Hobbit-Sense at OneFreeGarden.com

Hi folks – sorry about the delay on Quixotic 1. I meant to get it up yesterday, and then I was trying to get it up today, but I think I’m coming down with something (very tired and just can’t think – I am however a stellar napper at this stage in the game), so I’m going to try to sleep it off and get this up tomorrow. Again, really sorry. I just cannot put it together well – the ideas are there, but I’m not connecting them well and I’d rather be late than incoherent.

Also, just a note to all the Russian readers who have been commenting on the blog name – thank you! I have removed the “sponsored links” from your posts because I don’t want commercial links in comments, but I left the URL in the information you signed on for. I don’t feel comfortable having sponsored/commercial links in comments themselves, but have not removed them entirely. Links to personal blogs and websites is fine.

Again, sorry for the delay, and I hope you all are well.
-Rosy

Another week, another Quick Takes.  I’m actually off work today (which is nice, since last week I worked 6 days), and I even did write these before today/last night.  Of course, after reading the morning paper, I think some are going to be adjusted, but I won’t be scrambling to hit seven for once, so that’s a reason.

1.  I have begun to accept that I can be a very angry driver.  I’m not usually an angry person, and I have driven quite long distances without a hint of road rage (and that said, my rage is confined to my own car – I still don’t tailgate, make rude gestures, or beep).  But now that I have a (not very long at all) commute to work that takes me on the interstate (and an exchange with another interstate) I’m getting annoyed at all the idiots out there.  I try to be a very courteous driver (somewhat suspended when people are getting on the highway and I’m in the slow lane – if they’re not clearly slowing down or speeding up to get in without making me change speed, I speed up), but I’m pissed that so many other drivers are whipping past me and zipping in and out of lanes rudely and unsafely.  So, now I’m trying to keep my cool and not feel morally superior because I’m a (generally) courteous driver.  This is I think what really irks me… my image of myself is faced with the reality of myself, which is quite adept at colorfully criticising other drivers.  I used to be much better at making excuses for why they were driving poorly (they must’ve had a bad day;  perhaps they have an emergency, etc.)….

2.  Working at a Mall, especially when there aren’t many people around, leads to boredom and a bit of ennui.  I have discovered that for me, this in turn leads to eating.  I pack lunches usually, but man that food court’s so close…  I’m hoping the “I really don’t have the money for this” diet kicks in soon, because it’s hard to tune it out, especially when the CCTV keeps showing chocolates for Valentine’s Day and how to keep whole nuts longer (you put them in a ziplock with a date on them for 6+ months, in case you were wondering).  On the bright side, writing these down definitely helped alleviate some “empty mall” boredom.

3.  I admit it, I am a font addict.  Were it truly up to me, I’d probably be doing different fonts all over the place on this website (luckily, common sense and the limitations of WordPress kick in).  I used to be able to look at practically any font my computer had and recognise it.  I can’t do this with every font anymore, however, because I have since discovered free font download sites.  I’ve got 185 right now in their basic forms, and you can’t imagine how I was practically drooling at hearing that Adobe has some font library program with thousands of them… the fact that the price tag matches is why I haven’t got it, lol.

4.  Childish dislikes…For the longest time, I was certain I hated onion rings.  Then not long ago I tried a little bit of one and liked it.  My parents had told me when I was really young I loved them, but then for some reason I decided I hated the slimey-ness of the onions (a total misconception).. that said, I’m still not recanting on asparagus and shrimp.

5.  You’d be surprised what people think is real gold.  The display at work is designed to catch your eye with really glitzy fake coins, etc.  But these look obviously fake to me.  Kids coming up, sure, they’re kids.. but adults actually pick up the coins and I have to tell them they’re not real.  They’re gold-painted plastic – it really doesn’t look that real (about as real as the fake $100 bills we have scattered around).  

6.  So, BC (known in some circles around here as “Barely Catholic” – not the most charitable, but unfortunately not entirely inaccurate) has put crucifixes in its classrooms.  I was somewhat stunned, actually.  What was more stunning, however, is the professorial outcry.  The students didn’t care;  the professors did.  I guess Jesus and the Church are anti-intellectual (despite the Church being basically the center of learning for atleast 1500 years following Christ’s death and resurrection).  If I, as a Christian, worked at a Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu university, I would rather expect symbols of these religions in every classroom and religious activities.  As long as I was free to refrain from worshipping Lakshmi, etc., I wouldn’t have any issues.  On the bright side, I did find a column by a Jewish woman whose daughter is an alumna of BC:  ”Respecting BC’s faith is an easy cross to bear.”

