Month: July 2016

[img attachment=”98244″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”whats for supper aleteia” /]

Sometimes you look at what the future holds, and you think, “What can I make without using my brain at all?” Here is what we had for supper this week:

SATURDAY
BLTs, root beer floats

Birthday! Kiddo requested this meal; she’ll have a party later. Meanwhile, we increased our stilt ownership by 100%.

[img attachment=”112933″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”stilts” /]

Never thought I’d be buying special, patterned duct tape to help us tell all our stilts apart, but here we are.

***

SUNDAY
Pizza

Made by Mr. Husband. I forgot my shopping list, and so bought ingredients for pizzas, tacos, and quesadillas, but I forgot cheese. Toldja I had no plans to use my brain.

***

MONDAY
Tacos, guacamole, tortilla chips

I had a cheap attack in the middle of the supermarket, and decided to cut the ground beef with some ground turkey that was on sale. I also balked at Hass avocados @ $1.29, and instead chose the somewhat thriftier travesty known as Florida avocados, a vegetable entity which sometimes compounds the offense by introducing itself as a “SlimCado.”

Wikipedia tells me:

in the United Kingdom, the term “avocado pear” is still used as applied when avocados first became commonly available in the 1960s.^[18] It is known as “butter fruit” in parts of India and goes by the name “bơ” [ɓɘː] in Vietnamese, which is the same word that is used for butter.^[19] In eastern China, it is known as è lí (“alligator pear”) or huángyóu guǒ (“butter fruit”). In Taiwan, it is known asluò lí or “cheese pear”.

You see? We do have options, preserving at least our dignity and integrity. And yet here we are, consenting to vote for something called a “SlimCado.” If you were watching CNN last night and wondering, “How did it come to this?” — well, this is how. One SlimCado at a time. Concession and compromise after concession and compromise. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold because it is all withered and false, not like a real avocado pit at all; but they’re counting on people thinking, “But this is an emergency! I have no choice! I better just buy this, this thing here, because it says it’s an avocado . . . ”

I bought two SlimCados, and I’ll probably do it again, if they’re on sale. I am what’s wrong with America today.

So, the guac was the wrong shade of green and gravely inferior in texture and depth of flavor, and the taco meat kind of balled up, but we ate it.

[img attachment=”112915″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”taco” /]

It was also on Monday that I sent the following email:

[img attachment=”112917″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”Screen Shot 2016-07-22 at 10.48.55 AM” /]

Cleverly, I sent it not to my husband, but to the Special Projects Director at the Office of the Bishop in Colorado Springs, where I am going in a few weeks to speak to a local Legatus chapter. I blame the treacherous SlimCado. This is what happens when you’re alligator cheese-deficient in the brain pan.

***
TUESDAY
Hamburgers, pasta salad, broccoli and carrots with dip

NTR. But the pasta salad included basil that came from my very own terrible garden!

[img attachment=”112921″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”burger” /]

Not the broccoli, though. I tried growing broccoli once, and got some gorgeous, water-hogging foliage with a little ornamental broccofluff on top.

***

WEDNESDAY
Hammy Sammies, Cheezy Weezies

Yummy little recipe: You buy a package of little rolls and cut the tops off without even separating the rolls from each other. Lay ham and Swiss cheese on, and put the tops back on. Cover them with a sauce made of melted butter, worcestershire sauce, mustard, and poppy seeds. Let it sit for a while, then throw them in the oven.

[img attachment=”112931″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”hammy sammy” /]

Here’s the other thing you need to know about me: This is not the first time I’ve gotten this message from my computer:

[img attachment=”112922″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”Screen Shot 2016-07-22 at 10.56.11 AM” /]
Yep, I’ve spent most of my adult years downloading photos called “ham and cheese.” I am what’s wrong with etc. etc.

***

THURSDAY
La Brea Tar Pit Chicken, Cole Slaw, Grits, Peaches

An actual new recipe, actually, suggested by several Facebook pals when I put out a call for help re: boring drumsticks. You mix up soy sauce, red wine, sugar, and ginger, heat until the sugar is dissolved, and pour the sauce over the chicken. Cook for a while, turn it over, cook it some more, and it turns out looking like La Brea Tar Pit Chicken.

This doesn’t have anything to do with the post. I just added it to remind you all why you read Aleteia.

***

FRIDAY
Quesadillas, brown rice, frozen corn

What, because Hillary’s so much better, I guess?
Oh, sorry, I thought we’re just supposed to say that every few minutes now. As you were, AmeriCaCado.

