Children’s book giveaway! Tomie dePaola’s CHRISTOPHER THE HOLY GIANT and THE LITTLE FRIAR WHO FLEW

Couple of things! First, Ignatius is having a 30% off sale on children’s books. Just about every book for kids is on sale until Sunday, March 26 at 11:59 PM Pacific. They have so many lovely titles, including many re-issues by Tomie dePaola. (I reviewed some others here.)

Second, today I have two more books to give away! Two more wonderful Tomie dePaola books, both great picks for Easter. And weirdly enough, they ended up being two books about two very different models of masculinity (or maybe that’s just where my head is at right now). 

First: THE LITTLE FRIAR WHO FLEW 

It’s a cheery, attractive, colorful book full of details, animals, flowers and fanciful historical costumes, and makes a good introduction to the life of Joseph of Cupertino, the simple-minded, accident-prone boy who experiences the joy of God so directly, he levitates.

The story has a gentle arc and ends quietly with Joseph escaping fame and returning to his solitary life in the hills.

The text is by Patricia Lee Gauch and illustrated by dePaola in 1980, in a style that’s a little more line-heavy and busy and maybe more comic-like, less elegant and delicate than the style we may associate with dePaola.

Not a bad thing, just worth noting.

Incidentally, last night we watched The Reluctant Saint (1962) about Joseph of Cupertino and we all liked it. I’ll try and do a full review later this week, but it was entertaining and well-realized and although it was certainly dated, it had some very moving scenes and extremely appealing characters. 

Next book! 

CHRISTOPHER THE HOLY GIANT, written and illustrated by  dePaola. This one was first published in 1994, and it is my favorite dePaola era. 

What a story! This is very much what I mean by a myth: Something that’s not perhaps intended to be taken as a literal historical account, but is crafted to convey things that are true and important about humans, about the world, and about God.

It’s told very simply, without embellishment, and lets the glowing, icon-like illustrations wallop you. 

There are two pages with no text

And it ends with Jesus telling him everything he needs to know, and Christopher listens, and the very next day his actions bear fruit. What do you know about that. 

What a book! Can we have this as recommended reading for high school kids? For seminarians? 

Uh, I don’t mean to be a weirdo, but Christopher actually kind of looks like the sigma male or gigachad meme guy, ultra-muscular, ultra-masculine lone wolf who does what he wants and follows his own set of very simple rules.

I feel like a lot of dudes I’ve encountered have been reduced to Reprobus [Christopher’s name before he meets Jesus] level-grasp of cultural and spiritual norms. They know they are strong, and they are just looking for someone even stronger to follow, the end. What to do? 

Not that there is any kind of pop cultural subtext in this book, or anything! I just thought it’s an especially poignant parable for 2023. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to buy this for your little kids but leave it around for your teenage boys to read. (I’m a big believer in leaving books lying around where they may be idly picked up, like outside the bathroom or in the car, or on the table when dinner is almost ready.) 

Anyway, both books, in their own way, are about being the person God made you to be, and using the strengths you have been given for their proper ends. Good stuff, good stories. 

***

And now the giveaway! To enter to win both books courtesy of Ignatius, just leave a comment on this site and I’ll use a random number generator to pick and notify a winner on Sunday afternoon. (That will give you a chance to still purchase them at 30% off if you don’t win.) Good luck! 

What’s for supper? Vol. 242: Vindaloo! Couldn’t escape if I wanted to!

Hey! Didn’t get a food post out last week, but I have a decent excuse this time: We got about forty inches of snow

and lost power for three days. We had a drought this summer, so the trees are brittle, and tons of them fell on power lines, including the ones right across the street from us.

We have a well, which is run by an electric pump, so that means we also didn’t have water for those days, and that means we had to buy water (in the next town, because the stores here were closed, because the power was out) to flush the toilets.  Yes, you can melt snow to get water to flush toilets, but if you’ve actually ever done this, you’ll know it takes about a roomful of snow to melt down into about three cups of rather smelly water, which is not enough to flush two toilets that ten people have been using; and also, if you are trying to keep your house warm, I do not recommend bringing in a roomful of snow to melt, with a heat source that you do not have! Everything was like that: Yes, there is a sort-of kind-of solution, but is it better? Unclear. The dog, at least, had a wonderful time. He always has a wonderful time.

Anyway we survived by the light of candles and light sabers,

and we didn’t have any babies or toddlers, so that made it easier. I had just bought a ton of comforters on clearance, so we had plenty of bundling material. We even lucked out in that I hadn’t done the weekly shopping yet when the power went out, so all we lost was a pack of ground beef. And we are now the proud owners of a small but decent generator, and all my baby trees survived, and we’re very, awfully tired of board games and turkey sandwiches. 

The power came back on last Friday, which was St. Patrick’s day, and our bishop did give a meat dispensation, so we popped out and put together a nice meal for that: Irish breakfast with all the parts we actually want, so no blood sausage or anything dyed green, but sourdough toast, fried mushrooms, beans, roast tomatoes, roast potatoes, bacon, and eggs fried in bacon fat. 

Very tasty, because how could it not be. I got cherry tomatoes this time, rather than attempting to roast slices of large tomatoes, which are insanely fragile. I mean who isn’t these days, but the cherry tomatoes was a good idea. 

SATURDAY
Hot dogs and smile fries 

I actually love hot dogs. The kids act like it’s some terrible thing when we have hot dogs for dinner, because they are barely American, possibly barely human. 

SUNDAY
Antipasto plate, pasta and ragu, garlic bread, vanilla bean panna cotta with fresh fruit

Sunday was St. Joseph’s day. We usually have a big Italian feast with several courses, but we were still sort of in shambles from the power outage, so we kept it on the modest side. I put together two big antipasto plates with various cheeses, cured meats, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and fruit

and yes, I was worried I hadn’t bought enough food. 

But I had.

Damien made a wonderful ragù with veal, pork, and pancetta. Wow, it was good. Like especially good. He uses this recipe from Deadspin, but it comes out different every time, and it was so savory and lively. 

We had a bunch of bruschetta for the antipasto, and garlic bread for the pasta. And Italian ices, and then also for dessert, I made something I’ve been wanting to try forever: Panna cotta. I used this recipe from Serious Eats and started infusing the cream and milk with vanilla bean pods the night before. 

