7 Quick Takes, 2/15/14

--- 1 ---

Yesterday was the third anniversary of the worst Valentine's day ever.  A month prior, my wife and I were surprised and overjoyed to be pregnant.  Our first ultrasound appointment (at 8 weeks) was scheduled on 2/14/11 and as it turned out, our baby had died.  It was a blighted ovum--one of those cases where they had no idea what happened, and it would have been impossible to prevent it.  That was a terrible thing to go through, but it brought my wife and I closer than we'd ever been.  We leaned on each other, our love grew, and we have a little intercessor in heaven.  

--- 2 ---

I've read a few Agatha Christie novels lately, and I highly recommend them.  I enjoy her books in general, but since I was a teenager, I've loved her recurring detective Hercule Poirot.  Appointment with Death was pretty good; Murder in Mesopotamia was very clever and kept you guessing until the end; my favorite of the bunch, Murder on the Nile, felt like reading a film noir.  I loved it!  Finally, a little misdirection (slight of pen?) made Peril at End House a great read.  It was yet another that kept me wondering until the final reveal at the end.    

--- 3 ---

For my serious reads, I've been slowly getting through two books.  Hillaire Belloc's The Crusades and Caryll Houselander's Reed of God (about the Blessed Mother).  The virtues of both books are that they're well-written; unfortunately, they're not the kind of books I can pick up for a few minutes before bed.  I have to really concentrate and take at least 15 minutes to read them... I don't think I could be diagnosed with ADD but I often lack discipline when it comes to reading.

The books are great for different reasons.  Belloc tells of the Crusades from a Catholic perspective, which I find very helpful.  The Catholic perspective of that part of history is no where to be found in any secular textbook or history class.  Houselander reflects on the life of Our Lady and... wow.  It's profound, deep, but not overly complex or heady.  I hope to write separate posts about those when I finish them.
  

--- 4 ---

February 11th has double special meaning for me, as it is the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes and the feast of my baptism.  The connection of the two amazes me.  It feels like Jesus and Mary had a plan to make me feel loved and special, and chose things in my life to remind me how much they did love me.  I had a very powerful spiritual experience at Lourdes in college; I married a girl who picked St. Bernadette as her confirmation saint; we named our baby (see #1 above) Bernadette Hope; my grandparents and great-grandparents had a devotion to Lourdes and had a "statue" of the grotto (which included statues of Our Lady and St. Bernadette); in iconography class in the seminary, we wrote icons of Our Lady of Lourdes (at my hopeful suggestion) and my icon is one of my most prized possessions.  And it all started with my baptism!  Thanks be to God!

--- 5 ---

Work has been getting harder lately, and it will only be getting busier in the coming months.  Unfortunately for my stress level--it's become an exercise in mental toughness lately.  Getting greater mental toughness is just like learning humility or patience: IT SUCKS.  There's only one way to learn... 

--- 6 ---

I saw on Facebook that Bill Nye was going to debate a Creation Guy... and I had a hard time caring.  I don't believe in a strictly scientific view of evolution just like I don't believe in a fundamentalist, Protestant view of creationism.  Other Catholic people have written about it, e.g. Jimmy Akin, who writes well about it here.

My problem?  Some folks think Catholics are brainwashed fools, worshipping statues and indulging in superstition.  And some Protestants think we're on the road to perdition for not taking the Bible literally enough (to which I say: John 6).  But the Catholic view on the creation of the world, I think, blends faith and reason.  Being Catholic, I'm absolutely biased... but this seems very reasonable to me:

"Among all the Scriptural texts about creation, the first three chapters of Genesis occupy a unique place. From a literary standpoint these texts may have had diverse sources [This comes from historical-critical exegesis]. The inspired authors have placed them at the beginning of Scripture to express in their solemn language the truths of creation [the "why" rather than exactly "how", in the Church's view] - its origin and its end in God, its order and goodness, the vocation of man, and finally the drama of sin and the hope of salvation [the creation stories in Genesis tell us about ourselves, first and foremost; and those are the more important questions than the origin of the earth... they have to do with salvation]. Read in the light of Christ, within the unity of Sacred Scripture and in the living Tradition of the Church [=Catholics have an authority to turn to in the Magisterium when it comes to tough questions like this, thank the Lord!], these texts remain the principal source for catechesis on the mysteries of the "beginning": creation, fall, and promise of salvation." (CCC #289)   

It's worth reading the surroundings to that paragraph: Catechism #279-302.  

--- 7 ---

2013 was a surprisingly good year for my sports teams.  The 49ers went to the NFC Championship game; the Dodgers went to the NLCS; the Timbers (MLS) went to their conference championship game.  The team that did the worst out of mine was Notre Dame, who had a decent but not wonderful year.  I wonder how 2014 will turn out... one of my teams is overdue to win a championship.  The Niners last won in 1994, the Dodgers and Notre Dame last winning in 1988.  The Timbers have only been in MLS a few years, and I've only been following them for that long.

Jesus, you take prayer requests for sports teams, right?  Please?

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