Tag: uncategorized

A handmade wooden machine that mimics the motion of a drop of water hitting a puddle:

h/t Ebaumsworld via Ameetha Widdershins.  Built by Dean O’Callaghan

Guess what I lerned on Facebook the other day?  Nah, you’ll never guess, so I’ll just tell you: Abby Johnson is a fake pro-lifer.  She just sits on her ass (that’s a direct quote) and bathes in publicity, without actually accomplishing anything.  She’s not really pro-life — not pro-life enough.

This statement is so patently nutty that it’s hard to even know how to respond.  Abby Johnson, who is pregnant, appears to spend almost no time sitting down — busy as she is with And Then There Were None and now partnering with the Guiding Star Project to open a Resource Center and Maternity Home in Texas, where she lives.  Johnson is ministering directly, with spiritual, emotional, and tangible physical aid and support, both to abortion industry workers, and to women who need help beyond the choice to keep their babies.

Let’s review:  Abby Johnson gives people a reason to stop performing abortions.  She gives people a reason not to get abortions.  She drags her pregnant self around the country, daily exposing herself to abuse from the left and from the right, and hasliterally made an open book of her life and her past with Planned Parenthood.  If anyone is saving babies and women (and men) from abortion, it’s Abby Johnson.

But . . . she’s not pro-life enough.

The only explanation I can find for such an idea is what I call “bathwater thinking.”  You’ve heard of throwing out the baby with the bathwater?  This is mistaking the bathwater for the baby.  Sometimes people are so devoted to a particular way of achieving something good,they make the way their main focus — their “baby” — while the original goal becomes the amorphous, disposable background.  It’s bathwater thinking that leads people to believe that someone like Abby Johnson isn’t pro-life, because she doesn’t check off all the boxes in the How To Be Pro-Life checklist, which was drafted forty years ago.

Bathwater thinking.  You forget the baby, the living, breathing people involved, and wallow around in that warm, familiar bathwater of your indisputably worthy cause.

Let’s think about St. Gianna Molla.  A good many people believe that this woman’s greatness came in her eager, joyful acceptance of death in order to save her baby.  Not so.  It is true that she was willing to accept the risk of death when she refused the therapeutic hysterectomy that would have killed her unborn child.  And she did end up giving her life so that her baby could live.  But the whole time, she prayed and hoped and longed to live. She wasn’t devoted to being pro-life: she was devoted to herbaby.  And she wanted to live, so that she could be with her baby and her husband and the rest of her beloved children.  She was pro-life:  she hoped for life in abundance, including her own.

The same is true, in a somewhat different way, for St. Maria Goretti.  Over and over, I’ve heard this saint praised as a holy girl who prized her viginity so highly that she was willing to die to defend it.  And she did die as a result of defending her viginity.  But when her would-be rapist attacked her, she pleaded with him to stop because he would be committing a mortal sin, and he would go to hell.  She didn’t say, “Please, please, spare my virginity!” She begged him to spare himself.  

This is what it looks like when someone is close to God:  they want to spare the person.  They are in love with life.  They are focused not on the idea of morality, but on the person whose life and safety (whether physical or spiritual) are at stake.

In Maria Goretti’s case, she was focused on her rapist — and I am sure it was her love for him, and not her blindingly pure devotion to chastity, that converted him and brought him to repentance before she died.  That is how conversions happen.  That is how people are saved:  when other people show love for them.  It’s about other people.  It’s always about our love for other people.  That’s why, before someone is declared a saint, they have to perform two miracles for people still on earth.  Even after death, it’s not about the cause or the system or the virtue in the abstract.  It’s always about our love for other people.

Ideas like holiness, chastity, humility, charity, diligence, or any other virtue that springs to mind when you think of a saint?  These are bathwater.  These are the things that surround and support the “baby” of love in action.  A bath without bathwater is no good; but a bath without someone to be bathed is even more pointless. God doesn’t want bathwater saints, ardently devoted to a cause or a principle or a movement or a virtue.  God wants us to love and care for each other.  Love for each other is how we order our lives.  Love for each other is how we serve God.

It’s always about our love for other people.

