All Aboard!

Rock the Vote Friday

So I'm a little late at opening the polls today. Before someone starts throwing around accusations of voter fraud, let me just tell you that Mommy, Paul, and Lucy spent a very long morning at the hospital getting some x-rays of little Lucy's head. Two hours in the hospital waiting room was two hours too long.

But let's get down to business...

Peeps or chocolate bunnies for Paul's Easter basket?

Looking ahead...

So even though my oldest child just turned two, like any good Type-A personality, I've begun copious research on educational options. Currently, I've been researching homeschooling and came across this great article in First Things by a homeschooling mom. It is one of the best, and shortest, essays on the benefits of homeschooling I've come across thus far.

Happy Six-Month Birthday!

"A child's eyes, those clear wells of undefiled thought--what on earth can be more beautiful? Full of hope, love and curiosity, they meet your own." - Lady Caroline Sheridan Norton

(By the way, I meant to post this yesterday - Lucy's six-month birthday. The day just got away from me, though. Go figure.)

Too Cute

Aunt Ruth is letting Paul play with her cell phone today. He wants to take a picture of himself, so Aunt Ruth helps him do so. Paul looks at his picture. Pausing a moment, Paul announces, "Cute."

One in a Million...

The New York Times actually ran a piece worth reading! Yesterday they did a pretty decent article on Fr. Groeschel.

The Feast of the Annunciation

The Annunciation

by Edwin Muir

The angel and the girl are met.
Earth was the only meeting place.
For the embodied never yet
Travelled beyond the shore of space.
The eternal spirits in freedom go.
See, they have come together, see,
While the destroying minutes flow,
Each reflects the other’s face
Till heaven in hers and earth in his
Shine steady there. He’s come to her
From far beyond the farthest star,
Feathered through time. Immediacy
Of strangest strangeness is the bliss
That from their limbs all movement takes.
Yet the increasing rapture brings
So great a wonder that it makes
Each feather tremble on his wings.
Outside the window footsteps fall
Into the ordinary day
And with the sun along the wall
Pursue their unreturning way.
Sound’s perpetual roundabout
Rolls its numbered octaves out
And hoarsely grinds its battered tune.
But through the endless afternoon
These neither speak nor movement make,
But stare into their deepening trance
As if their gaze would never break.

Backseat Driver

Over the past two weeks, Paul has become a backseat driver. Needless to say, driving with Paul has become a less than exhilarating experience. In fact, it has become downright annoying. We repeat the same unfortunate conversation at almost every red stoplight.

Paul: “Go, Momma, Go.”

Me: “The light is red, Paul. Red means stop. Green means go.”

Paul is unconvinced. More insistently, Paul: “Go, Go, Go!”

Me: “It is not our turn. We must wait until the light is green.”

Paul: “Paul’s turn! Go! Go!”

I give up and retreat into silence. Alas, Paul does not. With much whining and flailing of arms and legs, Paul continues to insist that we go…immediately, if not sooner. Just when it seems my nerves have reached their ultimate limit, the light turns green.

Me: “The light is green, Paul. It is our turn.”

Exultantly, Paul: “Paul’s turn! Yaaay! Wheee!”

Sadly, we live in suburbia. This necessitates that we encounter a stoplight about every thirty seconds.

Maybe the Lord is offering me the opportunity to practice the virtue of patience.

Maybe He is giving me a good example of what I look like when I try to control everything in my life – a little, impatient toddler sitting in the backseat, unable to see the road and unaware of its laws, acting like I know what is best for me.

Maybe He is hinting that some drivers in our household (who shall remain nameless) should model more courteous driving behavior to their son.

For My Shelby County Readers

Here is a link to a great blog by Fr. Martin Fox, the pastor for St. Boniface and St. Mary's Catholic Churches in Piqua. Big discussion about Latin and the Mass over there right now. Enjoy.

And the winner is...

Lucy would like to thank everyone for participating in Rock the Vote Friday. She is very happy with the winning suit. Looking forward to more fun next Friday.