7.  Courtesy today’s paper I also found an interesting if disturbing article about a family mourning its pet.  Apparently, funeral homes are increasingly being used to hold memorial services for pets.  Yes, this is real.  Now, I love my pets, and I’d be upset at their deaths (I have, in fact, been very upset over a lost dog and a lost cat, and I’m thinking at 10 years old my tiny turtle is nearing his end (his species typically lives 10-12 years)).  But the reprinted obituary listed human parents, human siblings, even human grandparents.  I bet that dog was a great dog — but he was just a dog, he wasn’t human.  Color me old-fashioned, but I just don’t get this trend of treating pets like people.  

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So, I’m waiting for the library to get a hold of Man of La Mancha (I don’t know where my copy went) but I’m going to start working on the Quixotic Catechesis today, and I can tell you it’s going to be atleast 5 parts.  I’m thinking of posting a new part of it every Monday or Tuesday, and then doing an unrelated post every Wednesday or Thursday.  Again, my apologies for “going silent” in the middle of the week – once my coworker is back from vacation my hours should stabilise and give me a bit more free time to do this and also read more.  :)  Thanks again for reading!

-Rosy

I admit it, I really love some of the makeover shows on TV.  Not the ones that involve extensive plastic surgery, but ones that try to make a person over from the inside out.  There’s usually some point in the show where the person being made over finally starts to realise they have some intrinsic value (one a lot higher than their poor self-confidence reflects).  They then express their gratitude, and the hosts almost always tell them the same thing:  “You deserve it.”

Now, oftentimes the people are good folks who have been struggling in some area or are starting some new endeavor, and they really could use a new wardrobe.  They are often people about whom one could use the term “deserving.”  But the idea that one deserves a brand new, brand name wardrobe is, well, ridiculous.  They often have some (or even great) need for these things, but to declare that they deserve it… well, if they do, there are thousands, perhaps even millions, of others who do as well.  And if all those people deserve it, then all the others who do as well should be getting the same treatment –– which would be nearly impossible.  

Our culture is always telling people they deserve things –– the best, the most glamorous, the newest, etc.  The problem with this is twofold.  First is that it downplays the value of the things we really are owed.  When desert becomes about having nice things (and I have nothing against nice things), it distracts us from the things we really do deserve and need.  These are our human rights, respect for our inherent dignity, and our lives.  There’s nothing wrong with a new dress, a new car, or a new house, but by making them issues of desert, we give them emphasis they don’t deserve (they are only things, even if necessary ones) and it becomes easier to forget about the issues that really do matter.  How often material things have interfered with the needs of our brothers and sisters…

The other part of the problem is that it does away with true generosity.  If I deserve the new wardrobe, the hosts of the show are only giving what is owed me.  There’s no great merit in that, and no true generosity.  We do not say a man is generous for paying his employees;  they work, and he pays them as they deserve.  We say he is generous for volunteering his time, or donating to charity.  

Unfortunately, it seems like the idea of desert is creeping in everywhere.  I’ve seen it in schools, where people decide they deserved a certain grade, and have been wronged by a teacher.  I’ve seen it driving, where people don’t seem to think the rules apply to them.  There’s a new trend in parenting called “me time,” which goes beyond the need of people to recharge their batteries  to putting themselves before their children, or in the well-intentioned quest to buy a child everything he or she wants, because he “deserves the best.”  

But perhaps most sadly, I see it in religion.  Perhaps it is recoiling from the fire and brimstone, hell and damnation style of preaching so many were familiar with, or a few too many times being told they were going to hell.  I don’t really like being told I’m hellbound, and I don’t tell others they are, either.  However, a lot of us, myself included, find ourselves in this mindset that we deserve heaven because we make an effort, or we’re not as bad as other people, and in addition to being completely wrong (with a good dose of pride), we’re undermining the generosity of the cross.  If we deserve it, Christ’s sacrifice was no biggie.  Okay, it was painful, but if we deserve heaven then why did he even do it?  But if we really think about how much we need a savior, and just how bad we really are (easily closer to Hitler than Jesus on the spectrum of human behavior), then the gift becomes something to really be grateful for.  That is true generosity, and it’s amazing.  As we get closer to Lent, I’m going to try to be grateful that God doesn’t give me what I deserve, because hell isn’t where I want the last bus stop to be.

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Thanks for reading!  I’m currently thinking about a brief series I’m going to call the “Quixotic Catechesis.”  :D  Back soon I hope.. will definitely do another round of Quick Takes on Friday! 

