Seven Hungry Takes

I haven't done SQT in a long while - it's always fun, and if I could remember that it rolls around each and every Friday, and that Friday comes after Thursday every single week, I'd never miss it.

This week regular host Jennifer Fulwiler of Conversion Diary has handed over duties to Hallie Lord under the unfortunate circumstances of a serious health condition and hospitalization.  Please pray that her recovery is speedy and complete.


Here we go!

1. I'm hungry, like starving chew my arm off hungry.  It is a wretched tentacle of gluttony that over-indulgence often leads to craving.  Craving sugar, starch, and all the things I know are only temporarily satisfying and ultimately destructive.  Note to self:  look up definition of insanity and write it backwards on your forehead.
2. My husband is joining me, of his own initiative, on a New Years health reboot.  We enjoy playing tennis together and are making it a regular Saturday date along with one weeknight.  I'm hoping to sub in some league play this spring, so the practice will be great for my game as well as my waistline.  He's really good, so I'm going to have to throw a few left hander tricks at him to get him running a bit.
3. After tennis, I'm really hungry. I don't experience the appetite abatement that a lot of folks do after working out.  I will say though that I notice I don't want anything but good food after honest exercise or hard work.  Interesting how that works - when I'm slothing around all I want to do is eat Poppycock and drink Diet Coke.
4. I cooked my butt off this holiday season, a lot of which resulted in whiny take #1.  I did manage what I consider a masterpiece Christmas Eve dinner, which I'm declaring my standard meal from here until we get tired of it.  It was very simple, but it was festive and delicious without being nutritionally corrupt.   More on that next week.
5. Does anyone have experience with Zaycon foods - in particular, their fish?  We're determined to have fish on Fridays and at least one other night a week, and they seem to have excellent prices for wild catch.  We use their bacon, but I was just wondering if there was a yay or nay someone might share.
6. School starts back next Tuesday for the kids.  I pack their lunches everyday, but I'm passing the torch to them for the spring.  I'll have to have some things ready, but they're up to the challenge.   They're also going to each be responsible for planning and helping to prepare a meal one night a week.  I see a lot of bacon chicken in my near future.
7.  It occurs to me that a good focus for us this year will be charity and hospitality.  Sharing the good stuff - and food is so so good - makes it so easy to see it for the gift it is, instead of an occasion for  ingratitude and the creation of a false burden.

Happy New Year!

What I Hope To Learn

I fell off the Saint wagon a while back, and sometime around Thanksgiving I couldn't stand it any longer and wandered on over to Conversion Diary and the Saints Name Generator to pray for an open heart and spin the wheel for a Patron Saint to study and to ask to pray with me in this New Year. It's a great tool, not to be confused with a Match.com for your Patron sort of thing as insofar as we know it's completely random, but a chance to get to know a new figure in the Church.  These were real men and women in this world, many in what we would consider the modern time.  It would seem that some Saints are more likeable or desirable or fantastic, I guess, than others, but they are all, were all, entirely human - not a perfect angel in the lot, but men and women of faith who struggled with their own brokenness, often physical, more often spiritual, and looked to The Cross anyway.  Like the rest of us mere mortals, sometimes they ran to it, sometimes they crawled, sometimes they just lay in the road while they gathered the strength to lift their eyes to look upon it again.  It is this common imperfection coupled with their encounter with the miraculous that draws us to them.

God uses the imperfect to impart miracles.  The martyrs fortify us with our their own unfathomable courage, the early Doctors both satisfy our yearning for the concrete and delight our curiosity through their devotion to practical truths, the visionaries and mystics remind us that we are not dealing with only words on a page or a statue behind a stone altar but The Most Divine, moving through the planes of time and space, beyond all Earthly understanding, in ways only possible for the One True God.

Studying a single Patron for a given time offers a history lesson, at the very least, an example of devotion to follow and strive for, and in certain seasons, a prayer partner whose own earthly experiences have something relevant and valuable to teach us.  Whether or not their circumstances mirror our own isn't really the point, though often those connections can be readily made - either way, it is a profound opportunity to experience intercession, to live the habit of asking others to pray with us, for us, and us for them.

My Patroness for 2013 is St. Bernadette.  You can read more about her by clicking on her photo (yep, real person, got her on film) on the right. 

Short version:

- she was continuously and chronically ill and died fairly young
- she was a nun and a mystic who experienced visions at Lourdes, and immovable in her accounts of them
- she was utterly certain that healing comes about through faith and prayer

It took me some prayer and contemplation, but her being my Patroness this year isn't only a course of study, it's a perfect fit.   Now if that's not just like the Holy Spirit I don't know what is.

