bear – ing n 1 the manner in which one comports oneself; 2 the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~]; 4 pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation; 5 the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].
… better be careful not to write too much.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s Cause for Canonization has been moving forward quite well lately. I hear that it appears that the miracle needed for his beatification will be found among those which have been pouring in recently….
A concern is that since he was such a prolific writer, the review of his voluminous writings may not be completed for some time and could, therefore, delay the process.
His book that I recommend for all Christians.
h/t Amy
… better be careful not to write too much.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s Cause for Canonization has been moving forward quite well lately. I hear that it appears that the miracle needed for his beatification will be found among those which have been pouring in recently….
A concern is that since he was such a prolific writer, the review of his voluminous writings may not be completed for some time and could, therefore, delay the process.
His book that I recommend for all Christians.
h/t Amy
Mark left early for work, so he couldn’t manage kids for me, so no shower for me this morning. I dressed nicely to make up for it.
He did make the coffee for me, though. I went downstairs with MJ and Milo, put MJ in her high chair with a toy, reloaded the dishwasher, and started making breakfast (two eggs fried in coconut oil for me, toast with butter and jam for the boys. I told Milo to go wake up Oscar. He returned a few minutes later: "He won’t listen to me!"
I head back up to get him. "We’re going to Melissa’s this morning, so we need to get part of our schoolwork done right away." He stumbles down the stairs. I put the toast on plates, and I put two clean, damp cloth napkins next to the plates. The boys eat at the counter, and I eat at the table with MJ, who’s happy in her chair. Our family always eats dinner together at the table, but breakfast and lunch are simple and quick meals, often self-serve. (Bedtime snack is more elaborate.) I’ll be honest: the boys eat at the counter because it’s easy to clean.
I send Oscar to get dressed and then we head into the schoolroom. "I have a new kind of schoolwork for you to do today. It’s called ‘spelling study.’" I’m hoping to use the Spelling Power method of test-study-test, although not its pre-provided word lists, and I want to try it out on something easy to see how Oscar responds to it. I give him a test sheet and show him where to write, then begin our list: "On the first line, write a capital ‘A’ and a small ‘a.’ That’s correct. Now write a capital ‘B’ and a small ‘b.’"
"On the ‘b’ does the circle come first or the stick?" he asks. I tell him to try hard to remember and write what he thinks is correct. He writes a ”d first, then erases it and writes a ‘b.’ "Is that right?" I tell him yes. We continue up through ‘F.’ He makes two mistakes: the ‘f’ is backwards and the ‘e’ is as tall as the ‘E.’ I give him the study sheet and we go through the spelling-study steps, except that we’re not studying spelling, but rather the proper letter form. I can tell he likes it because he checks off each step with a nice big X. When we’re done he says, "Can we do it again? That is fun! I want to do lots!" I promise him we can do more tomorrow, smiling (even though I know from experience that the newness will wear off this activity in a few weeks).
Then it’s time for Spanish, which we started doing only a few weeks ago. That’s why it’s happening first-thing-in-the-morning, along with spelling: when we’re trying to establish a new habit, I try hard to do it right away each day. He likes this one too: we listen to the tape and practice saying one new phrase every day while he colors the picture that goes with it. Today it is "Hago bolas de nieve." I make snowballs. We might be able to practice that one outside today, if it doesn’t get so warm that what’s left of the snow melts.
I sent Oscar up to make his bed and put the books away in the bookcase, then to fetch clothes for Milo. Then I said they could have a break while I used the computer for a few minutes and finished my coffee and nursed the baby.
Almost half an hour later it’s time to get ready to go.
Incidentally, Elizabeth Foss of Real Learning, mother of eight who homeschools Charlotte-Mason-style, has started a brand-new blog that is "just the jottings of our daily happenings." It’s just a daily check list of what she’s having her family do for their schooling each day. The CM style, with lots of books and narrations, meshes well with a big family, for there’s not as much work for the "teacher" on a daily basis.
