Sometimes I Just Don't Get It

To be honest, maybe I don't get things a lot of the time.

I am having a great time in Melbourne. So are the kids. But to do this one also has to give and take about some things. I am pretty annoying, I know, but I don't get the notion of letting things bother you while on vacation. There will be plenty of time next week for that!

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun! And today's fun includes the art gallery and shops! And trams. And walking. And food....like the delicious food in Lygon St last night.

And workouts...Jillian Michaels circuits today. Some of 'em anyway.

And watching Madonna on Foxtel.

And Mass at the oldest Catholic Church in Victoria. I prayed at the Ladye Chapel. Beautiful.

But had another of those I Just Don't Get It moments.

Everyone knows I am a Christian feminist. However, we, the sexes, are equal but differwnt. As Pope John Paul II writes...

So, come on guys, what are we thinking of with adult women altar servers? Where does this fit in with worship, with humility, with respecting roles and the priesthood?

Melbourne

A family holiday in Melbourne. Hopefully not a repeat of those National Lampoon Vacation movies!

We brought our once-in-a-blue-moon journals. For writing. For drawing. To make an academic scrapbook of our lives.

Visited the friars in Springvale. Lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant...noodles! I loved all the local shops, the Vietnamese groceries..a mini exploration of its own.

Saw The Jersey Boys. Who knew Frankie Valli sang so many songs? And there is even an education kit for teachers online...

Big Girls Don't Cry.
Hey, maybe my theme song!

Off to mass ..Springvale...parish under the care of the Conventual Franciscans. Reading the Psalms this morning..and this stood out...

Thou, O God, are all my strength..Psalm 42.

My strength. Even when I am on holiday.

I should be packing...

I should be packing for my holiday...early start tomorrow and I have just finished my Kumon prep for my next centre day...but what am I doing? I am reading St Teresa of Avila's Way of Perfection. Again. ( And now I am blogging!)

I am reading of Love.

Spiritual Love. A type of love and friendship that our secular world sometimes finds hard to understand. Friendship between men and women without sensuality. Without thought of gain for self. Friendship between women that shares pain and suffering, that allows growth.

There are two kinds of love which I am describing. The one is purely spiritual, and apparently has nothing to do with sensuality or the tenderness of our nature, either of which might stain its purity.....

It is of the first kind of spiritual love that I would now speak. It is untainted by any sort of passion, for such a thing would completely spoil its harmony. If it leads us to treat virtuous people, especially confessors, with moderation and discretion, it is profitable;...

.....with spiritual affection......our reason soon begins to reflect whether our friend's trials are not good for her, and to wonder if they are making her richer in virtue and how she is bearing them, and then we shall ask God to give her patience so that they may win her merit. If we see that she is being patient, we feel no distress -- indeed, we are gladdened and consoled. If all the merit and gain which suffering is capable of producing could be made over to her, we should still prefer suffering her trial ourselves to seeing her suffer it, but we are not worried or disquieted.

...I repeat once more that this love is a similitude and copy of that which was borne for us by the good Lover, Jesus. It is for that reason that it brings us such immense benefits, for it makes us embrace every kind of suffering, so that others, without having to endure the suffering, may gain its advantages.

Happy new year!

Those Wise Men

We celebrate the feast of the Epiphany.

We follow in the footsteps of the Magi, who travelled to pay homage to the Baby Jesus; who brought Him gifts ; who were changed and converted after their encounter with the Infant Jesus in the manger. To (poorly and succinctly) paraphrase Fr's homily from last night ~ we Christians, on this day of the Epiphany, remember to pay homage to Our Lord, truly present on the altar in Holy Mass; to bring gifts, the gift of ourselves, our life, our love, our wills; to have a conversion experience on encountering Our Lord in the Eucharist.

Our family are sharing our usual gold coins and I am asking dh to pray with us the yearly Epiphany Blessing.

There is comfort in these sinple routines, continued year after year, in our homeschooling family.

From Simplicity Parenting, a book a friend shared with me over coffee, yesterday.

(Quite Simply) Rhythm builds islands of consistency and security throughout the day.

Meaning hides in repetition: We do this every day or every week because it matters. We are connected by the things we do together. We matter to one another. In the tapestry of childhood, what stands out is not the splashy, blow-out trip to Disneyland but the common threads that run throughout and repeat: the family dinners, nature walks, reading together at bedtime (with a hot water bottle at our feet on winter evenings), Saturday morning pancakes.