You rub the vanilla bean seeds into the sugar, which feels very fancy. Then in the morning, I bloomed some unflavored gelatin powder in milk with vanilla extract, warmed up the cream, scraped the insides of the vanilla bean pods into it, and whisked in the gelatin mixture and the vanilla sugar. Then I just poured it into ramekins, covered them with plastic wrap, and let it chill for the rest of the day. 

Shortly before dinner, I mixed a little sugar with blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries. I didn’t want them to break down a lot, so I didn’t do this far ahead of time. When it was dessert time, I ran a knife around the inside rim of the ramekin and then slammed them upside down on a saucer, and they came out well. Topped with the sugared fruit, plus some slices of mango, and oh it was so pretty

We also had some kind of fragile almond cookies on the side, I forget what it was called. 

I’ve never had panna cotta before, but it was a wonderful texture, silky smooth, and very creamy and refreshing. The vanilla bean specks had gathered at the bottom, so they were strewn all over the top of the glossy turned-out panna cotta and looked very elegant. 

Some of the kids opted to keep theirs in the ramekin and just eat them like cup custards. This is also a normal way to serve them, although people like to make them in glass containers, even wine glasses, if they’re going to serve them this way. 

So, very pleased with this foray. Damien, who isn’t a big fan of custards and such, thought they were great. I see many kinds of panna cotta in our future! You can put whatever you want in there. 

MONDAY
goblin food

Monday I served a truly terrible meal of very burnt chicken nuggets, a wad of very underdone hash browns, and dried-out leftover pasta. 

This kind of meal can be made more appealing by taking pains to make the table attractive. You can achieve this look by not clearing away yesterday’s dessert trash. Follow me for more etc. etc. 

TUESDAY
Reubens, chips

Tuesday there was still corned beef on sale, so I threw a few hunks in the Instant Pot for a few hours, and we had the meat sliced on toasted marbled rye bread with thousand island dressing, Swiss cheese, and sauerkraut. 

Wish I had run the whole sandwich under the broiler to melt the cheese, but it was still quite delicious. I really don’t miss boiled dinner at all. Corned beef is great, but it needs to be squashed in among other tasty things, not just lying there like a cadaver. 

WEDNESDAY
Pork vindaloo and rice, pineapple

I was having a conversation about real mindfulness with my family — about the experience of deliberately standing as nothing but a witness — and the tremendous sense of gratitude that often arises when you’re able to shift into this mode. I realized this happens to me often while I’m cooking, which explains why this isn’t really a recipe blog, per se, but more of a food experience appreciation blog (as well as a big family slice of life blog). And it explains why I often forget to taste while I’m cooking, which I have frequently felt very guilty and stupid about. It’s because I’m not thinking about the end result, but just feeling overwhelmed with the beauty of the things passing through my hands, the colors and sensations and smells and patterns. This does not make for the best food, necessarily, but it makes my life better!

Anyway, Indian food is very conducive to this kind of experience. Just assembling the ingredients almost always puts me in a different frame of mind. Everyone had been sick for several days with a nasty head cold one of the kids brought home, and I was very optimistic about knocking that out, at least while we were actively eating, when I saw what was going into the marinade for this pork vindaloo

This isn’t even as many peppers as the recipe called for (I was doubling it), but it was all I had. So it’s guajillo peppers, garlic, ginger, cinnamon sticks, tamarind paste, cumin seeds, cloves, peppercorns, and turmeric, sugar and kosher salt. The recipe calls for white vinegar, but I only had cider vinegar. 

It’s quite easy. You just make a paste out of all the ingredients above. You just bash them all together until they’re a sticky paste, and then marinate cubes of pork in it. The recipe calls for pork butt and also pork belly, but I just went with the butt. As I often etc etc.

Marinate a few hours

and then add some water and simmer it up along with sliced onions for a few more hours, and then that’s it. You serve it with rice, and throw some cilantro on top. 

OH IT WAS GOOD.

Immensely tender, and the sauce was spicy, yes, but not blast-your-head-off spicy. Just enough to make your nose tingle. It was also tangy and a little bit fruity and a little earthy, and wonderfully nourishing and warming. 

I had a second helping of rice with just the sauce with little fragments of meat it in, and it was a joy. Wonderful recipe. The kids liked it! This may have been because I really talked it up ahead of time, and purposely acted very excited and happy about it, and mentioned many times that it was called “VINNNDALOOOOO,” but it’s not the kind of thing that they usually like. 

I also cut up a few pineapples that were hanging around, and that was not the absolute ideal side, because they were extremely acidic. Mango or something a little more mild would have been better. But it was a wonderful meal all the same. Vindaloo! Knowing my fate is to be with you! 

If you use the recipe, be sure to save it, as Bon Appétit only gives you a certain number of free views.

THURSDAY
Chicken enchilada bowls 

Thursday we had school conferences right before dinner, so I prepped everything ahead of time, and we had an unsophisticated but tasty hot meal waiting for us, and everyone liked it. 

I dumped a bunch of chicken legs in the Instant Pot with a can of red enchilada sauce and some diced tomatoes and chiles, and pressed the “poultry” button. When it was done cooking, I fished the chicken out, pulled the meat off the bones, and transferred it to the slow cooker along with the tomatoes and enough of the sauce to keep it from drying out. 

I chopped a bunch of scallions and cilantro, sautéed some frozen corn in olive oil to give it a little char (it’s dumb, but everyone loves it this way) and put that in a bowl, and set out shredded pepper jack cheese, sour cream, corn chips, hot sauce, and Taijin seasoning. Then I set up the Instant Pot again with rice and water. When I was on the way home, I texted one of the kids to press the “rice” button, and when I got home, I heated the corn in the microwave. 

Boom, hot dinner, with cheese.

One of the kids told me, “Jolly good meal, mother. I said that in a silly way, but I meant it.” When a kid stops to make sure you know they’re sincere, you know they’re sincere. 

FRIDAY
Pizza

Just pizza. No tricks!

And I still haven’t written up Corrie’s under the sea cake! I think I will have to give it its own post, as it was quite a journey. It is the reason I happened to have unflavored gelatin in the house for panna cotta.

