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].

  • Palm branch confetti.

    A confession:

    I have been a Catholic for thirteen years this Easter, and I  still don’t know what to do with the palm branches I carry home dutifully every Palm Sunday.

    They’re blessed, right?   So I can’t just toss ’em, unless I burn them or something.  Yet I can’t see myself standing over the sink and setting light to them. 

    I never learned how to weave one of those nifty little crosses out of them.  And it’s too late this year to learn, because they’re all dried up and stiff and I am pretty sure that the cross-weaving thing only works when they are green and pliable. 

    I have seen them artfully arranged by sticking ’em through the back of a crucifix.  But we moved house a couple of months ago and I haven’t gotten around to hanging any up.  (Subsidiary confession:  I have gotten around to making curtains and buying several pieces of furniture.)

    But I seem to have inadvertantly come up with a good, or at least a final, solution this year: 

    Leave them lying around where a two-year-old with a pair of scissors can find them.

    Now that it can no longer be recognized as a blessed palm branch, I think I’m allowed to compost it. 

    At least I hope so, because the shreds of plant fiber that are left will look rather unconventional stuffed into the back of a crucifix.

    Maybe I can save it for the creche this Christmas.

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  • Psalm 95, day in and day out.

    I wonder why Psalm 95 is the usual invitatory psalm for the Divine Office, a.k.a the Liturgy of the Hours? (Unfamiliar with it?  Lots of info) Since the invitatory is prayed every single day that you pray the Liturgy of the Hours, that’s a lot of Psalm 95 — I’m sure most people who do the DO have it memorized by now. 

    Here’s Psalm 95 as it appears in Christian Prayer (the one-volume breviary published by the Daughters of St. Paul, which uses the ICEL translation), with the antiphon for Holy Week inserted:

    Come, let us sing to the Lord and shout with joy to the Rock who saves us.  Let us approach him with praise and thanksgiving and sing joyful songs to the Lord.

    (Antiphon)  Come, let us worship Christ the Lord, who for our sake indured temptation and suffering.

    The Lord is God, the mighty God, the great king over all the gods.  He holds in his hands the depths of the earth and the highest mountains as well.  He made the sea; it belongs to him, the dry land, too, for it was formed by his hands.

    Come, let us worship Christ the Lord, who for our sake indured temptation and suffering.

    Come, then, let us bow down and worship, bending the knee before the Lord, our maker.  For he is our God and we are his people, the flock he shepherds.

    Come, let us worship Christ the Lord, who for our sake indured temptation and suffering.

    Today, listen to the voice of the Lord:  Do not grow stubborn, as your fathers did in the wilderness, when at Meriba and Massah they challenged me and provoked me, Although they had seen all of my works. 

    Come, let us worship Christ the Lord, who for our sake indured temptation and suffering.

    Forty years I endured that generation.  I said, "They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not know my ways."  So I swore in my anger, "They shall not enter into my rest."

    Come, let us worship Christ the Lord, who for our sake indured temptation and suffering.

    Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:  as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever.  Amen.

    Come, let us worship Christ the Lord, who for our sake indured temptation and suffering.

    The main point of the invitatory, it seems, is "a call to praise God," since one has the option of substituting any of Psalms 100 (Cry out with joy to the Lod, all the earth), 67 (Let the peoples praise you, O God), or 24 (O gates, lift high your heads… Let him enter, the king of glory!).

    Still, Ps. 95 is the default psalm.  The whole psalm is used, not just the first part that is mainly praise — although in other parts of the DO, occasionally, parts of psalms are used.  Why the stuff about enduring "that generation" and God swearing that they "shall not enter" into his rest?  It’s a bizarre note to end on, if your point is praise.  Unless one of the things you want to praise God for is, well, exclusion of the undeserving.  Which may be all well and good — it has to be, if it’s an aspect of the divine — but isn’t generally something we tend to highlight.

    The fact that we read Ps. 95 day in, day out, every day that we pray the office, though, may mean something.  Maybe the bit about the forty years in the desert is a reminder not to get discouraged, even when picking up the breviary and starting the Invitatory is the same old same old same old thing.  We endure God, and He endures us, too.  Do not grow stubborn.  Harden not your hearts.

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  • You should have seen last year’s office Christmas party.

    So, I visited some out-of-town friends last weekend.  They’re expecting their first this summer.   Milo, 29 months old, came with me.

    We were sitting at the dining room table having some chips with my friend’s husband, trading mild stories about the past week.  At a lull in the conversation, Milo piped up:

    One of my daddy’s co-workers pooped on the floor.

