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].

  • Down to one for a week.

    This week, I only have Milo.  Oscar, age 5, went to visit his grandparents for a whole week.  I am using the extra time to get the upcoming month’s homeschooling materials together, but also to spend some rare time connecting with Milo, on Milo’s terms. 

    The_big_hole_033 We have done a few things we don’t normally do, like go out to lunch together and visit the local municipal zoo.  But it’s not those things that have made the days so wonderful.

    .

    I find that I’m overflowing with a kind of affection for this little guy that I’m not used to having.  I am not sure why.  Maybe it is a kind of flashback to the days when I only had one little boy, back when I thought that he was the most amazing little person in the entire world and I COULD. NOT. IMAGINE. ever loving another child as much as I loved that first little one.

    Or maybe it is just that I have had the time to really look at him, really listen to him.  A five-year-old occupies so much attention, and while I will always have enough love to go around, I can only spend so much attention and time.  I feel like I’m on vacation, my heart is so light and… not irritable.  Everything he does seems charming, even breaking a dozen eggs into the stewpot and half a dozen more on the floor.  (really)

    Or maybe it is a little bit like romance, like finally getting to spend a week together with just you and your beloved.  The way (*cough* I’m told) that can rekindle long-forgotten charms and affections.  Sure, you always love each other, but it has been so long since you noticed the way he smiles, or really listened to that one thing he always says that always warms your heart.

    And Milo?  Does he miss his brother?  He talks about him, for sure.  Mostly while he watches the big trucks trundling back and forth, building our new house.  I think he is thinking:  Too bad Oscar can’t see all this going on. 

    But I think he’s really enjoying having me all to himself.  At bedtime we cuddle up and he brings me one book and has me read it to him six times, and you know what?  I’m actually doing it.  When will I get the chance again?  Then I give him the book and say, "Now you read it to me, Milo," and he turns the pages and says a few words (accurately) for each scene. 

    He’s really so wonderful.  Why don’t I notice, most of the time?  I hope I can remember this happiness, this breathtakingly strong love for my second son, and carry it with me after the week is over.

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  • The big hole.

    Remember how The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy begins?

    …orange…

    The_big_hole_019 …excavator….

    No, it’s not a bulldozer, but it is here to destroy the side yard.  I am told that Vogons are not involved. 

    .

    The_big_hole_003 Milo is very interested.

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    The_big_hole_021 In real life, the colors of the dirt are rich black topsoil and chocolate brown sand.  The edge of the grass is tidy, straight.

    .

    .The_big_hole_024

    This is a toddler boy’s dream.

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    .The_big_hole_037

    The hole.

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  • Catholic Carnival: All Saints’/All Souls’ Day Edition

    Before the throne of God and the Lamb the saints will sing a new song; their voices will resound throughout the earth, alleluia.   — Evening Prayer I, Solemnity of All Saints

    First, let’s turn to the topic that jumps first to mind whenever October 31st rolls around:  That’s right, it’s Reformation Day!   

    What, you were thinking of something else?  This is, as everyone knows, the anniversary of the day that Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door.  Or… is it?  Chris Burgwald of Veritas thinks it’s a jack-o-lantern of a story — that is, it has a few holes in it. 

    Mr. Burgwald wasn’t the only blogger musing about the start of the Reformation this week.  Blogger Funky Dung at Ales Rarus suggests an appropriate hymn:  The Church’s One Foundation.  Thoughtfully, he provides us with a "forgotten" verse that seems to be missing from my hymnal.  Does yours have it?  Why not, do you think?

    Joel at On the Other Foot, too, considers whether this makes October 31 the Devil’s  Holiday, but he’s got good cause to be optimistic about it.

    Moving on to other topics:  November first, of course, is the Solemnity of All Saints, that celebration of the Church Triumphant.   Do we think of the saints as our friends?  We should — they’re more real than we are, Kevin Miller points out at  Heart, Mind, and Strength blog. 

    Current events were on the mind of some.   For example, Angry in the Great White North lets us know that Canadian government knowingly funds avowed anti-Christian groups.   But others are in more of a mediative mood…

    Rob, Crusader of Justice blogger, shares an intensely moving personal experience that took him by surprise at a recent retreat.   

    At my own bearing blog, I consider one way to ask, "Only say the word and I will be healed."

