Poetry Friday

Dear Michael Scott,

No one
will ever
take your place
in my cringe-reflex
or my heart.
Pam's art show.
Need I say more?
(But I could -- a thousand mores.)
Replace you?
A cruel joke.
Good Night.

~~~~~~

Tabatha Yeatts has the round up today.

~~~~~

(Seriously, you must click through and read "Good Night" by Wilhelm Müller. It's clickworthy. Though, also seriously, if you know me you know that I will seriously miss Michael Scott.)

Bits and Pieces of Our Days

If you'd like to win a copy of A Little Way of Homeschooling, go visit Barbara Curtis at Mommy Life and leave a comment on her post before May 2, when she'll be doing a drawing.

~~~~~

Review News: 

Two very different books (both coauthored by Mike Aquilina):

The Mass: The Glory, the Mystery, the Tradition by Cardinal Donald Wuerl and Mike Aquilina

This will be a two-word review:

Buy it.

It's a guide to our greatest prayer. In light of the upcoming new translation of the Roman Missal, The Mass offers both refresher course and devotional, theological explication and practical explanation. You may think you know all you need to know about the Mass, but the Mass is the heart of our faith. Are we ever ready to stop learning and plumbing the depths of our heart?

(That was more than two words.)

Dion: The Wanderer Talks Truth by Dion DiMucci (with Mike Aquilina)

Fast facts:
*Dion is his real name.
*He reads St. Augustine.
*He knows that James Joyce defined the Catholic Church as "Here comes everybody."
*This is a moving, fun, and inspiring read.
*I am now going to tell people that I am two degrees of separation from everyone famous because I have spoken to Mike Aquilina on the phone, and Mike knows Dion and Dion knows everyone. Therefore, I think I'm related to Bruce Springsteen.


And one final quick review of a sweet dvd:

Brother Francis: The Bread of Life: I actually asked Ramona to review this one for me. She liked it. She felt it was a little "young" for her (she's almost nine) but I think it would work well for 7-8 year olds who are preparing for First Holy Communion.
~~~~~

My new favorite browser add-on: Read Later Fast.  Go to the link to find out why it's helpful. Or read it later.

~~~~~

I have completely missed National Poetry Month. It was sortakindanearlyalmost on my radar, but I have been so busy with other things that I've been ignoring the radar. Still and all, I am always, in one way or another, thinking of poetry, so here's a poem for a Thursday:

Emily Dickinson's To-Do List

by Andrea Carlisle

Monday
Figure out what to wear—white dress?
Put hair in bun
Bake gingerbread for Sue
Peer out window at passersby
Write poem
Hide poem

Tuesday
White dress? Off-white dress?
Feed cats
Chat with Lavinia
Work in garden
Letter to T.W.H

(Read the whole thing here, at The Writer's Almanac.)

Will I Have Time to Write a Post Today?

I hope so. I've been thinking a lot about homeschooling methods, ideals and realities.

But we're so busy here celebrating the Octave of Easter, downing Easter candy, polishing off the last of my extraordinarily chocolate birthday cake, and finishing off the Easter dinner leftovers (including this delicious sweet treat that masqueraded as a side dish) that we may be prioritizing Sugar Comas today.

We'll see.

Alleluia! He is Risen!

After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning,
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb.
And behold, there was a great earthquake;
for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven,
approached, rolled back the stone, and sat upon it.
His appearance was like lightning
and his clothing was white as snow.
The guards were shaken with fear of him
and became like dead men.
Then the angel said to the women in reply,
“Do not be afraid!
I know that you are seeking Jesus the crucified.
He is not here, for he has been raised just as he said.
Come and see the place where he lay.
Then go quickly and tell his disciples,
‘He has been raised from the dead,
and he is going before you to Galilee;
there you will see him.’
Behold, I have told you.”
Then they went away quickly from the tomb,
fearful yet overjoyed,
and ran to announce this to his disciples.
And behold, Jesus met them on their way and greeted them.
They approached, embraced his feet, and did him homage.
Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid.
Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee,
and there they will see me.”

~~ Mt 28:1-10


Painting: Bouguereau, The Three Marys at the Tomb

The Great Three Days

The Triduum!

Holy Thursday.
Good Friday.
Holy Saturday.

Easter.

It doesn't get more liturgically beautiful.

I'll be quiet here over the next few days, but will be back next week.

I Thought I'd Have Time For a Post This Morning, But ...

... instead I'm sending you to the archives: The Triduum, Kidterrupted.

Holy Week is here!

Quote for a Sunday

So take heart and listen.

As God looked at Mary, as Mary looked at Bernadette,

So God looks at you with love.

~~ Fr. John Lochran

(as quoted in Through the Year With Mary: 365 Reflections)

Poetry Friday: You and I by Jonathan Potter

From his Poetry Friday picks and pairings* to his general stupendousness (pick a post, any post -- well, any post except this one), Atticus is the best thing about me. 

So I was immediately smitten with this poem, You and I,  by Jonathan Potter. 

It begins

You are a warm front
that moved in from the north,

and then it winds through several other marvelous metaphors and ends: 

And I am the discoverer of you. 

Depart immediately and go read the whole poem here, at The Writer's Almanac.