Now, I am no Becky Home-Echy, Lois and Pam! We don't do the whole pancake or even breakfast thing and we love family dinners around a DVD, precariously balancing plates on our laps and laughing and talking and arguing together over the show. But the common thread of spending a lot of time together, of attending Masses together, of celebrating the liturgical year together with activities and reading and food, of gold coins and blessings..these rhythms have formed our family during the course of the time.

For better or for worse.

Which is why I am an unschooler.


Radical Unschooling is the trust that a child will seek out and learn what he needs to know, when he needs to know it, without coercion, without school or school type methods, in the freedom and safety of his family. Our role as parents is to facilitate and make available our time, space, money, and lives to helping them explore the world.

Radical Christian Unschooling is the Trust that not only will a child seek out and learn what he needs to know when he needs to know it, without coercion, without school or school type methods, in the freedom and safety of his family, but that God will direct the child's path Himself. Our role as parents is to act as guides and mentors in the learning process, and to disciple our children in our Faith through our daily example of walking out our Faith before their eyes.

Our Unschooling Catholics blog.

From "Cleaving"

From Cleaving by Julie Powell.

I knew it would be one of those books. Quoteable. Descriptive. Knowing.

It leads me to drink, too - though not sherry, yet - and to other things, to things that are bad for me, harmful urges succumbed to....One thing I've learned about my inner voice is that it prefers indulging dangerous cravings to the prospect of tamping down those cravings into bitter resignation...

And ~

....Does everyone talk like this, in these codes? I decipher both messages perfectly. One pulls at me with a thousand threads of anxiety and obligation and love and solicitude and guilt; the other with a single knowing yank, the secret gutteral syllable that brings me to heel.

Rennet and Seeds

Many indeed are the wondrous happenings of that time: God hanging from a cross, the sun made dark and again flaming out; for it was fitting that creation should mourn with its creator. The temple veil rent, blood and water flowing from his side: the one as from a man, the other as from what was above man; the earth shaken, the rocks shattered because of the rock; the dead risen to bear witness to the final and universal resurrection of the dead. The happenings at the sepulcher and after the sepulcher, who can fittingly recount them? Yet no one of them can be compared to the miracle of my salvation. A few drops of blood renew the whole world, and do for all men what the rennet does for the milk: joining us and binding us together.

Gregory of Nazianzus, On the Holy Pasch

The love of God is not taught. No one has taught us to enjoy the light or to be attached to life more than anything else. And no one has taught us to love the two people who brought us into the world and educated us. Which is all the more reason to believe that we did not learn to love God as a result of outside instruction. In the very nature of every human being has been sown the seed of the ability to love. You and I ought to welcome this seed, cultivate it carefully, nourish it attentively and foster its growth by going to the school of God's commandments with help of His grace.

St. Basil the Great

Last Lunch for 2009

~ And I cooked ~

National Lampoon's American Vacation

This is no longer a vacation. It's a quest, a quest for fun. I'm gonna have fun and your gonna have fun. We're gonna have so much (bleep) fun they're gonna need plastic surgeons to remove the smiles from our (beep) faces. We'll be whistling zippity-doo-dah out of our ....

Sometimes, a movie quote just simply, beautifully describes a day.

(And I removed the expletives to protect my readers....)

A Prayer to the Holy Family

Last night, before dinner, before the wine-and-snakes, we prayed this prayer. Greg found it for me. It is beautiful, and so I am saving it here for next year, for the Holy Family. And sharing it with you, the one or two regular readers....


Act of Consecration to the Holy Family

O Jesus, our most loving Redeemer, who having come to enlighten the world with Thy teaching and example, didst will to pass the greater part of Thy life in humility and subjection to Mary and Joseph in the poor home of Nazareth, thus sanctifying the Family that was to be an example for all Christian families, graciously receive our family as it dedicates and consecrates itself to Thee this day. Do Thou protect us, guard us and establish amongst us Thy holy fear, true peace and concord in Christian love: in order that by living according to the divine pattern of Thy family we may be able, all of us without exception, to attain to eternal happiness.

Mary, dear Mother of Jesus and Mother of us, by the kindly intercession make this our humble offering acceptable in the sight of Jesus, and obtain for us His graces and blessings.

O Saint Joseph, most holy Guardian of Jesus and Mary, help us by thy prayers in all our spiritual and temporal needs; that so we may be enabled to praise our divine Savior Jesus, together with Mary and thee, for all eternity.

(Recite the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory 3 times.)

Amen.