    He took another bite of his bagel chip and added:

    I have co-workers too.  My co-workers didn’t poop on the floor.

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  • Ten reasons for a Catholic man to wear a ponytail.

    Speaking of gender and hairstyles, John of J. D. Carriere challenged the rest of us involved in a recent discussion of gender, clothing, and hairstyles (as they relate to the theology of the body) to come up with an answer — other than vanity — to the question "What use has a man got for a ponytail?" 

    The blogless James Fitzgerald managed some — why, he even managed ten!  — which I’m reposting here with permission.  According to James, the top ten reasons for a man-tail are as follows:

    – A ponytail avoids all this silly dashing to the hairdressers for the monthly trim and chat about the weather.

    – No need for the Carryhair-products (apparently John, whose last name is Carriere, peddles girls’ cosmetics or something — bearing) as all is ‘au naturel’.

    – You get to look a bit more like icons of ‘Christ Pantokrater’ (also portrayed with ponytail of sorts) than if you were to go for the JDCarriere short backandsides, French crop on top.

    – They are an evangelistic tool as you get mistaken for Jesus regularly, which leads to conversations about Him more often.

    – It avoids all need to ‘style’ to tame the outofbed look.  Just tie back, and go.

    – Ponytails are great for wiping crumbs away from mouth area, if there is no serviette.

    – They keep the back of your neck warm, saving those poofy scarves.

    – they can work as a tassle on the end of a chotki (Byzantine prayer rope)…to mop up your tears, when weeping because of your sins. Vital for when your chotki has gone missing.

    – they can be so positioned to cover up areas of thinning hair, and therefore avoid vain comb-overs.   (I am still trying to imagine this — bearing)

    – They increase your attractiveness to your wife, making marital relations more regluar, thereby promoting more conceptions and thus increasing the numbers of catholics in the world. 

    Ponytails are therefore a must-have for all radical male Catholics.

    If you say so, James.  Stop by again soon…

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  • Gendered hair and clothing.

    I’ve been in an email discussion, with John of the creatively named blog  J. D. Carriere, about gender-specific clothing and hairstyle.  In short, he thinks women should wear skirts and long hair, and men should wear short hair, except when necessity forces otherwise; I don’t think that "feminine" clothing has to include skirts, and I don’t think that long(ish) hair on a guy is automatically un-masculine, either.  I think it has less to do with structure than with style.

    At the very bottom, though, we don’t disagree.  Our dispute is about how to implement a principle that we agree on:  Men and women are different, and should dress the part.  (Sing it, sister, says John.)

    But the rub is, what’s "dressing the part?"  What’s "clearly" masculine and "clearly" feminine these days?  I think there are a lot of things that are clearly one or the other, but there has been
    a certain migration across the boundaries in the past couple of generations.  Except for the "all skirts and dresses are feminine" law, now it’s less a matter of what sort of item it than how it is styled. 

    Blazers and pants — yes, even a pantsuit — can be worn by men or women and can be "masculine-styled" or "feminine-styled."  And certain things that you might think of as exclusively masculine can look very feminine, at least I think so, with the right accessories
    or modification.   A lot of stuff, the form is simply practical, and the style is where the femininity comes in.

    It looks way worse when you stick with something rigid like "women must wear skirts" and then try to relax it by slapping on a STYLE that is basically masculine, rather than the  more flexible "women’s style should be feminine, but the form of the clothes can vary."  Think of all those Pentecostal young women with their church-festival matching tee shirts and their ankle-length denim skirts…. YUCK.  It’s, like, anti-feminine!

    Another example of this is the eighties-style "corporate attire" women’s suit with the skirt and the suit jacket.  Clearly, masculine styling stamped onto "women’s clothing," i.e., a skirt.  But that looks terrible and un-feminine compared to a very stylish women’s suit, obviously cut for a woman, even if the bottom half of it is trousers. 

    Certainly the word "pantsuit" coming out of John’s mouth is shorthand for a whole fashion syndrome….   But not every women’s suit with pants is a "pantsuit."

    It’s the same thing with hairstyles.  By now, long hair can be a masculine hairstyle, at least around here.  It depends on the execution.  You know that sort of discreet, low ponytail, that looks like short hair from the front?   I like that.  It certainly doesn’t look feminine.  And conversely, short hair isn’t always masculine, but can look quite feminine if it’s cut right. 

    If it’s just style, surely I should be able to isolate the characteristic that, at least in North American culture, makes the difference between masculine and feminine when it comes to hair, or clothing for that matter.   I think that, with hair, it comes down to freedom of movement or fluidity. 

