Begin with gratitude, and figure out later what it’s for

When we are young, we are taught to say “thank you” for gifts, whether or not they instantly fill us with delight.

No doubt some mom influencer on Instagram believes this is unhealthy and a betrayal of a child’s natural spirit, and little Ryleiyghye should never be compelled to express something that doesn’t well up spontaneously from her psyche. But I think it’s a good idea to teach kids to say “thank you.” I think it’s a good idea to teach it to myself.

I have started to make myself say “thank you” to Jesus for each day when I wake up in the morning. Even before I check my phone! First I thank him for the day, then I offer it up to him, and then I ask him for help making it a worthy offering.

If you had to make a diagram, it would probably look to an outsider like a lot of arrows going back and forth for no particular reason. Thanks for the day! Here’s the day! Give me things so I can do the day! Let’s not worry about that part right now. We’ll just call it the economy of grace and let the Holy Spirit work out the details. The part I’m interested in is the “thank you.”

I struggle with mornings. I don’t fall asleep or stay asleep easily, so when I first become conscious in the morning, gratitude is not the first thing that naturally wells up in my heart. So it really is an act of will, and an act of trust, to thank God for the day that is beginning whether I want it to or not. What I have found is that, like most prayers faithfully prayed, it has begun to affect me.

What began as mere spiritual good manners has become a minor revelation. I have begun to see something that perhaps you already know and feel: That whether I would have asked for it right then or not, each day is not just a thing that happens. It is something that is given to me. I didn’t make it. I didn’t cause it to be. I have no idea what it might possibly be full of.It is even pretty likely that something excellent will come to pass or will begin to take shape to come to fruition sometime in the future. It is, whether I’m happy to have it or not, a gift.

I always think of the lepers that Jesus healed, and only one came back to thank him.

Understandable, maybe, because they were so excited and incredulous at getting their lives back so suddenly and unexpectedly. They had never met Jesus before and maybe they got caught up in the amazement of this brand new thing.

But I can’t say the same. Jesus has healed me many times, in tiny ways and in major ways, and I expect this will continue for as long as I have breath in my body. Sometimes I asked for it, sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I realized right away that he was the one doing it; sometimes it took me years to catch on. But that’s what he does. He’s the healer. That’s why he came. I know this about him. 

Am I grateful for this in general, even if not at this exact second? Yes, I am! So I start the day by thanking him.

Sometimes, as the day progresses, it quickly becomes obvious what I have to be grateful for. Sometimes thanking God is, as I said, purely an act of trust, because the day does not shape up like anything anyone in their right mind would receive as a gift.

But then I remember the lepers. I remember that I do know this Jesus, and I do know what kind of things he is likely to do for me. I know him, and what he is like, and I know that he is not going to stop being that way. I can trust him. So far, I have never regretted starting the day with an act of gratitude. It is changing my life. 

***

Image: Niels Larsen Stevns: Helbredelsen af den spedalske, Healing of the Leper, 1913. Public domain
A version of this essay was originally published at The Catholic Weekly in March of 2023.

How we ruined a perfectly good cat

In the beginning, he was a normal cat.

My husband brought him home as a surprise for the kids, and to deal with the occasional critter that got into the house from the nearby woods. He was a nice enough kitten, handsome and stripey, and he spent a reasonable amount of time snuggling and pouncing and being adorable.

But once he grew out of his cuddly kitten stage, he made it pretty clear from that he didn’t need us at all, and that we existed for his convenience. We were to feed him, let him in and out, and step over or around him when he was sunbathing, and put up with the occasional random claw attack. A normal cat, as I said.

He was confident in his identity, and he understood his role in the family very well. He was the cat, haughty and sleek, dignified and independent. A normal cat.

The first crack in his armor was when we brought the bearded dragon home. This lizard is also a male, and believes himself to be a mighty warrior. If he doesn’t like you, he charges at you, and even though he’s about the size of a banana, his confidence makes it pretty intimidating.

He did not like the cat; and the feeling was mutual. In fact, the cat took his entire existence as a personal affront, and the first time we left the house, he managed to dislodge several heavy weights and knock the top off the terrarium to get inside the lizard tank so he could gobble up this ugly little intruder. 

I got home just in time. Put down my purse and turned the corner to see the lizard was on his back legs about to attack, and the cat cowering in a corner, smooshed into a little wad, a look of abject terror on his face. Another moment, and the lizard would have bitten his head off, or at least taken the biggest mouthful he could manage. I yanked the poor cat out by the scruff of his neck, and he scurried away and spent the rest of the day under the bed, reassessing his worldview. The next day he was fine.

But it seemed like, from that day forward, he started looking over his shoulder a little bit.

Then we got a bird. All summer long, the cat had been stalking and devouring wild animals, grasshoppers, voles, moles, even a careless rabbit, and yes, sometimes a songbird, and nobody had anything to say; but then we went ahead and deliberately brought an obnoxious green parakeet inside the house, and apparently he was just supposed to accept it. We weren’t going to let him restore the natural order of things. Instead, we were going to feed this bird, and give it toys, and teach it songs, and let it literally walk all over us with its little dirty birdy feet, and there would be absolutely no massacre whatsoever.

I vividly remember sitting on the couch having happy family time with the parakeet one evening, teaching it the Indiana Jones song, when there was a sudden thump at the window, and we all turned to see. It was the cat. He had thrown himself at the living room window and had pressed his face against the glass, his face frozen into a look of pure revulsion. He didn’t want to come in. He didn’t want anything to do with us. He was just sitting there, gazing in feline disbelief at what we had become. 

Then we got a dog. 

And honestly, the cat‘s life became hell. The dog is a boxer and he loves everybody, and wants to play-play-play, and wants to wuff-wuff-wuff, and snuff-snuff-snuff, and IT IS SO FUNNY TO KNOCK YOU DOWN, YOU CAT; and LOOK AT MY NEW WET ROPE, YOU CAT, IT IS WET; and LET ME SMELL YOU, YOU CAT; and never more from that day on did the cat have a moment’s rest. He was constantly being harassed and nudged and harried and hassled and rolled and battered. Even when he closed his eyes at night, I believe he saw visions of the jowly, joyful idiot, pursuing him, always pursuing him, prancing and dancing and not-quite-romancing, but generally just trying to be his best friend and maybe accidentally eat him up a little bit, but JUST FOR A JOKE, YOU CAT.

