7 Quick Takes

1.  I forgot to post a link to yesterday's Small Success Thursday, so here's one now.

Come join us over at Catholicmom.com to share your week of successes!

 

2.  Decision Time!  She chose it for the art program. It's an intense 79 hours worth of course work in art, including a showing at the art gallery every semester.

The campus is beautiful, it's small and surrounded by gorgeous trees, beautiful architecture and the beach.  But what I think tickled her heart the most, was their crest: 

Which in turn generated this: 

http://legacy.flagler.edu/products/hogwarts-t-shirt

 

3.  We're deep in birthday paloozah now, with Faith's party with her friends tonight, and Regina's actual birthday Sunday, and the need to schedule her party with her friends for after Easter.  Tonight, it's pizza and the second installment of the Hobbit  for Faith and her friends while the boys take in Captain America with their dad.  The older girls will be holding down the fort with the littles and a separate showing of probably Frozen, but they don't know that yet.   

 

I've seen it.  It's a b-movie except for the production value and power ballad.

 

It's immature and sophomoric...I still laughed.  

 

Then there's the hilarious fund raiser Simcha Fisher did where she promised to sing Let it go if they raised $4000, they did.  You can help her friend with the start up business and watch her sing in fulfillment of the pledge here.  I love when she says "Oh shoot."

 

4. Our son Paul is starting to talk and that's leading to interesting and unexpected conversations.  Yesterday, Regina's teacher came over to visit with me in the van in the parking lot. She reached over and chatted with Anna who gave her lots of smiles and was equally chatty back.  Paul looked over and said, "HEY! I'm Over Here!"  So she stopped and said I see you there. He nodded his head, all was right with the world. 

 

5.  Hey Sherry, how is the writing coming?  Well, slowly, but more frequently.  I logged in 3K on The Soul of the Minotaur this week, and 1K on Penelope, who seems to be stepping forward a bit more.   

 

6.   This week is the Erma Bombeck Conference, and I see many of my friends hosting the seminars, and it's hard to not be there, it's hard to feel like this year, writing has been at best, thwarted.  Bad computer, bad timing, I'd planned to host two seminars at the Catholic Writer's Conference Online, but that fell through because of a family emergency, it was scheduled for the Monday following Dad's death.  I cancelled because I didn't know 1) how I would be and 2) where I would be.   I'd submitted The Book of Helen for a few opportunities, but so far, it's like a bad fishing trip, nothing is biting.  I'm reminded of my dad's story about praying to his mother for a fish, and catching a beautiful speckled trout almost immediately, and it was the only fish of the day,  Admittedly, I'd like to get a line in the water this year.  Successfully finishing the second book would be the equivalent of a pretty good fish in my case.    

 

7.  Sacrament Season Starts soon.   We've got one month to First Communion, two months to confirmation and three months until my newest niece gets baptized.  

Marc will be the Godfather. 

 

That's seven, it was more work than I thought it would be.  Happy Palm Sunday and hav a good Holy Week.

 

Cramming Catholicism

This week my daughter had to do some sketches for a theology class.  She was charged with crafting images that would capture the symbolic meaning of the sacraments in a new way.   "But what if I think the sacraments themselves capture everything they are without embellishment?" she asked.

While she could argue the danger of trivialization via simplistic or saccharine metaphors for the sacred, I still just smiled and said, "Yes, but then artists would be out of work."  She had the grace to laugh.  

But the reality remained, she felt stymied and stumped by the task. 

That morning, I'd overheard a snatch of a lecture on Pope Benedict and his writings.  My mom had given me Benedictus and I'd recently taken to reading the daily meditation.  However the book tended to wander from room to room with the business of our household and thus often weeks were lost in the process.  It remained an organic habit rather than a daily ritual.  I happened upon the book.  Opening to the date, the reflection was on Ezekiel and the creation of a truly human heart from our hearts of stone, and how Baptism in effect resulted in a spiritual heart transplant. 

I called my daughter and read the passage. 
She immediately got it and set to work with the final comment, "This is another example of God cheating Mom." 

God cheats she said.

He doesn't have to play fair, He's God.   He can forgive 70 times 7, He can pay the last workers in the vineyard the same as the first.  He can shine on the just and the unjust.  

God cheats with 1000 whispers to our heart every day of how He loves us, pointing out what He hopes we will see. 

My daughter came back with the first painting, the Sacrament of Baptism.  A font of water trickled over a heart of stone, turning whatever bathed in it into a human heart.  We talked a bit about how it could be better rendered, but the thought was there. 

God doesn't cheat.  He just knows we're not very good at studying for the test and likes to hold impromptu review sessions.