bearing blog

bearing blog


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].

  • Union busting at the “progressive” non-profit.

    Lest you think I never cover anything on the left side of the blogosphere, here is a fascinating and detailed multi-part series about union-busting at the nonprofit FFPIRG.  (Minnesota members can take comfort:  MPIRG is not affiliated with the organization described here.)

    The link provided goes to the conclusion; use the links to "first post," "part two," "part three," etc. at the top of the page to navigate the story.

    My disclaimer on this topic is that, as a graduate student, I once worked very hard for a "no" vote on a grad student union — my beat was posting anti-union flyers in the Social Sciences Tower, which was a pretty thankless job, let me tell you.  But it wasn’t because I was against unionization, rather because I was against that particular union — a branch of a teachers’ union, and particularly because research assistants and teaching assistants were to be covered under the same bargaining unit, which is patently ridiculous.  (And, unfortunately, enshrined in Minnesota state law — I still believe that TAs deserve to be unionized, but as an RA I didn’t want to get sucked into a bad-deal union that lined the pockets of Education Minnesota at our expense).

    Anyway, the PIRG canvassers describe in the story should have had the opportunity to unionize, and they didn’t get it, largely because of legal means employed by the nonprofit to enable them to fire the organizers.  How could this work? 

    "We’ve all come to realize," Christian [one of the organizers] said to me, referring to both the firings and the long months yet to come, "that our nation’s labor laws are simply not designed to protect employees from employers who resort to measures as self-destructive as what the Fund was willing to do to prevent our union."

    It’s interesting.  After reading it, I felt like telling the next canvasser who comes to my door, "Forget the donations.  Here’s twenty bucks, go pay your rent with it."

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  • Minimalist coconut chicken egg drop soup.

    Ouch.  I am coming out of a migraine, which calls for comfort food.  And I don’t feel like doing much.  Luckily, I have some broth going since Saturday night in the crockpot, the remains of that night’s grocery-store rotisserie chicken. 

    I scooped some of the boiling broth out of the pot with my soup mug and added 1 beaten egg, stirring to break up the strands as they cooked in the hot broth.  Then I filled the mug to the top with canned coconut milk.  Add a few shakes each of vinegar, soy sauce, and Thai fish sauce and I’m set.  (The coconut milk even brought it down to sipping temperature.)

    But wait!  There are a few shreds of the roast chicken left in the fridge.  Add those, too.

    Sure, I could take a few more minutes and add lime juice, or sliced mushrooms, or minced ginger.  But take a look at the kitchen:  I only dirtied two bowls and a fork (I drank the soup, I didn’t spoon it).  Tasty, a quick energy boost, and low carb.

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  • Original Sin: positive or negative?

    Tongue in cheek — I don’t mean "good" or "bad," but is it something added or something subtracted?

    Pontificator (who just celebrated his first Mass as a Catholic Priest after converting from Anglicanism — congratulations!)  posts a citation from John Henry Newman about the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, i.e., the doctrine that Mary was from the first moment of her life free from sin.  I was struck by Newman’s characterization of the differences between Catholics’ and Protestants’ concepts of original sin:

    Our doctrine of original sin is not the same as the Protestant doctrine. “Original sin,” with us, cannot be called sin, in the mere ordinary sense of the word “sin;” it is a term denoting Adam’s sin as transferred to us, or the state to which Adam’s sin reduces his children; but by Protestants it seems to be understood as sin, in much the same sense as actual sin.

    We, with the Fathers, think of it as something negative, Protestants as something positive.

    Protestants hold that it is a disease, a radical change of nature, an active poison internally corrupting the soul, infecting its primary elements, and disorganizing it…

    [B]y original sin we mean, as I have already said, something negative, viz., this only, the deprivation of that supernatural unmerited grace which Adam and Eve had on their first formation,—deprivation and the consequences of deprivation.

    Newman goes on to explain how the "negative" view of original sin, plus the ancient understanding of Mary as the "new Eve," leads naturally to a position that the Immaculate Conception of Mary is not unreasonable.

    I realize that I have always had an unconscious acceptance of Original Sin as "stain," i.e., something added to the soul.   So what if I try to change my philosophy towards it, so that it becomes a kind of emptiness, primarily a cavity to be filled rather than primarily a spot to be washed away?

    A number of interesting distinctions follow.  For one, it removes the mistaken idea of Christian doctrine that is sometimes phrased "we are judged because of Adam’s sin."  It means, rather, that Adam’s sin took something away from us, something we need to reach God where He is (a chasm overcome by His coming to where we are).