Radio schedules fluctuate, so the air date may change, but I am doing the taping today.  And I can’t find the DVD remote.  So, tune in to Kresta in the Afternoon on Ave Maria Radio, if only to hear the circus noises in the background.  I am making this three-ingredient snow dough in hopes that it keeps the kiddies occupied.

Lots of stuff in the works, including a giveaway of two signed copies of my book. In the mean time, if you have read the book, I would be very grateful if you would take the time to write a review on Amazon. Every review drives it higher in ranking, which brings it to more people’s attention, which drives up sales, which allows me to buy more cheese for my ratties nine!  Many, many thanks to everyone who has bought the book!

Every five or six days, I get an angry or hurt email from someone demanding to know why they’ve been blocked.  In approximately 100% of these cases, I haven’t blocked the person.  What it is, is Disqus (and sometimes the Register commenting system) nets someone’s comment for mysterious reasons that make sense only to the borg brain.  That’s all. It happens to me, too — sometimes I can’t even comment on my own post.  Sometimes I post a comment, and it shows up, only to disappear later.  Why? Who knows? Not me.  If I block you, I will generally tell you why.

My comment policy is not strict.  Don’t be incredibly and repeatedly offensive, and don’t threaten anybody.  That’s about it. I can alter this as I see fit, without warning, because it’s my blog. You don’t have any right to be heard on my blog; but I don’t have any particular desire to micromanage how stupid and awful you wish to appear in public.

That being said, the A #1 way to make sure I don’t block someone is to insist that I block someone.  When I write in public, whether here or on the Register or on Facebook or in magazines or wherever, I set myself up for a 24 hour stream of nonsense, and believe me, that stream ain’t drying up anytime soon.  One way I deal with it is to remind myself that it’s my choice how much nonsense I want to put up with.  If I want it to stop, I stop it. If I don’t care, I let it go. It’s my decision, because it’s my blog.  I cannot overstate how important it is to me to own that decision.  If you know of a better, fairer, more sensible way to run a combox, then start your own blog and go for it.

Okey doke?  Sorry if this is crabby. I’ve had a brutal sinus head cold for a week now, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have writing deadlines, and radio interviews, and six-layer cakes to bake, and dinner to cook, and doctor’s appointments, and homework to check, and teachers to placate, and dog pee to mop up, and sacraments to prepare for, and so on. I’m tired and mean and doing my best to get stuff done, and I don’t need any advice on how to do it better.

In the interest of environmental responsibility, Al Gore suggests that all African women should bear four children.

This is, at least, what Al Gore surely anticipates when he speaks of “making fertility management ubiquitously available” to African women.  He says that “If you get the health improved, if you get the availability of contraceptives, then families will voluntarily choose to have less children.”  Surely he and Tipper had good health and access to contraception when they bore their four children.

Following Gore’s example, African women should also, presumably, voluntarily choose to live in a 20-room, 10,000 square foot mansion that uses approximately four times more energy than the typical home in the neighborhood.  In addition, each African mother should maintain a luxury apartment in San Francisco. In order to save the environment, Mr. Gore encourages all African women to take several plane trips every year, and only to charter a private jet “when necessary.”

PIC African woman carrying baby and firewood “And don’t forget to buy some carbon offsets to make up for that cooking fire you’re planning, missy.”

Oh, pish tush, you will say. Al Gore’s racist hypocrisy is old news, low-hanging fruit, as it were.  It’s easy to pick on a bloated lout like him; but his point still stands, yes?  Even if the first world did their fair share to reduce environmental costs, rather than palming it off on impoverished villages on the other side of the world, those third world women would be better off if they’d just put a cork in their outrageous, unthinking fertility.  They’d be healthier, wealthier.  They’d be happier.  Why not flood them with contraception?

Here’s why, according to Obianuju Ekeocha, a Nigerian woman who actually lived in one of those impoverished African villages —  and who actually knows what it’s like to see the kind of aid that Westerners want them to have.  Her open letter to Melinda Gates is from 2012, but it deserves to be read over and over again.  She says:

I see this $4.6 billion [in contraceptive aid] buying us misery. I see it buying us unfaithful husbands. I see it buying us streets devoid of the innocent chatter of children. I see it buying us disease and untimely death. I see it buying us a retirement without the tender loving care of our children.

