I do remember the agony I felt every time I thought about what was going to happen to Henry during the autopsy and then later, at the crematorium. Knowing that Henry’s body…
-
Hearts of flesh.
I wrote this some time ago and didn't polish it, and haven't time to do so today, but I thought I'd put it up for its timeliness, as today is the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. * * * I will take your heart of stone and put a new heart of flesh…