And the poor cat‘s spirit was broken.  All his haughtiness was gone. His dignity had all run away like the sands in an hour glass. He began to mew like a baby, and to seek out skritchings even when he wasn’t hungry.  He was needy and pathetic and he didn’t care who knew it. He put on weight; he started hanging out with the middle school girls, spending all his time gossiping and watching BTS videos. He never even talked about getting his degree anymore. The bird would openly laugh at him, and he would just look the other way, pretending he didn’t notice. But if you looked closely, you could tell.

Last night, we were watching TV with the windows open, and the unmistakable stink of a skunk came wafting through the house. We suddenly realized we didn’t know where the cat was. My husband made a brief search and couldn’t find him, so we grimly resumed watching our show. Sure enough, half an hour later there was a frantic scuffling at the front door, and the world’s most demonic smelling cat wanted to come in and be comforted. 

But we have hearts of stone, and did not feel like giving any cats any baths at midnight. So we stuffed him back outside. I went to bed and closed the windows, and over the next hour, I lay there listening to this poor forlorn creature scrabbling more and more frantically at the window, begging and pleading to be let inside. It was heart-rending. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. I did what anyone with human soul would do: I got up and took a sleeping pill, so I wouldn’t hear the little bastard. 

Then in the morning, my husband scrubbed him down with a baking soda bath and released him, and left for work. When my son woke up, the first thing he saw was the body of the cat lying wet, stiff, and cold on the floor.

He wasn’t dead, though. He had just hit rock bottom. He couldn’t get any lower. It was the worst day of his life. 

Or so he thought. 

My son (who had just woken up) took one look at this pathetic creature, his whiskers drooping, his eyes forlorn, his fur gritty and matted with baking soda, and he thought to himself, “Poor little guy. Poor little kitty cat. I don’t know what he’s been through, but he’s obviously had some kind of a rough time. You know what he needs? He needs a nice warm bath.”

Well, I haven’t seen either one of them since. It’s possible that, in a fit of pure feline umbrage, the cat may have spontaneously combusted. I think if I go in there, I may just find little pieces of cat all over the place. Little bitty angry bits of the most disappointed cat the world has ever seen.

It’s a sad story, really. He was a perfectly good cat, and we went and ruined him without even meaning to.  There isn’t any justice in the world. 

Did I mention we’re getting ducks? 

What’s for supper? Vol. 243: The next big hing

Here it is Friday again! What do you know about that. 

Here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, veg and dip

Damien made these, and they were yummy. Nothing much else to report, except look at the pretty dish Clara made. 

SUNDAY
Pasta carbonara

Bacon was on sale and we had leftover parmesan in the house, so I was powerless. Carbonara was calling and would not be denied. 

Here’s my easy peasy nicely greasy recipe:

Jump to Recipe

And very good it was, pasta carbonara. 

MONDAY
Ham, peas, mashed potatoes

The meal for when ham is on sale for Easter and you’re planning to make a big Passover meal the day before Easter so you don’t need ham for that, but despoiling the Egyptians is always in season. Or something. Anyway, the kids like ham. 

I don’t know why there is a marble on my plate. 

On Monday, despite being full of potatoes, I was already getting excited about Tuesday’s meal, when I would finally get to use my little bottle of hing. 

Hing is the Hindi word for asafoetida, which means “stinky ass.” Not really, but kinda really. It is made from the resin of giant fennel plants and whoever smelled it and thought, “boy, I bet this is just the thing to make my food taste really excellent!” must have been super high. It smells like . . . did you ever have a kid who got really really attached to a pair of green rubber boots with frogs on the toe, and he insists on wearing them all summer long, but won’t wear socks? And then finally takes them off and fills them with hot shrimp ramen? Hing kind of smells like the ramen that comes out of those boots. 

So naturally I was quite excited about adding this ingredient to my family’s menu. I decided to test the waters with another ingredient I also haven’t tried before: Flattened rice. 

Look at those guys! Look at them dance!

I cannot possibly miss when I have poha and hing on my side!

The recipe I landed on described itself as “mild,” and “easy” and “quick” and “for complete dumbasses” so I thought it would be a good first foray. 

Benny and Corrie had never seen a fresh coconut before, so we had fun stabbing it in the eyes and beating it over its hairy head with a hammer. Then I sent them off to bed and shredded the meat, which I was was the boring part, but really I wanted to keep all the end pieces for myself to gnaw on.

Then I bagged it for the next day, pretty excited about the poha to come. 

TUESDAY
Indian roast chicken, coconut poha, mango

First let me tell you about the main dish, which was roast chicken. As I have mentioned, I get kind of crabby when I have to roast a whole chicken, but mixing together a bunch of pungent Indian spices did cheer me up. I followed this easy recipe from Aarthi at YummyTummy, and it turned out great. I quadrupled the recipe and it made more than enough marinade paste for two six-pound chickens.

You just stab the chickens all over, rub the marinade in, including inside cavity, and roast it covered, and then uncovered. You do have to change the temperature once, and baste it toward the end. 

It was juicy and delicious. I didn’t have every last ingredient, but it had a little fiery burst at the first bite, which mellowed out quickly and just became warm and cheering and lively. The kids are very quickly acclimating to Indian flavors, and most of them ate the chicken happily, including the rather spicy skin, which was very crisp and packed with flavor. 

Definitely going to make this again. I may keep it covered a bit longe, just to avoid blackening the marinade quite so much. That being said, several people went back to the kitchen to scrape pieces of said blackened marinade off the pan after dinner, so the color clearly wasn’t a deterrent. 

And now for the poha. I more or less followed this recipe from SharmisPassions , except I had peanuts instead of cashews, dried ground mustard instead of mustard seeds, and I didn’t have any jeera. I also misread the directions and left the nuts in the pan when I was tempering the peppers and curry leaves and spices, so the nuts got a little burned.