    It rings truer to me to assert that our babies are conceived with a deficiency than to assert that they pick up in the womb some kind of infection of the soul.  Such an idea transforms the sacraments.  (However, the idea of baptism as a "washing" is so common from the earliest traditions that we’d be ill-advised to throw it out — surely there’s something to that symbolism too.)

    Yes, "the lamb of God … takes away the sins of the world."  But this refers to actual sins, no?  It’s plural (peccata) and original sin is always singular (peccatum), unless I’m mistaken.

    The idea of original-sin-as-negative also helps guard against the heresy that concupiscence is "meme" rather than "gene" — that is, that the tendency to sin spreads from person to person through culture rather than through human reproduction, a tempting heresy to be sure.  (And not much more than re-warmed Pelagianism.)

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  • Lully, lullay.

    This weekend, again on account of Our Lady of Guadalupe, we heard The Coventry Carol at Mass.  I’m reprinting last year’s post:

    Today at Mass during the Offertory (inexplicably; this is Advent) we sang Lullay, lullay, thou little tiny child, a.k.a. "The Coventry Carol" after its tune.

    You don’t hear that one very often outside of church, and not really very much in church, as lovely as the tune is.  (Here’s a link to the tune at Oremus.org — link plays music.)  I sing it only with great difficulty, myself.  How strange and haunting:  the lullaby of the grieving mothers of Bethlehem, on the day that Herod slaughtered the Holy Innocents:  the carol that accompanies the Flight into Egypt, and is its dark other side.

    Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child, bye, bye, lully, lullay.

    O sisters too, how may we do, for to preserve this day / this poor youngling for whom we sing?  Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

    Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child, bye, bye, lully, lullay.

    Herod the king, in his raging, charged he hath this day / his men of might in his own sight, all young children to slay.

    Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child, bye, bye, lully, lullay.

    Then woe is me, poor child, for thee!  And every morn and day / for thy parting nor say nor sing ‘Bye, bye, lully, lullay.’

    Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child, bye, bye, lully, lullay.

    I remember hearing the carol as a child and not really absorbing anything other than the refrain.  I always thought it was a lullaby for the Baby Jesus:  what other "thou little tiny child" is there to sing about at Christmastime?  I didn’t know about them, and they have disappeared these days from our Christmas story, but… some fifteenth-century English tune-smith did remember the mothers of the forgotten little ones of Bethlehem, and we should be thankful for him.

    The Christmas story is indeed a joyful one, but in the midst of it there is a great terror and sadness.  December 28th is the Feast of the Holy Innocents:  remember it, and sing Lully, lullay.

    (Matthew 2:13-18:  Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Rise, take the Child and His mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you: for Herod is about to search for the Child, to destroy Him." And he rose and took the Child and His mother by night, and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Out of Egypt have I called My Son."Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:"A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation:  Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled because they were no more.")

    UPDATE:  It’s possible that the Coventry Carol was chosen because this upcoming weekend [remember, I posted this originally in 2005], in honor of Our Lady of Guadelupe’s feast Monday, our parish is hosting a special pro-life Mass. 

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  • Tagged with the birthday meme.

    Rich Leonardi tags me:

    The Rules:

    1) Go to Wikipedia.
    2) In the search box,     type your birth month and day but not the year.
    3) List three events that happened on your birthday.
    4) List two important birthdays and one death.
    5) One holiday or observance (if any).

    Events:

    1582 – Due to the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.   

    I first read that in a "Big Book of Facts" I had as a kid and it always fascinated me.  Everyone went straight from October 4th to the 15th.

    1921 – Baseball: The World Series was broadcast on the radio for the first time.

    It figures.  In my family, when I was growing up, we had a tradition that on yor birthday, you got to ride in the front seat of the car, you got to have your favorite food for dinner, and you got to choose what the family watched on TV that evening.  Except I never got to pick the TV show
    because the playoffs were always on.  Boo hoo!  (Well, it seemed like a horrible injustice at the time.)

    1969 – The first broadcast of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

    Speaking of TV, this is a milestone, don’t you agree.

    Births: 

    • 1882 – Robert Goddard, American rocket scientist (d. 1945)
    • Václav Havel, playwright and President of the Czech Republic

    (what, you wanted I should highlight Teresa Heinz Kerry?)

    Deaths:  1938 – Saint Faustina Polish religious (b. 1905)

    As of 2000, my birthday is her feast day. 

    I’d like to count that as the "holiday," but if I can’t, I’m stuck with International World Teachers’ Day.  Give your favorite teacher a Certificate of Redundancy Certificate for that one!

    Tag: Valerie, Meira V., DIH

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  • The horror of canon-law footnotes.