My prayers this year, spiritual resolutions I suppose, are for:

1) compassion and empathy, particularly for those who suffer lingering and chronic illness and pain
2) a less cynical heart, open to the unexplainable
3) strengthened belief that prayers and faith can and DO lead to healing

Amen.

If you haven't taken the opportunity to study the Saints, I hope everyone, Catholic and otherwise, does so and is able to learn from their lives and their examples of faith.  It is academically enriching as well as spiritually encouraging, and sometimes just plain interesting. 

Food for thought....

 Star of Bethlehem

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year....most of you trying to keep up with the sporadic posts on this fledgling journal are known to me already, and I appreciate your friendship very much.  Thanks for the conversation out and around the ether, you make me smarter and braver, surely holier can't be far behind :).

Lots of good stuff over the last several weeks - some insight into tragedy, some thoughtful reflection, many good ideas and suggestions about living in the light instead of the dark in a culture determined to go grim...so, read away...

Stop Hiding In Your Armory       Vanessa

"Joy is a celebration of life and freedom, as opposed to fear and death. The old motto “live free or die” was chosen to reflect joy. Joy that was unmarred by fear, even when facing seemingly insurmountable odds. The people who carried those banners assumed that they were marching like pigs to the slaughter, and they kept marching anyway. They were joyful in their suffering and misery. They had hope. They didn’t know if they’d live on earth for long enough to see things improve, but they hoped they would eventually improve."



Why Are Catholics Still Whining About the HHS Mandate?         Bad Catholic

"It is vital for the non-religious to understand this ridiculousness, for it follows that the real crime of a government against the religious man is not violence, but the attempt make it impossible for him to love God and neighbor. This is the ultimate prohibition of the free exercise of religion. This is the injustice that hammers the heart of the religious man and raises him to fury."



 There's No Going Back         Keoni Galt

"You now see things with clarity. Then you realize just how ugly most truths are, and you sometimes wish you could go back to believing the beautiful lies of the mainstream consciousness. Unless you experience brain damage that inflicts amnesia, you will find that you can't.
Once you know the truth, you cannot hide from it, even if you want to."


Reflections on Sandy Hook       The Deliberate Agrarian

"I’ll bet that there are plenty of people in this country who are appalled and disturbed by the Newtown shooting, but who declare that they are "pro-choice." These people don't much care about unborn children that are literally ripped from their mother’s womb’s. Many of these unborns are fully formed, fully alive, fully innocent. And yet it, in the minds of so many people, this killing of children is acceptable.

I don’t understand. "



Newtown and the God Who Knows               The Anchoress



"People will ask, “where was God, in all of this.” God was in the teachers who pulled little kids into classrooms and went into lockdown, and in the first responders who got survivors to safety and reunited with their parents (pray for the first responders, too; they suffer — often in silence — after they have made safe). God was right beside everyone, and is with them in grief. Because he is the God Who Knows all we feel and experience."




 The Reality of Christ's Birth               Generation Cedar

"Perhaps the pristine stable looks nice, but we should rather remember just how lowly the King of Kings made his entrance. This too, God’s sovereignty, to show us how much he delights to exalt the lowly. Christmas–the ultimate rescue mission to save the lost and heal the broken."




The Peace of the Lord be with you always.   Amen.
















 

Saint Nicholas

Patron Saint of:

Bakers
Brewers
Brides
Children
Greece
Grooms
Merchants
Pawnbrokers
Russia
Travelers

(copycatted from American Catholic)


I got in a hurry choosing a Patron for the coming year, and I am delighted with what the Saint's Name Generator, brainchild of the lovely Jennifer Fulwiler, offered up.  St. Bernadette is a profoundly appropriate fit just now, and a figure I've wanted to study.  That said, St. Nicholas is really cool, and look at that list....pawnbrokers, really? 

MENU PLAN MONDAY

Is here - read and share recipes, techniques, etc, there or here....Happy Monday!

It begins...Veni, Veni...

Hoping your First Sunday of Advent is a blessed one.

Let Us Manage Ourselves

St. Paul in Prison

Hawaiian libertarian, who never fails to deliver, argues convincingly and still generously, once again, that critical thinking and right personal behaviors, not political group think no matter how valiant the cause, is what will effect the change we all hope for.  And even if universal change never transpires, they are the better way to live.


Profound statement of the week, from Keoni Galt:

Let us manage ourselves the best we can, to find the ways and means to live life as best we can...

This.