    A woman’s hairstyle has to be long enough to be a little free, at least part of it, for it to be feminine.  So it could be, for example, very short on back and sides, even under-cut, but long
    enough on top to have bangs and to come down on the sides — this is a hairstyle I have had — and still be very feminine.  And of course long and flowing qualifies. A man’s hairstyle, to be masculine, has to be short enough not to move much, or else constrained somehow — say with the ponytail, or even in something like dreadlocks — to be masculine. 

    As I think about it more, it does seem that the rules should change once the hair goes gray though.  Don’t know why… ask me again after mine starts to turn.

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  • Avoiding RadTradism.

    Good series of posts at JimmyAkin.org on rad-trad-ism and liturgical abuse and the like.

    It begins with a 2001 This Rock article by Jimmy, which he entitled "Problems in the Church," but which he ought to have entitled "Spiritual Fruit-Chuckers."  Has more of a ring to it.  In this article, Jimmy points to the story of the high priest Eli and his two sons as a precursor to today’s liturgical abuses and moral failings among the clergy.  Another is a historical incident that doesn’t appear in the Bible:

    At the time, the man in charge was named Alexander Jannaeus (ruled 103-76 B.C.).

    One of Israel’s more important national festivals was (and still is) the feast of Tabernacles (a.k.a. Sukkoth). In Alexander Jannaeus’s day, one of the customs for celebrating Tabernacles was for the people to bring luabs to the Temple and wave them in celebration. A luab was a bundle of branches from trees in the vicinity of Jerusalem-palm, myrtle, willow-to which a citron had been tied. A citron is a fruit similar to a large lemon.

    While the people held their luabs, one of the things the high priest was supposed to do was pour out libations from two silver bowls-one of water and one of wine. According to the custom of the Sadducees, the high priest was supposed to pour out the water bowl on his feet, but the custom of the Pharisees disagreed with this.

    Alexander Jannaeus, who was a Sadducee, followed the Sadducee custom in performing the ritual, but the Pharisees were so popular at the time that the people became enraged, tore the citrons off their luabs, and pelted Alexander with them in the middle of the liturgy.

    Well, that’s one way to deal with perceived liturgical abuses-though I wouldn’t recommend using it today. (In fact, it didn’t work so well then, either. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, Alexander took revenge by killing about six thousand members of the citron-lobbing crowd.)

    His point is that there’s a wrong way and a right way (actually, several of each) to respond to liturgical, and other problems.  And that you shouldn’t "give someone else permission to control your spiritual peace."

    More recently, Michelle Arnold (alluding to that article) has a good blog-piece, "Surviving Sunday Mass," describing how that advice worked for her in a specific situation.

    Then she goes on with a two-parter:  Suggestions for "Overcoming Temptations to Rad-Trad-ism." In Part 1 she offers a definition of rad-trad-ism (distinct from the sensibility and preference-set that she calls Catholic Traditionalism) and suggests these tactics:  don’t church-shop unjustifiably, support your priests, get to know your priests and religious, pray, and examine your conscience.   In Part 2 she adds more:  accept that you don’t know it all, don’t relyon hearsay, seek the good, and appreciate spiritual fatherhood.

    All good advice.  The comboxes get a little heated (mostly from miffed folks who recognize themselves, I’d wager) but it makes good reading.

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  • The two kinds of, for want of a better term, plural marriage.

    Lots of good stuff over at Family Scholars Blog today. 

    The discussion around this post about so-called "plural marriage" got a bit heated and confused:  no one seems to be able to agree on whether poly-whatchamacallit-marriage is something that liberals and feminists will support as a lifestyle choice, or whether it is something that they will repudiate as a backward, unequal, misogynist institution.

    It’s a perfect example showing why it’s necessary to define your terms at the start of a debate.  Some of them are thinking of one kind of legal structure in which one person is "married to" two or more other persons, and some of them are thinking of an entirely different legal structure in which one person is "married to" two or more other persons, and they are trying to use the same name for it. 

    Let’s play a game.  Cue Sesame Street music:

    Three of these groups are doin’ the same thing, three of these groups are kinda the same; one of these groups is doin’ its own thing, now it’s time to play our game;  it’s time to play our game.

    Who doesn’t belong?

    • A male member of a fundamentalist church in rural Utah, who is already legally married to one woman and who wishes to marry a second woman
    • A Muslim man legally married to three  Muslim women in Nigeria
    • A hypothetical upper-caste woman in a hypothetical matriarchal society in some forgotten golden age of matriarchal societies, married to two men who must both provide for her
    • A group of three people in, say, Toronto, one of one gender and two of the other, who are all deeply devoted to one another and who wish to enter a legal marriage in which all are bound together

    Ready?