Oh, one more thing, I got a big sack of flattened rice, something I just found out about (by seeing it on the shelf), which I haven’t had a chance to use yet, but I’m pretty excited about it.

Apparently it is parboiled, so you barely need to cook it, and Indians use it for all kinds of things: A quick, cozy breakfast, savory or sweet, a side dish with vegetables and potatoes, or you can fry it, or you can do whatever you want. It’s healthier than white rice because it hasn’t had as many nutrients polished away. 

What does it say in the belly of the whale?

My community band practices in the basement of a synagogue, and there is a strange work of art on the wall. It’s rendered in wood, painted in bright colors, and it shows something I have never seen before: A whale diving into the deep, surrounded by brilliant fish. Nestled in the whale’s stomach is a man.

You are thinking it is Jonah, and I guess it is. But he is not a desperate, raggedy prophet in dire straits. He is an old man, clearly Jewish, with a noble profile and glasses, a kippah on his head and a fringed blue-and-white tallit on his shoulders. He is sitting on a little wooden chair at a little wooden table. Overhead (yes, in the whale) hangs a little wooden lightbulb, and by its light he is reading one of a stack of little wooden books. Just sitting there quietly reading a book, inside the whale. The whale looks slightly alarmed, but the old man is perfectly at home, learning.

I thought immediately of a Reddit post I recently saw, written by a young woman who was enraged at her father for spending his own money, at the end of his life, on a long-delayed college education. What does the old man need to go to college for? His life is almost over! The money should be preserved, not wasted on a man who’s almost gone. It was even worse than the Prodigal Son: She was not only demanding her inheritance ahead of time but also begrudging that her father should have any of it.

I thought of my own father. Partly because he looked a little bit like the bearded old Jew with his wooden books and partly because he did keep on learning, right up until the end. From books, to be sure. His bedside, when I went there to tidy things up to sell our old house, was smothered in books. But he was not necessarily pushing himself academically in his final years. I think he died watching TV (not that there’s anything wrong with that—he was tired).

What I mean is that the last several years of his life tested him mightily. The family fell to one crisis after another, and finally my mother lapsed irretrievably into dementia, and he had to learn to pour love into her and get nothing in return but mumbles and flutters. He had to learn so much. He was so old, but he had so many things to learn before he was delivered from this life.

During this time, he told me that the Lord was taking more and more things away from him, and he was glad, because it was getting him ready for death. He smiled when he said this. He was grateful it was happening—the getting ready, not the dying. He did not seem to feel, against all odds, that it was a dark time, even as his life dwindled away.

This is what it fundamentally means to be a Christian: It means to know that what we are doing is getting ready. What we are experiencing, all the time, is learning…Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. 

***
Image: Jonah by Rosalind Welcher, on the walls of the Congregation Ahavas Achim in Keene, NH; photo by Simcha Fisher

Welcome spring with A Garden Catechism!

Last week, we got almost forty inches of snow and lost power for three days. This morning, the pipes froze. So naturally, I’m thinking about gardens. And I’m warming my hands over the bright, glowing pages of Margaret  Rose Realy’s beautiful new book, A Garden Catechism: 100 Plants in Christian Tradition and How to Grow them. 

I’m lucky enough to call Margaret a friend, so she is the one I always ask if there is something mysterious popping up in my garden, and I don’t know if I should be happy or not. She always knows what it is. I also ask her if there’s an invasive bittersweet vine on my fence and I don’t know how to get rid of it, or if my irises aren’t blooming anymore and I feel like I should do something but I’m not sure when or how. I ask her whether my apple seedlings can be saved, and whether it’s too late to put lilacs in, and whether it’s worthwhile saving seeds from the marigolds I impulse bought at Walmart. Margaret always knows!

Now she has taken her immense wealth of knowledge and organized it into an eminently searchable book for the gardener who wants to cultivate a space that’s not only beautiful, but rich with Christian meaning. Each of 100 entries — organized into color-coded sections of flowers, herbs and edibles, grasses and more, and trees and shrubs — includes a large, lovely illustration by Mary Sprague, an explanation of the history and/or symbolic significance of the plant in Christianity, what theme of garden it might fit into (Stations of the Cross, Marian, Rosary, Sacred Heart, and so on), what it symbolizes, and several paragraphs of detailed practical information and advice about what it looks like, where and how it grows well, and how to care for it, and in some cases, how to harvest, display, and dry it. 

Each entry also has a column of symbols for cross reference. There are a total of six possible symbols for different kinds of prayer gardens, and thirteen possible symbols for different kinds of suitable landscapes.

That’s about two-thirds of the book. The rest of it is a sort of condensed master class in horticulture, including information on everything from how to evaluate a site and design a garden, how to test soil and fertilize, how to read plant tags, how to collect seeds and even how to water. 

Next comes an introduction rife with practical advice for how to arrange an outdoor space for a shrine, stations of the cross, prayer labyrinth, and more;

and there is a section on ‘development of intent,’ to help focus your thoughts and ideas about what you hope to accomplish by making a prayer garden. There are several pages on color theory, a section on making stepping stones, ideas for how to keep a journal, and a reference chart collating all the information about plants in the previous pages. 

The overall tone is gentle, encouraging, and wise, and every single page is absolutely bristling with practical, reliable information, and it’s thoughtfully arranged to be as easy to use as possible. The goal is to help you come up with a plan that is meaningful and appealing to you (and maintainable in the landscape you’ve chosen), rather than providing ready-made plans for you to copy by rote. It’s also fascinating and informative for someone who’s just interested in gardens.

The book would make an excellent present for someone just starting out with gardening, who could use some encouragement with a plant or two, but would not be out of place for a master gardener who will appreciate the comprehensive breadth of knowledge gathered in these pages, and is looking for inspiration for a new kind of project. The unique combination of horticultural knowledge and spiritual insight and cultural and historical research pretty much guarantees that that almost anyone who picks it up will learn something new. 

Margaret Realy is an advanced Master Gardener and a Benedictine oblate. She has written several other books, and her writing appears regularly at Our Sunday Visitor and at CatholicMom.com. This book would be a great place to get to start to get to know this warm, kind, and incredibly knowledgeable woman. Happy spring!

 
 

The myth of Jesus

On the way to Mass, one of my kids asked me if it were true that people evolved from apes, because that’s what she heard in school, but she had read otherwise in the Bible.