THAT BEING SAID, I had hing, darn it! I had been led to believe (possibly by myself) that if you have hing, the magic of umami is going to grab you by the taste buds and drag you straight to flavortown.

This . . . did not happen. I swear I used plenty of it, and I had so many fresh ingredients, fresh curry leaves, fresh coconut, and did I mention hing, and I let it splutter and everything like the recipe said! But the whole dish just tasted like hot wet shredded paper with burned peanuts in it. 

Oh well. It wasn’t bad, it just didn’t taste like much of anything, and was more baffling than anything else. I don’t know, maybe I got confused somehow and messed up the proportions when I was sizing it up. I have lots more poha, and I’m definitely going to try again! Just . . . not that particular recipe. (I don’t blame the recipe, but it’s cursed now, and I have to move along.)

The chicken was great, the poha was at least hot, and the fresh mango was nice. Still a pretty good meal, just weird. 

WEDNESDAY
Chinese pork, chopped salad, pineapple 

Now this was a bit of a triumph, and made me feel better about my cooking. I had this big lump of pork and only the very vaguest of plans. I had bought a little red cabbage, and a bag of kale on clearance — sale kale, if you will — and some crunchy noodles, and that was as far as I got. It seemed like we’ve been having a lot of rice lately, so I wanted to make something different. And it was kind of late in the day to start char siu. 

So I mooched around some recipes, and decided to try something that I thought should work.  Famous last words, right?

I put together some classic Chinese roast pork ingredients — soy sauce, oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, honey, white pepper, and five spice — and I just mixed it together and hucked it all in the Instant Pot with the meat for 22 minutes. It came out undercooked, which was okay, because I was planning to finish it on the stovetop.

I put the sliced meat in a big pan with all the sauce and just simmered it slowly 

stirring it occasionally, to make sure all the sides of the pieces of meat got coated. And I’ll be darned if it didn’t reduce way down until it was sticky and glossy and dark reddish-brown, and truly delicious. 

It took about half an hour, maybe forty minutes, and it really, really tasted like restaurant roast Chinese pork. I was so pleased. Very little effort. I was afraid the pork would be tough with all that cooking, but it was not. 

I chopped up the red cabbage and kale and just served the meat on top of it with the crunchy noodles, and it was fab. I bought some bottled sesame dressing, but ended up not using it, because the meat had such an intense flavor. I served pineapple on the side just to round the meal out. 

Extremely pleased with this. I was so nervous about serving meat without rice, but I think it worked so well. The meat has a very potent flavor and is very sticky, so it was good to have the fresh crunchy vegetables for texture contrast, and the extra snap of the thin noodles made it perfect.

Here’s the recipe with the exact directions:

Jump to Recipe

You could really taste the white pepper in the sauce, too. I highly recommend getting a canister of white pepper to keep around, even if you only use it every once in a while. There really is no substitute for that strange little sizzle it adds. (Warning: It smells like horse manure for some reason.)

THURSDAY
Burgers and chips

When I tell you how relieved I was to look at the menu and see it was just burgers and chips. I know I’m the one who makes these stupid complicated menus, but still! Why do I do this to myself! Because I like good food, that’s why. But still, I was relieved. And burgers are good food, too. 

I was determined to take a more interesting picture of a burger, and the only thing I could think of was to deliberately stick my finger in the frame.

This struck me as hilarious at the time. Then I took a two-hour nap. 

In other food news, on Thursday morning we did try poha again, this time as a sweet breakfast dish. I soaked the poha in water for about five minutes, squeezed it out, doused it in milk, and heated it in the microwave for two minutes, then put honey on top. 

(It occurred to me too late that I could have just soaked it in milk and saved myself a step, and also made it taste richer.) The little kids liked it. I tried a bit and it was nice, reminiscent (understandably) of rice pudding. My kids like hot cereals — oatmeal, cornmeal mush — and this is along those lines, although the grains of rice don’t meld together into porridge but stay separate and sort of fluffy. Neat stuff!  

FRIDAY
Sabanekh bil hummus for adults, tuna for kids

We had this stew just a few weeks ago, but we’re headed toward spring and I only have a little bit of soup season left. It’s been blustery and nippy out, so a nice pot of this earthy, nourishing Palestinian spinach and chickpea soup with a lemony twist while the predicted rain washes away the last of the snow is going to be just the thing. 

And if you don’t like it, you can have tuna! Sprinkle some hing on it, see if I care.

(I do.)

Print

Spaghetti carbonara

An easy, delicious meal.

Ingredients

  • 3 lbs bacon
  • 3 lbs spaghetti
  • 1 to 1-1/2 sticks butter
  • 6 eggs, beaten
  • lots of pepper
  • 6-8 oz grated parmesan cheese

Instructions

  1. Fry the bacon until it is crisp. Drain and break it into pieces.

  2. Boil the spaghetti in salted water until al dente. If you like, add some bacon grease to the boiling water.

  3. Drain the spaghetti and return it to the pot. Add the butter, pieces of bacon, parmesan cheese, and pepper and mix it up until the butter is melted.

  4. Add the raw beaten egg and mix it quickly until the spaghetti is coated. Serve immediately.

 

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Quick Chinese "Roast" Pork Strips

If you have a hankering for those intensely flavorful strips of sweet, sticky Chinese roast pork but you don't want to use the oven for some reason, this works well, and you can have it in about an hour and a half, start to finish. You will need to use a pressure cooker and then finish it on the stovetop.

Ingredients

  • 4+ lbs pork roast

For sauce:

  • 3/4 cup soy sauce
  • 1/4 cup oyster sauce
  • 1/4 cup hoisin sauce
  • 1/4 cup mirin
  • 3/4 cup honey
  • 1 tsp white pepper
  • 2 tsp Chinese five spice

Instructions

  1. Blend all sauce ingredients together. Put the pork in the Instant Pot, pour the sauce over it, close the lid, close the valve, and set to high pressure for 22 minutes.

  2. When pork is done, vent. Remove pork and cut into strips, saving the sauce.

  3. Put the pork in a large sauté pan with the sauce and heat on medium high, stirring frequently, for half an hour or more, until sauce reduces and becomes thick and glossy and coats the meat.