It keeps coming up, so I’m going to keep answering.

In my recent post #DontPray is trending. Do they have a point?, I said that it’s shameful to merely pray in the face of horrible crimes, rather than asking ourselves what we can do — whether it’s working directly on the actual problem, or working to sanctify our own families and our own souls, so that horrors may be overcome by good.

A reader calling himself “Charles, an Atheist,” left this response:

Don’t pray. Two hands working do more than a thousand clasped in prayer. Praying does more harm than good. Praying gives people a false sense of accomplishment: they’ve done nothing, but felt like they made a difference. Many people forgo actually helping in times of crisis or tragedy, because they believe that they’re doing their personal share by praying. So they contribute less than if they contributed in material ways. So if you really do want to solve the world’s woes, or to help a good cause, then do something with your hands, or donate resources.  Peace, friends.

I was struck by his courteous tone, and his obvious desire to do good in the world. Like Charles, I have met people who feel that praying (or writing blog posts, or calling in to radio shows, or Tweeting with self-righteous hashtags) is all they’re required to do to help their fellow man, and they feel proud of themselves for saying the correct words and then going about their business as if they’ve accomplished something. This kind of empty gesture does replace action, and it’s nothing to be proud of.

That’s why I write about this topic so often: I want to remind religious people that if we’re able to act, then we’re required to act. Faith without works is dead. Works take many different forms, but unless we’re contemplative religious, we may not simply pray and call it a day.

Also, I want to remind non-religious people that some prayer is private. A good many of the world’s most effective humanitarian workers do pray before, during, and after they work; but they follow the Lord’s explicit command to do so privately, behind closed doors, because it’s a true conversation, and not done for show. So if you see someone who is active and effective, he may also pray fervently, without anyone knowing it.

Regardless of whether anyone knows you’re praying or not, what is the primary purpose of prayer? It is to meet God, to speak to Him and to listen to Him while we living our lives. In prayer, we turn our lives over to God, and we ask for His guidance, strength, courage, and wisdom when we think, speak, and act. Prayer, action. They go together.

My morning prayer is from the Psalms (and, for what it’s worth, I’m locked in my private room as I write this, okay, heavenly Father?):

A clean heart create for me, o God,
and a steadfast spirit renew within me.
Cast me not out from your presence,
and your Holy Spirit take not from me.
Give me back the joy of your salvation,
and a willing spirit renew within me.

No matter what comes next, this covers it. As I pray this prayer in the morning, I often have a very clear sensation of strapping on armor, getting my marching orders for the day, and preparing my heart to be ready, open, and resolved to carry out whatever it is I need to do, whether I want to or not. This prayer covers the predictable things, which I’ve been training for and have specific orders about, and the unpredictable ones, which I might be winging it.

Sometimes, the get-ready prayer is stirring and encouraging, and I’m raring to go:

Sometimes it’s a little darker, and I can’t see how it all will end. How did it come to this? All I can hope for is to be on the right side, with the right heart and the right intentions before the enemy is met:

Okay, maybe even something like this

(although when I end a prayer with “Groovy,” I’m usually asking for some divine comeuppance).

Prayer doesn’t excuse me from action. If anything, praying a “get ready” morning prayer like the Psalm above makes much harder for me to ditch my duties to other people, because I’ve made it official that I’m making plans, and not just drifting along. You can’t pray a prayer like this and then claim you had no idea that a follow-up was required.

Of course, there are other kinds of prayer. There are prayers with no obvious action involved: prayers for mercy, prayers of gratitude and joy, prayers for forgiveness, prayers of anger and grief, and sometimes prayers of bafflement, when you have absolutely no hope of doing anything useful yourself, and the only thing that’s left is prayer, so you do it because it couldn’t hurt.

As I’ve said before:

Prayer is like deciding to use both hands to tie your shoe. It’s like taking off your sunglasses when you’re looking at sculpture by Bernini. It’s like filling your pen with deep, black ink. It’s like remembering a joke you heard when you were a child, and finally getting it.  It’s like adding the catalyst that changes everything.  It’s like telling your beloved what’s really on your mind, and being delighted to realize that your beloved already knows. It is the conversation that happens before, during, and after everything great and small that we do. Prayer doesn’t make things happen. Prayer makes things possible.

