Poetry Friday: Updike, style vs. content, and glory days

John Updike died this week.



Love his work or or hate it (and I've done both, depending on the book), he was an incredible craftsman. Listen to this, from the above NYT obituary:

He wrote about America with boundless curiosity and wit in prose so careful and attentive that it burnished the ordinary with a painterly gleam.

Here he is in “A Sense of Shelter,” an early short story:

“Snow fell against the high school all day, wet big-flake snow that did not accumulate well. Sharpening two pencils, William looked down on a parking lot that was a blackboard in reverse; car tires had cut smooth arcs of black into the white, and wherever a school bus had backed around, it had left an autocratic signature of two V’s.”

The article continues:

The detail of his writing was so rich that it inspired two schools of thought on Mr. Updike’s fiction: those who responded to his descriptive prose as to a kind of poetry, a sensuous engagement with the world, and those who argued that it was more style than content.

Oh, but sometimes his style was enough.

Which actually goes against the grain, in general, of what I believe about art and what makes art worthwhile. It has to have content, meaning. Some inherent value that is more than just beauty on display.

But, oh ... sometimes his style was enough.

Both as a poet and as a novelist, Updike wrote about the glory days of the high school athlete, and of that athlete's later life. Rabbit Angstrom is one of the saddest characters in all of American fiction.

And, Rabbit seems to have had first stirrings in "Flick" -- here's a snippet of Ex Basketball Player, a poem written in 1954:

Once Flick played for the high-school team, the Wizards.

He was good: in fact, the best. In ’46

He bucketed three hundred ninety points,

A county record still. The ball loved Flick.

I saw him rack up thirty-eight or forty

In one home game. His hands were like wild birds


Read the rest of it here.

And read more about it here, in this short interview, Inside Game, at the Poetry Foundation, in which Updike calls poetry, "the exercise of language at its highest pitch."

Oh, yes. Sometimes his style was enough.

Call me weak.

Poetry Friday is being hosted today at Adventures in Daily Living.

"Mommy, help me separate the meat eaters?"

Ramona gets concerned about grouping all those animals together on the ark.

When she plays with her Noah's Ark set, she separates the carnivores from the herbivores, out of concern for, well, you know. She doesn't want anyone chomped up during those forty days.

The pigs, of course, are a challenge.

We've Been Married for 25 Years Today!

And I can't decide what to post. Too many choices.

Should I post this one from last year, the marriage meme?

Or, this one, the anniversary post from our 23rd?

Here's one about what kind of father Atticus is.

What about this one -- "Add This to the List of Reasons I Married Him"?

Or, maybe this one about why the Gospel of John makes me cry.

Here's another meme: Eight Things About My Husband.

How about all those other Atticus posts? Especially the one about the fudge?

None of them tell the whole story, though.

The story is this:

God has launched us on a great adventure.

We are twenty-five years in, but it still feels dizzyingly new.

This could be because:

a.) we are pathetically immature, or
b.) we have short-term memory loss, or
c.) He keeps giving us new and stunning gifts, leaving us breathless each time, or
d.) all of the above, or
e.) some combination of two of the above, because these ridiculous multiple choice tests always have those silly combination answers that are designed to drive you mad and make your eyes roll into the back of your head and make you wonder if you'll have to draw a Venn diagram in order to figure it out ....
f.) Atticus is the best husband in the world

Put your pencils down. It's time for grading.

My answer key says that c.) and f.) are the winning combo, and if you, too, guessed correctly, then you, too, must have that happy, blessed and completely unmerited bit of grace called marriage-to-a-saint-I don't-deserve (with the only chink in the armor being that Stooge thing.)

I love you, Atticus.

Happy 25th Anniversary.

St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us, that we might make our multiple choices together for many years to come.

Celebrating Our Catholic School!

If you're Catholic ...
and you homeschool ...

you're

A Catholic School!.

Celebrate!