Rock the Vote

So I've decided to add a weekly feature here on Ordinary Time, "Rock the Vote Friday." This week Lucy would like you to cast your vote to help decide on this summer's swimming suit. The polls are now open.

Greenhouse Gases

You can't imagine the relief I felt when reading this article. Not that kind of relief. I was just so happy to know that we humans don't carry all the blame for global warming. It seems that cows are also real contributors to greenhouse gases, in the most literal sense.

If we could only create such a pill for men, we could probably eliminate the threat of global warming completely. Let's get on it, Al Gore.

On Mothers

Women know
The way to rear up children (to be just);
They know a simple, merry, tender knack
Of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes,
And stringing pretty words that make no sense,
And kissing full sense into empty words;
Which things are corals to cut life upon,
Although such trifles.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Aurora Leigh

Modern Day Superheroes

Every morning this past week, I have had the same exact conversation with Paul on our way to morning Mass. Desperately trying to encourage good behavior at Mass, I try to prepare him each morning with a little pep talk in the car.

Me: “We are going to church, Paul. Paul needs to be quiet and stay close to Momma.”

Paul: “Church.”

Me: “Yes, Paul, we are going to church.”

Excitement growing in his voice, Paul: “Priest!” (actually it sounds like “peest”)

Me: “Yes, Paul, we are going to see the priest.”

Even more enthusiastically, Paul: “Priest, Priest!”

Growing thoughtful, Paul: “Purple.”

This one confuses me for a moment….Me: “Yes, Paul, the priest wears purple because it is Lent.”

This conversation generally repeats itself over and over until we finally reach the church. We go into the church and sit on the benches in the back foyer/cry room area. Paul eagerly looks through the glass windows into the main church for The Priest. We are generally a little early so Paul gets worried when he does not see The Priest. Paul begins to call for The Priest, rather loudly. Finally, The Priest appears. Paul begins to dance and slowly tip-toes closer and closer to The Priest until he is hovering about two feet away. He continues to hover, looking up at The Priest with star-struck eyes and a shy smile on his face. The Priest gives Paul a high-five. Paul is in heaven.

This little drama plays out every morning. It is clear that to Paul The Priest is a purple cape-wearing Superhero. His obvious awe of The Priest leads me to a little self-examination. How do I look on our priests?

The recent priest-sex scandals in the Church and bad experiences with heretic priests have brushed the shine off my view of priests. And while these priests are the minority, not the majority, I often let the bad tarnish the good. The holy, humble priests I met in college and at our current parish have done much to bolster my faith in our priests, but I’m sad to say I often am initially skeptical when I meet a new priest. And I’m afraid I’m not alone in these feelings.

To some extent, maybe this is okay. It is good for the laity to demand holiness and orthodoxy from their priests. But what are we doing to help our priests achieve that holiness and orthodoxy? Most of us are probably praying hard for more future priests, but maybe we should spend more time praying and fasting for the priests we currently have. Maybe more prayers and sacrifices would help all of our priests become the purple cape-wearing superheroes our world desperately needs.

Some Light Reading

Very interesting article over at First Things, giving a pro and con view from two noteworthy conservatives on the Bush presidency.

Real Lenten Penance!

Friday muskrat dinners in Lent? Only Michiganders could think of this one! Now that is a real Lenten penance.

Here's the link to the full article. It is not for weak stomachs. Thanks to Danielle Bean for posting it on her blog. It has made not eating meat today very, very easy.

This is America, not France.

Over the last few weeks, I have entered a serious state of unease regarding the state of the Conservative movement. Oh, I am no naïve, rose-tinted glasses type…I’ve spent too much time in the trenches. I have long been aware of the fact that the Republican Party is not always the friend of Conservatives. But now I am beginning to wonder if Conservatives are their own friends…it is getting ugly, people.

It is dispiriting to watch a seemingly endless stream of conservative commentators and political operatives endorsing or joining the Rudy Giuliani campaign, despite his strong pro-choice stance and liberal stance on other social issues. The lives of millions of babies seems to be a matter of little importance for many of them now. Rudy can fight the War on Terrorism. Rudy is a Tough Guy. Rudy can win.