 

Lent Film Party Review: The Reluctant Saint

Fisher Family Mandatory Lent Film Party has been kind of a bust this year. So far we have only watched the second half of I Prefer Heaven, which we started last year and watched on the Formed app, and The Reluctant Saint (1962). We watched that on Tubi; it’s also currently on Amazon Prime.

What I know about Joseph of Cupertino is basically: He was Italian, known as kind of a simpleton, and he levitated. I don’t know how biographically accurate the movie is; I’m just reviewing what I saw. Here’s the trailer:

Here’s the plot:

Giuseppe is a grown man living with his impoverished mother and no-good father in 17th century Italy. His mother has been keeping him in school because she can’t figure out what else to do with him, because he’s so slow-witted and accident prone. She manages to palm him off on some Franciscan friars, who reluctantly allow him to tend the animals; but even there, trouble finds him, partly because, while some of the men are patient and kind, others are resentful and suspicious of his foolish, forbearing ways. He happens to meet and impress the local bishop, who is also of peasant stock, and who sees value and worth in Giuseppe’s simplicity and devotion. He directs him to study for the priesthood, to the horror of everyone including Giuseppe himself. 

His studies are a disaster, but when he reports for his preliminary examinations, the one scripture passage he is quizzed on is the only one he happens to know: about the lost lamb that the shepherd goes to find. So he’s doomed to study for another year, with even more esoteric books, and when he arrives in the city for his exam, the interlocutor turns out to be his old friend the bishop, who immediately lets him pass. 

But in the mean time (I may be slightly scrambling the order of events, but it doesn’t matter much), Giuseppe has taken up the slightly disturbing habit of floating up into the air when he prays. The fellow who previously considered himself Giuseppe’s rival tells the whole town that this is because he’s a saint, and the people swarm the monastery, begging for healing. One of his superiors (played by Ricardo Montalban), who has always eyed Giuseppe with suspicion, now believes that his powers must come from the devil, and Giuseppe is forced to undergo an excruciating exorcism. When it is completed and he is declared free of possession, he immediately begins to levitate again, and his persecutor realizes his mistake and repents. 

In the final scene, we see Giuseppe integrated happily into the community, accepted and valued at last, processing with them and chanting, and blissfully floating away, only to be tugged like a balloon gently back to earth by the very man who accused him of being possessed. 

My take:

It’s a dated movie. The characters speak with accents to show they are Italian, and moments of divine intervention are indicated by blinding light and loud, heavenly choirs. Giuseppe’s intellectual state is portrayed in a way that may make modern viewers squirm.

That being said, I give the actor, Maximilian Schell, full credit for taking on a kind of role that wasn’t really a thing at that time, and generally lending the character a dignity that’s probably ahead of its time, despite the plot relying heavily on comedy. 

Early on, it’s a little painful to watch Schell’s grinning, fumbling performance. It’s almost like the beginning of an Adam Sandler movie, where you think, “Oh my gosh, is he going to act like this the whole time?” But either the acting gets better or you just begin to accept it within the world of the movie, because it does get less uncomfortable.

It’s not entirely clear what Giuseppe’s intellectual capacity is, but he’s constantly mocked, abused, and bullied, and he tries his best to accept it with good humor. There’s some indication that he struggles with treating people well when they abuse him. It’s a comedy, overall, bbut you do feel how badly he wants to belong somewhere and be useful somewhere; and you feel how painful and awful it is for him to be dragged away from his happy world he’s found in the barn with the animals, and to have to be in a monk’s cell studying books he doesn’t understand; but you also see that he does it out of obedience and humility. 

Giuseppe is the patron saint of aviators, which is cute, but at least as he is portrayed in this movie, I think he would be especially dear to people who never feel like they belong or fit in or are in the right place, and never feel like they’re good enough, and are trying very hard to humbly work with the hand they were dealt. 

One thing I liked very much was the character of the bishop. Catholics and anti-Catholics alike generally take the shortcut of almost reflexively showing hierarchy as bad guys — but Bishop Durso (Akim Tamiroff) is so affable and lovely, it’s like balm for Giuseppe to have such a good friend. I love that he readily (correctly) identifies Giuseppe as a “true son of Francis,” and it’s pleasant to see another such man in the role of bishop. (I generally find it comforting to realize that, just like today, the church has always struggled with religious orders straying from their charisms, and has always had a problem with internal jealousy and competition and infighting cropping up in otherwise sound groups; but God, then and now, continues to raise up good, solid men and to place them where they need to be at the right time. The movie doesn’t necessarily draw this theme out; maybe it’s just something I especially needed to see right now! Nevertheless, it is there in the story. )

There was very little discussion of spiritual things in the movie, that I can recall, and that was a good choice. I mean there is, but Giuseppe doesn’t come out with any maxims, corny or profound, about God’s love or intentions; you can just tell from the expression on his face that he’s very devoted to Mary, that he tries very hard to be good, that he works hard to forgive people when they wrong him, and that it’s a constant sorrow to him that he’s always failing at what he tries, but he does love life all the same. All this makes it immensely gratifying when he eventually does find his place at the end. It’s not excellent acting, but it’s good enough. It works. 

There is no explanation or theorizing, that I can recall, about exactly why he levitates. It makes life much harder for him! It’s not something he would chose for himself. The very first time it happens, the movie (not especially creative in its cinematography in general) depicts this by showing, not him, but the statue that has sent him into ecstasy. We see it from his point of view, first over his head, then only slightly overhead, and then at face level, and that’s how we realize he’s rising into the air. This is clever, because it avoids what could be a clumsy-looking special effect of him dangling in mid-air, and it also invites us to see the phenomenon from his point of view: Just something that is happening, utterly out of his control, and who knows why. I’m not trying to read too much into it. I just appreciate that this is a movie that keeps things simple and doesn’t try to go beyond its own means. Levitation is weird. It’s something that Giuseppe just has to accept, and, well, so do we. 

When you see him levitating when he’s facing the altar, saying his first Mass, his face almost distorted with joy, it’s a short scene but quite powerful. It shows something you maybe don’t think about very often: What it feels like to be a priest. Or maybe what it ought to feel like? 