    If you guessed "the Toronto threesome," you’re right… but the key question is, Why?  What’s objectively different about that bunch?

    Here’s the distinction that makes a real difference:  the number of marriages involved in each case, and who is married to whom. In the set of "like" legal structures, a marriage is always between one man and one woman; but one person can enter multiple marriages which are independent of each other, independently meet the local criteria for "marriage," and can be independently dissolved.

    • The Utah man has formed one marriage with his "first wife," and he seeks to form a second marriage with another wife.  If he is successful, the two marriages would be (1) man/first wife, (2) man/second wife.   The two women would not be married to one another.
    • The Nigerian man has formed three separate marriages:  (1) man/first wife, (2) man/second wife, (3) man/third wife.   The three women are not married to one another.
    • The hypothetical matriarch has formed two separate marriages:  (1) matriarch/first husband, (2) matriarch/second husband.  The two men are not married to one another.

    Technically, the term "polygamy" should be reserved for this type of legal structure, with "polyandry" describing the marriages of one woman to two or more men, and "polygyny" describing the marriages of one man to two or more women.

    Contrast this with the Toronto threesome, which hopes to form a single marriage — a single covenant or contract — that includes three people.  If there are two women and one man (it really doesn’t matter who’s outnumbered here), then the women are married to each other while each of them is also married to the man, because they’re all one big happy marriage. 

    Technically, this is not polygamy.  I don’t think there is an accepted word for it; "polyamory" might do it, except that "polyamory" doesn’t imply legal sanction of any kind, only, well, affection and/or sex.

    (UPDATE:  MrsDrP, in the comments, says she’s heard the term "group marriage."  I suppose that would do, except that it’s numerically imprecise; two is a group, after all.   Well, what do you expect — the ones coining the term have imprecision on their side.)

    These two systems are not at all the same.   And it’s easy to see that they’re not the same:  just make an analogy to business partnerships or corporations.  If Mary forms a business partnership with Joe and another business partnership with George, is that equivalent to Joe, George, and Mary all forming a partnership together?   Obviously not.

    So, here’s why the debate got all muddled over at FamScholBlog:  Some, thinking of "traditional" polygamy, specifically polygyny, claims that liberals and feminists will never go for it ’cause it’s inherently unequal.  Others, thinking of polyamorists entering legal menages-a-trois (and -quatre, and -cinq, and so on) claims that liberals and feminists will attack the two-person marriage the very first minute that the opposite-sex marriage battle is over.

    Sloppy thinking won’t do here. Does the legalization of same-sex marriage imply that there is no legal reason to prohibit "polygamy?"  It rather depends on whether by "polygamy" you mean, well, polygamy — one person entering into multiple marriage-style unions — or whether you mean "marriage-style unions of more than two people." 

    Old Testament polygamous marriages were valid marriages.   There’s nothing inherently at odds with natural marriage there.  One man, one woman:  that’s what it takes to make babies; and each marriage was exactly that.   If a man could provide for more than one family, he could enter more than one marriage.  Simple.  Natural.  Theoretically, I suppose, it could go the other way round, but practical considerations made it primarily if not exclusively a polygynic system rather than a polyandric one.

    Enter the Church, and a new understanding of marriage, not merely as a natural, biological institution, but as a sacramental one:  and the new sacramental understanding of marriage, added the dimension of no Christian may be in more than one marriage at a time.  Because now Christian marriage is an image of the unique union of Christ and the Church, see?  And multiple marriages obscures that. 

    A legal system that respects the biological origin of marriage, but not the sacramental one (which makes sense if the state is never to be informed by any church) would stamp its approval on traditional polygamy while rejecting outright all unions-of-three-or-more.

    A legal system that respects neither biology nor sacrament would approve of unions-of-three-or-more.  What other reason is there to forbid them?  And if that same legal standpoint views egalitarianism as all-important, then traditional polygamy, with its inherent inequality, would be rejected.   The original reason that multiple marriages were legally excluded — foreignness to Christian understanding of the meaning of marriage — has quietly gone away (it was probably unconstitutional to begin with) and been replaced with an unwritten "something else" that doesn’t inconveniently refer to religion.  I dunno, maybe it’s economics.  We can’t afford to put two wives, plus children, on one guy’s insurance. 

    That’s why legalization of marriage between two individuals of the same sex is a sign that legal marriage of three-or-more individuals is more likely:  Inherent biological realities are officially irrelevant. 

    But it’s probably not a sign that polygamy is more likely. 

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    1 comment on The two kinds of, for want of a better term, plural marriage.

