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].

  • Because I have nothing better to do?

    I started planning Oscar’s second grade year.  (He’s a homeschooled first grader).

    Sometimes I think that the question "Would I enjoy homeschooling?" would be best answered by a simple diagnostic question:  Do you like making lists and buying office supplies?

    I do.  I especially like making lists of office supplies to buy, and buying office supplies with which to make lists.  But I digress.

    ANYWAY, first grade planning and purchasing is done.  I mean, down to the "day" level.  For example, on Friday of the nineteenth week of first grade, Oscar will be doing this:

    • memorizing Question 27 in the First Communion Catechism
    • listening to the eleventh chapter in the first grade religion textbook
    • reading aloud from one of the "Mr. Putter and Tabby" books by Cynthia Rylant
    • discussing the childhood of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
    • working one lesson from Saxon Math
    • practicing his recorder for 5 minutes

    The reason I am so organized is simple:  For me, organizing stuff is a method of procrastination.  Also an excuse to buy more office supplies.

    On that note, instead of helping Mark do the dishes, I started putting together the second-grade year.   I realized I didn’t have all that much to do.  Once you’ve decided on a series — like the Saxon Math — you can, if it’s working for you, just keep getting the next one.  That took care of Art, Math, Copybook, and Religion.  Music’s just the recorder.  I’m going to add Latin, but I already bought Prima Latina.    I’ll draw my read-alouds from Ambleside again.

    This gave me time to play with History and what is usually called "Science" but what I prefer to call "Nature Study," the term being understood to include, say, chemistry and physics and not just "stuff outside the house." 

    I decided to study history via a read-aloud survey of ancient cultures, a la the book Story of the World vol. 1.  I’ll leave several weeks’ leeway in it so that we can stop and study one or two of them in greater depth as Oscar becomes interested in them. 

    We’re already learning about nature through monthly co-op classes at the nature center, which is certainly enough at this age.  But if I want to do more, I have two ideas — I could use neither, one, or both. 

    The first idea is to read about the history of science and technology in the ancient world, concurrent with each culture we’re reading about.   This interdisciplinary approach would deepen both history and science.  I looked around and found a few resources that look good:  there’s a "Science of the Past" series of books, and another series called "Ancient Technology," and a single book of science projects called "Ancient Science."  (Sample project:  1. Try to dig with a blunt stick.  2.  Try to dig with a sharp stick.  3.  Realize that it took people a pretty long time to invent the plow.)

    The second idea is to buy a Science Project Kit, such as Snap Circuits, and select assignments from the included manual.  (Followed, probably, by narration.)  Mark liked this idea a great deal and volunteered to do the selecting and teaching and discussion.  Hm, I should probably take that into account when I make my decision.

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  • My vote for the Best Response to Kate Schori.

    It’s well known around the Catholic blogosphere what Katharine Jefferts Schori, the newly-elected presiding bishop of the U. S. Episcopal Church, thinks of us breeders: 

    Q. How many members of the Episcopal Church are there in this country?

    A.  About 2.2 million. It used to be larger percentagewise, but Episcopalians tend to be better-educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than some other denominations. Roman Catholics and Mormons both have theological reasons for producing lots of children.

    Q.  Episcopalians aren’t interested in replenishing their ranks by having children?

    A.  No. It’s probably the opposite. We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion.

    MrsDarwin replies,

    maybe Kate’s on to something there — Pope Benedict has a far better education than she does, and we notice that he has no children. Must be for theological reasons.

    If that isn’t snarky enough for you, there’s always the Kate Schori Ecumenical Coffee Mug.

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  • Therese in hidden places.

    When we moved into our house almost a year ago, we intended to build bookshelves.  All our boxes of books went straight into the attic to await their new homes. 

    They’re still there, of course.   So if I need a book I have to go up and open boxes and dig and dig and dig, trying to guess which one might be where, until I find it (or give up).

    I went up last night to find a book of read-aloud stories, and I never found it, but what I did find was the new-last-Christmas translation of Don Quixote, which I hadn’t gotten around to reading yet before we moved, and Story of a Soul, the memoirs and doctrine of St. Therese of Lisieux.