You are doing everything you can to give your child an authentic Catholic education. That's worth celebrating during this Catholic Schools Week.

Personally, I always think chocolate should be involved, but follow your own instincts. Our celebrations will also include cake. Cake is a necessity for any good Catholic school. And coffee. Teachers need coffee, so don't be shy about consuming gallons of it this week in the name of outstanding teaching.

If your celebration is particularly innovative this year (with or without chocolate) drop me a line and let me know what you're doing.

(Custom image thanks to ImageChef.com)

Happy Birthday, Mozart

More here and here.

What's wrong with Google today? They always commemorate stuff like this. And yet today, nary a magic flute in sight. Harumph.

Bits and Pieces of Our Days

Anne-with-an-e and Betsy watched Bella again the other night. They asked me, "What is Marvin Gaye?"

"He's not a what, he's a who. He was a singer in the seventies."

"Oh!" said Anne. "When Nina said she could use a hot bath and some Marvin Gaye, I thought maybe it was a wine."

~~~~~~~~~~

We are all loving a current, fun read-aloud, Ginger Pye. Eleanor Estes was the best kind of children's writer: she knew how children's minds work, she could sound exactly like a child, and convey the way everything in a child's world is weighted with great import, without mocking them, and without talking down to them. In this way, her writing reminds me of Lissa Wiley's.

~~~~~~~~~~

I picked up The American Story, 100 True Tales from History at the library, but haven't yet had a chance to peruse. Anyone seen it?

~~~~~~~~~~

Yesterday, when Ramona got up and I asked her, "How are you today?" she replied that she was "feeling chipper!" Such a good way to start a Sunday.

~~~~~~~~~~

"So you see, Ramona ... "

"... the reason I don't want you to stand behind me on this chair when I'm on the computer, and hold on to my hair, is that when you fall like that, you take my hair with you," she said, with amazing composure (if I do say so myself.)

On the Feast of St. Francis de Sales, and a new find

From St. Francis de Sales, patron saint of writers:

"Every moment comes to us pregnant with a command from God, only to pass on and plunge into eternity, there to remain forever what we have made of it."


"Oh what remorse we shall feel at the end of our lives, when we look back upon the great number of instructions and examples afforded by God and the Saints for our perfection, and so carelessly received by us! If this end were to come to you today, how would you be pleased with the life you have led this year?"


"Some say it is unreasonable to be courteous and gentle with a reckless person who insults you for no reason at all. I have made a pact with my tongue; not to speak when my heart is disturbed."

"Lord, I am yours,
and I must belong to no one but you.
My soul is yours,
and must live only by you.
My will is yours,
and must love only for you.
I must love you as my first cause,
since I am from you.
I must love you as my end and rest,
since I am for you.
I must love you more than my own being,
since my being subsists by you.
I must love you more than myself,
since I am all yours and all in you. Amen."

*************************************

And, look at this!

Daily de Sales!

I peeked ahead to my birthday, and found this incredible quote:

"You recognize thousands of imperfections and failings in yourself, contrary to your desire for purity and perfect love of God. In reply I say that it is not possible to avoid all of these. While we live on this earth, we have to put up with ourselves, until the day that God takes us to Heaven. Meanwhile, we can do no more than to keep a close watch on ourselves, and be patient. How can we correct in one day defects that we have contracted by our prolonged lack of diligence? Sometimes God has healed a person in an instant, without leaving a trace of his previous spiritual sickness. But in so many others He has left the scars of their conversion, for the greater benefit of their souls." (Letters 277; O. XIII, p. 19)

Scars. Oh, yes. He is perfect. Just perfect.

Poetry Friday: Good-bye, and Keep Cold

Good-bye, and Keep Cold by Robert Frost stirs my fiercest maternal instincts.

There is only so much we can do, no?




Good-bye, and Keep Cold
by Robert Frost

This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark
And cold to an orchard so young in the bark
Reminds me of all that can happen to harm
An orchard away at the end of the farm
All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.