And of course there will always be phonies: those who put on armor, take a picture of themselves for Instagram, and then shamble down to the basement to play World of Warcraft the rest of the day. Humans gonna human. It’s lame and useless to pray and then refuse to act, just like it’s lame and useless to get a “namaste” tattoo or you attach a “nomorewar” hashtag to everything you say. Big deal, who cares? Talk is cheap, whether you’re talking to God or Reddit. Let’s see some action.

Christians really ought to know better. So let’s be sure that our prayer and our action go hand in hand. People who pray are people who act — or at least, they should be.

The younger kids came home from the first day of Totus Tuus camp wearing strings on their wrists. I asked why, somewhat nervously — hoping that no one had pressured them into making some kind of pledge or consecration that they’re not ready for. My seven-year-old cheerfully explained, “Oh, we have to wear this all week, and if we show up without it, we have to sing a silly song.” How cute! I thought. Then the next day, she showed up with a second string on her wrist, this time a green one. She casually explained that these are the liturgical colors, and she could tell me what they stood for. And that, if you forget to wear them, you have to sing a silly song.

Read the rest at the Register.

***

Pictured: Not an official Totus Tuus Bit of String. They are actually thinner. I don’t know why I felt compelled to disclose this, and yet here we are.

Is it my imagination, or has the internet been on fire with smart ideas and good writing lately? Maybe it’s just that everything that’s not about the Hillary Trump Dumpster Fire looks smart and worthwhile. But I don’t think so – I think the world is just bigger than All That. Here are some great reads you may have missed:

1.One of Us: Superman and the Incarnation by my sister, Abigail Tardiff, at Catholic Exchange:

In the recent flop Batman v Superman, Superman has the same problem as God: America has taken its democracy so much to heart that we see any kind of hierarchy as a sin. It’s not just King George who offends us, by making laws for us to live by that we don’t have a voice in. It’s the whole idea of a king. It’s God Himself, now, Who offends us not only by the things He does, but simply by Who He is. We object to the idea that Someone exists Who can make decisions about us without our say.

2.Policing with Velvet Gloves from The Atlantic, on police officers who want to learn how to serve people with mental illness:

“‘One day, one of you officers will have to come to my house and you might have to shoot and kill my son,’” Ernie[San Antonio police officer Ernie Stevens] recalls her saying, still shaking his head at her resignation. “‘And I want you to know that if that happens, that’s OK. Because I want you to go home safe to your families. You don’t know what it’s like to live with this.’

“At that moment, everything changed for me,” Ernie remembers. “To see her resolved to the fact that her son would eventually be killed by a police officer, and to know she couldn’t possibly be alone … I just thought, there’s no way that this can be.”

3. 6 reasons to request prayers on social media A good little synopsis by Elizabeth Dye.  I definitely need to reel in my social media activity, but at least it makes me pray for people all day long.

4. Jennifer Fitz on Active Participation and the Things We Do with our Bodies at Mass:

I remember this night at Mass when active participation ceased to be about marching around or singing along.  I was at OLCC, sitting in the pew because standing was not on my to-do list (decrepitude), it was some feast or another, and the Gloria was going on forever, and ever, and ever.  The choir would sing some line of the Latin, and then sing it again and again in fifty different variations of hauntingly beautiful soaring tunes.  Then on to the next line.

Not a Sing Along.

It was a Pray Along.

I finally got, for the first time in my life, a chance to pray the Gloria with something that felt like justice.  No more wincing at the splendor of tu solus sanctus then quick keep moving, time for the next big idea.  Each idea, one at a time, washing over the congregation, swirling around in a whirpool of words, seeping into our thoughts and wetting the soul’s appetite for the next line of the prayer.

5. Begotten Not Made: a short piece by Glenn Arbery, my college professor and now president of Wyoming Catholic College, on a revelation via the gift of one of his daughters, who has Down Syndrome:

[21st-century neo gnostics] don’t feel free unless they can will whatever they do, including making themselves.

But it seems to me that the phrase in the Creed is wonderfully liberating. We are not responsible for making our children—educating them, to be sure, but not turning them into products. They arrive with their own natures, and we accept them and work with those natures, as we accept and work with our own. What a relief to be given what one is: begotten, not made.

6. From the Register‘s Joan Desmond: NY Times Tells Liberal Parents It’s Okay to Freak Out About Porn:

[NYT’s Op-Ed columnist Judith Shulevitz] writes:

Parents don’t have to believe that such material is a direct cause of sexual violence to be driven a little crazy by it. It’s bad enough that it’s giving our sons and daughters some very creepy ideas about how they’re supposed to look and act.