The only thing I had a quibble with is when the bishop, in the middle of their lovely nighttime chat while roasting chestnuts, admits to Giuseppe that’s he’s never really understood the trinity. That’s fine, but then Giuseppe blithely explains it by saying that it’s like his robe: You fold it into three, and that’s it: Three folds, one robe; three persons, one God. The bishop says “Brilliant!” Well, actually that’s the heresy of partialism! So if you’re watching with your kids, you might want to follow up on that scene.

It’s not really a kid’s movie, but there’s nothing graphic or terrifying in it. More sensitive viewers might be upset by how often the mother hits Giuseppe, and how mean she is to him in general, although she clearly loves him. There is nothing graphic in this movie, and although its overall tone is lighthearted, there are some sad and intense scenes throughout, mostly because Giuseppe is constantly mocked and harassed and pushed around so much. It also has a scene where he feeds a starving mother and baby, and is beaten up. His father is a drunk, and then he dies. The scene of the exorcism lasts several minutes and shows him kneeling and sweating by candlelight while in chains, while the priest dramatically prays in Latin. Kids who watch it will probably need adults to put some things in context. But as I said, the movie keeps things straightforward and simple.

Overall, I liked it very much, and I’m glad my family saw it. It was entertaining and engaging and memorable. Recommended, as long as you understand the sensitivities of your viewers. 

Why was Jesus prefigured as a bronze snake?

For Christians, reading the Old Testament in light of the New Testament is sometimes almost like a game: Where is Jesus hiding? How is Jesus prefigured this time, in a story set thousands of years before he was born?

In today’s readings, we have a weird one: The Hebrews complain that they’re hungry, that they would have been better off in Egypt. God, annoyed, sends snakes to bite them, and many of them die. Then the people ask Moses to ask God to take the snakes away.

So Moses prayed for the people, and the LORD said to Moses, ”Make a saraph and mount it on a pole, and whoever looks at it after being bitten will live.” Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole, and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.

The people are wounded; they look at this thing raised up on a pole at God’s command, and they are saved. This is clearly a prefiguring of the Crucifixion.

So in this scenario, Jesus is prefigured by…a venomous snake. That’s weird! It’s not how we think about our beloved savior, prefigured or otherwise. It’s not how we think about salvation…Read the rest of my short scripture reflection for America Magazine. 

Image: Photo on Mt. Nebo in Jordan by Dennis Jarvis, Halifax, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The grief of God

I never thought it was strange that Jesus wept when he saw Lazarus dead. Why would he not? You’d have to have a weird notion of some robotic, emotionless Christ to imagine him facing the death of his close friend without feeling grief and anguish.

These tears of Christ are usually explained as evidence that he was truly human, just like us. We see him displaying human emotions many times: Getting angry, being affectionate, getting sarcastic. So this time, the explanation goes, he felt sad, just like us; he felt sorrow and pain, just like anybody.

But I think when he wept at the death of Lazarus, we are seeing something more than that. I think we’re seeing his grief as God.

What I mean is that humans know that death is bad. No one has to teach us this; it’s an innate understanding that death is an ugly, awful, unnatural thing that we hate and fear and do not want, for ourselves or for anyone.

But it is possible for us to get over this knowledge. It’s possible, over time, with repeated exposure, to become comfortable and blasé toward death. Sometimes it’s just a necessary attitude that people must develop so they can do their jobs, as health care workers, as hospice workers, as soldiers, as morticians. Some people who care for the living are repeatedly exposed to death until it no longer provokes strong emotions.

And some people, without good reason, deaden their consciences so that they no longer feel horror and repulsion at the death of other humans. They expose themselves to such violent imagery and exploitative forms of entertainment, or to such utilitarian social thinking, that they don’t feel even baseline human emotions of grief and repulsion around death anymore. They have successfully amputated that emotional organ, and the tears no longer flow.

You might think that God, of all people, has been exposed to death more than anyone. He who has existed from before the dawn of time has been present for every death — every human death, even the ones that no one else in the universe was there to witness, and every other possible kind of death as well — plant death, animal death, bacteria death, planet death. God has seen it all. Talk about overexposed….Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor. 

Image: Jesus Raising Lazarus From the Dead, Spain, ca. 1120-1140; photo by Sharon Mollerus, CC BY 2.0 <Creative Commons>, via Wikimedia Commons

The man called Resurrection

[This is an essay I wrote two years ago, a year after my father died, a few weeks after my mother died, a few weeks before Easter. It was first published at The Catholic Weekly on April 2, 2021.]

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After my mother’s funeral, I drove home and took off my wet, muddy clothes, and found that I could barely move. My flesh had turned to sand and I couldn’t make my limbs work. I crawled into bed, and the longer I stayed there, the heavier I got. I kept thinking about how my mother’s body was so light, they let her coffin down into the grave by hand. They used heavy machinery to place my father in the ground just before Easter last year, but my mother had become very light. 

In my mother’s funeral sermon, the priest spoke of Lazarus. Martha thought her brother’s death was a stupid, pointless death. She accuses Jesus: If you had been here, our brother would not have died! And she was right. But Jesus wanted to show them, I suppose, that he is who he says he is. He is the resurrection and the life. Where he is, there life is. That’s who he is, said the priest: He is the Resurrection. And he comes as close as he pleases, when he pleases, to do as he pleases.

In this story, he raises his voice, and Lazarus comes out. They undo everything that has been done: They take his winding cloth off, they feed him again. Lazarus lives again. 

I wonder if Lazarus was afraid to go to sleep that night. I wonder how he felt when the newness of his new life wore off and he sinned again for the first time: how stupid he must have felt when he had to repent again, even after he had already died.

I wonder how he felt later, when he started to die again for the second time. Maybe by that time he had gotten blasé about the process, and thought he’d be protected from that final darkness for a second time. Or maybe he was afraid he would be rescued, afraid he’d be called back and asked, for some reason, to do it all again. 

Isn’t it awful, sinning again and again? Facing death, being rescued, sinning and repenting and being forgiven, and then going out and doing it again? 

When my mother first became a Christian, she was crushed to realize it was still very easy to sin. She had heard, and read, and taken to heart the idea that baptism brings the life of Christ into human souls. She thought that, since Jesus had taken up residence in her heart, he would therefore prevent her from doing anything bad. She thought you choose Jesus and jump in the water, and when you come up again, you’re set for life.