    Ste.-Therese had been much on my mind since the homeschooling-co-op potluck, hosted at the lovely home of a couple in our parish.   I had walked around and around the first floor of their house, wondering how it is that people who have lovely homes manage to do it (probably has something to do with the fact that their youngest kids are teens now).  I particularly admired how they’d managed to display a great deal of devotional art without the slightest hint of kitsch or tackiness — every item seemed to be in its natural home, from the large twinned portraits of the Sacred Heart of Our Lord and the Immaculate Heart of Mary over the fireplace to the pretty Last Supper in the dining room. 

    As I was examining some of the lovely things, I noticed a small display of black-and-white photographs in vintage frames on a low table by the piano.  Thinking them family pictures, I went over to look more closely.  Perhaps some of them were, but among the photos, in a frame like any other, was this:

    Therese My heart gave a little leap when I saw this one, as if I’d seen my own great-grandmother’s photo and thereby discovered that the hostess was my cousin.

    Of course, this is nobody’s great grandmother, but everybody’s little sister, Therese, at age fifteen, not long before she entered Carmel.

    Anyway, I was tickled by the inclusion of Therese without comment in a group of family photos.  Few saints can "pull off" that kind of display so naturally!  Because she’s so approachable, so much a real live modern young lady, and there are so many people who have a real love for her — not just an abstract "devotion," but a sisterly affection of the heart.  I mean, Therese, if you know her, is really part of the family.

    So it was with delight that I rediscovered Story of a Soul  among my boxes.  I immediately took it downstairs and read it again, almost straight through.  I don’t think it’s ever going back in the attic.

    It’s ever new on each reading, and amazing that it was written by a twenty-two-year-old.  So delightful to read her writing about how she can get to heaven only by being "little," since she can never be a great theologian or doctor of the Church — with the hindsight of knowing that, when the wealth to be mined from her little theology became known, she was named Doctor of the Church (there are thirty-three, and only three are women).

    This time through, I was especially struck by the passage on her vocation, LOVE:

    To be Thy Spouse, O my Jesus, to be a daughter of Carmel, and by my
    union with Thee to be the mother of souls, should not all this
    content me? And yet other vocations make themselves felt–I feel
    called to the Priesthood and to the Apostolate –I would be a
    Martyr, a Doctor of the Church…

    I opened, one day, the Epistles of St. Paul to
    seek relief in my sufferings. … I read that all
    cannot become Apostles, Prophets, and Doctors; that the Church is
    composed of different members; that the eye cannot also be the
    hand. The answer was clear, but it did not fulfill my desires, or
    give to me the peace I sought….

    Without being discouraged I read on, and found comfort in this
    counsel: "Be zealous for the better gifts. And I show unto you a
    yet more excellent way."[14] The Apostle then explains how all
    perfect gifts are nothing without Love…

    I could not
    recognise myself among any of its members as described by St.
    Paul, or was it not rather that I wished to recognise myself in
    all? Charity provided me with the key to my vocation. I understood
    that since the Church is a body composed of different members, the
    noblest and most important of all the organs would not be wanting.
    I knew that the Church has a heart, that this heart burns with
    love, and that it is love alone which gives life to its members. I
    knew that if this love were extinguished, the Apostles would no
    longer preach the Gospel, and the Martyrs would refuse to shed
    their blood. I understood that love embraces all vocations, that
    it is all things, and that it reaches out through all the ages,
    and to the uttermost limits of the earth, because it is eternal.

    Then, beside myself with joy, I cried out: "O Jesus, my Love, at
    last I have found my vocation. My vocation is love! Yes, I have
    found my place in the bosom of the Church, and this place, O my
    God, Thou hast Thyself given to me: in the heart of the Church, my
    Mother, I will be LOVE! . . . Thus I shall be all things: thus
    will my dream be realised. . . ."

    (from the Taylor translation, available online — but here is a better English translation)

    She goes on to write about how it is not the greatness of a work, but the love with which it is done, that sanctifies.  Therese writes about how she strove to perform every act with love in her heart for the Sister nearest her.  She did this many ways, not the least by "assuming good intentions" in the other Sisters, especially the ones who most troubled her.  She reiterates Paul’s words that all gifts, all works, are nothing without love.

    And if you’re incapable of loving these people? I wondered the last time I read her words.  What if you can’t, simply can’t, muster up any love for the person whose fault you’re ignoring, whom you’re trying to treat with a kindness "because it’s what you’re supposed to do" even if you can barely stand them?  What if the best you can do is fake it, and there isn’t any love in your heart for them?  None at all?   

