Remember

Remember the Argonne Forest.
Remember Iwo Jima.
Remember Frozen Chosin.
Remember Khe Sanh.
Remember the Marine Barracks, Beirut.
Remember Khobar Towers.
Remember the Cole.
Remember "Desert Storm," "Enduring Freedom," "Iraqi Freedom."
Remember who fought for you, who fights for you, who fights for freedom.
God Bless our Troops.

A Pause For Worship

Hon. Daughter #1 picked up a short story class over the summer, and somewhere along the lines (I think it was the final paper on A Good Man is Hard to Find) we had a conversation about Flannery O' Connor. Hon. D. remarked that Flannery often put herself--and not necessarily a flattering portrayal, either--into her stories. Certainly overeducated adult women (occasionally men) who still live with their mothers (or other older relatives) crop up frequently in the Flannery canon. But other characters in the stories can also function as Flannery stand-ins. And Flannery can be as merciless with her stand-ins as with the meanest of her nonautobiographical characters, making her stories a sort of confessional of the typewriter.

I hadn't read any Flannery since college, but of late circumstances, not the least of which is that I'm now living smack dab in Flannery country (I could visit her old haunts of Milledgeville or Savannah in a few easy hours of driving) have been pulling me in her direction. The images she created are still palpable along many a secondary road, where teetering sharecroppers' shacks and farmhouse chimneys peer through kudzu and ramshackle towns that the interstates passed by dot the largely rural landscape. In short, Flannery's been tugging at my consciousness for some time now. So I picked up a collection of her short stories a few weeks ago and have since been reading through them.

I'd read A Temple of the Holy Ghost years ago, so it's been in my mind since the conversation. In a few stories, most notably this one, the Flannery/main point of view character is an intellectually precocious girl on the brink of adolescence, who is frequently impatient with the lack of perceptiveness of the older people around her. In Temple this character is summed up in a self-deprecating sentence that has become a stock in trade of the Catholic blogosphere: "She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick." (Ohh, does that hit close to home!)

At any rate, figuring out the child/Flannery was the easy part. There's another character of sorts (of sorts because he/she exists only in a brief description given the child by a teenaged cousin and subsequently in her vivid but not necessarily realistic imagination) whom I hadn't associated with Flannery before rereading: the Freak. The Freak is a carnival sideshow hermaphrodite (though that word is never actually used in the story) whose description springboards the child's imagination into a more profound understanding of the workings of the Holy Spirit and the human connectedness with God therein. (All of this is of course, completely lost on all the "adults" in the story, for whom the Freak is merely a prurience-enabling occasion of sin.)

Now I'm sure that a search of literary journals would show me thoroughly unoriginal in my assessment, but that by no means takes the fun out of the realization for me. It's not much of a stretch, because most of us feel like a freak at one time or another. I imagine that Flannery, struggling for most of her adult life with the lupus that eventually ended it prematurely, experienced that feeling as well. I think she voices her acceptance, and her determination not to let the thorn in her side dissuade her from spreading the Good News, in the preaching of the Freak as envisioned by the child. She's tough on herself, mind you, and on her audience. Speading the Good News is no job for sissies, she seems to say. But it is our calling; so buck up there, you.

I think it's a worthwhile meditation for all of us, especially when we feel overwhelmed by our own afflictions. To that end, I close with it here:

"God made me thisaway and I don't dispute hit," and the people [said,] "Amen. Amen."
"God done this to me and I praise Him."
"Amen. Amen."
"He could strike you thisaway."
"Amen. Amen."
"But he has not."
"Amen."
"Raise yourself up. A temple of the Holy Ghost. You! You are God's temple, don't you know? Don't you know? God's Spirit has a dwelling in you, don't you know?"
"Amen. Amen."
"If anybody desecrates the temple of God, God will bring him to ruin and if you laugh, He may strike you thisaway. A temple of God is a holy thing. Amen. Amen."
"I am a temple of the Holy Ghost."
"Amen."



Coming up next, we return to our regularly scheduled rant already in progress.

lenten meditation

No time to write today; will try to get back to my next homeschooling post later in the week. Meanwhile, here is Thomas Merton's well-known prayer from Thoughts in Solitude. It can be found, with translations in Spanish, Portuguese, French and Swahili, at the Merton Institute site.

I like this prayer, because it reminds us that we do not have all the answers (something we could all stand to remember!) but that through our striving to do God's will we serve him. And always, He is with us.