Anticipating a hostile response from liberal readers, who generally oppose restrictions on sexual content as a form of neo-Puritanism, Shulevitz holds up her own progressive credentials:

I’m not against the proliferation of internet sexualities …. I just don’t want my preteens watching actors having sex with corpses, even fake corpses, before they’ve begun to date.

Well, you gotta start some place.

7. From another of my talented sisters (I have four talented sisters!): Devra Torres at The Personalist Project with the encouraging thought that Maybe Everything We Know Is Wrong:

How do you assess, for example, the suffering of a 40-year-old man living when the average lifespan was 30, but the aged were revered? How to compare it to, say, the suffering of a woman who dies at 75 in a nursing home where the aged are despised and hidden away? Or how to measure the physical pain of a 12th-century peasant without ibuprofen or antibiotics, against the spiritual agonies of a 21st-century atheist who, as far as he knows, has no reason to live?

8.And have I mentioned lately that I’m on the radio every week with my friend Mark Shea? We’re live on Mondays at 5 Eastern (Breadbox Media live stream here). You can listen to podcasts of previous shows here (Mark is on every weekday, and has a different regular co-host for each day). Here’s a recent show where Mark and I talked about poetry and how to read it, and we read some of our favorite poems, including some by Hopkins, Richard Wilbur, Theodore Roethke, and Edward Lear, and two by Mark himself!

9.And finally, the dumbest thing I’ve read lately: Some doofus at the Huffington Post has decided she’s offended at one of the best parts of the Mass, the part where we tell God, “Look, you know and I know that I’m a mess, but thanks to you, it doesn’t matter, because you love me.” Yeah, let’s do away with that, doofus. (This dovetails pretty well with Abby’s “Superman” post above, actually.)

Aleteia’s David Mills responds handily and gently with You can’t be having too much grace:

It’s a gift, meeting people who are so good. The good man and woman is a beacon, is the light of an open door at the end of a dark hard journey. It’s a gift to feel unworthy in the presence of goodness, because that goodness comes from a God who wills us to become worthy and has provided the means at great cost to himself.

10. Hold everything.  Finally finally, here is a dessert which I insist someone rush over and make for me: Grilled peach splits from Smitten Kitchen. Check it out: Grilled peach halves drizzled with maple syrup and cinnamon, filled with vanilla ice cream, with a crumb topping of pecans, coarse sugar, and bourbon, and of course vanilla whipped cream. I would trade my left foot for one of these and laugh all the way to the hospital. Ew. I’m sorry, I only wanted to talk about peaches, but that went bad.

 

 

1. America, democracy, etc. 

But let’s talk about something else, shall we?

2.The van. Oh, you’re tired of hearing about my van? I’m so terribly sorry. Think how much worse you’d feel if you were within a fifty-mile radius of us, and you could hear my actual van, rather than just hearing about it.

A mechanic once wrote on the repair estimate, more in sorrow than in anger, “misfires badly under any significant load.” Oh, yes. That was the first time I ever gave a van a hug. I used to wonder why I could never come up with a name for my van, but after I read this diagnosis, I knew why.

I already know what her name is.

I already know.

3. The lawnmower. The other day, in a neighborhood far, far away, I saw a wee sprite of a girl tooling around handily with a lawn mower, doing her part to keep the family manse tidy and trim. I wondered why my own rotten kids don’t mow our yard. I have four teenagers. Four! Some of them quite hulking! And yet my husband and I are the only ones who mow.

Then I remembered that our lawnmower has several good features, such as: all of the wheels turn. But it’s old, and it’s not well-maintained, and it keeps forgetting to put itself in the shed when it rains, and so it runs a little rough. Last time I mowed for longer than ten minutes, it took two full weeks to regrow a sort of starter layer of skin back on my palms.

4.My transition off Zoloft. Hey, nobody’s reading this anyway, right? So I says to myself, I says, “I’ve been on this drug for a good, long time, and it’s pretty good, but there’s this and that reason, and thus and so, and maybe I can start weaning myself off it, and just see how it goes.” Therapist says great, doctor says fine, so this is what I do. And it was going okay, it really was. It was going great, to be honest. I took my final dose, said goodbye, threw out the bottle.

Twenty-three hours later, eleven different kinds of hell broke loose. Of course they did. Any one of these things would have been reason to start taking an anti-anxiety drug.