...

I wish I could promise to lie in the night
And think of an orchard's arboreal plight
When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)
Its heart sinks lower under the sod.
But something has to be left to God.


Read the whole poem here at the Poetry Foundation.

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Laura Purdie Salas. Run over there and leave her your linky goodness.

On the anniversary of Roe v. Wade

John Paul II's words to women who have had an abortion:

I would now like to say a special word to women who have had an abortion.

The Church is aware of the many factors which may have influenced your decision, and she does not doubt that in many cases it was a painful and even shattering decision. The wound in your heart may not yet have healed. Certainly what happened was and remains terribly wrong.

But do not give in to discouragement and do not lose hope.

Try rather to understand what happened and face it honestly. If you have not already done so, give yourselves over with humility and trust to repentance. The Father of mercies is ready to give you his forgiveness and his peace in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

You will come to understand that nothing is definitively lost and you will also be able to ask forgiveness from your child, who is now living in the Lord.

With the friendly and expert help and advice of other people, and as a result of your own painful experience, you can be among the most eloquent defenders of everyone's right to life. Through your commitment to life, whether by accepting the birth of other children or by welcoming and caring for those most in need of someone to be close to them, you will become promoters of a new way of looking at human life.

Read more here, and read all of Pope John Paul II's encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, here.

Book review: Grain of Wheat

Fr. Michael Giesler kindly sent me a review copy of his latest novel, Grain of Wheat, from Scepter Publishing. It's the first of his books that I've read, but is actually the third in a trilogy that began with Junia and continued with Marcus. All are related, and tell the story of the early Church, of conversions, of joy and crosses.



From the publisher's synopsis:

Set in the second century of the early Christian Church, Grain of Wheat takes you into the heroic lives of the early Christians. Along the way, it shows the beauty and dignity of the Christian family, along with the power of the vocation to celibacy — a charism lived not only by priests and bishops, but by many of the lay faithful. These brave men and women, both single and married, followed Christ and spread his Kingdom while remaining in society. Through their courageous faith an entire culture was transformed, one person at a time, one family at a time.

This work of fiction draws on early Christian testimonies, as well as more recent historical and contemporary books. It continues the saga which the author introduced in Junia (2002) and Marcus (2004).

Grain of Wheat offered me the chance to immerse myself for a time in the faraway world of the early Christian Church but at the same time to see that, in some ways, their lives were not so different from our own. Friendships, family relationships, work -- all are affected by our faith, and our faith should affect all of these things. Acquaintances can become friends in Christ, and conversions can come from the most unlikely corners.

I also appreciated the way in which Grain of Wheat was written -- so gently, with the careful touch of a man who treasures what is sacred and knows how (when the plot requires) to refer to the profaning of it without wallowing in the details and ugliness.

I will have no qualms about passing this one on to teenage Anne-with-an-e, and I have a feeling we'll both want to go back and read Junia and Marcus, to fill in the blanks and spend more time with this heroic but very human Christian family.

How can I not share this stuff?

Ramona: Mommy! Did you hear that merciless laughter? (I was later told that Betsy had instructed her to call it that.)

Me: No ... what were you doing?

Ramona: We were having a tickle party! (She ran to rejoin the party, and called back over her shoulder), "I haven't had this much fun in years!"

Busy Ramona

I found some paper that Ramona had stapled together to make a planner. On the first page was written:

THURSDAY THE "15TH"

EAT
BRUSH
DRESS
PLAY FLOBBERING STAR
PLAY DOLL HOUSE
LUNCH
SINGING
CHECK EMAIL
SLEEP

I see that she has allotted an entire afternoon/evening to singing and email. Hmmm. That doesn't sound like a bad day at all. Perhaps I shall have to rework my plans for today.

And, please don't ask me what Flobbering Star is. I'm fairly certain that I received a lengthy explanation, but if you ask me, I shall be forced to admit that I either didn't listen, or I have zero power of retention.