The rationale for this bare-faced abandonment of the Conservative Movement's basic values on social issues is ingenious, mixing truth with fallacies. The same argument is coming from across the Conservative spectrum: from Rich Lowry at the neo-conservative National Review online, from crunchy-con Rod Dreher, and from conservative columnists Cal Thomas and George Will. (See links for full articles)

The basic argument is that the scourge of abortion cannot be effectively dealt with through politics, either because it must be done through cultural change or because no politician - conservative, moderate, or liberal - really cares deeply about abortion. Therefore, since we can not really solve abortion through politics, conservatives need to become more politically mature and stop being one-issue voters.

It is an ingenious argument because it does contain some truth. Abortion cannot be completely addressed through political means. True statement. However, I do not know many pro-life conservatives who look at abortion as a solely political problem. We see it as a cultural and, fundamentally, a spiritual problem. However, working towards laws that recognized the dignity of the human person is one way to help Americans change their minds and hearts about abortion. Laws do shape a nation’s conscience.

It is also true that many politicians do not care deeply about abortion. But does this mean we just throw in the towel? For heaven’s sake, most politicians do not care deeply about any issues! Do we, the voting public, just then decide not to vote on the issues any more? Of course not. It seems to me the most effective way to encourage politicians to care deeply about issues is to make them realize they will lose if they don’t. I never thought surrendering was the Conservative way, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe there is too much French blood in our Conservative leaders.

Sometimes being a brother is even better than being a superhero. ~Marc Brown

American Art: Reality or Myth?

Time to talk about some adult ideas. I recently came across this post by self-named Crunchy Conservative Rod Dreher.

(Disclaimer: I am not a Crunchy-Con, but I find many of their ideas intriguing. Many of their ideas on lifestyle, art, architecture, and economics hearken back to Chesterton’s Distributism and the work of Southern Agrarians here in the States, movements I’ve found compelling, though have never bought into the ideas. Sadly, I have begun to lose respect for Crunchy-Cons as many of them have seemed to let their environmental concerns trump their pro-life concerns in the voting booth.)

Anyway, this particle post made claims that American conservatives seem incapable of producing good fiction, even good Art generally. The topic attracted me since back in the day when I still used brain cells on a daily basis, I wrote my college thesis on the state of Fine Art in America – does it exist and if not, why? Dreher extensively quotes an article by Daniel Larison to make his point that American conservatives have proven to be unable to produce good fiction:

"Part of the problem is indeed an excess of optimism, and optimism on the American right is one part Yankee, one part capitalist and one part Reagan. Whatever else you want to say about these three, they are not generally regarded as the fathers of great writing. Optimistic people typically are not the best artists, and I don’t just say this because I prefer the pessimists among us. Their frame of mind does not allow for real tragedy or real failure. For the optimist failure is not only unlikely, it does not ultimately, truly exist. The best days are always yet to come! But without a sense of nostalgia for a lost age or a lament for your people or even a full appreciation for the petty indignities of life combined with reverence for sacred mysteries (and sometimes, if a writer is really wise, he knows how to find the mystery in the petty indignity–see Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn), I think it is very difficult to write really captivating, good fiction."

While Larison makes some tolerable points about the over-exuberance of American conservatives, overall I found the argument that optimists make poor artists unconvincing. Maybe it’s just that one of my very favorite authors, G.K. Chesterton, was one of the most optimistic men I think the world has ever seen. Chesterton’s optimism was the right sort of optimism, though. It was not the sort of banal whitewashing of reality that Larison seems to refer to as optimism, but an optimism based on the knowledge that all creation, especially man, was indeed good because it was created by God. Yet at the same time, the goodness of creation and of man suffered because of the Fall. As Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy, “One could be at peace with the universe and yet be at war with the world.”

To me this seems to be the basis of good fiction, really all good Art. It needs to recognize the dignity of the human person while at the same time understanding the reality of the Fall. Art should be an expression of Truth since it is from Truth that Beauty springs forth. Only if the artist recognizes the Truth about the human person and creation will he be able to bring forth this Beauty.