But that’s not how it works. I don’t know which sin she committed that showed her how wrong she was, but I imagine it was something petty — something small and human, which nonetheless showed her very starkly that you can be washed in the blood of the lamb and then go right back to acting like a stupid sheep. In fact, it’s inevitable. You go back, Jack, do it again. It’s not a “one and done” situation. It’s an “over and over and over again” situation, and you don’t always know what it’s for. 

One stupid thing about the way my mother died was that she was a frail and tiny woman whose brain had long since been pillaged by dementia. She couldn’t dress herself, or speak, or sit up, and sometimes she forgot how to eat. So this little tiny ravaged woman got COVID. Then she beat COVID, and recovered completely from COVID, and began to get stronger, and then she died anyway, of something else. I think they called it “undetermined” on her death certificate, which made me laugh a little. I snickered through my tears that I knew the real reason she died. The very day before, her nursing home opened up visiting hours again for the first time in many months. She never did like social occasions, and would do anything to get out of them. I imagined her seeing some guests on their way, and thinking “Not this again!” and taking some extreme steps to avoid playing host.

I’m supposed to be writing about Easter in time of Covid. All I can say is that, if you zoom out far enough and take a long enough view, Covid time is no different from any other time. When the pandemic raged unchecked, it was clear to every sane person that death was near to us, or could be, or might be. But that’s always true. Death is always very close. Both my parents died, one at the beginning of the pandemic, and one toward the end, but neither died of covid. Death of all kinds is always very close. 

My father used to say he was going through an awkward stage, the one between life and death, and I’m feeling that pretty hard right now. Some Easters on earth are like that: If not tragic, then awkward and a little stupid, stupid like Lazarus caught between his first death and his second one, stupid like sin, stupid like things that happen over and over again and seem to have no meaning. 

When my grandmother had dementia, my mother, who cared for her, used to anguish over what the meaning could possibly be for her mother’s life. It went on and on and on, long past the time when anyone could make any sense of it, least of all my grandmother herself. Eventually my mother stopped asking, and just tried to rest in the thought that there are some things we can’t know right now. It doesn’t mean they don’t mean anything. It just means Jesus knows, and when he wants us to know, he will come and tell us.

When my mother’s dementia got bad, we had to put her in a nursing home, and my father went to see her every day. He went back and back and back to see his wife, who couldn’t even look at him or say his name, and after a few years of it, and by God, he changed. He started to love life. He became a happy man, and then the man called “Resurrection” came for him, just before Easter, just as the COVID lockdown began.

Sometimes Resurrection looks like getting your beloved brother Lazarus back; sometimes Resurrection looks like the death of both your parents, at least from the outside, at least for now. You never know what will happen when the Lord comes near. 

When Martha said, “Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died!” she was right. Sometimes he draws near, and then draws away, for reasons of his own. I do believe in the power of baptism. I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting, eventually. I do believe in the man called “Resurrection.” I don’t care for his methods, but I believe in him. When he wants me to know more, he will come and tell me.

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Image: Resurrection of Lazarus, Workshop of Daniel Chorny and Andrey Rublev, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Children’s book giveaway! Tomie dePaola’s CHRISTOPHER THE HOLY GIANT and THE LITTLE FRIAR WHO FLEW

Couple of things! First, Ignatius is having a 30% off sale on children’s books. Just about every book for kids is on sale until Sunday, March 26 at 11:59 PM Pacific. They have so many lovely titles, including many re-issues by Tomie dePaola. (I reviewed some others here.)

Second, today I have two more books to give away! Two more wonderful Tomie dePaola books, both great picks for Easter. And weirdly enough, they ended up being two books about two very different models of masculinity (or maybe that’s just where my head is at right now). 

First: THE LITTLE FRIAR WHO FLEW 

It’s a cheery, attractive, colorful book full of details, animals, flowers and fanciful historical costumes, and makes a good introduction to the life of Joseph of Cupertino, the simple-minded, accident-prone boy who experiences the joy of God so directly, he levitates.

The story has a gentle arc and ends quietly with Joseph escaping fame and returning to his solitary life in the hills.

The text is by Patricia Lee Gauch and illustrated by dePaola in 1980, in a style that’s a little more line-heavy and busy and maybe more comic-like, less elegant and delicate than the style we may associate with dePaola.

Not a bad thing, just worth noting.

Incidentally, last night we watched The Reluctant Saint (1962) about Joseph of Cupertino and we all liked it. I’ll try and do a full review later this week, but it was entertaining and well-realized and although it was certainly dated, it had some very moving scenes and extremely appealing characters. 

Next book! 

CHRISTOPHER THE HOLY GIANT, written and illustrated by  dePaola. This one was first published in 1994, and it is my favorite dePaola era. 

What a story! This is very much what I mean by a myth: Something that’s not perhaps intended to be taken as a literal historical account, but is crafted to convey things that are true and important about humans, about the world, and about God.

It’s told very simply, without embellishment, and lets the glowing, icon-like illustrations wallop you. 

There are two pages with no text

And it ends with Jesus telling him everything he needs to know, and Christopher listens, and the very next day his actions bear fruit. What do you know about that. 

What a book! Can we have this as recommended reading for high school kids? For seminarians? 

Uh, I don’t mean to be a weirdo, but Christopher actually kind of looks like the sigma male or gigachad meme guy, ultra-muscular, ultra-masculine lone wolf who does what he wants and follows his own set of very simple rules.

I feel like a lot of dudes I’ve encountered have been reduced to Reprobus [Christopher’s name before he meets Jesus] level-grasp of cultural and spiritual norms. They know they are strong, and they are just looking for someone even stronger to follow, the end. What to do? 

Not that there is any kind of pop cultural subtext in this book, or anything! I just thought it’s an especially poignant parable for 2023. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to buy this for your little kids but leave it around for your teenage boys to read. (I’m a big believer in leaving books lying around where they may be idly picked up, like outside the bathroom or in the car, or on the table when dinner is almost ready.) 