Bits and Pieces of Our Days

Things we've recently watched:

Star Wars, with the kids. I call it "the first one." Some people call it "the fourth one," but I refuse to. A very young Harrison Ford makes it the first one.

Wuthering Heights (Confession ... I never read the book.) To fans of the book -- what do you think of this production?

Will Work for Food


Things we've recently read:

Lots of Eric Carle. He's Ramona's recent pick.

Mr. Popper's Penguins -- parts of it have Ramona helpless with laughter. When the service man (who refused to put a handle on the inside of the refrigerator) backed out of the house saying, "Sure, sure .... " to Mr. Popper's wacky ideas, I thought she'd double over. Now I love to hear her imitation: "Suuuure, suuuuure ... that's a fiiiiine idea," she'll say, backing away from me.

This issue of Kids Discover. Love this magazine.

This piece from the Omaha World Herald about Charles Schulz, and this factoid:

When Schroeder pounded on his piano, his eyes clenched in a trance, the notes floating above his head were no random ink spots dropped into the key of G.
Schulz carefully chose each snatch of music ....

On Learning to Read: Part II

Last week, I talked about how Anne-with-an-learned to read. I came away from my experience with Anne thinking that "teaching reading" was a snap. The only thing required of me was to read to my child, talk, talk, talk, and point out a few phonetic anomalies.

Then came Betsy. Different child, different brain, different wiring. A brand, new experience. I no longer felt like the SuperMom of Homeschooling. Was I doing something wrong?

No.

Betsy, who is every ounce as sharp as Anne-with-an-e, just processed things differently. Initially, though she loved having me read to her and enjoyed our family read-aloud times as much as Anne did, she was not inclined to watch the page and see what the words looked like. At one point, I noticed that rather than watching the page as I read, as Anne had, Betsy watched me, watched my mouth move as I read. Betsy wanted to hear the story, experience it, be a part of it. She was more auditory and kinesthetic than Anne had been, and so reading came to her in a different way.

With Betsy, I took the more traditional route of phonics rules and reinforcement, but I taught it with games:

• I made simple board games ("Read the word and move ahead three spaces.")

• I printed out Jan Brett's phonogram flashcards and we played charades with them. This was possibly one of the best things we ever did.

• I had her tell me a story -- she narrated it to me orally, I wrote it down, then had her copy it onto pages which she then illustrated. She then read her composition ("Jat's Bat" -- I still remember that the cover she made was decorated with glitter) to me again and again.

• We found Cynthia Rylant's Mr. Putter and Tabby series and Betsy loved it (and so did I.) We read those repeatedly, too, until she was reading them on her own.

This mixed bag of approaches worked, and Betsy began to read, and to love independent reading as much as Anne did. She just had to arrive by a different route, and I had to tune in to what would help her get there.

Today, they are both excellent readers and I don't think anyone would know which of them read "early" and which read "late" (and I'm glad that they didn't have to deal with such labels, which really aren't helpful and can be detrimental.) Though an "early reader" might make things easier on a teacher, the age at which a child reads isn't really important to the child or to her overall journey. She will read when she's ready, and when she's offered the right opportunities to be ready.

Quote for a Sunday morning

“Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly.”

~~ St. Francis de Sales

Poetry Friday: I'm Hosting!

I usually post Richard Wilbur's The Writer about every four months.

I see that I have allowed a scandalous eight months to pass without sharing this most beloved gem.


I'm appalled. I know what I must do.


The Writer
by Richard Wilbur

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top

....
Read the rest of the poem here ... listen to it here. And, for an interview with Richard Wilbur, go here, to the Poetry Foundation.
....

Mr. Linky awaits your contributions to today's Poetry Friday round-up. Please leave a link to your post as well as a comment. I'll be rounding up the links and providing color commentary as often as I can during the day. Thanks!
....