I’ve bookmarked it — already it’s a source of great ideas. Older kids listening to great books on their iPods while doing chores, then coming back to narrate, for instance.
I went to Mass this morning with Mary Jane in the sling, because I could. Saturday mornings are my free time, and it was a first Saturday, so why not?
It was quiet and quick, twenty-five minutes long in all. When it came time for the Gospel reading, after the young priest announced, "A reading from the Gospel according to Luke" and we all responded, he grinned and said sotto voce, "Here we go!" before launching into the reading: "When Jesus began his ministry he was about thirty years of age…."
I thought, Here we go? That’s a weird thing to say right before the gospel. What kind of priest is this?
And then as the priest went on, I grinned. I’ve never heard this read aloud at Mass before, because I’ve never attended on the eve of Epiphany’s celebration:
He was the son, as was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli,
the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi,
the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph, the son of Mattathias,
the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Esli,
the son of Naggai, the son of Maath, the son of Mattathias,
the son of Semein, the son of Josech, the son of Joda,
the son of Joanan, the son of Rhesa, the son of Zerubbabel,
the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri, the son of Melchi,
the son of Addi, the son of Cosam, the son of Elmadam,
the son of Er, the son of Joshua, the son of Eliezer,
the son of Jorim, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi,
the son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph,
the son of Jonam, the son of Eliakim, the son of Melea,
the son of Menna, the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan,
the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed,
the son of Boaz, the son of Sala, the son of Nahshon,
the son of Amminadab, the son of Admin, the son of Arni,
the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah,
the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham,
the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, the son of Serug,
the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber,
the son of Shelah, the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad,
the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech,
the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared,
the son of Mahalaleel, the son of Cainan, the son of Enos,
the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
Midway through, as the priest struggled with some of the multisyllabic names, I thought, I was glad I’d come just to hear this. I am not sure why I liked it so much. Maybe just the brief reminder of the way the liturgical year winds around — the thought that this unwieldy but weighty passage is read in the same place every year — and that there’s so much that I miss because I rarely go to daily Mass.
And also, a reflection on how different it is to hear the readings than to read them. I wonder sometimes if it’s not so good for us (save the hearing-impaired) to flip to the right page in the missalette and read the text at the same time that it’s being proclaimed from the pulpit. Aren’t we meant to hear it, rather than read it, in the midst of the liturgy? Wasn’t the word transmitted orally to most Christians throughout history? Writing is useful, especially for epistles and such, but there’s something powerful about hearing instead of reading.
Look at the page of Luke’s gospel and your eye slips wearily over all the "begats," the "son ofs." But hear it and you are moved. "…son of God" comes like a punch line.
Eight years and three kids into our marriage, we’re pretty good at this natural family planning thing. We’re practically the poster children for NFP success. For we’ve gotten exactly what we planned for so far, our kids spaced "about three years apart:" Oscar, who arrived just after I finished my graduate school coursework, twenty months after our wedding; Milo, who arrived when Oscar was three months past his third birthday; Mary Jane, who arrived when Milo was three months shy of his third birthday. (In fact, she arrived the day before Oscar turned six, so we’ve only had a cumulative spacing error of about twelve hours.)
And we’re comfortable with it too. Without going into any intimate details, let me just say that we’re also apparently (so far) the poster children for not having much disagreement or trouble with it at all, not with the calculation and figuring out how the timing should go, not with the sacrifices and cooperation that go along with the constraints we accept. It’s … easy for us. I know it’s not easy for everyone, so I try hard to be appropriately grateful, but really, for us it’s been easy.
Too easy?
Mary Jane is only five months old, and I’m strongly committed to totally breastfeeding her for a while, so I’m positive that avoiding another conception now is right and reasonable. That has apparently given me the safe place from which to start wondering about, and challenging, one of the assumptions I brought into my marriage: the sacred Three Year Spacing.
