A Simple Life

It is July, and a surprising 80 degrees here in north central Texas! After a scorching June, it was so nice to step outside today and be met with a refreshing breeze, and a sidewalk that will not blister the skin off your face.

Romeo and Cookie Boy have not been feeling too good the past two days. They decided they were not up to bowling or the library today.  Spending a day in the house yesterday did not sit well with the Mad Toddler. We had a "challenging" day, to say the least. So I knew I had to come up with something, quick!

We have been so blessed to move into this neighborhood full of kids. Even better, Tank, age 10, and Speedy, age 8, live 2 doors down from us. They are kindred spirits (to quote my beloved "Anne"). Right as I was trying to come with alternative plans for the morning, Tank and Speedy rang the doorbell, to invite Romeo over to make baking soda-and-vinegar volcanoes. Romeo ran over, and the Mad Toddler ran out! I chased him, and that was when I realized the amazing weather we are having.

So, out came the sidewalk chalk! What fun to sit out all morning IN JULY and make the driveway all artsy! It kept the Mad Toddler happy. The Young adult attempted to play marbles. Eventually, the Young Adult, Cookie Boy, Romeo, the Mad Toddler, Tank, and Speedy all ended up in the driveway drawing tanks, airplanes, semis, and  -best of all - tracing each other's body outlines so that the driveway ended up looking like a horrific crime scene where odd shaped gingerbread people were off'ed! Awesome!

I was just telling ArtGuy the other day that it feels so odd to be relaxing this summer. I feel...guilty. After thinking about it, I began to understand why. Last summer was crazy, with moving and all. In fact, exactly one year ago today, on July 1, my appendix burst, and our move was interrupted by my recovery. Thanks to family and friends, we got all moved in and settled. And the year before that happened, I had a new baby and was recovering from giving birth to a 10 1/2 pound boy via emergency c-section. So, it has been a while since I have even had the opportunity to simply....be.

Relaxing, slowing down, is essential to well-being. We often miss the point of it. Without leisure, we become less human. I know Josef Pieper had something to say on the subject. I am going to have to go read up on it.

So, enjoy your summer! Relax and take a break! It'll be gone before you know it!

The Mad Toddler working on a few principles of physics, thanks to the chalk and to the nice slope on our driveway: "what goes up, must come down", and "bodies in motion tend to stay in motion"

Colorful pants!

Bless Your Beautiful Hide

I can't help it! Every time I make pancakes for dinner for my brood of men, I seem to channel Seven Brides for Seven Brothers!  Though, I just can't seem to manage it in that beautiful bass voice Howard Keel managed in the movie!

Bless your beautiful hide, wherever you may be

We ain't met yet but I'm a-willing to bet

You're the gal for me.....

....Pretty and trim but not too slim

Heavenly eyes and just the right size

Simple and sweet, and sassy as can be!

Bless her beautiful hide

Yes, she's the gal for me!

Now I know I only have 5 men to cook for, not seven, but still. As fast as pancakes are to cook, my men can wolf 'em down even faster. I made 26 pancakes, and guess how many were left? NONE! Ditto that to the 12 slices of bacon (which the Mad Toddler did not eat, neither did Cookie Boy, our resident vegetarian).

All my manly men like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.  When I get on to ArtGuy for...poor manners ( read: bodily noises), he likes to reply, "What do I need manners for? I already got me a wife!" (another great quote from the movie). 

Who says life doesn't imitate art?

Random Things

Cinnamon rolls for dessert last night! Yuuuuuuuummy!

Waiting for our bowling lane this morning. I really hate pictures of myself!

Luckily I brought snacks for the Mad Toddler. Last time we only got one game of bowling, so that is what I thought would happen today. Instead, they went ahead and gave us two games, so we were bowling quite a while - right into the lunch hour!

Romeo gets ready to bowl! He usually creams us, except for this time. This time I managed several strikes to pull out a victory. Romeo came in second, though!

Lovely patch of blue sky in the midst of last night's storm.

Not the best pic - was trying to get a good shot of the wall cloud.

Awesome.

All Bark, No Bite

Or, all clouds and wind, but no rain!

BOO!  We seem to miss all the rain in the general Dallas/Ft. Worth area. There is an official drought, but only in my neighborhood!

Here are some pictures, and just because you are extra good, a lesson plan on clouds!

Following: my dead grass.

Oh, those teasing clouds!

And now, just for you:  follow this link to a lesson plan on Clouds I did a while back for Suite101, and which the National Weather Service used for their Home School packet this past year. I know it is summer, but learning is for any time of year!

May rain blanket your yard and kiss your plants (but drown nothing)!

Music in the Church, or Kickin'it Old Style

As a member of the Catholic church all my life, I have had a great variety of exposure to many styles of music in worship. Some good, some not-so-good. But "good" is not an objective word, is it? (Well, "good" is not objective when it comes to music, I should say!)

What is "good" music? And what is "good" music, liturgically speaking?

(I am only beginning a better study of the subject, so this is more of an introductory editorial than a well-researched thought. Hopefully I will get to that point! And this is of course, an excuse for any of my facts that are off - I am still working on it!!! )

I was a child of the Catholic Charismatic movement. This movement is steeped in the rich tradition of the Holy Spirit. A great deal of music was produced during the start of this movement, in the 1960's, '70's, and early '80's. Think of it as a precursor to modern-day praise-and-worship.

At the same time, I have been in parish life since birth, and thus exposed to the more traditional elements of the Catholic faith.

In other words, I can jam with Mercy Me, Tim Hughes, and Newsboys as well as chant "Tantum Ergo" (in both English and Latin)!