11:15 AM:
Updated to note: Some plumbing problems and real life are getting in the way of blogging. :) Please enjoy all the Poetry Friday links via Mr. Linky, and check the comment box, too, in case the LinkMeister is being petulant with anyone. I've tried to go ahead and add anyone who wasn't already showing up in Mr. Linky. Sorry not to be able to provide a more in-depth round-up this week!

Bits and Pieces of Our Days

Hamster Trauma:

The other day, Anne-with-an-e came running upstairs, holding onto Blanche the Hamster, quite upset. Anne had just rescued poor little Blanche from the mouth -- yes, she pulled the hamster right out of the mouth -- of this guy:


Apparently, he was planning to enjoy his snack away from prying eyes (and hands) as he had not yet chomped down. We're so happy Anne spotted him en route to his picnic.

~~~~~~~~~~

Weather Whine:

The temps are below zero here. Again. I know ... it's Nebraska. It's winter. I know. I should expect it to be cold. I'm a little tired of it being so cold, though. However, I am feeling grateful for the not-so-little details of my life: at least I'm not twisting and burning hay to stay warm, as Laura Ingalls did. Thank you, God, for furnaces, and hot water and warm clothes and hot meals.

~~~~~~~~~~


Tonight, Ramona said, "Mommy, I love you more than I can type!" Aaahhh ... a true blogger's daughter.

~~~~~~~~~~

Upon surveying a print of Nighthawks that hangs in in our stairway, Ramona began to narrate:

"The guy in the hat is saying, 'Darn! I forgot my spy gear.' And, 'Why do I always get the odd people?' says the guy behind the counter."





~~~~~~~~~~

On Learning to Read: An Introduction

How do children best learn to read?

I can't answer that. I'm not a reading expert; I can't even name the many, varied methods with accuracy. What I can tell you about is how my children learned to read.

I always say that God tricked me into homeschooling because my first child learned to read so painlessly. It left me thinking, "I am SuperMom! I will be the Wonder Woman of Homeschooling! I can do anything!" My brilliant children would absorb all necessary knowledge by a sort of academic osmosis, because I'd bathe them in a rich learning environment. Everything would simply happen, as reading had happened for Anne.

It was, it seemed to me, something like this passage from To Kill a Mockingbird:

"Teach me?" I said in surprise. "He hasn't taught me anything, Miss Caroline. Atticus ain't got time to teach me anything," I added, when Miss Caroline smiled and shook her head. "Why, he's so tired at night he just sits in the living room and reads."

Indeed. I wouldn't have to teach anything. Reading to Anne was all I'd done. I read to her, Atticus read to her. When she asked questions about letters, sounds and words, we answered them. When we played with her Sesame Street bathtub sponge letters, we made words, spelled out her name. When she looked at the pages as we read picture books, we pointed out what we were doing, running fingers under the sentences, so she could see what particular words looked like, where sentences began and ended. Not that we talked about any of this. We just did it.

One day, when I went to pick Anne up from preschool, her teacher told me Anne had read a book to the class. "She read it," the teacher said, with an expression I couldn't quite decipher. Perhaps it was a bit of what Scout Finch's teacher showed:

... after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste.

"Yeah, she's been doing that," I told the teacher, thinking that this was how all children learned to read. (Of course, Anne's somewhat precocious reading didn't stop the teachers from being critical of other things ... I remember the "messy handwriting" comment that prompted me to check out a couple more books from the library on homeschooling, muttering all the while, "Messy? She's four! It's supposed to be messy! I can do this. I can teach. Where's that book by David Guterson?")

So. That's how Anne learned to read. The Scout Finch way. We had simply substituted Clifford and Charlotte's Web for the newspaper:

Now that I was compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of shoelaces. I could not remember when the lines above Atticus's moving finger separated into words, but I had stared at them all the evenings in my memory, listening to the news of the day, Bills To Be Enacted Into Laws, the diaries of Lorenzo Dow -- anything Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled into his lap every night.
                                             

Next up:

Guess what? Children Are Different!