Already before we started having kids, I had (and still have) a certain belief-set. I would carry my baby constantly in-arms or in a sling, not stick him in a seat or playpen. I would carry and hold my young walkers, too, except when they chose to stand. We would all sleep better and more safely with our little children snuggled into the family bed. We would care for our children ourselves and not entrust them to paid providers. I would nurse each one until a natural, mutual end of weaning at age three or four or five, however long it might take, even if that meant I had two nurslings at once. We would try to incorporate our children into our lives and teach them to use our tools and share our work. Later we added homeschooling to the list, too.
And some more beliefs: Hunter-gatherer families, what with extended breastfeeding and lactational amenorrhea, naturally have a spacing of eighteen months to four years between children, so children naturally "expect" to have siblings no sooner than that. The ideal spacing in terms of maternal and child health is about two and a half years on average. And (most importantly) I can handle the intense form of parenting I have chosen as long as the kids are about three years apart.
I’ve been pretty comfortable with this. And though I always say that I never look more than one baby ahead, I’ve been content in the knowledge that, at this rate, we might have four or five or at most six children in all (I’m thirty-two years old), and I rather like not knowing right now what the final number will be. I certainly know other couples (I kind of think of this as the "NFP instructor" pattern) with five kids spaced like fenceposts.
In the past year, though, we’ve had the great blessing of getting to know (in real life and on line) a number of families with an abundance of children fairly close together. Four children under the age of six. Five children under the age of eight. That sort of thing.
I see that often, not always, there are choices made that are not the ones I would make. The children are often weaned earlier, perhaps at twelve months. The babies spend less time in arms and more time in seats (heck, with my two boys around I’ve put MJ into her high chair as much as she will let me, myself; I know I’d only be doing it sooner and more if I had a young toddler as well as my small boy and larger boy.) I don’t know what these families do about discipline, but I imagine I’d be looking for even more shortcuts than I do now, and might be making choices I don’t feel comfortable with.
Still, it’s plain to me that there are beauties there that we miss with our perfect, perfectly wide spacings. Closer together, the children have more years to grow in each other’s company, and maybe cannot remember a time without their nearest siblings. Maybe when they are grown they will be closer too. The house will be busier, noisier, crazier for sure. Maybe those moms long for calm and quiet more often than I do — I manage to find enough of it for myself, every week. But I doubt they’d trade a child for it.
And then there’s those beliefs I mentioned. Would I feel pressured to force an early weaning, or would I overuse the stroller I’d have to buy? Would I yell more? Would I cut corners I shouldn’t? Would I become a mother I don’t admire? I might pray for the knowledge that I’d do just fine. Yet I know that we’re granted today’s bread, not tomorrow’s to set aside in safety.
Just something that’s been on my mind, right now when I’m safe with my new little baby in my arms, safe from the need to ask myself yet if it’s time to seek new life.
Eric tagged me (interestingly enough, along with people named Peter, John, and James — oh, and Karl too) to tell six weird things about myself.
Now, in some circles (say, back home visiting family and friends at Christmas) the weird things would go like this:
These things make me certifiably weird in a "percentile of the population" sense, but I’m guessing that they don’t seem particularly surprising to the population that visits my blog.
So I’m going to have to do better than that.
1. When I was twelve, I accidentally severed all the ligaments in my right wrist.
I fell down some stairs with a drinking glass in my hand. Now I have a scar that looks like I tried to commit suicide. And I have limited sensation in my thumb and two fingers. This is useful for having my iron tested. Fortunately,
2. I am left-handed,
as are my husband and our two sons. While left-handedness is not weird per se, I am, as, left-handed women are rarer than left-handed men.
3. I share two "work days" per week with a few close friends who are also homeschooling families.
Sometimes at my house, sometimes at one of theirs; we arrive in the morning, help out with housework, bring lunch, sit the kids down at the table together to do their schoolwork, sometimes take walks, make dinner together, hold a baby, make tea, knit, plan curriculum, read stories to eight children at once, that sort of thing. We call it "the tribe," and it keeps us from getting that creeping sense of isolation.