Music is emotional, there is no denying that. We love music because of the connections we feel, the emotions it evokes, the way it transports us out of ourselves. That is the attraction to praise and worship style music. It can help us establish that feeling of awe and wonder, that feeling of being in front of something so much bigger than ourselves. It is a private worship at the same time it is communal.

Chant, usually associated with Gregorian chant, is a very old style of music, named after Pope Gregory the Great. It is often monophonic, or without harmony, but can be polyphonic. It is beautiful in its simplicity. It is very powerful, for it connects the singer directly with the text without fancy musical frills. There is a beautiful austerity to chant.

In the wake of great sweeping reforms after Vatican Council II (1962-1965), many worthy things were (mistakenly) thrown out. As the liturgy experienced many changes, Latin chant was dropped just as Latin was dropped from the order of the Mass. Many of these changes were good and timely, but in an effort to undertake so many changes that were not better understood until much later, you often had the case of "the baby being thrown out with the bathwater".

The result today is that many people (not all, but many) who lived in the Church before Vatican Council II are nervous to approach anything smacking of the pre-Vatican II era. It seems (to them) to be a return to the "bad ol' days" of secrecy, firmness without charity, and the divisive wall that seemed to fence the lay faithful out of the holy of holies, the inner sanctum of the heart of the church.

But to those of us who are adults now, born in the 1970's, 1980's, and so on, we feel a loss. We grew up so near to Vatican II, but too near, usually. Our parents and grandparents often moved forward without a backward glance, and so Vatican II became a word we knew, but an idea we were unfamiliar with. We knew there were changes, we knew mass was in the local language and not Latin, but that was about it.

Only as a college and grad student did I actually learn about Vatican II and more about the changes it made and the huge amount of information that was only beginning to be processed, some 30 years later. The Church is still trying to get to the heart of it, after all this time.

So, as this is getting a bit wordy, I think I will end it here and pick it up again later!
For now, think about music, church, and worship. What are good and bad songs? What is good liturgical music? Bad liturgical music? What songs make you cringe? What makes it feel like a great Mass?

Book Review: The Magicians

The Magicians, by Lev Grossman.

To be fair, my younger brother warned me. He said something like, "You are welcome to take this book. I started it, but couldn't finish it. It wasn't very good."

However, my younger brother is the kind of guy that reads books on smart-people's books lists. I like 'em light-and-fluffy! Plus, I love fnastasy books, and almost always finish a book just to see what happens. So, even though he did not care for it, I thought I would probably find it tolerable.

Wrong.

Lev Grossman admittedly tips his hat to "CS Lewis, JK Rowling, and TH White", but it often feels more like a sneer in their direction than any kind of homage.

The main character in the book is Quentin, a young man who finds he can do magic and gets into an exclusive school of magic (sound familiar?). But where the Hogwarts of Rowling is a well-realized place, Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy seems to have little purpose in the book, except as a place for a bunch of unappealing magical young adults to hang out. Although this is supposedly a college, the characters in this school act like 13-year-olds, think like 13-year-olds, and explore their morality like 13-year-olds with too much freedom. Their sum total of college is to drink and hook up. Magic seems to be something they neither value or appreciate.
 Quentin thinks that this discovery of his magical abilities will bring happiness to his life, in spite of never having been a happy person. It does not. Grossman had an interesting idea here, to explore the idea that happiness or contentment comes from within, not from outside things, even from the dicovery of a special ability. But it just doesn't work in the end. Quentin is neither transformed by his experiences nor challenged to grow.

Underlying the whole story is the world of Fillory, an imaginary world from Quentin's favorite childhood books. Quentin wishes it were real, but when he finds out the truth of Fillory as an adult, it is not the idyllic fantasy from childhood. There is a battle with "evil", but one cannot say it is a battle of "good" vs evil. More like evil vs. drunken rich-kids.

There seems to be no subsance to this story, as there were in CS Lewis's works or even Rowling's. In the latter, the underlying themes ranged from loyalty to courage to faith. Grossman loses his way. A good story needs a good framework. The underlying themes of The Magicians seem to be wasting your life away and the dissollusion of childhood dreams. Nothing redeeming here.

There is a good amount of gratuitous sex and language. Neither does much for the story, besides leave the reader with a deeper feeling of ick. Added to that is the horrible relationship Quentin has with his parents. Grossman never explains this in a satisfying way. Quentin appears to hate his parents because they love each other too much, and they are never that interested in him. However, this relationship seems more like a convenient way for the author to dismiss having to deal with the parents than a real, interesting part of the main character or the book.

In the end, Grossman, who has an impressive resume, leaves us with a book with no purpose. There is no moral, no good tale, no desire to go on, and what it more, this reader was not even entertained.

Pass!

Ah, Saturday

It is always nice to reach the end of the week.

Yesterday I went out to lunch with two long-time, dear friends. They have known me forever, through teen angst and life changes. We have been connected electronically, but have not been face-to-face in a while. I actually got a sitter for the boys (well, really the Mad Toddler), and skipped out the door to Mimi's - yuuuum! I felt crazy decadent, leaving the boys behind while I lunched out!

A couple of hours with friends, and I felt like a new woman.

So now we are at Saturday. The Mad Toddler has already had one time-out confrontation today. Whew - thank goodness ArtGuy was here this time! Although, the Mad Toddler was clearly trying to play us. He would yell at me, but he would be all sweet with ArtGuy. Again, the little boy did not want to put his bottom on his chair. It was another 30 minute tussle, but in the end, he sat!

Today I hope to finish the grocery list and continue to work on my projects. My goal now is to finish a book that was supposed to be a present for a niece almost ten years ago. I chickened out of giving it to her at the time. Now I am going to clean it up a bit and see what I can do with it.

Well, in between soccer games, that it! Go USA!