Not that quiet

Tonight's conversation:

Ramona: Can I play some more after our snack?

Me: No, it's time for bed. Time to read quietly in your room.

Ramona: Quietly? Does it have to be quiet? Do we have to act like mimes?

Ramona's latest reads

Last night before bedtime, Ramona finished reading A Bear Called Paddington, and was quite proud of herself, as it's the "biggest chapter book" she's read so far. I'm thinking about a post on how children learn to read (or, more specifically, how my children learn to read), but that may not happen today.



So, in the meantime, here are some other books we're enjoying:



Betsy got Walter Wick's Optical Tricks from the library, and we all had fun with it yesterday. Betsy's so interested in optical illusions at the moment that we also ordered A Little Giant Book: Optical Illusions and spent some time poking around M.C. Escher's website.





Snowflake Bentley is a must in January, as is cutting out a blizzard of homemade snowflakes. That's on the to-do list this week.






The Snowflake : A Water Cycle Story had the kind of lovely illustrations that appeal to me, but the story left Ramona squirming and restless. Too much science lesson, too little personification, not enough story.






Ramona plucked Slop!: A Welsh Folktale from the library shelf, and it was new to me. We both enjoyed this sweet story, based on Welsh folklore.

And that's it -- I'm out of blogging time this morning!

I'm Tweeting! (Or is it Twitter-pated?)

Because, you know, we all need to increase our computer time, right?

My Twitter page is here.

How You Know You've Been Thinking About New Year's Resolutions

That basket of cookbooks -- the one that's been sitting on top of the fridge? -- can now be seen sitting on your kitchen counter.

Oh, you're so proud.

But, ummm ... you really need to dust those books off.

Ever feel like doing this?

Via my friend, Heather:

Quotable Ramona

~~~~~~~~~~

Ramona: It is so sad when a person's M&Ms are gone.

~~~~~~~~~~

Ramona: I sure hope I don't lose my reading privilege tomorrow.

Me: Why would you lose a privilege tomorrow? Are you planning to break any rules?