In short:

5. My garden. If you went out there, you’d think, “Hey, this garden is going okay, considering she keeps forgetting she has a garden. It’s pretty weedy, and she needs to stop talking about putting up a fence and actually put it up, and maybe a little insect control couldn’t hurt. But things are certainly growing. Basil fat and hearty, string beans throwing off the blossoms of youth and getting down to business; tomatoes flourishing, radishes chugging along, lettuce and radicchio doing their part; lonely eggplant keeping busy, watermelons taking their time but not dead yet. Yes, this garden is going pretty smoothly, overall.

No.

I’ll tell you what the problem is. It’s those freaking pumpkins. They look great, right? Here’s just a few of my pumpkin plants:

[img attachment=”112450″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”pumpkin vines” /]

Leaves plush, vines ramping all over the place, flowers flowering. But it doesn’t mean anything, not anything at all. I’ve been down this road before, and it’s all a sham.

Right about the time when all those overachieving 4H kids (mere children!) are propping up their rapidly swelling Jarrahdales, their Howdens Huge Boys, and their Rouge Vif D’Etampseses on a bed of straw so they don’t crush themselves with their own massive girth, I’m standing there, tapping my foot, wondering why I used up so much valuable garden space for a bunch of yellow flowers that are too shy to go out and meet a girl.

[img attachment=”112451″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”pumpkin blossom” /]

One year, I was so desperate for some pumpkin action, I actually set the alarm for just before dawn so I could get up and hand-transfer the pollen with a delicate paintbrush from the stamen of one flower to the stigma of another. “Stigma” is right, yeesh. Let us never speak of this again.

And it didn’t even work! I also tried the thing where you shock the flowers into doing their manly duty by leaping out at them with a baseball bat and shouting, “YOU KEEP MY LITTLE GIRL OUT PAST MIDNIGHT, YOU BEST HAVE A WEDDIN’ RING IN YOUR POCKET, SON!” That didn’t work, either.

Yeah, I know you can fry pumpkin blossoms. I just don’t want to, okay?

6. Route 9. For Totus Tuus day camp this week, I find myself driving on this road four to six times a day, for a good half hour at a time. And it is gorgeous. Enchanted. Shimmering with water lilies on one side, solemnly robed with majestic pines on the other. There are gardens, cultivated and wild, and dancing fields of copper grasses, trimmed with purple and crowned with luminous coronets. Exuberant copses of trembling poplars give way to swaying curtains of wild grapes. The road unfurls and the intoxicating chorus of July mounts and then, when you’re so charged with green you cannot think that there could be any color but green: the river. Oh, the river. Oh, that deep, romantic chasm, and and oh, that fabulous blue! It just makes you want to

BRA-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-AP.

Rumble strips! So rude! So jolting! Any time you happen to slip even the teensiest bit off the very center of the lane, you get smacked with these stupid, unnecessary rumble strips. I don’t appreciate it at all when I’m trying to enjoy my nap, I mean drive.

Things are not going smoothly, I say.

***
Airplane! photo courtesy of Movie Stills Database

Alternate title: Build a Little Chicken Puppet In Your Soul!

Let me back up. The other day, I had the following conversation with my husband:

Him: “Oh, I remember that guy! He gave you a really hard time a few years ago.”

Me: “Really? I don’t remember him at all. I have such a hard time holding grudges, because I have such a rotten memory.”

Him: “I know. That’s great about you.”

Me: “Ehh, not really. It’s not exactly a virtue. I just have a bad memory.”

Him: “No, it is a virtue. Sometimes virtues come easily, but they’re still virtues.  And besides, you deliberately cultivate it.”

Me: “I guess so! I guess I could make up for my bad memory by keeping little notebooks about of stuff that made me mad, but instead I just . . . embrace the vagueness.”

Him: “I like you.”

Me: “I like you, too.”

Him: “Let’s watch Kolchak.”

Me: “Okay, but I’ll need a drink.”

Boy, his hat didn’t go on the hook, and he didn’t even care! Pshh, that Kolchak.

Seersucker notwithstanding, it was really helpful to hear this reminder that not all virtues are tortured out of us. I tend to think that virtues only “count” if they’re awfully hard, or if they run contrary to what we naturally want to do, or if they are the fruit of some soul-quaking struggle. Not so!

It is true that God sometimes asks really hard things of us. And it is true that everyone has some natural tendency that needs squashing or reversing. Original sin, you guys. It’s a thing. Everybody has something that needs some work, and God will use adversity and discomfort and trials to bring virtue out of us.