    Ed Peters makes it simple, with his solaranite-powered guide to the footnotes of the 1917 Code.

    Be sure to check out the captions:

    When attempting to acquire a new skill, whether it’s making scary claw-hands or deciphering citations to Gratian’s Decree, try to find someone with experience who can show you how to develop your skill more quickly and accurately.

    And the Latin jokes, too.

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  • Motion and meaning.

    Rich Leonardi handily predicts that a bishop’s pastoral visit to Africa will result in commentary praising liturgical dancing.  Then he posts a picture of silly American liturgical dancers.

    Just because liturgical dance is silly here doesn’t mean it isn’t good in other places.  Conversely, the existence of truly worshipful liturgical dance in other countries, if it indeed exists, does not make it a good idea in American parishes (except maybe those composed largely of immigrants from places of the former type).

    Liturgical dance done here doesn’t spring from the heart of our culture as a genuine act of worship. It’s imposed on us.

    That’s a big difference.

    Nor do we recognize any kind of body motions that we could call "dance" as signifying any sacredness.

    And it’s not because "the church recognize[s]" that "people were going to move their body and that was going to lead them into sin," as someone said once, and as Rich quotes them in another post.

    We do have body motions that we recognize as sacred or that we invest with meaning. You can tell their authenticity in our cultural context by seeing where they are copied, outside of church, by people wanting to import an air of the sacred.

    Think of the solemn procession (much used in civil ceremonies, graduations, etc). Think of the sign of the cross and its resemblance to, say, placing your hand over your heart to honor the flag. Think of the ringing of bells. Or rising from your seat in the presence of a respected person.

    These aren’t cultural signifiers of the sacred because they are used in church.  They are used in church because they signify the sacred.

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  • WARNING: THIS INFANT CARSEAT IS NOT INTENDED TO PROTECT INFANTS FROM THEIR OWN PARENTS’ IDIOCY.

    I attend a weekly Music Together class with my three children, ages 6, 3, and 4 months.  I like the mixed-age group, the low-pressure environment, the well-trained instructors.  I like the format, which allows the toddlers to express themselves, experiencing the music, with lots of whole-body motions like jumping, running, rolling balls, dancing with scarves, playing rhythm instruments.  It’s boisterous, yet the instructor’s skill keeps it "all about the music."  I love it.

    The last two weeks, however, have been a nightmare.

    Two new babies are in the class, one MJ’s age, the other born a few weeks ago.  Their mothers each have a toddler as well.  Clearly the mothers believe the class is for the toddlers, not the babies (although the class is expressly for ages birth through five years).  Last week, both of those babies’ moms left their infants strapped in carseats in the middle of the floor, often getting up to dance around the room with their toddlers.

    Imagine six boisterous toddlers and preschoolers running around the room, pretending to be airplanes or kangaroos or something, also three or four moms, while two little babies sleep in the center of the room, defenseless, "like little oysters on the half shell," as my friend put it when I described it to her.

    Not only that, but there were RHYTHM STICKS.  And BALLS. 

    Why couldn’t those mothers see that this is dangerous?  Do they think that the car seat is magically protective on the floor?  Do they think the handle is a roll bar?  Do they think the other children will remember that the carseat, which looks for all the world like an inanimate object, contains a tiny human being?

    Milo, my three-year-old, is pretty boisterous.  When the teacher says, "Let’s run around the room!" he doesn’t jog, he goes at full speed, colliding with the walls.  I occasionally have to take him out of the class to remind him not to throw things.   That’s a normal part of learning to respect others. 

    But this class was a nightmare.  The parents are, reasonably, responsible for our own children’s behavior towards others.  If Milo knocks into a one-year-old, the worst that’s going to happen is a bruise.  I can make him apologize.  I can take him out of the class if I have to.  But if he gets overexcited even for a moment — which is hardly unexpected in a class like this — and knocks over one of the carseats, the newborn inside could be seriously hurt.

    I had to keep a grip on him the whole time because I was afraid he would run into one of the carseats.  When it was time for rhythm sticks, he did throw one once, and I had to take him away.  I had to take him out of the room again when it was time for ball-rolling, because I know from experience that he will forget he is not supposed to throw the balls. 

    We’ve been doing this class for nearly three years, and I have encountered the babies-in-carseats problem before.  My strategy has always been to sit right next to the baby.  Then I can point the baby out to my children, remind them constantly to be gentle, and also can serve as a human shield if need be.  (Why the babies’ mothers do not do this is beyond me, but the fact is, they do not always stay by the carseat.)

    Last week’s class was the first time there was more than one baby on the halfshell, and so I could not protect them both at once.   