  • Local news articles on the “Talking about Touching” controversy.

    Bishops fault local archdiocese’s sex-abuse program:  Child-protection guidelines fall short amid parents’ opposition   (St. Paul Pioneer Press, 3/31/06)

    Archdiocese late in starting sex-abuse education (Star-Tribune, 4/1/06)

    (h/t:  Primary Educators League)

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  • How not to make a bed.

    Amusing post at Six and the City.

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  • Why you should care that I don’t have a job.

    The always-right-on-the-money "Jane" at Asymmetrical Information explains why the mommy wars make a lot of sense:

    …if you think you’ve found the One Right Way to raise YOUR child, then it does indeed make sense to fight hard to persuade as many other women as possible to make the same choice. If you are at home, working mothers are your enemy, at least until they chuck the rat race, and vice versa.

    Why do I say this? Simple: having the majority of people live the way you do has significant positive externalities.

    In other words, we at-home moms benefit when there are a lot of other moms at home, and working moms benefit when there are a lot of other moms working.

    She goes on to give examples from both sides, including this one:

    …[S]taying at home with children is not nearly as rewarding as it was in the 1960’s. All right, there are more daytime television options than there used to be, and gyms now have day-care centres. But there is something huge missing, and that is all the other women in your neighbourhood. The ones that your mother had coffee with, asked to watch the children for an hour, played afternoon bridge with, formed the pillar of the PTA with, and so on . . . they’re all off trading bonds or editing books or waiting tables. That’s why all the women I know who stay home are desperate for adult conversation by the time their husband walks through the door. Most neighbourhoods used to be communities full of women who zipped around between houses, filling each other’s days. Now they are often lonely prisons.

    This rings true to me because, despite being at home, I’ve mostly escaped that prison.

    Crucial to my happiness, in all seriousness, is the fact that we’ve formed close friendships with three other families in similar situations (dad works, mom’s at home, kids are homeschooled) and we spend huge amounts of time together during the weekdays.

    Typically we trade off days: Mondays everyone’s at Melissa’s, Thursdays at mine, Fridays at Hannah’s, etc. We take some work with us, supervise all the kids’ schoolwork around the kitchen table, help each other make dinner or take care of housework, and also we’re available to each other on a moment’s notice for emergency childcare and the like.

    For example, Melissa broke her ankle this week and the rest of us are taking turns spending the day over there just to help her out with her kids.

    I can’t imagine how my days might go if all my friends were working and I had no one but myself and my own children in my own house. I think it would be terribly isolating and depressing. I try to remember that when I talk to women who are struggling with the home/work decision — I don’t regret staying home, but my home-staying experience has made me wealthy in relationships, and not everyone feels comfortable reaching out to other women to deliberately form this kind of a relationship.

    Nevertheless, I try to encourage people to do it — it makes all the difference in the world.

    And I specifically try to encourage women I know and like who live in my city, because — who knows — maybe we can help each other out. 

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  • Leaven bleg.

    So I was reading the Exodus/Passover account this morning and it occurred to me to wonder: 

    What kind of leaven did the Israelites in Egypt use, anyway?  I mean, obviously (I think) it would be a naturally occuring yeast, but how did they work with it?  Was it like a sourdough, where you use some of the last batch to leaven the next batch?   Or was it fresh leavening added to every batch?   

    I’m just wondering, exactly what did they have to do differently, in terms of recipe, when they were commanded not to leaven their bread.

    Was the process changed much when, many generations later and in a different land, the Jews were keeping the Passover feast in the time of Christ?

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  • Snakes on a Plane.

    OK, this entire blog — starting from the bottom of the archives and going up — made me laugh. 

    Here is a quote from Samuel L. Jackson to whet your appetite.

    "As soon as I opened the script and saw the title, I was like, ‘Cool!’ Hopefully that’s not a euphemism for something else,” says Jackson with a laugh. "And sure enough, I go there and there’s 500 snakes on a plane. Can you believe they were going to change the name to ‘Pacific Air 121′? What is that?"

    I really should NOT sit down at the computer when I go down to get a glass of water in the middle of the night. 

    (I must say, though, after I read the quote from an actor who played a passenger that, um, bit it early in the movie, I’m ready to see it myself…

    In fact I read the script and, as it turns out, accuracy and believability don’t really matter in a film entitled SNAKES ON A PLANE! )

    I have to close this post, or I won’t be able to stop myself from adding more quotes from the site.  The exclusive script review, for example, with spoilers… and the fan art, including a movie poster for Snakes on a Torus… 

    H/t Scrutinies, of all places.

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