    This time it occurred to me:  Well, of course, you can do it for love of Jesus alone.  There is that.

    So Therese is right.

    Another bit that I admired this time through:

    Sometime
    before this     [a great disappointment] took place I had offered myself to the Child Jesus to
    be His little plaything. I told Him not to treat me like one of
    those precious toys which children only look at and dare not
    touch, but to treat me like a little ball of no value, that could
    be thrown on the ground, kicked about, pierced, left in a corner,
    or pressed to His Heart just as it might please Him. In a word I
    wished to amuse the Holy child and to let Him play with me as He
    fancied.

    Here indeed He was answering my prayer. … Jesus
    pierced His little plaything. He wanted to see what was inside
    . . . and when satisfied, He let it drop and went to sleep.

    Advent and Christmas are fitting times to read the autobiography of the little plaything of the Christ-Child, Sister Therese of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face. 

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  • OK, how about this argument for chant?

    OK, try this one on the  Parish Community Liturgical Committee Chairperson.  Chant is more inclusive!  From a parish that’s doing it, via Amy Welborn:

    “The Church,” said Father Donnelly, “is very particular when it comes to sacred music. The definitions are clear. It must be music that is holy, i.e. sacred; it must contain goodness of form, i.e. beauty and artistic merit; and it must also possess universality, which is described by the Vatican as having characteristics so that ‘nobody of any nation may receive an impression other than good on hearing it.’”

    Universality also means, the pastor added, that the music is recognizable as sacred music by the faithful around the world and therefore encourages inclusivity. Although it [need] not be Palestrina or Gregorian Chant, it must evoke the sacred.

    I don’t mean to sound tongue-in-cheek.  This is indeed a very good point.  Liturgical deconstructors of the past 45 years have been trying to make liturgy more "relevant" by adapting it to the "local culture."  Local secular culture, that is.   The result is a splintered mess that isn’t recognizable as sacred to anyone who hasn’t had the misfortune of growing up in middle America. 

    Try this thought experiment:  Imagine yourself at Mass at your average suburban parish "with felt fish on the wall," as my old friend Derek used to put it.  The choir is doing their best — sincerely, I sa, for I’ve been part of these choirs — with a come-as-you-are hodgepodge of acoustic guitars, a full drum set, electric bass, a saxophone, and the music teacher from the local primary school to provide African drumming.  The material they’ve been given for the "entry song"
    (the theater-in-the-round architecture has necessitated the dropping of the term "processional")is not challenging; something like "All Are Welcome." 

    Now imagine that seated up front is a delegation of Catholics from your sister parish in, oh, Nigeria, or perhaps Guatemala. 

    Embarrassed yet?  OK, how about if your fresh-faced music teacher includes "Mayenziwe" or "Digo Si, Senor" in the set list?  The teenager with the electric bass always has a lot of fun with those.

    It’s not about the local culture.  And if you make it all about being relevant to the local culture, you lose the ability to be relevant to visitors, foreigners, to people who wander in looking for something they know not what.  Our mission is to speak  (not to the world, but) to people all over the world.  Not merely to "be relevant," but to bear meaning.  The liturgical elements that we choose from all the cultures we encounter are to be those ones that bear a message of sacredness to anyone who experiences it, even someone totally unfamiliar with it.  Universal sacredness.

    Modern multicultural revisionism, here in the U. S., denies the possibility of universalism.  No one is supposed to be able to discern the sacred in someone else’s culture.  Instead of universality, it prefers mere diversity:  a smattering of Spanish lyrics or "African" stylings, poorly executed by people with little or no understanding of the culture that the music supposedly spring from.  It’s not authentic, and it shows.   

    Chant holds pride of place in the Catholic liturgy (not that you’d know it around here; I’ve never in my life actually heard it used at Mass) because, given that it’s been used for so long, it is held to be universally recognizable as sacred among Catholics all over the world.  One of the reasons it is recognizable as such is that it developed in the Church from within a Church culture.  It wasn’t appropriated from outside.  Is it Eurocentric to insist that chant is preferred, as the church does?  OK, so chant developed there, on that continent that was once called "Christendom," but there’s nothing particularly European about its form.  It doesn’t require any instruments at all.   Musical scale traditions vary from culture to culture, but chant can be used in any of them. 