    Kicking Over My Traces, a slimy mollusk who clearly aspires to be a hoofed mammal, presents a series of questions, a sort of self-examination:  am I being mindful to God?

    Penitens at A Penitent Blogger asks another question:  What’s God’s plan, and do I really need to know?

    Alicia at Fructus Ventris considers some words from the book of the prophet Malachi:  she says that because of widespread infidelity and divorce and the rejection of bearing offspring, "we are offering the diseased and malformed to God, not the perfection and the first fruits."

    And finally, two bloggers find inspiration in unlikely spots in popular culture: 

    Herb Ely posts on "Patsy Cline, Martha Stewart, and Phylacteries;"

    while Our Word and Welcome To It unearths a TV Guide from the past to find a (relatively) ancient, unheeded warning.

    Thanks to all who submitted posts!

    All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I shall not turn away.   — Evening Prayer, Office for the Dead, All Souls

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  • Chicken and noodles.

    Plain old comfort food, quite literally the way my mom used to make it.

    Remove the skin from a couple of bone-in chicken breasts and simmer with water to cover, perhaps with a carrot, celery stalk, and halved onion thrown into the pot, until cooked through.  Remove solids.  Discard vegetables.   Remove chicken meat from bones, chop coarsely, and set aside.

    Add to cooking liquid:  one or two thinly sliced carrots and one or two sliced celery stalks.  Bring to a boil and simmer a couple of minutes.  Add salt to taste and about half a package of wide egg noodles.  There should be barely enough liquid to cover the noodles.  Add water if it seems far too dry; but the idea is for the noodles to absorb most of the liquid.  It’s not chicken noodle soup.

    Cook on low, stirring frequently to prevent burning, until noodles and vegetables are cooked and most of the liquid is absorbed.  Return meat to pot and heat through.  Season to taste.

    Nothing fancy, but it is nice, especially the next day after the noodles have released some of their starch and thickened the broth.

    One thing I love about chicken soup:  You can simmer poultry scraps and bones and vegetables for seventy-two hours and get a wonderfully rich, concentrated, brown chicken stock that’s fabulous in recipes.  Or you can simmer some chicken parts for one hour, with a couple of carrots thrown in, and you still get some very tasty broth.  I think that the one-hour broth tastes completely different from the seventy-two-hour broth, a lovely flavor on its own and a fine soup base.  Not that it isn’t worth the trouble to let the stuff go for a few days — it’s just that you can start making something nice by dipping into it right away.

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  • “Only say the word and I will be healed.”

    I liked this, from Disputations:

    Last month, a priest spoke about what the faithful say just before receiving Holy Communion: "Only say the word and I will be healed."

    The Eucharist is true food; It overcomes our weaknesses and makes us strong in the life of the Trinity, if we allow it. But how often do we really ask to be healed? Do we even expect anything from the Eucharist, beyond perhaps a good feeling and some bit of undetectable grace?

    We can, if we like, come to Mass prepared to truly ask to be healed. Healed of a physical ailment, or an emotional wound, or a moral weakness. And what relic, what novena, what pilgrimage can add to the power made present at every Catholic altar in the world?

    I think it’s St. Faustina (probably others too) who wrote about asking Jesus to heal her tongue at the moment His body was placed upon her tongue.  That is, to heal it from its tendency to speak ill of others, to speak harshly to others, and generally from speaking too much at all.

    When you consider how much sinning we do merely by speech, you realize how powerful this can be.  It’s a good moment to ask Him to heal much of our impatience, our imprudence, our dishonesty, our cruelty, when we make of our mouths (briefly) a tabernacle for Him.

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  • How to forgive.

    We all know that not only are we supposed to forgive, our salvation is practically dependent on it. 

    But it can be hard.  How, how, how to forgive when anger bubbles to the surface every day?

    Waiting in Joyful Hope has a suggestion, and it sounds like a good one.

    The first process is to make the decision to forgive, remembering that forgiveness is a decision not a feeling.

    Once we have made that decision, we must remember all the things that have caused this need for forgiveness.

    Then we must list all the other points that have been blessings from this person we need to forgive.

    The next point is the most crucial of all, when anger surfaces, we must not bring the list of hurts to mind, but only the list of blessings, and then the anger will subside.