    I went up to both moms after class and apologized profusely for the near misses — Milo, by far the most physically energetic kid in class, had run past their baby’s carseats several times.  My hope was that (a) they would forgive me for not keeping better control over him (I tried, but recall that I have a new baby myself, who is IN MY ARMS during class) and (b) they would get the hint that the baby was not safe in the carseat in the class.

    It gets better.  Yesterday’s class, I planned to arrive early to talk to the instructor, who is in all ways excellent and who owns the business.  The instructor was not there and a substitute was teaching.  One of the two mothers kept her son in arms during the class (whew).  But the other mother still had her brand-new little girl in the carseat.  When she saw my concern that Milo was going to collide with her child, she said to me, "Don’t worry, I’ll put her where she’ll be safe."

    So she got the baby out of the seat and snuggled her in her arms, singing songs to her all through the class.

    No wait, that’s not what happened.

    Actually, she picked the carseat up by its handle, with the baby still strapped inside, and placed it up on top of a half-wall, four feet high and barely wider than the carseat, that separates the dance room from the coat room.  Where it teetered all through the class.  I could not look at it without imagining some child throwing a ball at it and knocking it down, baby and all, onto the hard linoleum floor.  Or some dancing mother tripping over a dancing toddler and careening headlong onto it.  Or my own 6-year-old son trying to peek into it (he could reach it) and knocking her off the wall.

    It gets better!  On the other side of the wall, just below where the mother left her baby, is a combination boot bench/slide that the children always climb on while their mothers are getting their coats.  I forgot about that till class was over and I came out into the anteroom.  I sat on the bench to keep children off it.  The mother got all her winter gear on and all her toddler’s winter gear on before she came to get the baby.

    "Oh, excuse me," I said cheerfully, as I got up.  "I was blocking your baby."

    "Oh, that’s all right," she said with a friendly smile as she grabbed the handle and took the baby down from her precarious perch.   "You’re not in my way."

    She still didn’t get it!

    After I got back to a computer I composed an e-mail to the instructor/business owner begging her to formulate a "no carseats in the class" safety policy.  More when I hear back from her.

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  • Do you think they meant “kugel?”

    Best Google search of the day:  Someone got to my site by Googling

    kegel with chicken fat

    Sounds… squishy.

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  • Reader question

    What religious items, images, icons, etc. are on display in your home, and where? 

    I’m late in getting my few items out of the attic, and thinking about getting some more this year, and looking for inspiration.  The St. Therese photo I saw in an acquaintance’s home a few weeks ago has got me thinking!

    (Answer in the comments, and don’t be shy, as I can never get enough comments!)

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  • Don’t underestimate what’s going on here.

    Pope Benedict meets with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. 

    Today, I dare to hope we will see reunion in my lifetime.

    Although it has all of Byzantium’s history behind it, the Church of Constantinople is tiny today, shrinking under the pressure of Turkish civil law.  They cannot freely choose their leaders; their seminary is closed; they cannot own their church buildings; recently the Christians even lost the cemeteries that house their dead.  They fear justly that they will die out entirely within a generation or two.  Which makes all the more urgent our efforts and prayers to join together again.

    Constantinople holds a kind of primacy among the Orthodox churches.  If Constantinople and Rome can rejoin… perhaps full union is possible.

    See patiarchate.org for much, much more.

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  • Is Jimmy Akin on a roll or what?

    All this week I’ve barely been able to keep up.

    For my few readers who aren’t familiar with him, Jimmy Akin — yes, the cowboy hat guy — is a Catholic writer and apologist.  His blog is the best place I know to go for extremely detailed, technical, practical, and correct answers to all kinds of questions about Catholic beliefs, practices, and morality. 

    In my view, he answers questions like an engineer, or perhaps a mathematician, often laying out the list of all possible answers or arguments and then systematically destroying them one after another until only a few remain, at which point he announces (one way or another) that the speculation is about to begin, and then proceeds to reason his way through them.   He never lets an ambiguous term slip by without definition, and if he needs to appeal to Church documents he goes straight to the Latin. (For a sample, see his Moral Theology category)

    Another thing I like is his willingness to write at length about hypothetical and fictional scenarios, as in this response to the recent reader question "Would it be just under Catholic teaching to commit genocide against the Cylons?"

    This week he’s writing about torture (start here and read forward), the topic of which has been bandied about the Catholic blogosphere of late (notably by Mark Shea) and which has suffered a bit from a lack of definition of terms.

    There’s also some writing about the Pope’s visit to Turkey.  Also about Benedict’s upcoming book about Jesus.  Good stuff.  Check it out. 

    More about JA.

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