-Rosy

Another quick takes.  I wish I were taking notes for this all week — maybe having to scramble like this will train me to be better prepared.  On the amazing side, I actually have finished these the night before – lucky since I’m working all day Friday!

1.   It never ceases to amaze me just how well organised God is.  Somehow, despite all my “best” efforts, I end up right where I’m supposed to be.  Of course, I should know this by now, but oh well.  My first buy at the gold stand was with a woman with whom I connected on a faith level.  I made a big mistake on a buy, but the person who benefitted had just had hours cut and had rent coming due.  I also have really enjoyed getting to know the folks at the kiosks near me.  I think I’m there for a bigger purpose than buying gold.. I know God can use me for that anyway.

2.  I think I’m going to start freaking the people at the Apple Store out, because I keep glancing over… I popped in quickly yesterday for the first time – I spent all of two minutes in there.  I don’t know why after drooling over it so much I was so sheepish about actually going there.  I clicked one of the click pads on one of the new MacBooks… and walked right out.

3.  I love the MacGruber/Pepsuber commercial(s) from the Super Bowl.  I especially loved that the real MacGyver (Richard Dean Anderson) was in it.  Pepsi has had good ads lately.

4.  Has anyone else noticed all the stroller contraptions out there?  I don’t have any kids, but having a large number of siblings younger than I am, well, I’ve got a better than average familiarity with them for someone my age.  The other morning in the paper the comic Baby Blues revolved around the idea of a “stroller system” and I’ve seen tons of newfangled ones…  I can tell you they may be able to switch from stroller to rocker to car seat, and are generally ugly.  Some doubles also do weird things like having one kid effectively under another…. wow, that’s a great view.  I think the designers are trying too hard.

5.  Brrr, it’s cold!  And nasty!  I acquired a fair bit of sludge driving home Tuesday night that froze behind my front tires, which is how I discovered it Wednesday.  Every time I turned, I heard a disconcerting grinding noise.  Luckily I was able to get the giant gross grey ice blocks off (eventually on one of them).

6.  I’ve started playing “A Living Prayer” by Alison Krauss and Union Station obsessively this past week.  If you haven’t heard it, it’s simply beautiful… I can listen to it and sing along with it endlessly because it’s gentle but really meaty prayer-life-wise, and has a lovely melody.  I especially like the last line of the chorus: “Take my life, and let me be a living prayer, my God, to thee.”

7.  I mentioned in #1 that God seems to have put me in the kiosk for a reason.  Well, I also feel like he sends people my way to help me out.  I’m not the most naturally assertive – I have a hard time starting the conversation, but I feel pretty confident once I’m talking to someone that I make a good case.  I don’t want to be the worst buyer, and while I’m planning my budget around the base pay, not the commission, it really helps.  So I sit there, a bit reserved, and just start asking God for help.  And amazingly, he gives it to me – I have been doing pretty well courtesy the “Big Man Upstairs.”  Lucky for me, he doesn’t mind that I keep asking.  

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Well, that’s this week!  Working on a post about the ideas of generosity and desert (as in, deserving something, not an arid region). 

Thanks for reading!

There’s been a bit of hoopla in the news lately about Pope Benedict lifting the excommunication  of four bishops who are part of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), which society was basically in schism for the past 20 years or so.  Shortly before he did this, one of the excommunicated bishops, Bishop Williamson gave an interview in which he denied the Holocaust (or Shoah).  And so when the Pope lifted the excommunication there was an immediate outcry about Williamson’s statements.

Now, I think there is a reason to have an outcry about people denying the Shoah.  My plans for law school are basically to focus on human rights abuses, and the issues I care most about are genocide and slavery.  To me, denying the sin of the Holocaust would be almost a second murder.  I am not, therefore, a big supporter of Williamson’s thoughts on the matter, or his shooting off his mouth.  But I do have some issues with the results of Benedict XVI’s lifting of the excommunication.  

Some have taken the opportunity to decry the act as implicit support of Williamson’s opinions.  Some have even called for the Pope’s resignation.  But it seems like the very same groups who criticise the Church for being “too dogmatic,” “unwelcoming,” “too strict,” etc., apparently don’t believe it when it comes to people they disagree with.  Any religion that has any “meat” to it (i.e. isn’t a “feel good” faith, but takes a moral stand) is going to alienate some people who don’t want to be told what to do.  But I think they’ve missed the whole point of church.