Now, I know we have talked about this before. Many, many times. It’s just that she likes the story of Genesis very much, and she wants it to be literally true. The God she knows and recognizes is the one who is depicted literally in the pages of her picture Bible. 

She isn’t ready to hear what I have told her in the past, and what I told her again this time: That I’m not really sure how modern humans came to look like they do. That it’s okay to believe that Genesis is literally true, but that I think some kind of evolution must be true; and also that I suspect scientists aren’t quite as sure about what happened as they profess to be.

What I am sure of, and what I tell my daughter she is very free to believe, is what it does say in the Bible: that God made human beings on purpose, out of love, and that He continues to love them and to want to be with them, and that he deliberately gave them an immortal soul. When and how that happened, and what it looked like, I don’t exactly know, and neither does anyone. 

I told her that the story of Genesis isn’t bad science. It’s also not good science. It’s not science at all, and was never intended to be. I said that if she wrote a story about what kind of family she has, and someone told her it was bad science, she would be baffled, because it wasn’t science; it was a story. And that is what we generally mean by myth: Not something fake and made up to fool people, but just the opposite: something that attempts to tell something we think is true about what the world is like. And so the book of Genesis is a myth, in the sense that it was written to tell us all kinds of true things about how the world was made, and how humans were made, and by whom, and why, and what kind of relationship they have with God. 

It tells us that the creation of the world was not violent, not ugly, not competitive, not chaotic, and not random. It was in some way orderly, it was deliberate, it was done with a plan, and it was beautiful. It was good. It was done in the context of relationships, from the very beginning. This is the myth of our creation. This is what I believe about how God made us. 

My daughter is probably too young for such a subtle idea, but I’m not really sure what else to tell her. I knew she is very interested in Greek myths, so I said (probably confusing the issue more, but I was driving, and things pour out of your mouth as you drive) that Greek myths served the same purpose as Genesis: To try to explain what kind of world it was, as they understood it. They got some things wrong, but some things right.

Prometheus, for instance, I said. He was a titan who dwelt in a kind of paradise, but realized that mankind below was cold, bereft, needy and alone; and so he had pity on them and brought them the gift of fire. 

And what a gift. It was more than just a flame, but signified all kinds of good things, light, heat, warmth, protection, intelligence, enlightenment, and even comfort. He cared for them, and so he came down from heaven and brought them good things.

It was here that I discovered the D’Aulaire illustration of Prometheus has been quietly living in my head all these years as a proto-image of Jesus. Of course he had.

But then, I said, of course they also got a lot wrong. In this myth, the other gods didn’t want man to have all these good things. So they punished Prometheus for what he had done. 

And then it occurred to me: That part was a proto-Jesus story, too, albeit very darkly. In the myth, because of his kindness to mankind, Prometheus was nailed to a rock to have his liver eaten out by an eagle; but, because he was immortal, it regrew every day, and was devoured again the next day, and his agony continued. A wretched, ugly story, so perverse . . . but so familiar.

You see it, right? Fine tune this myth, and it becomes Jesus, who came down from heaven to save mankind, and for his troubles he was nailed to a tree and now he has become an immortal meal. The suffering part is over, but yes, his body becomes our food over and over again. The ancient story distorts the reality to come until the point of it all is lost, but it’s hard to deny the basic form is there. What does it mean?

Maybe the point isn’t lost after all. Maybe the point is that we tell these stories over and over again, but they don’t take on any kind of truth or beauty until Jesus arrives. That’s the point. If you want your story to mean something, put Jesus in the center of it. At least that is how it seems to me. 

We have all seen the man who is knee deep in theology, with ecclesiastical degrees and pedigrees up to his neck, but he has no love, no kindness, no spark of divinity inside him that he allows to become a flame. Why, because there is no Jesus at the center of his story. And we have all seen the man who doesn’t know the holy name of Jesus at all, and yet his whole life and all his works are animated and illumined by that presence just the same. We have all seen men whose lives make stories like this. What does it mean? 

It means that Jesus hides. He hides in Genesis, He hides in myth, he hides in humanity, he hides everywhere, so that we can find him. At least that it how it seems to me. 

***
Image: Charles Ephraim Burchfield letter to Louise Burchfield, 1933. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. (Creative Commons)

What’s for supper? Vol. 241: Troubles with soup are better than troubles without soup

Happy whatever day it is! I didn’t do a food post last Friday because, I forget why. Oh, because I was complaining about the pope.  Anyway I wanted to share the results of a recipe from the previous Friday. It’s sabanekh bil hummus, Palestinian spinach and chickpea soup. I followed the recipe from Saveur and it was deeee-lectable. 

You saute some onions in olive oil, and then you toast some spices (cumin and coriander) and then grind them, then add them to the onions along with some garlic, plus allspice and nutmeg, and pepper, and cook a little longer, then add chickpeas and stock. (It called for vegetable stock, but I had chicken.)  

THE SMELL.

Simmer for about half an hour, add in fresh baby spinach, fresh lemon juice, some kosher salt, and a little more olive oil. Look-a here, now.

It was so good. The earthy spices combined with the bright lemon juice and the tender chickpeas and spinach made it a surprisingly interesting dish, considering it’s just broth with chickpeas and spinach.  Damien and I absolutely loved it. Definitely adding it to the Friday rotation. 

I’m kind of mad about this, but I’m now fully converted to the notion that fresh ingredients are worth the trouble. Sometimes you just plain don’t have the time or energy, and then it’s a blessing to use convenience foods! It’s fine, it’s not a moral issue! But if you can grind spices and squeeze lemons and crush garlic and chop herbs, oh man. Do yourself a favor. It eventually stops feeling laborious and extravagant and just feels like the normal way to cook, and it elevates your flavors so much.

Of course I still buy bouillon powder, rather than making my own stock, and I still routinely buy frozen pizza dough and so on. Let’s not be silly. I know you’ll agree that I draw the line at exactly the right arbitrary spot. I KNOW YOU’LL AGREE.