Ramona: Well, no, I'm not planning to. But, if you make me mad ....

~~~~~~~~~~

Book reviews: Grace Cafe and The Domestic Church

Donna Marie Cooper O'Boyle is a prolific writer. Her latest books -- yes, plural! Two of them! -- are as lovely and inspirational as her other work, most of which is built on the conviction that mothers are living out an indispensable vocation.



Grace Cafe offers "recipes" that will nourish any mother, perhaps especially anyone struggling with her vocation as a stay-at-home mom. I readily identified with this passage:

"Others would say, 'Oh, it's nice that you have the luxury to stay home.'

Yet I believe that it is not a luxury. It is a choice and a decision to do without some material things and comforts ...."

This has certainly been true in our case. At times, it doesn't feel like a luxury at all to be at home, but rather like the sacrifice that it is. Don't get me wrong -- I love being an at-home mom, and it is a privilege. But a privilege is not the same as a luxury. Serving God is always a privilege, even when it's hard. Financially, emotionally, and in other ways, being a stay-at-home mom can be hard. But mothering has eternal value, and Donna-Marie knows this truth.

The truth is reinforced with quotes from Scripture, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II, and various saints. And, don't all moms need such authoritative and powerful reinforcement? Particularly the kind that helps us to find holiness within our homes, rather than encouraging us to seek it elsewhere. Grace Cafe includes one of my favorite quotes on holiness for moms:

"It is most laudable in a married woman to be devout, but she must never forget that she is a housewife. And sometimes she must leave God at the altar to find him in her housekeeping."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Domestic Church: Room by Room covers much of the same territory, but Donna-Marie never seems to exhaust it. Though an individual would benefit from reading, this book is arranged as a study guide for a group, with discussion questions at the end of each section. (And, pssst ... don't worry, busy moms -- the answers are there, too! So don't worry about passing class.)

The Domestic Church, like all of Donna-Marie's books, backs up its exhortation with solid sources such as quotes from Scripture, encyclicals and saints.

I love Donna-Marie's realism, too. In this book, she includes a beautiful quote from Blessed Teresa of Calcutta:

"A living love hurts. Jesus, to prove His love for us, died on the Cross. The mother, to give birth to her child, has to suffer. If you really love one another properly, there must be sacrifice."

And she honestly addresses "temptations to abandon the heart of the home," noting that mothers can get discouraged, or feel unrecognized and unappreciated. She writes: "A mother who is fighting this interior battle may feel, or even state that she is 'just' a mother. I have heard this so often, and I will tell the mom that she is 'not just a mother!'"

This is the heart of Donna's message, and this is her mission: to help other moms realize that their work is a vital, vibrant, holy vocation.

I highly recommend Donna-Marie's books to newly married women and new mothers, and to moms of any age who seek encouragement and affirmation in their vocation.

And so, dear moms, if you have any doubts about the worth of your daily struggles, sacrifices and joys, dig into these books. When you've finished, you'll close them with a contented sigh, knowing that someone out there understands your worth and knows what you're going through ... that you are storing up treasures in heaven.

Twelfth Night!

It's still Christmas!

Though we American parishes celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany on Sunday, today is the Twelfth Day of the Christmas season, so feel free to celebrate the Epiphany again tomorrow. We plan to.

We made King's Bread (aka St. Lucia bread) today and although we're easing back into our "real life" routines this week (poor Atticus had to head back to work), we'll certainly take tomorrow off.

As Connie's Daughter reminded us in the comments on this post, even though tomorrow brings the Twelve Days to a close, we're still liturgically in the Christmas season until the Baptism of the Lord, on Sunday, Jan. 11th. The Catholic Culture link from the post I just mentioned has activities and recipes through that day (eighteen full days of fun) in addition to the twelve.

We just did gingerbread houses:



and I imagine we can find a few more things to read, eat and celebrate this week.

Merry Christmas!

Sharing the wealth of news

from the Inbox:

Italian priest and web designer, Fr. Paolo Padrini, has developed the iBreviary, which has been approved by the Vatican. Cool, huh? (Proceeds go to charity.) See details here and here. (Fr. Joe, are you listening? This is you all over.)

**********

Maureen Wittmann is techno-savvy, too. She's offering web seminars at Homeschool Connections. If you missed her presentation on "Organizing Your Classroom" you can still find it, and the next session, on January 7th, features Danielle Bean (though it looks like that one's already full! Be on the lookout for more to come.)

Maureen is also looking for your ideas for future topics, so visit her soon.

**********

Atticus and I help, in a tiny way, to sponsor a great missionary couple, from FOCUS, Joshua and Elisabeth Gideon. Joshua recently shared a copy of Curtis Martin's new book, Made for More. Find out more here, at the website.

Some quotes from students (students can get a free copy of the book, and can ask questions through the website):