Please Melinda, listen to the heart-felt cry of an African woman and mercifully channel your funds to pay for what we REALLY need.

She then goes on to describe the true needs of African families.  And here is Ekoeocha’s follow-up from August of 2013.  She explains:

[M]ore educated African women almost always choose to have fewer children (but mostly by natural methods rather than artificial contraceptives). So rather than fill our defenceless under-aged brides with Depo-Provera — which is more like a general anaesthesia that will numb them to the brutality of their reality — we can better empower them by giving them an education, which becomes the lifeline by which they can climb out of poverty one girl at a time.

Is that what the likes of Gore and Melinda Gates really want — truly educated girls?  Do they respect African women and African culture enough to help them make their own choices?  Or is that too much trouble to go to for a bunch of dark-skinned global parasites?  Do Gates and Gore and their ilk show any interest in listening to the true concerns of actual African families?  Or is all their wealth just funding another chapter in Western imperialism, where, rather than exterminating Africans directly, we brainwash them into exterminating themselves?

 

I need something that I can do while I’m sitting down in the evening, when my brain is mush and I have nothing good to read and I refuse to think about laundry, but I don’t want to go to bed yet.  Right now, I usually just cruise Facebook. Although this activity often yields some exquisite cultural experiences

PIC Japanese fart warriors

I feel like I could be spending my time better. And I feel like staring at a screen is sucking the soul out of me.  But I don’t want to work or anything.

I used to enjoy quilling, making earrings, that kind of thing.  Embroidery I wasn’t crazy about, and I stink at sewing in general.  Any ideas?

I’m sorry. I’m going through my inbox and am horrified at how many emails  I never answered. I’m trying to respond to everything, but I know I’m going to miss some.  If you have an urgent question, please send another email!  And please don’t be offended. I am making an effort to respond immediately to emails, so they don’t get lost, but there is a lot of plate-spinning here, and I just drop stuff. I just do. Thanks for understanding!

Thank you, all my friends, for your words of consolation and for your prayers.  Thank you for sharing your stories.  So many of you have suffered so much.  What a crowd of beloved babies there must be, waiting and praying for us!  I am keeping all of you in my prayers, especially you parents who have lost babies you had really come to know and love.

Life goes on. We were supposed to be back to school Thursday, but we had a snow day yesterday and today.  All I did was rest and watch the kids fight and play, wrestle with the dog and eat popcorn.  My husband worked from home, and then he helped our resident Spiderbaby do a little ceiling walking, using the power of her favorite new hat:

Sweet baby, sweet husband.  Sweet life.

Baby has come and gone.  Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for your prayers and kind words. They helped so much through all the waiting. God bless you.

I wasn’t sure whether to make this public or not, but what the heck. I know you guys are wonderful pray-ers, so if you could spare a quick Hail Mary or a “Jesus, help us” prayer, I would be grateful!

Yesterday, I was halfway through a post announcing that I am pregnant with a very much desired baby #10.  Then I started bleeding steadily all day yesterday.  Today, I have just about stopped bleeding.  I went to the lab yesterday, so they could test HCG levels.  They will do another test Wednesday afternoon, and I will get the results in the evening.  So, unless things take a terrible turn in the mean time, I will not know whether it’s reasonable to have hope for this baby or not. It may not be reasonable to hope.

Up and down, up and down. I have never had a miscarriage before. I know that’s practically a miracle.  We’ve had complications, but God has given us nine mostly healthy children with no losses.  I know that He has given us this baby, too.  Baby is the size of a blueberry, and is starting to sprout fingers and toes.  Or he should be.  Anyway, he is real, and I haven’t said goodbye yet.

I am keeping up hope because I would rather grieve a baby than not know how to feel, if I find out he is dead.  I am not trying to figure out how to feel, and I am not beating myself up over feeling the wrong things, or for forgetting for a moment what’s happening.  It’s just up and down, up and down.  My husband is working from home, and he will be home tomorrow. I am just keeping busy and staying warm, and am happy to be with my family.