Twelve tidbits to tide you over till tomorrow.
On Family and Community:
- The American virtues of autonomy and usefulness poison the sense of duty in the family to care for each other. If I must always take care of myself, I deny my family members their duty to care for me. That duty makes us better people. I try to remind myself of this when I feel I burden others with our family’s unavoidable needs. Gilbert Meilaender puts it well here from First Things archives.
Giving women credit that they can make choices. We are not just a bundle of “twitching nerves.” That this fertility awareness method is mainstream is terrific. - Community networks and organizations, like the local parish, helped mitigate the problems of age segregation highlighted in this article on youth culture because children were naturally around adults, teenagers with kids, kids with elderly. The more we separate, individuals may feel understood and better fulfilled, but there must be variety.
- Wouldn’t hurt for us to keep perspective about why we do the parenting things we do, like first-birthday parties. I wished we could have done something for my son, Peter’s birthday. It was a miracle he made it that far. But I was so burnt our keeping the other family traditions alive, we did not do a thing. And that’s okay.
- This woman: her writing is amazing, her story is amazing, she has been an inspiration and source of her. Her posts following the births and deaths of her twin girls gave us the courage to face our daughter’s birth. Here she writes about what she carries with her.
- Peter’s little guts are in a study right now, different goals as this, but just as amazing.
- Our family is making plans! Want to journey with us to Detroit to pray for our son?
On the Church:
- One of my favorite saints is St. Francis de Sales. Only after I met him and loved him through reading Introduction to a Devout Life did I learn he is the patron saint of writers.
- The Church will always offend someone because she is charged with declaring what is right and wrong. Even speaking with as much kindness as possible, the only way to not offend anyone, is to stop talking.
On Culture and Education:
- I hope there are newer films/shows out there that would benefit girls than this list presents (as these are mostly older), but I must say, I love many of the movies on this list for girls.
- Some good advice for any graduate student. I think it applies to us lifelong learners as well.
- Here is an article on The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis. In high school, I argued with a friend over what order one should read the Chronicles of Naria, whether in order of publication or the order of the story sequence. I cannot remember what side of the argument I was on, I often argued ignorantly in those days. This author is on the side of allowing the story to unfold as Lewis intended it, with The Magician’s Nephew coming first. Allowing authors to lead us through the story. There is something to be said for trusting the author to lead you through a story. If we trusted rather than deconstructed, maybe authors like Arther Golden would not have found it necessary to present his historical fiction, Memoirs of a Geisha, as an autobiography.
- There is a modern iconoclasm taking place in the United States. We worshipped civil heroes while blacking out their conversion stories or stories of weakness, letting our universities do that for us (Martin Luther King Jr., Christopher Columbus). Would that we understood a man can do great things, while still falling short.