Damien and I were both insanely busy all week. Just tons of writing, and we had two birthdays, and a bunch of other stuff I can’t even remember. Also Sophia went to Rome with her high school class, and we had to get both cars fixed (my car was doing something that was causing people to stop me and say, “Excuse me, do you know your car is–” and I would have to sigh, “Yesss, I am aware,” and I drove around like that for over a week before I had a chance to get it fixed. So penitential, much litany of humility. Damien’s car was fine, except for the brakes, pff), and Lena taught the dog to roll over, which was more emotionally fraught for the whole family than you might expect.  Also the dryer broke, and I hit some lady’s mailbox on the way home from band. I really kranged it good, and it was very cold out, so it shattered, so I had to knock on her door and say, I’m sorry, I hit your mailbox, and there was a very old, unclothed man sleeping in the living room with purple old his legs sticking out. Probably can’t really blame the dog for that (I do not take him to band). 

I did manage to get the one stinking maple tree tapped finally, though. It’s a long story and probably nothing will come of it, but I really hate not finishing projects, so I’m forging ahead. Look-a here, now!

 

I’m sorry I keep saying that. I’ve been listening to funk music lately and it stuck, for some reason. 

SATURDAY
Hamburgers, chips

Words cannot describe how long ago that Saturday and those hamburgers were. 

SUNDAY
Grilled ham and cheese

We had these sandwiches on ciabatta rolls. I really hate cooking with an iron frying pan, but it does come in handy for laying on top of a puffy sandwich and weighing it down when you’re trying to get cheap Aldi cheese to melt. 

MONDAY
Southwest chicken salad

I drizzled some chicken breasts with something called elote seasoning, which seems to be mostly chili powder, salt, and dehydrated cheese powder, and roasted the chicken, and served the chicken slices over mixed greens with shredded cheddar, some corn sautéed in olive oil, and chipotle ranch dressing, with corn chips. 

I feel like there were beans, but maybe they remained in the realm of hypothesis. Anyway, it was a good salad. 

TUESDAY
Lasagna, Mars cake

Tuesday was Elijah’s birthday celebration, and he requested Damien’s amazing lasagna, which he makes using the Albert Burneko recipe. Absolutely stupendous. Creamy cheese sauce, ultra savory tomato sauce with meat, just fab. I always get a terrible picture of this lasagna because, once he sets it on the table, no power on heaven or earth can slow me down.

It weighs about 87 pounds and it’s so good. 

I also made a Mars cake. Elijah likes Mars a lot, and I thought it would be nice to throw together a little fondant Mars Perseverance Rover with wheels that turn and a little gum paste Ingenuity helicopter with a rotor that spins, how hard could it be??

Well. I took a chance and broke away from my filthy box cake ways and used the King Arthur “Simple and Rich Chocolate Cake” recipe and it was exactly that, simple and rich (and chocolate, and cake. And a recipe. You guys, I’m so tired). And the cake turned out very well! I made a simple frosting with butter, a little salt and vanilla, powdered sugar, and milk, and the Mars part was pretty enough.

Then, well, things got out of hand a little bit with the robots

What can I say, an attempt was made. The good news is, he turned down my original idea, which was a galaxy mirror glaze cake with a surprise Mars-shaped heart baked right into it. So like when you cut space open, there’s Mars inside! Just like in real life! So we didn’t do that, which is good, because I can’t do that. Instead, we had the robuts, held together with toothpicks. They would have been better if he had let me put candy eyeballs on them, but I learned just in time that he actually feels strongly about robots and eyeballs. Look-a here.

WEDNESDAY
Tacos

Man, it’s a good thing I wrote this down, because I don’t remember this at all. What a week. I fell asleep on the couch so many times. 

THURSDAY
Mussakhan and taboon bread, tabouleh 

This I do remember. This is the second time I have made this meal, recipe also from Saveur, and it was just as popular this time. It’s quite easy, but packs a huge punch with flavor. You just have to get your chicken parts and onions marinating several hours ahead of time, and then you just roast it up.

Just before it’s done, you fry up some pine nuts and toss them over the top of the sizzling hot chicken, which you have lavishly spread over the piping hot taboon bread,

Jump to Recipe

which you have whipped up a few hours before dinner because you believe in yourself. Actually I timed it a little wrong and the chicken was ready a few minutes before the bread, so people started eating it before I could put it on the bread. A minor disappointment, soothed by the implied compliment that they couldn’t wait to get their hands on that chicken. I still had my chicken on bread, and I spooned up plenty of the lovely sumac-laden roasting juices to ladle over the tender, dimpled taboon. 

This meal is so good, you can’t imagine. The chicken is so juicy and the mixture of spices is just heavenly. You got the happy salty little bread cloud floating underneath and it’s really just hard to stop eating. 

I also picked up a few boxes of tabouleh, already mixed with seasoning, so you just had to pour hot water over it to wake it up, and then I added some chopped tomatoes and cucumbers and feta cheese. I ate, uh, kind of a lot of that, too, even though it was just boxabouleh. 

FRIDAY
Pizza

Just regular old pizza, whew.

Oh, I was planning to tell you about the whole other cake, but I guess that belongs in next week’s post! I mean this week’s post. I did start it on Thursday. Well, next time, I’ll tell you allll about it. It just about killed me. 

And now it’s Tuesday. We got a massive dump of snow, the power is out, and I guess we are going to have corn flakes and melted snow for supper. 

Print

taboon bread

You can make separate pieces, like pita bread, or you can make one giant slab of taboon. This makes enough to easily stretch over a 15x21" sheet pan.

Ingredients

  • 6 cups bread flour
  • 4 packets yeast
  • 3 cups water
  • 2 Tbsp salt
  • 1/3 cup olive oil

Instructions

  1. Mix the flour, salt, and yeast in the bowl of a standing mixer.

  2. While it is running, add the olive oil. Then gradually add the water until the dough is soft and sticky. You may not need all of it. Let it run for a while to see if the dough will pull together before you need all the water. Knead or run with the dough hook for another few minutes.

  3. Put the dough in a greased bowl, grease the top, and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm spot for at least an hour until it has doubled in size.

  4. Preheat the oven to 400. Put a greased pan or a baking stone in the oven to heat up.

  5. If you are making separate pieces, divide it now and cover with a damp cloth. If you're making one big taboon, just handle it a bit, then put it back in the bowl and cover it with a damp cloth. Let rest ten minutes.

