PIC house with cracked foundation
Ideas are like houses, and other people are like . . . well, like people who live in those houses. If I lived next to a house with a huge, gaping crack in the foundation, and I discovered that a lovely young family was innocently planning to move into that house, what should I do? Should I keep quiet, in the name of peace and unity?
“The man who has not suffered, what can he possibly know, anyway?” says Rabbi Abraham Heschel. He may be onto something. When we look for insight and understanding, we go to someone who has been wronged, and who has come out stronger and wiser: survivors of wars, genocide, concentration camps; people who have overcome massive disabilities; people who have been abused and outcast, and who have responded with love, gentleness, generosity, and wisdom.
But what about the man who caused his own suffering? The man who has been selfish, foolish, ugly, cruel, and who has suffered because of his own willful sins? What can he possibly know, anyway?
What kind of person responds to someone’s joy with an agenda? I don’t even care if you’re right or wrong: that’s dehumanizing (and last I heard, most people on both ends of the political spectrum are generally opposed to dehumanization). You’ve heard of the Culture of Death, which teaches people to sneer in disgust at the good, the true, and the beautiful. What we have here is its sad sack cousin, the Culture of Blechh, which teaches people to turn every occasion, whether happy or sad, into a basin to catch the Very Important Message they perpetually disgorge.
[L]et’s make a distinction here. Christ and the saints exhort us to deny ourselves, to voluntarily turn away from the lure of physical comforts, to sell all we have to follow Him. He wants us to learn that we have a choice: to give ourselves over to the demands of the flesh, or to master the flesh and try, instead, to satisfy our spiritual hunger and thirst.
Christ and the saints did not exhort us to deny others, to prevent other people from enjoying physical comforts. He did not tell us to make the choice for other people. Instead, He told us, over and over and over again, to feed His sheep. And that’s what the saints did: they fed people. Yes, with plain old physical food, that poor people could eat with their bodily mouths and digest with their earthbound bellies.
The teacher started scheduling weekly “clean-ups.”
Students relished in the opportunity to admit wrongdoing, share intent to change, and restore friendships. It was a beautiful, beautiful thing. They walked out stiff and uneasy, and returned with bright smiles on their faces.
Sound familiar? Read the rest at the Register.
PIC pregnant woman on chemo
Pregnant women have been successfully treating their cancer in the second and third trimesters without harming their babies for over twenty years — and yet this fact is far from common knowledge. When we hear that a woman has cancer while pregnant, the first thought that comes to mind is that she has a horrible choice to make. Why is this?
Read the rest at the Register.
SF:That seems like the hallmark of how your run Mary’s Shelter: you don’t only care about the babies and the kids, but you respect the parents. Is this a deliberate decision, to approach your ministry this way?
KW: Absolutely. We don’t just save the life of the baby. We’re out to save the life of the mother, and the father, if he’s in the picture. We crack up when we hear a pro-choicer saying, “You pro-lifers only care about the white baby in your belly.” That’s the biggest lie out there.
If the woman is abortion-minded, we’ll give her a place to live, if that’s what’s holding her back. If a woman walks in and she’s in a domestic violence situation, we get her counseling. We don’t even kick them out if they’re drinking or doing drugs; we give them an opportunity to do a program and stay with us.
We give women up to two years with us; and women who are “rock stars” – the ones who are really looking to move on and get a nursing degree or something like that — she can stay up to three years while she does school and work and gets everything together. That’s all about the woman. That’s for her.
Read the rest of my interview about this amazing organization at the Register.
And don’t forget, I’ll be the keynote speaker at their upcoming Summer Soiree August 23! Free to attend, and a great opportunity to learn more about the amazing work they are doing.
Late afternoon finds me slaving over a hot Facebook page, gorging on a smorgasbord of tantalizing photos with captions like: “Here is my 8-year-old carefully chopping the chives she grew in her little garden! This is the second time this week she’s made pork medallions herbs de provence, but we’re not complaining, as long as her little brother provides those scrumptious grilled peaches with caramel bourbon sauce for dessert! They are so cute with their aprons. <3 <3 <3″
Yes, well. I believe in equipping a child for independent living, and if that education makes life a little easier for mom at the same time, all the better. At the same time, we’re talking about kids who sometimes miss their target while putting their own pants on. I’m not showing them where the knife sharpener is.
As a writer with children, I receive lots and lots of Catholic children’s books, and nearly every time, I regretfully decline to review them, because I cannot deal with the way Mary and Jesus’ faces are drawn. The best of them are blank and insipid, giving the impression that the Holy Family was dabbled in narcotics; and the worst are goony and pandering. Take it from me: transferring Spongebob’s features onto a human body and slapping a halo on his head is not, in fact, the best way to attract little children to the Faith.
Maite Roche is different! Read the rest at the Register.
As I write, I may have nothing packed, nothing purchased, and nothing planned, but I do have a very tidy and detailed list of the things I am sure will go wrong on our trip. They are as follows:
- We will run out of food and we will starve, because obviously we won’t be able to get into the car and drive to a store and buy more food. This is camping, and we are going to have to make do with sand tea and acorn kabobs.
- Sharks. Okay, there are not going to be any sharks, but I’m afraid my kids, who somehow wore us down and got to watch Jaws, are going to be so afraid of sharks that their little brains will actually explode with anxiety. And do you know who is attracted by brain matter in the water? SHARKS.
- We will be surrounded by such awful, noisy, inconsiderate people that we won’t be able to enjoy our awful, noisy, inconsiderate family.