~~~~~


The Poetry Friday round up is at Random Noodling.


*If you follow only one of those links, choose this one and then follow the link to see the poem paired with a painting. I may not possess the general stupendousness of Atticus, but I do get to lay claim to it. Thank you, Jonathan Potter.

Five Reasons I Love Him -- A Lenten Meme

Wonderful Pat Gohn of Among Women tagged me with a Lenten meme.

The rules: Those tagged will share 5 things they love about Jesus/why they love Jesus. Those tagged will tag 5 other bloggers and will provide a link in the comments section here with their name so that others can read them.

My Five:

1. 
He loved me when I didn't even know He existed; He loved me when I knew He existed but I ridiculed Him; He loved me when I broke down, sobbed, asked Him to forgive me my countless sins and transgressions. He loves me now as I stumble through my life as a Christian. I love Him because He first loved me.

2.
a.) He sacrificed His Body and His Precious Blood in order to save me. And He repeatedly offers me His Body and Blood, and saves me again and again, every time I assist at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

b.) Sacraments. They are like Divine Magic, minus the sleight of hand, plus the ooohs and aaahs. They stagger me. They are weird and brilliant.

3.
He makes all things new.

4. 
He laughed. He wept. He got frustrated. He celebrated. He grieved. He knows all things. He knows why I laugh, why I weep, why I get frustrated, why I celebrate, why I grieve.

5.
Confession! It's the best. Even when it feels like the worst. The worst becomes the best. (I told you He makes all things new.)

6.
Did I mention that He first loved me?

7. 
He forgives me for cheating at/ignoring the rules about memes and about how many things one should list.

Okay, the tagging business. I'm terrible at this. I promise I will try to actually, literally tag some people, but in the meantime, if you want to do the meme, please do, and let me know. Or, just leave your five in the comments.

Bits and Pieces of Our Days

I had a lovely post planned for Poetry Friday last week, but couldn't get it done because we were without internet access most of that morning. I have to admit that most of that morning felt like a month and a half. I am so used to high-speed-internet-instant-access-communication-at-my-fingertips ... it's always good to have it ruthlessly yanked from me in order to readjust my perspective. I was trying to make plans with two friends and their kids and I envisioned myself driving from house to house to confirm the meeting place when I remembered that I do have a phone. I picked it up and guess what? It worked. Sometimes those ancient inventions come in handy even as we chuckle at their quaint charm.

~~~~~

Anne-with-an-e took the ACT test on Saturday. She is Glad. It's. Over. We unschoolish night owls don't generally choose to be up at 6:30 on a Saturday morning, readying ourselves for something that involves math. The last time we did that was, oooh, let's see ... Never? Always a new adventure when one is homeschooling high school. At any rate, I'm really proud of her and she survived.

~~~~~

I am really proud of Betsy, too. Have I mentioned that my middle daughter has written two short novels? Two. I haven't written a single novel yet. I have some catching up to do. So fun to see her tackling longer works and now revising and editing. She brings a chapter of her novel to our writing group every week and she also has an online writing pal (Katie! She loves you!) with whom she exchanges work. Recently Betsy, Anne, and two other friends starting kicking around the idea of working together to write a novel. The authorial fun just keeps coming.

~~~~~

We finally saw Tangled. It was here-and-gone so quickly from our little local theater that we hadn't had the chance to see it.  So the girls bought the dvd and Atticus and I watched it with them last night. Great movie -- themes of light and love and sacrifice. Highly recommended.

(Eta: More discussion here.)
~~~~~

Other movies we've seen lately:

Get Low (Atticus and me) Beautifully filmed. Touching and lovely. But then, Robert Duvall and Bill Murray could sit in front of a camera and discuss their favorite heartburn relief remedies and I'd watch it.

Ramona and Beezus (whole family) Don't get me started. It wasn't horrible, and yet it was. Selena Gomez as Beezus? Kissing Henry Huggins? Really? This is a problem.

Elf  (whole family) Yes. We, too, couldn't believe we'd never seen it. "You sit on a throne of lies!" is now a frequently heard emphatic whisper around here.

Flipped (older girls and me) Loved it. So very sweet. Here's a great review from Roger Ebert.

The Goodbye Girl (older girls) They loved it as much as I've always loved it. They were delighted when I told them that Quinn Cummings is not only alive but has a hilarious and wonderfully written blog. As a matter of fact, if Anne-with-an-e's ACT score is delightfully high, I'll credit the QC Report. Anne read the rabbit posts while she ate breakfast that morning and her laughter had a whole lot to do with leaving the house in a buoyant mood.

The Lenten Update

Last week I mentioned that I'd post an update on all things Lent.

Sunday was Laetare Sunday -- more than halfway through Lent and this always seems like a good time to assess one's Lenten progress. A couple of friends and I had been assessing ours over coffee just a few days before. (My friends actually ordered something else, but, hey, I was focused on coffee, which I did not give up this year, although, if one is drinking Village Inn coffee one may as well have given up coffee up because the quality of Village Inn coffee is, well, wait ... I said I wouldn't complain this Lent ....)