Anyway, both books, in their own way, are about being the person God made you to be, and using the strengths you have been given for their proper ends. Good stuff, good stories. 

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And now the giveaway! To enter to win both books courtesy of Ignatius, just leave a comment on this site and I’ll use a random number generator to pick and notify a winner on Sunday afternoon. (That will give you a chance to still purchase them at 30% off if you don’t win.) Good luck! 

What’s for supper? Vol. 242: Vindaloo! Couldn’t escape if I wanted to!

Hey! Didn’t get a food post out last week, but I have a decent excuse this time: We got about forty inches of snow

and lost power for three days. We had a drought this summer, so the trees are brittle, and tons of them fell on power lines, including the ones right across the street from us.

We have a well, which is run by an electric pump, so that means we also didn’t have water for those days, and that means we had to buy water (in the next town, because the stores here were closed, because the power was out) to flush the toilets.  Yes, you can melt snow to get water to flush toilets, but if you’ve actually ever done this, you’ll know it takes about a roomful of snow to melt down into about three cups of rather smelly water, which is not enough to flush two toilets that ten people have been using; and also, if you are trying to keep your house warm, I do not recommend bringing in a roomful of snow to melt, with a heat source that you do not have! Everything was like that: Yes, there is a sort-of kind-of solution, but is it better? Unclear. The dog, at least, had a wonderful time. He always has a wonderful time.

Anyway we survived by the light of candles and light sabers,

and we didn’t have any babies or toddlers, so that made it easier. I had just bought a ton of comforters on clearance, so we had plenty of bundling material. We even lucked out in that I hadn’t done the weekly shopping yet when the power went out, so all we lost was a pack of ground beef. And we are now the proud owners of a small but decent generator, and all my baby trees survived, and we’re very, awfully tired of board games and turkey sandwiches. 

The power came back on last Friday, which was St. Patrick’s day, and our bishop did give a meat dispensation, so we popped out and put together a nice meal for that: Irish breakfast with all the parts we actually want, so no blood sausage or anything dyed green, but sourdough toast, fried mushrooms, beans, roast tomatoes, roast potatoes, bacon, and eggs fried in bacon fat. 

Very tasty, because how could it not be. I got cherry tomatoes this time, rather than attempting to roast slices of large tomatoes, which are insanely fragile. I mean who isn’t these days, but the cherry tomatoes was a good idea. 

SATURDAY
Hot dogs and smile fries 

I actually love hot dogs. The kids act like it’s some terrible thing when we have hot dogs for dinner, because they are barely American, possibly barely human. 

SUNDAY
Antipasto plate, pasta and ragu, garlic bread, vanilla bean panna cotta with fresh fruit

Sunday was St. Joseph’s day. We usually have a big Italian feast with several courses, but we were still sort of in shambles from the power outage, so we kept it on the modest side. I put together two big antipasto plates with various cheeses, cured meats, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and fruit

and yes, I was worried I hadn’t bought enough food. 

But I had.

Damien made a wonderful ragù with veal, pork, and pancetta. Wow, it was good. Like especially good. He uses this recipe from Deadspin, but it comes out different every time, and it was so savory and lively. 

We had a bunch of bruschetta for the antipasto, and garlic bread for the pasta. And Italian ices, and then also for dessert, I made something I’ve been wanting to try forever: Panna cotta. I used this recipe from Serious Eats and started infusing the cream and milk with vanilla bean pods the night before. 

You rub the vanilla bean seeds into the sugar, which feels very fancy. Then in the morning, I bloomed some unflavored gelatin powder in milk with vanilla extract, warmed up the cream, scraped the insides of the vanilla bean pods into it, and whisked in the gelatin mixture and the vanilla sugar. Then I just poured it into ramekins, covered them with plastic wrap, and let it chill for the rest of the day. 

Shortly before dinner, I mixed a little sugar with blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries. I didn’t want them to break down a lot, so I didn’t do this far ahead of time. When it was dessert time, I ran a knife around the inside rim of the ramekin and then slammed them upside down on a saucer, and they came out well. Topped with the sugared fruit, plus some slices of mango, and oh it was so pretty

We also had some kind of fragile almond cookies on the side, I forget what it was called. 

I’ve never had panna cotta before, but it was a wonderful texture, silky smooth, and very creamy and refreshing. The vanilla bean specks had gathered at the bottom, so they were strewn all over the top of the glossy turned-out panna cotta and looked very elegant. 

Some of the kids opted to keep theirs in the ramekin and just eat them like cup custards. This is also a normal way to serve them, although people like to make them in glass containers, even wine glasses, if they’re going to serve them this way. 

So, very pleased with this foray. Damien, who isn’t a big fan of custards and such, thought they were great. I see many kinds of panna cotta in our future! You can put whatever you want in there. 

MONDAY
goblin food

Monday I served a truly terrible meal of very burnt chicken nuggets, a wad of very underdone hash browns, and dried-out leftover pasta. 

This kind of meal can be made more appealing by taking pains to make the table attractive. You can achieve this look by not clearing away yesterday’s dessert trash. Follow me for more etc. etc. 

TUESDAY
Reubens, chips

Tuesday there was still corned beef on sale, so I threw a few hunks in the Instant Pot for a few hours, and we had the meat sliced on toasted marbled rye bread with thousand island dressing, Swiss cheese, and sauerkraut. 

Wish I had run the whole sandwich under the broiler to melt the cheese, but it was still quite delicious. I really don’t miss boiled dinner at all. Corned beef is great, but it needs to be squashed in among other tasty things, not just lying there like a cadaver. 

WEDNESDAY
Pork vindaloo and rice, pineapple

I was having a conversation about real mindfulness with my family — about the experience of deliberately standing as nothing but a witness — and the tremendous sense of gratitude that often arises when you’re able to shift into this mode. I realized this happens to me often while I’m cooking, which explains why this isn’t really a recipe blog, per se, but more of a food experience appreciation blog (as well as a big family slice of life blog). And it explains why I often forget to taste while I’m cooking, which I have frequently felt very guilty and stupid about. It’s because I’m not thinking about the end result, but just feeling overwhelmed with the beauty of the things passing through my hands, the colors and sensations and smells and patterns. This does not make for the best food, necessarily, but it makes my life better!