“Made for More has helped provide a foundation for my faith that I never had in my upbringing. It's helped solidify my knowl­edge as to who Jesus is and has cleared any misconceptions that I've had of the foundation of the faith."

~Wendy, SDSU Senior


"Made For More is exactly what a college student who is strug­gling with their faith needs. It leaves readers with no other choice but to understand Jesus Christ as Savior. It truly shows students that they were not made for any ordinary life but made as children of God to live in His extraordinary love.”

~ Ben, Bradley University Senior

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Poetry Friday: Of Brain Cells and Eliot

Sometimes, on a Thursday night, I plop down on the couch, look at Atticus and ask, "What do I want to post for Poetry Friday tomorrow?"

He always has an erudite reply and an intriguing suggestion. He's an intelligent, fascinating man. I used to fancy myself equally intelligent and fascinating (weeelll, maybe not equally but close enough to hold my own in a good poetry discussion), and I considered us a perfect match. Several years ago, I could keep up with all his Wallace Stevens talk. Then I had children. For a few years, when sleep was so elusive, my mind started to slip. The "Emperor of Ice Cream" began to sound like a character on the Disney channel.

Anyway, in answer to the learned suggestions of Atticus, I usually stare into space a moment, take a sip of wine and say something like, "I think I'll write a poem about Putty," or "I'll just do Billy Collins again."

These exchanges often remind me of a scene from Annie Hall in which Woody Allen and Diane Keaton are in a bookstore, and he says, "Here, I think you'd like to read this, uh, instead of that cat book."

So, in order not to buy a cat book today (though I must add the disclaimer that my beloved Billy Collins is not a cat book -- the metaphor refers to the state of my mind and has nothing to do with his poetry, which I much adore), I am posting Atticus's suggestion: Journey of the Magi, by T.S. Eliot.

At first I groaned, "Ohhh, Eliot ... I don't know if I have the energy for Eliot." But then, I asked myself, "When did you last read Journey of the Magi?" And I had to honestly answer myself, "I don't know. It may have been several Emperors of Ice Cream ago." So, I read it. And, as always happens, I was mesmerized. How does he do that? How did he carry around the reputation of being too scholarly and too philosophical to write poetry, and then do that? It's so good, such a perfect melding of earthly earthiness and the supernatural. Like Jesus Himself, really. Eliot captures that down-to-your-bones discomfort, the squirming and the revelation, the discovery that this isn't really my home. That knowledge which at first is both comforting and terrifying.

Go here, to the Poetry Foundation, to read more about Eliot.

Journey of the Magi
by T.S. Eliot

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
...

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different;
...

The full text of the poem is here.

The Poetry Friday roundup is at A Year of Reading.

from the archives: Being More Like Mary

On the feast of Mary, the Mother of God:


I dislike comparing myself to Mary, because it's akin to holding my Sculpey creations next to Michelangelo's Pieta and asking what kind of artist I am.

The differences are painful to see and ultimately laughable. But, I do it anyway, because it's good spiritual exercise.

Mary was a wife and mother, as am I. Mary cooked meals, cleaned house, and did laundry, as do I. There the comparisons end.

I imagine home life with Mary and I envision peace and serenity, because Mary knew that the mundane tasks of each moment were a necessary part of the whole. The meal of the day, the washing, the tidying and the clean-up of dishes ... everything had import and was approached as such. She simply did it because that is part of what the mother of Jesus needed to do.

This year, I will strive to be more Mary-like in my household tasks, approaching them with greater serenity and acceptance, knowing that all things have import and that my duties as a mother and a keeper of our home are a necessary part of the whole.

I imagine affection, warmth and laughter in the home of Mary, Joseph and Jesus. (Remember that scene in The Passion of the Christ in which Mary and Jesus are joking and laughing about tables and chairs? I loved that.)

This year, I'll thank God for all the laughter in our home, knowing He is the author of such joy, and I'll strive to find and hold on to the humor in those inevitable days that crop up (you know ... the ones that will not, at first glance, seem to hold any humor.)

Mary's faith was bare and heroic, as Romano Guardini said in this old article at Godspy. Again and again, she had to endure pain and separation and yet her faith didn't -- couldn't -- waver.

This year, in my walk with God, when I feel distance from Him, though I can't resolve to have such faith (as only God can grant it) I can resolve to pray for it always, to ask to be more like Mary in my faith.

I don't know that Mary would have blogged ... she pondered musings in her heart, rather than blabbing them to the world. She pondered, prayed, and she listened.

This year, though I won't resolve not to blog (or blab, as it were) I can resolve to continue pondering things in my heart and to ask the Lord to make His answers to my ponderings clearer to me.

If God however, asks me to quit blogging, I will. He'll have to be very loud and clear about it, though.

Like Mary, I pray I'll be listening.

(Painting: Polish Madonna)