  6. Using a little flour, roll out the dough into the shape or shapes you want. Poke it all over with your fingertips to give it the characterstic dimpled appearance.

  7. Bake for 10-12 minutes until it's just slightly browned.

The thing about having kids

If you are wondering what things are like at our house, here is what you need to know: We have FOUR teenagers. Wasn’t that good planning? Aren’t we smart? It also smells wonderful here, believe me. And whatever the levels of snark and sarcasm you’re imagining, multiply it by 10. The four of them tend to gang up on us and act together like some kind of unholy army of scoffing and scorn.

Sometimes my husband will fuss at them, because they need to be fussed at. I recently learned that, after he leaves the room, one of my daughters will turn to the others and say, with a look of mild astonishment on her face, “I never did catch that man’s name.”

Pandemonium. She has very good comedic timing, just like her father, and she gets away with way too much just because she’s so funny. Just exactly like her father (whatever his name is).

And that’s what it’s like at our house.

I set this essay up like I was complaining, but this is actually one of the greatest parts of having children — or two of the greatest parts, I should say.

One is that they are so entertaining. They start out that way when they are first born (all babies are beautiful, and all babies are incredibly ugly, which is hilarious), and they keep it up as they trundle through one developmental stage after another, gracefully or clumsily blossoming into life as if they’re the first ones that ever thought of trying it. These comic firsts — first goofy laugh, first words, first joke, first completely insane knock-knock joke, first pun — they don’t get old when you have a lot of kids. If anything, they get better and better, because you’re relaxed enough to enjoy it.

It’s possible that I’m predisposed to enjoy my kids’ humor because I love them, but I have also heard so many people say that they had kids for various reasons — for duty, or because their wives wanted it, or by accident — and were amazed to discover how entertaining the little buggers turned out to be. I remember seeing a post on Facebook where some hapless young man loaded down with a stroller and diaper bags smiled goofily and told the cameraman, “I never thought I’d be so proud of someone for rolling over.” He knew the kid wasn’t some kind of genius for hitting a basic milestone, and yet that’s what milestones are like: They feel huge. They feel historic, even though trillions of people have done them before.

I suspect this is a large part of why people answered as they did in a recent Pew study…  Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor. 

Photo by Naassom Azevedo on Unsplash

Pope Francis has had ten years to take sex abuse seriously

My mother used to say that a man will sit in his living room and talk about how to save the world, while his wife is outside with a hammer and nails, fixing the front steps.

Ten years into the Francis papacy and this is how I feel, as a member of the church, and specifically as a woman in the church. We’ve been hearing these living room lectures for a decade now. We’ve heard about openness and going out to the margins and smelling like the sheep and not judging, and we’ve heard about reform.

How are the front steps? Do people take a look at the Catholic Church and think, “How safe and welcoming!”?

When Pope Francis was elected, I was thrilled. The photos and stories that circulated seized my heart and made me feel like something incredible was about to happen. I saw him riding incognito on a bus, refusing to take advantage of his high office to grab a limousine. I saw him washing the feet of Indigenous women comfortably breastfeeding their babies, and no one was freaking out about modesty or decorum or custody of the eyes. I saw him standing, apparently heavy with distress, at the moment of his election, feeling the unwelcome weight of the duty that had been placed on his head, and I thought this spoke well of him, that he wasn’t grasping for power. And I saw him waving cheerily up at a photographer over his car a few months later, and I thought this spoke well of him, too, that he had chosen to make the most of where he was. He seemed to love everybody. He seemed to see people, especially the unseen, especially the overlooked, the wounded. My hopes were especially high for how he would handle the sexual abuse crisis.

I thought: He is going to do great things. He’s going to challenge us all. This is a man who will listen to us, who will cut through the nonsense, who will do things in a way that makes sense, who won’t be flattered, who will stand up for the little ones. Things are finally going to be different this time. I had tearfully, painfully accepted the fact that Benedict and John Paul II had fumbled the sex abuse issue badly. And it looked like Francis would be different.

It has been 10 years. He has done many great things. But he was perfectly poised to make a difference with the sex abuse crisis, and the world was perfectly poised to applaud him if he did. He has squandered his chance… Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. 

***

Photo by Nacho Arteaga on Unsplash

The Catholic Home Gallery: Interview with John Herreid and GIVEAWAY

A little something to help get you through Lent! I have in my hot hands a copy of The Catholic Home Gallery: Eighteen Works of Art by Contemporary Catholic Artists, and Ignatius Press is giving me a second copy to give away! I’ll put details for how to enter at the end of the post. 

Guys, the book is gor-ge-ous, and it’s more than a book: It’s designed so you can pull the prints out and hang them on your wall. Wonderful idea.

Here’s the back cover, showing thumbnails of all the prints:

Here’s a little preview flip book, so you can see how it’s set up. I was actually astonished that this book is listed at $26.96. That’s a sale price, but the full price of $29.95 is also an excellent deal. I can’t think of another place you could find eighteen high quality prints for that price. You could also keep it together as a book, if that’s what you prefer. There is a short bio for each artist; many artists have included a little statement about art, and there is an artist’s note about each print. Importantly, the book includes information about where to find more of the artist’s work, so you can follow them, and maybe support them by buying more art. 

Here’s the list of the nine artists included in what I hope is the first in a series of such collections:

The book includes two pieces by each artist, with a forward by Emily Stimpson.

The other day, I talked to John Herreid, who came up with the whole idea and edited the book. He is the catalogue manager for Ignatius, and also designs many book and DVD covers for them. Herreid is an artist himself, and an art collector (as well as being my sister’s husband’s brother; I’m never sure if I’m supposed to mention that). Here’s our conversation.

SF: You say in your note at the end of the book that “I kept hearing people say such things as ‘I wish we had great Catholic artists working today.’ The thing is, we do! But with the overload of information in the digital age, it is often difficult to find these artists if you don’t know where to look.”
 
It does seem, though, like there has been a sudden flourishing of variety of styles of sacred art in the last several years. There are just more, and more different kinds of Catholic art, than there used to be.
 
JH: One of the things that facilitates that is the advent of social media, especially the kind that’s devoted to sharing images, like Instagram. But before that, there were a fair number of people devoted to making sacred art, but it was hard to encounter it. 
 