The dads are part of it too, by the way. We also see each other occasionally on weekends, and function as a sort of extended-family-by-choice for the purpose of, oh, moving furniture, getting someone to drive you to the airport, babysitting, someone to put down on forms as the emergency contact, that sort of thing. For example, this evening one of the dads is coming over here with his three kids to hang out with Mark and me for a few hours because his wife needed some quiet time to work on the computer.
If this doesn’t sound particularly weird to you, consider this: We are hoping, and trying to figure out how, we can all move into houses that are next to each other or at least on the same block. Unfortunately, this seems to require more computing power than I can muster.
Where did I meet these people? Well, that brings me to this:
4. I have a doctorate in chemical engineering.
And if you don’t think that makes me weird, you don’t know many chemical engineers. It’s not a very good doctorate (please don’t ask me to describe my thesis work), because I became a shameless slacker, academically speaking, after I decided I didn’t want to put into daycare my son who was born 3 years into the thing. After that, I never went to any seminars or networked or published any other papers or learned any auxiliary skills or lectured any courses or did anybody any favors — in short, nothing at all that might help me get a job in my field.
I spent my first maternity leave finishing up coursework. I wrote most of my thesis while on "maternity leave" (actually, they’d just stopped paying me) with my second baby. I turned in my thesis on April 29, 2004, the same day that my son was having minor surgery in the university hospital; on May first, Mark went back to full-time work and I went home to raise my kids.
I don’t know if it makes me weird, but it has certainly contributed. Oh, and by the way, two of the dads in the tribe (see number 3) were in the same PhD program, and that’s how I met them. My husband isn’t one of them — I met him when we were both undergraduate ChE students. (Hmm. It’s just occurred to me that maybe I better not get any more schooling.)
5. Unless there are some that I forgot, I own eight different kinds of slings, a.k.a. soft baby carriers.
I do not think this ought to be considered weird — after all, I own more than eight shirts — but the number seems to be greater than the average. This is how I have managed to make it through three children and no strollers or playpens.
And because someone will ask: Didymos long (blue indio), Didymos short (red indio), Maya Wrap, Mexican rebozo "extra fino especial," Kangaroo Korner Adjustable Fleece Pouch, Kangaroo Corner Mesh Water Sling, Kangaroo Korner Adjustable Mesh Pouch, and a tube sling that Hannah made for me a long time ago. This doesn’t count the Kelty Expedition Carrier, which only Mark ever uses.
Finally,
6. When I am reading something, anything, I am completely oblivious to my surroundings.
This drives people around me crazy. Nobody believes that I do not do it on purpose. When I was a child my parents would shout my name at me until one of them thought to tap me on the shoulder, at which point I would put my book down and wonder why they were telling me I was grounded for being disrespectful. When I was a graduate student, once, I got locked into the library at closing time and didn’t notice for more than two hours. And now that I am a mother, not even the screaming of my own children — I mean, the kind of screaming that is accompanied by blood on the carpet — can break my concentration, if I happen to be looking at a magazine. Something must be wrong with my maternal instinct. I blame graduate school.
tag, if you’re reading this: stella borealis, light and momentary, valerie, anyone who thought the first six weird things were weird, and the tribe (if you’re willing to come clean in my comment section.)
An excellent comments thread appeared over the holidays at Midwest Conservative Journal, a conservative Anglican blog, in which a remarkably respectful dialogue evolved about the fine distinction between what some called "Mary-worship" and proper devotion to the Blessed Virgin.
(Not that it’s remarkable for that site — MCJ regularly has great commenters. It’s just a good example of a positive discussion among people who disagree firmly with one another.)