    This of course is an ongoing process and one that I need to work on every day. I know in time that I will be able to automatically go to the blessing list and forget the injustice list. All this of course with God’s grace and Mary’s intercession.

    Maybe this appeals to me only because I am such a listmaker.  Lists promise to solve so many problems.  Don’t they?  Nevertheless, this formula seems worthy of effort.

    (H/t Disputations, who adds:

    We are, of course, obliged to pray for our enemies, an obligation that would seem to extend to those who aren’t our enemies so much as people we flat don’t like.

    It is, I find, a very liberating experience — animosity and anger being what we’re liberated from — to simply pray that God give them the graces they need to fulfill God’s will for them, without reminding God what His will for them is.

    That is, to pray, "Fill his heart with Your love," without adding, "so that he’ll finally stop being such an idjit."

    True.)

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  • Intelligent design AGAIN.

    A good post summarizing the problems with so-called "intelligent design" theory.  Neither new nor fangled, if you ask me.

    If anti-religion evolutionists, and anti-evolution religionists, would just realize that the two ARE NOT MUTUALLY INCOMPATIBLE, a lot of this silliness could be avoided.

    And by the way, specifically teaching in public schools that there is definitely no design behind the evolution of species (as in, e.g., the NEA "evolution platform" up to a few years ago)  is a breach of the church-state wall that is precisely equivalent to teaching that there definitely is design behind the evolution of species. 

    Is there any harm in just steering clear of the whole idea of design, and letting students come to their own conclusions?

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  • Catholics on the Court.

    David Bernstein points out that if Samuel Alito is confirmed to the Supreme Court, there will be a Catholic majority on the Court:

    This is an extraordinary development. It was, let’s recall, only forty-five years ago that JFK’s Catholicism was a major issue in a presidential campaign. As Ken Kersch and Philip Hamburger have shown, anti-Catholic sentiment played a large role in the development of modern establishment clause jurisprudence (in part through the influence of that old KKKer, Hugo Black). The leading separationist group after WWII was known as Protestants [now, Americans] United for the Separation of Church and State.

    We can rejoice that Catholics are now such an accepted part of the American scene that it will hardly raise any eyebrows that a fifth Catholic has been nominated to the Supreme Court (joining, of course, two Jews).

    It is rather amazing, isn’t it?  Bernstein goes on to speculate that the reason we’ve come so far so fast is that, well, we’ve assimilated, and we really aren’t all that different from the rest of America anymore.  A mixed blessing.

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  • Office and officeholder.

    As long as I’m commenting on the Sunday readings, let’s add some commentary on the Gospel.  The whole reading was Matthew 23:1-12, which has a LOT of stuff in it, but the part I thought most important is in verses 1-3:

    Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples,

    saying, "The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses.
    Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice…."

    It’s a stunningly clear exhortation to distinguish between the office and the officeholder.

    There are applications in many situations:  religion, politics, the family, the military, even commerce.   Sticking with religion for the moment:  How many times have we heard corruption, hypocrisy, criminality among the hierarchy as an argument for why the Catholic Church cannot possibly be teaching the truth?  (It’s not just Catholics of course; cf. televangelists.) 

    Yes, there have been many bad priests.  Yes, bishops committed great wrongs.  Yes, we have had terribly corrupt Popes.  Doesn’t mean that what they taught was wrong.  Do and observe whatsoever they tell you even if they are hypocrites.  (One can, of course, point out that great and humble saints have taught the very same truths that are preached by the hypocrites.)

    When you run into someone, these days, who doesn’t practice what he preaches, conventional wisdom says he should conform his preaching to his practice.  Rarely is this the case.  Much more often, the hypocrite in question should conform his practice to his preaching. 

    Anyway, the Scripture passage is a reminder that the office deserves respect  — and in some cases obedience — even if the officeholder is contemptible. 

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  • “Like a weaned child on its mother’s lap, so is my soul within me.”

    An image in the psalm for today, Psalm 131, sparked my interest.  The whole psalm is only three verses; here it is:

    A song of ascents. Of David.

    LORD, my heart is not proud; nor are my eyes haughty. I do not busy myself with great matters, with things too sublime for me.

    Rather, I have stilled my soul, hushed it like a weaned child. Like a weaned child on its mother’s lap, so is my soul within me.
    Israel, hope in the LORD, now and forever.