Around maybe 2002, another artist, Ted Schluenderfritz, author-illustrator Ben Hatke, and Sean Gleeson, and later some others and I put together Smallpax, a group for Catholic illustrators and artists, and I started interviewing artists like Daniel Mitsui and Tim Jones. Deacon Lawrence Klimecki and Anthony VanArsdale were also involved. That’s where I first started seeing the early versions of [Ben Hatke’s character] Zita. Ben was still doing illustrations for Seton Home School, way back in the day. The website is gone now, into the mists of the Internets. 
 
But I saved a bunch of images into a folder and showed them to people at work and said, “Wouldn’t it be neat to do a collection of prints?” Then I proceeded to be annoying about it for a decade, and they eventually agreed to do it. 
 
SF: I’m really struck with how it’s not just designed to page through, but so you can take the images out and put them your home.
 
JH: I grew up in a house where my mom had art all over the place. A lot was stuff she was pulling out of magazines and putting in frames. When I started collecting art for my own purposes, several times I encountered these folios of prints from the WPA era. There would be just a collection of thirty or forty prints, designed so they could be detached and put on the walls. I was familiar with a loose folio that came in a folder, but the idea of a bound folio was really neat. 
 
If you have art on the wall, it becomes part of your daily life. It informs how you think of the saints being depicted, or of the Blessed Mother, or your image of God, which is one of the reasons I really don’t like the saccharine late 19th and early 20th century treacly kind of sacred art. 
 
If you grow up around that, you get the idea that the faith is either pretty and nice, or else it isn’t real, or else you encounter a great amount of suffering, and if this is your image of the faith, you think, well, I can’t connect with that. Some people find it deeply meaningful; they really do. But for me, that has never been something that spoke to me. 
 

Fr. Jaques Hamel by Neilson Carlin
 
SF: Have your kids let you know how the art you put in the house has affected them? 
 
JH: Some of my kids are more into visual art than others. My daughter, who is very artistic, will look at it and talk about it with me. My youngest, who is six, as soon as I showed him the proofs [of the book] that came in, he immediately told me that as soon as I get the final one, he wants St. Joseph Terror of Demons. He grabbed that one right away. 
 

St. Joseph Terror of Demons by Bernadette Carsensen
 
SF: How did you choose the artists? 
 
JH: It’s a wide variety of styles, and that was conscious. There were people I really wanted to get in there: Tim Jones, Matthew Alderman, and Jim Janknegt. Those were the initial people I envisioned building this around. Matt Alderman is doing a black and white sort of art nouveau style;
 

The Wedding at Cana by Matthew Alderman
 
Tim Jones is doing a classic realistic style,
 

The Immaculate Heart by Timothy Jones
 
and Jim Janknegt is doing a modern style with colors that explode off the page.
 
Miracle of the Sun by James B. Janknegt
 
With those three, you get an idea of the kind of variety you will find in the book. 
 
SF: Did anything surprise you as you went through the process of putting it together? 
 
JH: One person said, “I’m glad you decided to include some images of recent saints and soon-to-be saints,” and I said, “Oh, I guess I did.” I have Blessed Solanus Casey [by Matthew Alderman] and Servant of God Fr. Kapaun [by Elizabeth Zelasko]
 

Servant of God Father Emil Kapaun by Elizabeth Zelasko
 
I hadn’t really consciously set out to do that, but I am interested in recent saints. 
 
 I also didn’t realize that I had put quite so many Marian images in there. There’s . . .seven, eight, nine, fully half these images. I brought a copy to the Marian Library at the University of Dayton to give them in their library collection, and I said something like, “There aren’t that many Marian images,” but then I looked at them and I was like, oh, I guess there are!
 

Mary, the Mother of Life by Michael D. O'Brien
 

SF: I know some people have rules about sacred art, like not combining it with secular art in the same space. Do you have any rules? 

JH: I personally do not. I grew up in a house with a jumble of images, like a Padre Pio statue in a shrine made out of an old tofu press hanging on the wall. 

SF: That’s the most Herreid thing I have ever heard. 

JH: I do think, looking back, it’s funny that Padre Pio is Mr. Redmeat saint, and there he is in a tofu press. 

Saint Padre Pio by Matthew Conner

SF: I have seen the photos you’ve been posting on social media as you’ve been hanging up the prints in your house. It’s a good tip to find high quality frames in thrift shops. Frames are expensive! Do you have other advice for people who want to incorporate more sacred art into their homes?

JH: I collect art of all kinds. I love having things on the walls. One thing I think people get too finicky about is having to be very intentional about having to set up a special sacred spot in their room. That’s great if you can do that and have the room for it, and the room is architecturally appropriate for it, but often times you may not be able to do that. In that case, you may want to just put things where they fit and gather around them for prayers. 


St. Benedict by Gwyneth Thompson-Briggs

As far as collecting sacred art, antique stores are a great spot, although it’s often the more saccharine style of art. I found a great Madonna and Child, made by a great sculptor, for $8 at an estate sale. It’s huge, actually impractically huge. 

Our neighbor once brought a friend over to talk about home brewing, and the guy walked into the door and was confronted by all this Catholic imagery. And he said, “So, is the Catholic thing an aesthetic, or . . . ?”
I said, “No, I actually believe it.” 
And he said, “Oh. O-kay . . . . . okay.”
 

SF: Sure, you’re the weirdo. 

Is there anything else you want people to know about this book or about art in general? 

 
JH: I really feel strongly that we made sure to include information about each of the artists, where you can find them online, their social media info, and where you can purchase their art. It drives me bonkers when people share images by working artists and don’t credit them, and don’t say where it’s from. 
 
Sacred art in the past was commissioned by the wealthy and powerful, and they would be responsible for funding it. We’re no loner in a world like that. Most artists depend on people like me and you to buy art from them.  I feel like it’s only just to find artists online and try to support them.
 
If one of these images [in the book] jumps out at you, go look them up and find out what else they’ve done, and maybe purchase a few prints directly. That’s the only way they’ll be able to continue doing this work, if people like me and you support them. 
 

***

And now for the giveaway! Nice and simple. Just leave a comment on this post, and you’re entered. I will use a random number generator to choose the winner on Monday the 13th, and I will contact the winner by email. Thanks to Ignatius for sponsoring this. 

FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE, PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT USING A NAME CONNECTED TO AN EMAIL ADDRESS THAT ACTUALLY WORKS. If the winner left a comment using the email address “nicetryfeds@noneofyourbeezwax.com” I will make rude chimp noises and then pick someone else, and then you won’t get your art. 
 
 
 

 

 

Fatherhood transfigured

The theme at Mass yesterday was fathers, secretly.

Our pastor has introduced a new ministry, the Men of St. Joseph, which is meant to spiritually support men (fathers and otherwise), and provide fellowship for them and so help strengthen the family. We’re having perpetual adoration, beginning on St. Patrick’s day and ending on St. Joseph’s day, to pray for their intentions. Our family takes up three short side pews, and my husband was standing right in front of me as father made these announcements, so maybe I was primed to think about fatherhood, and the various ways it manifests itself.  

At our parish, there has been an influx of families from a somewhat different culture. I don’t mean ethnically; I mean that the women and girls cover their heads and wear skirts, the boys and men wear dress shirts if not suit jackets, and the fathers are unambiguously in charge of their little tribes. I love hearing more babies at Mass, which is another change they brought with them. Previously, you had to hit the later Mass with the guitars and tambourines to hear a lot of kid noise — and honestly, a certain amount of kid screaming and berserking; but now the early Mass, the one with the organ and choir and the little scraps of Latin, also has its good share of miniature Catholics making joyful and various other noises unto the Lord. 

There is also a sub-contingent of new families where the kids are deathly quiet in their pews. Maybe it’s just their personalities, and do I try to mind my own business, but it always pings my alarms when I see a young kid who seems able to sit and stand very still for a full hour, but is afraid to look his father in the face. I happened to look over and see a little boy with flaxen hair and a peaked, anxious face gather up his courage to pluck at his father’s leg to wincingly ask permission to visit the restroom. He seemed terrified. I do try not to jump to conclusions, but I can’t help notice these things. 

At this Mass, we heard the Gospel about the transfiguration. Our pastor drew out the contrast in how the disciples behaved when they were just having a normal day with Jesus, going for a little hike up the mountain; and even after his face started to shine and his clothing become dazzling and Moses and Elijah appeared, Peter (who, our pastor pointed out, has no filter) started talking about making plans to set up tents so they could all stay there and hang out together. Peter was clearly overwhelmed, but not so overwhelmed that he stopped talking. 

But when God the Father began to speak, then he shut up. Then they were afraid. “They fell face down on the ground, terrified.” Now this is God unfiltered, unmediated by human flesh in the Incarnation, and the disciples absolutely could not handle it. 

It is a strange story. I said God the Father manifests himself to them, and I said he was “unfiltered,” but really it must have been just a sort of tip-of-the-iceberg situation, or else they would have been obliterated. He spoke to them from a cloud, terrifying though that was, presumably to protect them from the full force of his presence.

And for what purpose does he speak to them in such a way that they cannot help but hear him? To point them to Jesus. He says “This is my son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.”

Well I would think so! When I heard this reading, I actually couldn’t remember what came next, so I listened the heck up to see what it was that Jesus was going to say, that God the father came down from heaven to particularly draw our attention to. So what does Jesus say?

He says, “Get up. Do not be afraid.”

That’s it.  So what’s this about? 

 Jesus says a lot of things, before and after the transfiguration, and it would be a big mistake to decide that this is the main thing, and that the rest could be ignorable. But right after the Father says “listen to him!” Jesus says two things: “Get up” and “Do not be afraid.”

Two things. Our pastor pointed out how comfortable Peter and the others clearly felt with Jesus that day. He brought them up there presumably to receive the message from God, and Peter has the idea of making tents so that Jesus and Moses and Elijah can stay there. Peter wants to put up stakes and get them to come down, and stay down, and be where he is. 

But instead, Jesus is asking them to come up to where he is. First he brings them up the mountain, and then he tells them to get up. I have no idea what his tone of voice was with these words! Reassuring? Annoyed? Exasperated? Tender? Commanding? Challenging? In any case, it’s their move: They have to get up. Staying down, hanging around, just keeping the status quo and either being comfortable and chill, or being terrified and immobile, is not an option. 

But then he does also reassure them. “Do not be afraid.”

This is what he has been saying ever since he was born as a little nobody-baby in Bethlehem. He makes it so they will not be afraid to look God in the face, because they know him, and are comfortable with him. But now he also, I suppose, wanted to give them a little reminder of . . . who else he really is, besides their friend and companion and teacher. Because he knows what is coming soon, and he knows they will need to be strong. 

He doesn’t want them to be afraid of him. But he does want them to know how high above them he is, so that they will stand up and be more like him. There are more mountains that must be scaled. 

Jesus is not God the Father. But God the Father commands us to listen to him. And what he says is both comforting and challenging, both. I think what we are seeing here on the mountain is the fatherhood of Jesus. What he says is what all good fathers say. And what he shows them, in his dazzling holiness . . . I don’t know. Maybe that is what all good fathers can be. I once saw a man, a good father, kneeling on the floor, wrapping the ankle of a young man he treated as a son. There was a brightness in the room, and I was dazzled. I was afraid. 

It must be extremely hard to be a good father. To be approachable without going too low. To comfort fears without making too much room for berserking. To impose discipline without instilling terror. To learn how speak to children so they will listen, so they will know that what comes out of your mouth next is the real deal. To know when they do need the occasional flattening, and then immediate inspiring after that.   To be the protector of the family without becoming a threat to the family yourself. To do what must be done to strengthen them, knowing it may lose their affection. To give yourself up for your family without becoming lost. To be the one who has to tell people “get up” when, in fact, you are not Jesus and do not have supernatural aid and very much want to lie down yourself. 

So fine, so I signed up for the adoration hour for the intentions of fathers in our parish (and that includes people who are affected by their fathers, which is everybody).  I know there is a lot of nonsense about the crisis of masculinity and so on. But this is a very hard time to be a good father, and men who are trying to get it right are pulled in a so many more directions than we give them credit for. So many of them want to be good fathers when they have never had that for themselves, never seen it. It is hard. Harder than I realized. So let’s pray for them, to be strengthened and comforted and inspired by the fatherhood of Jesus. 

***
Mosaic image via HippoPx (Creative Commons)