I think the real problem with American art, by conservatives or liberals, has often been the lack of a true understanding of the nature of man and creation. (Maybe that was what Larison was trying to get at with his unfortunate use of the terms optimism and pessimism.) Unfortunately, our country’s philosophical and spiritual roots generally reach back either to the Enlightment’s empirical modernism or an extremely puritanical Protestantism, both of which lack a true perception of the human person and creation. While there are many other reasons for America’s seemingly inability to develop a thriving Arts culture, this seems to me to be the most fundamental.

Lucy's First Meal

Lucy: "I'm not so sure I like prunes."

The Battle of the Big Red Juice

A war is raging in the Bremberg household. Paul has developed an all-consuming passion for V-8 Fusion juice, also known in this home as “Big Red Juice.” A very typical conversation in our home is as follows:

Dancing with excitement, Paul pleads: “Juice, Momma, juice.”

Pulling the V-8 out of the fridge, I reply: “Okay, Paul.”

Paul: “Big juice.”

Me: “Yes, Paul.”

Paul: “Red juice.”

Me: “Yes, Paul.”

Paul: “Big Red Juice, Momma!”

Obviously, I’ve raised a genius.

Left to his own devices, the boy would be on an all liquid diet, consisting entirely of Big Red Juice. Probably about ten sippy cups of it a day. My current battle plan to reintroduce real food into Paul’s diet is to limit Big Red Juice consumption to four cups a day.

The battle raged for a few weeks, with many victories and few defeats. Then I was forced into a retreat by incessant whining. However, the troops have rallied and once more taking on the up the Cause. Still, the going has been tough. Today Paul was not to be distracted in his quest for more Big Red Juice. He pulled out every weapon in his formidable arsenal: whining, crying, puppy dog eyes, an all-out temper tantrum. I was a rock, impenetrable. Paul saw he needed a new plan. He left the kitchen to regroup.

Ten minutes later, I discovered that Paul had climbed down the basement stairs unassisted, a very rare occurrence in our home. There he stood in the utility room before the pantry shelves, clutching his favorite blue blankie with tears glistening on his cheeks, staring forlornly at the extra bottles of Big Red Juice. It was a pitful sight.

This ambush attack almost took me down…almost. However, I went beyond the call of duty and stuck to my guns. Ah, the thrill of victory!

So what's in a name?

I wanted to take a moment to comment of the name of this blog, Ordinary Time.

For those of you who may not know, the Catholic Church divides the liturgical year into seasons: Advent/Christmas, Lent/Easter, and Ordinary Time. The longest portion of the year is spent in Ordinary Time. Blah, right? Really, one might ask, how exciting can a season be with a name like Ordinary Time?

Of course, this is not the view the Church takes of Ordinary Time. While it may not be full of the intense preparation of Advent and Lent or the glorious celebration of Christmas and Easter, Ordinary Time is when much of the real work of the Catholic is carried on. It is the time when we must take the spiritual goods we have been given through contemplation of the Incarnation and the Pascal Mystery, and put those goods to everyday use.

As a full-time mom and homemaker, I’m slowly learning the value of “Ordinary Time” in my own Domestic Church. While birthday and holidays and vacations are wonderful times for my little family, I am realizing more and more that the real joy of my vocation is to be found in the small, the simple, the commonplace. By bringing Christ into the everyday, His Presence transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary.

The Stars of the Show

Lucy: Are you sure Paul's okay, Mom?

In the Beginning...

So here I go. I’ve taken the plunge into the world of blogging. For a stay-at-home mom of two, whose days are full of diapers, drool, and very dirty laundry, this blog will most likely represent the height of technological prowess in my life. Unless you count programming the VCR to record Sesame Street each day. Which I don’t.

I hope this blog fosters a sense of closeness with family and friends. I hope it becomes a forum to share ideas about Faith and family life and politics and literature, all the things I love. And hopefully, this blog will be a glimpse into my heart and mind for my children someday, replacing all those baby books I really did mean to buy and fill out.