    That’s it.  So, what do you think about the "weaned child?"  Very interesting!  Why has the psalmist stilled his soul like a weaned child on its mother’s lap and not, say, like a nursing child on its mother’s lap?  While the mother’s lap is a place of comfort and happiness for any child, certainly a nursing child would be receiving even more comfort from its mother than a weaned child.

    Well, let’s see.  When you hear "weaned child" you should be thinking of a largish toddler or a smallish child, perhaps a three-year-old or a four-year-old.  My experience with three- and four-year-olds is that they can be VERY squirmy, more than many younger children.  But at the same time they are also (being older) beginning to be able to respond a little more to their parents’ requests. 

    Nursing children are indeed very easy to hush and to still; a child who is nursing is usually a quiet, calm child.  (Not always.  They can get into some amazing contortions when they have a mind to.  But often, nursing a child calms him immediately, and sometimes puts him right to sleep.  Right now, for instance, as I sat here blogging, I was nursing my youngest, and it took about 5 minutes for him to fall mouth-wide-open unconscious.)

    I’m thinking that the psalmist didn’t mean for us to imagine that his soul is idyllically still, that it is as easy to still his soul as it is for a nursing mother to offer her breast to still her nursling.    I’m thinking he meant us to imagine the mother’s effort to hush and still her weaned child.  It’s second nature to pop a nipple into a crying child’s mouth.  It can be a little tougher to help an older, weaned child to calm down.

    And a child who’s actually in the act of suckling is not likely to get upset again, at least not while at the breast.  But sometimes, stilling and hushing a weaned child is a sort of dance:  just when you get him to settle down and his breathing begins to be regular, suddenly the snuffling starts again and you’ve got to rock him even harder, hug even tighter.

    So that’s one possibility.  Perhaps that soul, only recently "proud" and "haughty" and "busy," took some effort to settle down, to hush and to still, like a weaned child on its mother’s lap.  Perhaps the psalmist knows that the soul won’t stay still for long; tantrums will, eventually, return, and he will have to settle it down again, by an act of will.

    There is another possibility in that word "weaned."  It could be meant to connote satisfaction or fulfillment — that the weaned child has drunk his fill from his mother’s breast.  He has been filled up for life. 

    But the first possibility seems to work better with the psalmist’s intent, which is to say — I think — that he has managed to quell (for now) worldly desires, pride, and the like, and found (for now) inner peace in the Lord.  What do you think?

    (Something else interesting:  The nursing mother appears in the second reading for today, 1 Thessalonians 2:7-9,13.  It goes like this:

    [W]e were gentle among you, as a nursing mother cares for her children.

    With such affection for you, we were determined to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our very selves as well, so dearly beloved had you become to us.

    Compare and contrast.  Our very selves as well.)

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  • Ordaining married men.

    MrsDarwin considers the practical effect of opening the door to more widespread ordination of married men in the Roman rite, by looking at the "market" for Protestant clergy.

    In sum, Protestants do not have a clergy shortage. However, they do have a lot of churches without ministers…

    Liberal denominations have both a high vacancy rate (significantly higher, actually, than for Catholic parishes) and a lot of unemployed clergy.

    The problem seems to be that while there are a lot of ordained clergy, many of the openings are only marginably able to support a minister.  The P[resbyterian] C[hurch] USA reports that 50% of their vacant churches have congregations of less than 100 adults, many of whom offer salaries in the 20k range for ministers. Many of these are also in rural areas, making it difficult for a minister supported by his or her spouse’s job to fill the vacancy. Denominational polls of ordained Protestant clergy revealed very few were willing to go to rural areas, or in some cases to move at all, since in many cases they relied on a second job or a spouse’s career to support their families.

    Some good thoughts there.  Read the whole thing.  And it’s worth repeating a question in the comments from the great post that sent her off on this tangent:  where are all these married men so anxious to serve the church in ordained ministry?

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  • Sick.

    Not very, just a little bug.  I am enjoined to stay in bed and rest, while Mark takes the kids out to picnic with friends.  Blogging may be exceptionally light, or exceptionally heavy, for a few hours.

    UPDATE.  I’m not so sick that I can’t host the Catholic Carnival this week!  Email your submissions to me at erinarlinghaus *cough* AT *cough cough* earthlink DOT net …

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