    (Amy pointed out recently that even so-called "traditional hymns" aren’t actually preferred in Catholic liturgy; stuff like "For All The Saints" and "Immaculate Mary" is permitted, but not exactly encouraged.  Mass isn’t supposed to always be the filling in a "four-hymn sandwich."  Here’s her post, linking to an article about "the treasure that the widespread use of hymns has seemingly buried.")

    Anyway, perhaps it’s worth suggesting to your multi-culti liturgical coordinator that pop Masses might actually be alienating, rather than welcoming, to outsiders.  And anyway, although welcoming is good, the point is not to have everyone there feel welcomed.  One welcomes as a means to an end:  the barriers must go down in order that God may be worshiped.  Welcoming can’t be the main focus, because welcoming is about us, not about Him.

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  • What are they teaching in these schools these days? (Texas State University edition)

    Nothing like pulling a quote from the 1760s and pretending it’s from the 1620s.

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  • The coffee bootstrap problem was particularly bad this morning.

    Mark having gone off to adoration this morning at 7, planning to stop at the gym on the way home, I stumble down the stairs at quarter to eight with the baby in the sling and head for the coffee pot.

    Ermph.  There’s a piece of scrap paper, old printout, stuck under the pot.  Don’t want to start a fire.  Let’s see, turn it over, oh, it’s Oscar’s schoolwork from yesterday.  One half of 14 is 7.  Wow, he spelled everything right, and the ess is facing the right way, and everything.  How lovely.

    Now what?  Oh yes, beans.  Hm, we ran out of those pretty fast.  Down to the freezer to get more.  in the basement pantry, I shake coffee beans from the big bag in the chest freezer into the jar, and plod back upstairs.

    Into the grinder.  The grinder roars to a start, dutifully spewing coffee grounds onto the counter.  I fumble with the lid until the spewing stops and the coffee grounds enter the approved coffee ground receiving chamber.

    I bet I left the wet grounds in there yesterday.  I open the lid and sure enough, there’s a coffee filter peeking out of the top.   The words still dry wander through my mind searching for something to connect to.  I pick up the filter basket, lift it out carefully, pass it over the sink to catch any drips, and neatly upturn it over the trash can, letting the full coffee filter drop in.

    Instead of going splat it goes hiss as dry coffee grounds cascade through the garbage can like pebbles in a rainstick.

    Wh? I look over at the coffee maker and squint at the window in the side.  It contains seven cups of water.  Suspiciously, I pick up Oscar’s schoolwork paper and turn it back over, to the side printed with an old spreadsheet. 

    Penciled along the left margin in my husband’s handwriting:  All ready to go!  Love ya!

    I shake the new grounds into the coffee filter and drop it into the coffee maker and close the lid and turn it on. Then I turn around to see the filter basket on the counter.  Ack!  I turn the coffee maker off, carefully transfer the (damp) coffee filter into the basket, replace the basket, turn it on again.

    OK, I think I can face the day now.

    What day is it, anyway?

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  • Don’t make eye contact.

    James at The Daily Brouhaha has a good post on "the rule of silence" that governs train commuters, and why breaking it is a bad idea.  I’ve experienced this too.

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  • Taking off his Pope Hat.

    Pope Benedict is about to publish a scholarly book on Jesus:

    "Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration" is scheduled for a March release in Italian by the Rizzoli publishing house and in German by Herder Verlag.

    Announcing the publication Nov. 21, Rizzoli and the Vatican gave reporters copies of the book’s preface and a portion of its introduction.

    In the preface, signed "Joseph Ratzinger — Benedict XVI," the pope wrote that for decades he had noticed a growing scholarly distinction between the "historical Jesus" and the "Christ of faith," a distinction that many Christians now accept as accurate.

    But, he wrote, if the human Jesus was totally different from the Jesus depicted in the Gospels and proclaimed by the church, what does it mean to have faith in him?

    Jimmy Akin notices something important:

    But the book is not an act of the papal magisterium, despite its author’s election to the papal see:

    In a Nov. 21 statement, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, said, "The pope says clearly, with his usual simplicity and humility, that this is not a ‘magisterial act,’ but a fruit of his personal research and, as such, can be freely discussed and critiqued.

    "It is not a long encyclical on Jesus, but a personal presentation of the figure of Jesus by the theologian Joseph Ratzinger," who was elected pope after beginning the work, Father Lombardi said.