A number of comments, including from professed Catholics, were along the lines of "Well, we know that Catholic doctrine says, or at least claims to say, that people aren’t supposed to worship Mary. But just take a look at the practices of Catholics and you can tell that they are." For example, here’s a comment from "Murfee":
As a RC for nearly 3 decades, having been immersed in Roman catechetical substance and theory, I can say w/o any qualms that the worship of the Blessed Mother has always been a fact of life from the earliest pontificates to the present. Get a grip, its a doctrine of the church. "Mary worship" may not be extantly expressed as such, but its the single strongest undercurrent in theory and practice today. Say a rosary and that should clue you in. Check out the marian altars in nearly every church or parishes so named for the mother of our Lord and tell me I’m delusional. So why do we protest (as in protestant) so much when some wag points out one of RC’s features? Hey, if we’ve got a magenta shirt on why do we insist on calling it cyan?
Guilty admission: My first thought on reading the bit about "single strongest undercurrent in theory and practice today" was I wish! Not that I wish people were really worshipping Mary, but I wish that theory and practice today could actually be readily mistaken for it by the unwary. Most parishes I’ve attended over the years aren’t exactly riddled with Marian chapels or echoing with scheduled communal rosaries.
Others pointed out that, whatever it looks like, you’d have to be able to read a person’s soul to know whether they were really worshipping the object of their devotion. Some confusion certainly comes from words that mean different things to Protestants and to Catholics (e.g. "pray to" doesn’t equal "worship" for Catholics) and others from ambiguities (e.g. the practice of bowing during the line "He was born of the Virgin Mary and became man" in the Creed refers to "He" and not to "the Virgin Mary.") Some confusion, too, comes from shorthand language on the part of Catholics who do, in fact, understand the distinctions (e.g. saying something like "St. Anthony please help me find my keys" rather than "St. Anthony please pray to God for my intention that I may find my keys.")
So how to bridge the gap of understanding? I wonder, is it even possible to "in practice" worship someone or something, if you fully understand that it’s not God? I could understand that if someone incorrectly thought that Mary was God, part of God, a person of God, or a goddess, that someone might worship her. But that seems an unlikely error for anyone with the barest of catechesis. Is it possible to worship in practice what you don’t worship in theory? Isn’t worship really something that happens in the mind and heart? Could this be used as an objection to the claim that Catholics worship Mary (or other saints) "in practice" even if we pay lip service to worshipping God alone?
Then I thought of two Scriptural quotations involving "worship" of something that’s not God (in the mind of the worshipping agent, an important distinction). First, Satan tempts Jesus in the desert to worship him; if it were impossible to worship what you know not to be God, then this would be nonsensical. Second, I thought of "you cannot worship both God and Mammon." Mammon generally being regarded as meaning "riches" or "money" or "worldliness," this would also be nonsensical unless it were possible to worship what one knows not to be God. But that was just my memory: I had to look them up.
It turns out that the Mammon bit (Mt 6:24) isn’t exactly as I remembered — English translations say "serve," not "worship," and since "serve" is something you do externally, there’s no contradiction: it is possible, and often commendable, to serve that which you do not worship. Your employer, for instance. Or even Mary, for to serve her would be to obey her words: "Do whatever he tells you."
Satan-tempting-Jesus-in-the-desert is even more interesting. It’s Matthew 4:9-11:
And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship [1] me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship [2] the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve [3].’” Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered [4] to Him.
I added the footnotes 1-4 above to show you something interesting. In the Latin Vulgate, verb 1 is adoraveris, verb 2 is adorabis, verb 3 is servies, verb 4 (which I mention because it sometimes is translated "served") is ministrabant. "Worship" in both verbs 1 and 2 is rendered "adore" in the Latin.
In the Greek textus receptus, interestingly enough, verb 1 is (pardon my transliteration) proskyneses, verb 2 is proskyneseis, verb 3 is latreyseis, and verb 4 is diekonoun.