Anyway, Indian food is very conducive to this kind of experience. Just assembling the ingredients almost always puts me in a different frame of mind. Everyone had been sick for several days with a nasty head cold one of the kids brought home, and I was very optimistic about knocking that out, at least while we were actively eating, when I saw what was going into the marinade for this pork vindaloo

This isn’t even as many peppers as the recipe called for (I was doubling it), but it was all I had. So it’s guajillo peppers, garlic, ginger, cinnamon sticks, tamarind paste, cumin seeds, cloves, peppercorns, and turmeric, sugar and kosher salt. The recipe calls for white vinegar, but I only had cider vinegar. 

It’s quite easy. You just make a paste out of all the ingredients above. You just bash them all together until they’re a sticky paste, and then marinate cubes of pork in it. The recipe calls for pork butt and also pork belly, but I just went with the butt. As I often etc etc.

Marinate a few hours

and then add some water and simmer it up along with sliced onions for a few more hours, and then that’s it. You serve it with rice, and throw some cilantro on top. 

OH IT WAS GOOD.

Immensely tender, and the sauce was spicy, yes, but not blast-your-head-off spicy. Just enough to make your nose tingle. It was also tangy and a little bit fruity and a little earthy, and wonderfully nourishing and warming. 

I had a second helping of rice with just the sauce with little fragments of meat it in, and it was a joy. Wonderful recipe. The kids liked it! This may have been because I really talked it up ahead of time, and purposely acted very excited and happy about it, and mentioned many times that it was called “VINNNDALOOOOO,” but it’s not the kind of thing that they usually like. 

I also cut up a few pineapples that were hanging around, and that was not the absolute ideal side, because they were extremely acidic. Mango or something a little more mild would have been better. But it was a wonderful meal all the same. Vindaloo! Knowing my fate is to be with you! 

If you use the recipe, be sure to save it, as Bon Appétit only gives you a certain number of free views.

THURSDAY
Chicken enchilada bowls 

Thursday we had school conferences right before dinner, so I prepped everything ahead of time, and we had an unsophisticated but tasty hot meal waiting for us, and everyone liked it. 

I dumped a bunch of chicken legs in the Instant Pot with a can of red enchilada sauce and some diced tomatoes and chiles, and pressed the “poultry” button. When it was done cooking, I fished the chicken out, pulled the meat off the bones, and transferred it to the slow cooker along with the tomatoes and enough of the sauce to keep it from drying out. 

I chopped a bunch of scallions and cilantro, sautéed some frozen corn in olive oil to give it a little char (it’s dumb, but everyone loves it this way) and put that in a bowl, and set out shredded pepper jack cheese, sour cream, corn chips, hot sauce, and Taijin seasoning. Then I set up the Instant Pot again with rice and water. When I was on the way home, I texted one of the kids to press the “rice” button, and when I got home, I heated the corn in the microwave. 

Boom, hot dinner, with cheese.

One of the kids told me, “Jolly good meal, mother. I said that in a silly way, but I meant it.” When a kid stops to make sure you know they’re sincere, you know they’re sincere. 

FRIDAY
Pizza

Just pizza. No tricks!

And I still haven’t written up Corrie’s under the sea cake! I think I will have to give it its own post, as it was quite a journey. It is the reason I happened to have unflavored gelatin in the house for panna cotta.

Oh, one more thing, I got a big sack of flattened rice, something I just found out about (by seeing it on the shelf), which I haven’t had a chance to use yet, but I’m pretty excited about it.

Apparently it is parboiled, so you barely need to cook it, and Indians use it for all kinds of things: A quick, cozy breakfast, savory or sweet, a side dish with vegetables and potatoes, or you can fry it, or you can do whatever you want. It’s healthier than white rice because it hasn’t had as many nutrients polished away. 

What does it say in the belly of the whale?

My community band practices in the basement of a synagogue, and there is a strange work of art on the wall. It’s rendered in wood, painted in bright colors, and it shows something I have never seen before: A whale diving into the deep, surrounded by brilliant fish. Nestled in the whale’s stomach is a man.

You are thinking it is Jonah, and I guess it is. But he is not a desperate, raggedy prophet in dire straits. He is an old man, clearly Jewish, with a noble profile and glasses, a kippah on his head and a fringed blue-and-white tallit on his shoulders. He is sitting on a little wooden chair at a little wooden table. Overhead (yes, in the whale) hangs a little wooden lightbulb, and by its light he is reading one of a stack of little wooden books. Just sitting there quietly reading a book, inside the whale. The whale looks slightly alarmed, but the old man is perfectly at home, learning.

I thought immediately of a Reddit post I recently saw, written by a young woman who was enraged at her father for spending his own money, at the end of his life, on a long-delayed college education. What does the old man need to go to college for? His life is almost over! The money should be preserved, not wasted on a man who’s almost gone. It was even worse than the Prodigal Son: She was not only demanding her inheritance ahead of time but also begrudging that her father should have any of it.

I thought of my own father. Partly because he looked a little bit like the bearded old Jew with his wooden books and partly because he did keep on learning, right up until the end. From books, to be sure. His bedside, when I went there to tidy things up to sell our old house, was smothered in books. But he was not necessarily pushing himself academically in his final years. I think he died watching TV (not that there’s anything wrong with that—he was tired).

What I mean is that the last several years of his life tested him mightily. The family fell to one crisis after another, and finally my mother lapsed irretrievably into dementia, and he had to learn to pour love into her and get nothing in return but mumbles and flutters. He had to learn so much. He was so old, but he had so many things to learn before he was delivered from this life.

During this time, he told me that the Lord was taking more and more things away from him, and he was glad, because it was getting him ready for death. He smiled when he said this. He was grateful it was happening—the getting ready, not the dying. He did not seem to feel, against all odds, that it was a dark time, even as his life dwindled away.

This is what it fundamentally means to be a Christian: It means to know that what we are doing is getting ready. What we are experiencing, all the time, is learning…Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. 

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Image: Jonah by Rosalind Welcher, on the walls of the Congregation Ahavas Achim in Keene, NH; photo by Simcha Fisher