    This says volumes about the personal humility of the man who is now pope. To have the spiritual authority to mandate that every sentence in the book be believed by Catholics and to refuse to use it–to refuse to put forward one’s own ideas authoritatively–and to instead openly say that people are free to discuss those ideas and critique them–knowing even that they will meet hostility in many scholarly circles–is the mark of an extraordinarily humble man.

    How cool is that?  I’m looking forward to seeing it in English.  Correctly or not, I am imagining it as a more scholarly, less for-popular-reading, Life of Christ a la Bishop Sheen.  (Which, if you haven’t read, you might select while you are waiting for Benedict’s, I mean Ratzinger’s, book to come out.)

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  • Safe, thank goodness…

    Abandoned baby found by the roadside in Stearns County:

    The baby — believed to be 3 to 14 days old — was left near the intersection with another gravel road, Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Bruce Bechtold said today.

    She was found by Bob Klaverkamp, a dairy farmer who was on his way home. She was in a car seat propped against an oak tree, about 7 feet off a gravel road, covered by a pink blanket with a small duffel bag nearby.

    "I was thinking somebody got rid of a car seat for some dumb reason," he said. " I got out to check, and I heard a little whimper.

    "I lifted the blanket and there was a baby."

    He said he went to his truck and called 911, then picked up the baby and took it into his vehicle to keep it warm. "I touched its fingers, and it wasn’t very cold," he said. "She was holding my finger as I talked to her. She was very sweet, a very nice little baby. She was very quiet, with once in a while a little whimper. A very good baby."

    As I was reading this story, the thought came to me, as natural as anything, "Huh! I should call and ask if they need anyone to take care of that baby, because I could take care of her."  For an instant, it seemed like a very good idea.  And then, of course, I remembered that I already have a fairly newly born baby to take care of, three-month-old MJ (in fact I was nursing her at that moment), so—I guess it’s not such a good idea! 

    Those maternal instincts can be weird sometimes.  Bravo, Mr. Klaverkamp, who had this to say, too:

    "I told the 911 operator I wanted to keep her," Klaverkamp said, smiling.

    How could you not?

    She’s a lucky girl.  This is Minnesota, and it’s November.

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  • Still hope for skiing?

    The last time Mark visited the sports medicine doctor, in May of 2000, his visit started off like this:

    SPORTS MEDICINE DOC (making small talk):  Got any kids?

    MARK (beaming with pride, at least in my imagination):  My wife is pregnant with our first.

    SPORTS MEDICINE DOC:  I do vasectomies too.

    So it is  a testament to the sports medicine doctor’s generally good sports-medicine advice that Mark went back to him this week, not for a vasectomy, but for help with his hamstrings.

    Sports Medicine Doc told Mark to slowly ramp up his general activity, i.e., walking.  For this I bought Mark a pedometer yesterday, because why bother unless you’ve got data?  Also he is to go to the gym three times a week and perform a specific set of exercises. There is hope that the ski season can be salvaged, which is good, because he’s supposed to make several business trips to Colorado this year.

    I told him not to walk too much at work, because I need him to start ramping up his activity at home first.  The laundry is piling up.

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  • Game time.

    I’m trying a new school-day schedule this month.  Instead of doing lessons with Oscar in the morning, and giving him independent work (worksheets, in other words) in the afternoon, I’m having his independent work ready for him in the morning, right after I read aloud to the boys, and putting the lessons later.

    With this change, right after we finish our read-aloud couch cuddle, I can sit down at the table with 3-year-old Milo for ten or twenty minutes of some kind of work or play. 

    It’s practice for school.

    What we’re doing right now is playing board games.  The favorite is Go Away Monster.  We play a couple of rounds while Oscar gets started on his schoolwork.  Oscar wasn’t happy to begin with —"Milo’s having more fun than me!" he complained —but I explained what I was trying to do, and once he grasped that I was (sort of) tricking Milo into doing schoolwork, he seemed satisfied.   He still spends more time interrupting us than doing his math sheet, but with time I think he’ll settle down.

    I’m hoping that if I do this for a year, not only will Milo and I have had the chance to play some great games together (yes, I do hope to expand beyond Go Away Monster), but he’ll be used to sitting down at the table with me and doing something together.  Then maybe I can start introducing some preschool type stuff.  My plan, it is working.

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  • Local news.

    Desperate Irish Housewife gets a new blender.

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