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

- Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude"
© Abbey of Gethsemani

kicking and screaming

...but finally on the new Blogger. As this has left me feeling in need of prayer, I submit for the benefit of all the following list of "Insta-Prayers For Each Meyers-Briggs Personality Type," courtesy of The Ironic Catholic and various others:

ISTJ: Lord, help me to relax about insignificant details beginning tomorrow at 11:41:23 a.m. E.S.T.
ISTP: God, help me to consider people’s feelings, even if most of them ARE hypersensitive.
ESTP: God, help me to take responsibility for my own actions, even though they’re usually NOT my fault.
ESTJ: God, help me to not try to RUN everything. But, if You need some help, just ask.
ISFJ: Lord, help me to be more laid back and help me to do it EXACTLY right.
ISFP: Lord, help me to stand up for my rights (if you don’t mind my asking).
ESFP: God, help me to take things more seriously, especially parties and dancing.
ESFJ: God, give me patience, and I mean right NOW.
INFJ: Lord, help me not to be a perfectionist (did I spell that correctly?).
INFP: God, help me to finish everything I sta
ENFP: God, help me to keep my mind on one th - Look a bird! - at a time.
ENFJ: God, help me to do only what I can and trust you for the rest. Do you mind putting that in writing?
INTJ: Lord, keep me open to other’s ideas, WRONG though they may be.
INTP: Lord, help me to be less independent, but let me do it my way.
ENTP: Lord, help me follow established procedures today. On second thought, I’ll settle for a few minutes.
ENTJ: Lord, help me slow downandnotrushthroughwhatIdo

Not sure which to choose, though. Thought I was INTP, but I redid the quiz this morning and came out ISTJ. Maybe I should say them both for good measure.

Yard eco: Beaucoup juncos, mourning doves, robins, mostly on the ground. Carolina wrens, chickadees, & chipping sparrows at feeders; some house finches, titmice, & of course, the occasional cardinal. Mockingbirds & brown thrashers hanging around as well. Baby thought she heard a catbird a few days ago; it had one of the squirrels' undivided attention. Yellow-rumped warblers, front and back yards in the last couple of days; great view of a downy woodpecker yesterday in the front yard! Wonderful stuff, that suet!!

GROUNDHOG GREETINGS TO ALL WHO VENTURE HITHER!

Christmas

He neither shall be borned in house nor in hall,
Nor in a king's palace, but in an ox's stall.

He neither shall be washen in white wine nor in red,
But in the clear spring water with which we were christened.

He neither shall be clothed in purple nor in pall,
But in the fair white linen that usen babies all.

He neither shall be rocked in silver nor in gold,
But in a wooden cradle that rocks upon the mold.

--from As Joseph Was A-Walking,
Appalachian spiritual.

When I was a seeker,
I sought both night and day;
I sought the Lord to help me,
And He showed me the way.

He made me a watchman
Upon the city wall,
And if I am a Christian,
I am the least of all.

---from Go Tell it on the Mountain
African-American spiritual

A blessed Christmas to all.

Thought for the day

...from Psalm 127 (JB) and with thanks to Henri J.M. Nouwen in With Open Hands (1972, Ave Maria Press.)

If Yahweh does not build the house,
in vain the masons toil;
if Yahweh does not guard the city,
in vain the sentries watch.

Dr. Moreau, call your office, et. al.

According to this Lifenews.com article, a number of clinics around the world are now offering face lifts and cosmetic injections using tissue from 6-12 week gestation aborted babies. Were this not grotesque enough, the article adds:

To obtain the cells, women in underdeveloped nations are paid up to $200 dollars to carry a baby up to the optimum eight to 12 week period when the fetuses are “harvested” for their stem cells which are then sold to exclusive cosmetic clinics.

Evidence again that one woman's "choice" is another woman's exploitation.
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Cynthia McKinney's district contrived to get rid of her again; anyone could have predicted she'd go out with a bang. According to local radio reports this morning, members of her campaign were involved in a scuffle. I'll post the link when I get to it. The AJC's site has some items on it today.

Dick Yarbrough, an Atlanta-based columnist/humorist, proposed McKinney's nomination as ambassador to Outer Space during her last hiatus. Perhaps she'd be so kind as to oblige us again.
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Iraq the Model present evidence in their Aug. 9 post that the spirit of The Onion is alive and well even in the Middle East. Who'da thunk it?
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Personal: Tripped over a dog and jammed little finger of right hand day before yesterday. Don't think it's broken, but it is pretty painful and swollen. Have been keeping it taped to adjoining finger as I figure that's what a doc would do if it is broken; hoping to avoid half a day at the office. It looks better today. Thank goodness; typing with taped fingers is tricky business.
Yard eco: Squirrel munchkins have reached a size that makes them hard to distinguish from the adults; Momma was looking awfully chubby atop the feeder yesterday. A second litter? Maybe I'm overfeeding them. Hummers plentiful; I think we have a number of fledglings among them. There was a whole family at the backyard feeder yesterday: a larger female, and a smaller female and male.
Harvest: Lots of bell peppers; a sort of bruising or insect damage is common on quite a few of them. I'll have to look it up. Still have some cayennes and eggplants ripening.
Knitting: Have to pull out a couple of rows of baby gift. Should be interesting with taped fingers.
For days that couldn't be worse, from Beginning to Pray by Anthony Bloom:
Remember the psalm in which, after more restrained forms of expression, suddenly David bursts out, 'You, my Joy!'...when we can say to God 'O You my Joy!' or when you can say 'O You the pain of my life, O You who are standing in the midst of it as torment, as a problem, as a stumbling block!', when we can address Him with violence, then we have established a relationship of prayer.