I point this out only because "latria" (as in "idolatry") is in Catholic theology the specific term for the reverence or adoration that is appropriate to God alone. According to Wikipedia it is sacrificial in character and is usually translated "adoration." "Adoration" is not the modern English word I would have chosen to translate this concept (I would have used "worship"). After all, kittens and babies are "adorable." But "worship" in English, etymologically speaking simply means "respect," at least according to Wikipedia, which links it to Anglo-Saxon worthscripe.
How confusing.
Modern English usage worship = something you are supposed to do to God alone = latria
Older English usage worship = "respect" = something due to many, including saints and other people
Modern English usage adore = something one can do to God, or something one can do to a kitten
Usual translation of latria into English = "adoration"
It makes me wonder if whoever came up with "latria = adoration-not-worship" was an Italian who happened to be an expert on Anglo-Saxon.
Yes, I recognize that when we "adore" Christ in the Eucharist we are doing something essentially different from what we are doing when we look lovingly upon anyone else, but the language problem here seems tailor-made to cause confusion.
Okay, it was Clement VIII, but still.
Brad gives us a look into his head. Excellent post, good for anyone who’s wondered what it’s all about.
h/t Happy Catholic.
Rumor has it that liturgical changes are coming, including more Latin, reining in theologically out-there hymns, and maybe the priest will be encouraged to face the same direction as the people again. Ad orientam: to the east. Or, as opponents like to put it, "with his back to the people."
Rich Leonardi quotes one of those opponents:
Thus, when the priest was at the altar, with his back to the congregation, while reciting prayers in Latin in a barely audible manner, the message was clear, even if not explicit. The priest is the one who makes the Mass happen (the old textbooks referred to it as "confecting the Eucharist"), while the laity are present essentially as onlookers …
That’s how the argument goes. Ad orientam = "back turned to the people" = people reduced to onlooker status = high’n’mighty priest. Priest turned toward the people, then, supposedly sent the message that the priest was just this guy, you know?, one of us, and raised the people to the status of participants, not merely an audience.
I submit for your consideration: two images.
In each, one man is going step by step through a highly ritualized routine, complete with special costume and equipment. He is in front of a number of other people standing rank on rank in rows, who are looking to the man in front for cues even as they go through motions that they themselves know well. In the first picture, the man in front faces the people I just spoke of. In the second, his back is to them.
Number 1: The "Rock Star and Audience" model. (That’s The King.)
Number 2: The "Drum Major And The Rest Of The Marching Band" model. (TBDBITL, of course. Yeah, I know, these guys have an audience too. But right now I’m thinking about the folks in the Sam Browne belts.)
A few observations.
1) The drum major may have a fancy title and a fancier hat, but he is most emphatically one of the band members.
2) Isn’t it obvious that the drum major and the rest of the band have a shared purpose, and that the rock star and the audience do not?
3) Whose position — the drum major’s relative to the rest of the band, or the rock star’s relative to the people in the pews, leads to the appearance that it’s All About The Guy Up Front?
4) Is the rock star singing along to the music generated by the audience? Is the drum major dancing to the music generated by the marching band? Hm? So who’re the "onlookers" here, and who are the "active participants?"
My point is just that it’s inherently absurd to say that when the priest’s back is to the people, the message is that the people are a mere audience, but when the priest faces the people, the message is that the people are active participants. Does anyone seriously think that because the drum major has his back to the trombone players and the drummers, "the message is clear" that the music is coming from him?
The posture of the Performer is to face his audience.
The posture of the Leader Among Us is to face the direction we’re trying to go.
Now it may well be that, back in the day, the priest mumbled, barely audibly; and now, everybody can hear fine and dandy. Although being able to read lips probably helped some, I suspect this has not so much to do with our newly enlightened liturgical style and more to do with the fact that these days, churches (at least the big cavernous ones) have amplification systems.
And don’t forget another thing we have in common with the marching band… we rehearse. We do this every week, you know? So we know what’s coming. I could probably come up with more analogies (Music appropriate to the venue! The Playing Field!) but I think I’d be stretching harder than the guy with the baton.
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