To put it plainly:  Church is for sinners.  In our circles of friends and associates, we decide who fits our standards.  We choose what we can handle in terms of other people.  Some of these choices are illegitimate (like those who won’t associate based on race, creed, color, class, etc.), and some are legitimate (people who exercise bad influences on us, with whom it is difficult to be happy or who try to domineer us, etc.)  

But Church (and I’m talking really about the whole Body of Christ) does two things we can’t do: 

1. It has standards none of us can reach all the time (and often most of the time);  
2. It will take all of us anyway (atleast where it’s really honest about what being Church means).  
   

Let’s be honest here:  come Sunday mornings (and a lot of other times during the week), Christians worship around the world is the largest deliberate gathering of sinners.  As I put it in my title, when we get together, we easily come together with more sin than a brothel on a busy night.

If you get the whole story, and not just what the sensationalist media reports, you’ll find out that another bishop of the SSPX told the pope that didn’t reflect them all, and put a gag order on Williamson.  You’ll also see that Williamson did apologise, and most recently has been told by Pope Benedict to repudiate his views.  But more importantly, Pope Benedict believes it is his mission to help heal the wounds within the Body of Christ, both within the Catholic Church and among the various Christian churches.  

Fr. Roger Landry, editor of The Anchor, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River, MA, puts it well:  

If the Pope behaved like a politician rather than a father, he probably would not have lifted the excommunications. It was a magnanimous, courageous move fraught with risks. First, many within the Church seem prone to view the possible return of the 1.5 million members of Society with as much enthusiasm as the older brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son for the homecoming of his wayward sibling. Benedict, however, has the perspective of the father in the parable, which is the only truly Christian frame of reference. 

(The full article:  Unity, Magnanimity and Lunacy.)

This is really the crux of it.  I know a lot of people feel rejected by Church because it tells people to go in the face of modern culture, to practice self-denial of our baser desires to live the fullness of the life God wishes for us.  But Christianity is also the only place that will really take everyone as he is and point to Christ as the “way up.”  I could keep “pontificating” but I think the late Pope John Paul II put well what the Body of Christ is really about in his Message for the 20th World Youth Day at Cologne:

Jesus is the Prince of peace: the source of forgiveness and reconciliation, who can make brothers and sisters of all the members of the human family.

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Listening to Christ and worshipping Him leads us to make courageous choices, to take what are sometimes heroic decisions. Jesus is demanding, because He wishes our genuine happiness. He calls some to give up everything to follow Him in the priestly or consecrated life. Those who hear this invitation must not be afraid to say “yes” and to generously set about following Him as His disciples. But in addition to vocations to special forms of consecration there is also the specific vocation of all baptised Christians: that is also a vocation to that “high standard” of ordinary Christian living which is expressed in holiness.

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Thanks for reading.  Thoughts and comments always appreciated.

-the Rosy Gardener

Before I begin, I would like to ask for prayers for Catholic author and blogger Amy Welborn and her family.  Her husband Michael, also a Catholic blogger and author, passed away suddenly yesterday, and if you can spare a few moments to pray for Amy, her husband with the Lord, and their children, I have faith it will help them through this sad time.  I am including this here, rather than its own topic, out of no disrespect but because I imagine that since this blog is still very new and I think including it in a lengthier post will garner more readers than a small one  on its own.  I can’t profess to know Amy in any sense, but every time I’ve come across her work I’ve been glad of it.  Requiesca in pace Domini, Michael.

UPDATE:  Danielle Bean has set up a paypal button to collect donations.  If you feel moved and are able to donate money in addition to your prayers, she has more information on her website.

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Apologies for having gone quiet – I haven’t become frustrated with the blog or anything, I’ve just been busier than usual.  One of my coworkers is on vacation so I’ve been covering extra hours (which will help my rather pitiful bank account and thus help keep this blog online).  But I haven’t forgotten – I’ve just been too busy to figure out what to write and then to write it.  But I’m here now and I’ve come up with something finally, and it will follow shortly.

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Thanks to Foxfier for the bit of encouragement – I’m not bothered by the lack of comments-  I hope someday to have a nice steady group of a few more but I’m grateful to any at all who read, and I hope you find it worth your read.  Thanks also to Fr. Dalgleish and Eva David – I have begun watching your videos, Father, and I am adding your blog, Eva, to my RSS feed and probably a linkback soon (I need to figure out how to make the list longer).  I have also found A Dish of Orts through the Guttenberg Project and hope to start reading it soon.  

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If anyone has ideas for posts, please feel free to email me with them.  I am also glad to have guest-posts if it fits in with the general “themes” of this blog.  Anyway, now to write the post (hopefully) before running off to work.  Thanks to all.

-RG