Back to our conversation. What is working for you? we asked one another. Where were we falling down? Were we hard enough on ourselves? Too hard? Were we sacrificing the right things, the right amounts? Praying? Giving? What, what, what?

And I was struck yet again by how personal the liturgical season of Lent becomes. It starts off simply enough:

Pray, fast, give.

That's what the Church tells us to do. And it's a great prescription.

But the way it plays out in each of our spiritual lives seems to be unique to the individual. Unique, even, to the year and the season of life.

Last week, as I read through an old journal (I was looking for some specifics to include in a current writing project) I was reminded that one year for Lent I gave up a bunch of stuff: chocolate, coffee, snacking between meals, alcohol, TV, and I think something else. (Breathing? What's left?)

I don't mention this to get kudos for heroic sacrifices because these things weren't particularly heroic, though they felt monumental to me at the time, especially in the cumulative effect. I mention it because of what happened in that year. After that Lenten season, during which I was offering up all of my sacrifices for my husband's soul and conversion, he began to show a wee bit of interest in coming into the Church.

He told me he’d been thinking about the nature of evil, about how all evil really comes down to being separated from God. "And," he said, "I don’t think I want to be separated anymore. I want to be where you and the girls are."

This was huge, people. Atticus. The Man Who Would Never Be Catholic.

I don't take credit for any of it, obviously. God did the work. I would never claim, "Oh, yeah, I'm so glad I gave up Cadbury that year because that's how my husband found God." But I do cling to the belief that when we offer ourselves as sacrifices and prayers, He can and will use those prayers for good.

That's another reason that, for me, offering sacrifices that fall into both the "objectively good" and "objectively bad" categories is essential. It's one thing for me to give up complaining, but I also need to hear and feel my stomach growl.

How that plays out for me is different every year. I was trying to articulate this to my friends the other night, but it came out sounding so weak. Because, even though this year isn't packed with the same list of sacrifices from the miracle year I mentioned previously, I can still tell that this year, what I'm doing is working for me.

"How do we know when we're tackling the appropriate level of sacrifice and when we're just being lazy or selfish or making an excuse?" my friends and I were asking ourselves.

My only answer -- and it's not a very articulate one -- is that if you've ever dug deeply into Lent and have seen awe-inspiring results, and if, conversely, you've ever looked for a loophole and darted immediately through it, you just know.

I know when I'm fudging. I know when I'm darting. And I know when it hurts. And I know what kinds of deaths bring resurrections in my life.

"The way of perfection passes by way of the Cross. 

There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle."

(Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 2015)

I think it's good for us to wrestle and discuss and ask our friends to help us sort out what's working and what's not in Lent and in our spiritual lives. My friends and I had a great conversation over coffee (and whatever they drank), and in some follow-up emails about how individual our courses are.

But, in the end, my friends and I each know, in the depths of our hearts, whether or not we're letting God work in us. It would be lovely if one size really did fit all, but that's a lie, in both fashion and faith. We are too fearfully and wonderfully made for Him to fit each of us with the same garment.

"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 

  for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." 

~~ Philippians 2:12 

Quote for a Wednesday

And yet another reason I love Thomas Merton:

"Typewriter broken. And now the infinite God has to compete, for possession of my mind, with the image of a beautiful new typewriter with French accents on it." 

~~ from The Sign of Jonas

I'm at Conversion Diary, reflecting on Our Father's Name

Last month, I mentioned that Jennifer at Conversion Diary was putting together a series of posts meant to reflect on the Lord's prayer, word by word. I loved her idea, especially because as I first began tentative prayer I did the same thing. (Pondered one word of the Our Father at a time, that is. Blogging wasn't a word yet.)

Not yet baptized, wondering if I had to go to a church, and reading the New Testament to learn more about this Jesus person, I'd sit down to pray and spend time with just one word of the Our Father. If you've never savored the Our Father this way, meditated on just a single word or phrase, I highly recommend it. You'll find thoughts, connections, and ideas that simply don't pop up in the middle of a rote recitation. (Not that rote recitation doesn't have its place -- in times of fear or crisis, when my brain isn't working well, it's a gift to have a string of real words at my disposal that are at once a cry, a comfort, and a prayer of supplication. And, of course, formal prayer is not automatically rote, but that's another subject.)

So, please head over to Jennifer's to read the whole series, and share in my thoughts on our Father's Name.

(Graphic is thanks to Jen. I'm not that clever.)

Poetry Friday

Another Atticus pick this week. A pairing, really. He says:

"'The Lark Ascending' by George Meredith was the inspiration for the piece by Ralph Vaughan Williams of the same name, which should be listened to while the poem is read ... just a suggestion.... "

I'm taking his suggestion. So, start up the music:



and then click over to the poem, found here. Mix and savor.

May your Friday -- and your National Poetry Month (it begins today) -- ascend into something beautiful.

*****


The round up is at The Poem Farm.