But it’s also true that grace builds on nature. Hey, there’s even a phrase for it! (I should write that down in a little notebook, so I don’t forget.) God really wants us to work with what we’ve got, even if it’s only a sieve-like memory. That’s  . . . why He gave it to us in the first place.

It makes sense. If I gave my daughter a sewing kit, I’d be thrilled to see her happily using it to make things. I wouldn’t think, “Oh, but she likes sewing, and she has a knack for it, so I’m not all that impressed by this felt chicken puppet she whipped up.” No, I’d be delighted, and I’d encourage her to try her hand at something more complex.

Same with the behaviors that come naturally to us. We don’t need to  preen ourselves on virtues that come easily; but we should recognize what those virtues are, so we can deliberately work on taking them to the next level. If we only work on the things that make us sweat and bug out, then we’ll be neglecting the gifts that God deliberately chose for us, and that’s just rude.

Bonus virtue! I asked my husband if I could share that conversation we had, and he didn’t remember it at all — and he doesn’t have a bad memory, either. He does remember that one jerky guy, though; he just doesn’t recall the part where he edified, encouraged, and illuminated me. One flesh: where two crazy people get together and, between them, come up with about 80%-worth of a virtuous, well-adjusted human being. In marriage, you not only get to build on your own virtues, but you can build on your spouse’s, too.

Kolchak, however, is on his own.

***
Image courtesy of Damien Fisher

[img attachment=”98244″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”whats for supper aleteia” /]

I’m sorry this post is so long. I didn’t have time to write a shorter one.

***

SATURDAY
Bagel sandwiches with egg, cheese, and sausage

I made the bagels in the oven in three batches, and burned all of them! A perfect record! I think the following may be the one and only picture I have of food this week.

[img attachment=”111999″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”corrie bagel” /]

Note the patient dog waiting for his commission, and note the child on stilts. Because it is dinner time.

I also made a quadruple recipe of blueberry muffins on Saturday evening, for Sunday breakfast. Blueberries were so cheap, I actually bought more than I could use, prompting my seven-year-old to say, “Mama! There’s extra blueberries?!?! Here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna get a trout — a brand new trout, that no one’s ever used! — and I’m gonna . . .

“. . . Wait. Is it not called a trout?”

She meant “trowel.” She had the idea of shovelling blueberries into her mouth with a trowel. Which is probably the best recipe for blueberries.

Muffins are very easy to throw together, and I always think I can easily make them in the morning. But I can’t, because it is morning and nothing is easily. I used this basic muffin recipe from King Arthur flour, and they turned out fine. I took some pictures, but they looked exactly like blueberry muffins, if you can imagine such a thing.

Good tips from Good King Arthur: Add the berries to the flour mixture and mix thoroughly, to coat the berries and prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the cupcake tin. And remember that it’s okay to leave lumps in the batter! Overbeating gives you tough muffins, which would be sad, but not a bad band name.

***

SUNDAY
Korean beef bowl, rice, watermelon

Amazing Husband Man made supper (easy, yummy recipe) while I went to Panera and did some work (first doing the “local oaf” routine). There was only a little bit of rice in the house, despite the fact that “rice” was written on the blackboard, and despite the fact that our van has rice all over it from the forty pounds of leaky bags of rice that were recently in there. I don’t want to talk about it. Everyone got a little rice, okay?

***

MONDAY
Chicken drumsticks, chips, Brussels sprouts

I felt sad and tired looking at all those uncooked drumsticks, so I solicited recipes on Facebook. It’s refusing to fetch that thread for me, but here’s one I remember, and plan to make: La Brea Tar Pit Chicken.

There were tons of wonderful ideas. As I always do when I ask for advice, I ignored it all and just made a quick Italian dressing-type marinade and then put the chicken under the broiler. It was fine; tasted like chicken.

***

TUESDAY
Hot dogs, beans, chips

I think the kids made this. It was hot.

***

WEDNESDAY
Spaghetti with sausage

Nothing to report. It was hot. OH, but we finally knocked “adults-only evening swim with fancy snacks” off the to-do list for the summer. Crackers, brie, cherries, beer, and scantily-clothed husband by the lake at sunset. Sometimes it all just works out. (Take note, parents drowning in Babyland! Eventually they do get old enough to leave at home and you can do amazing things.)

***

THURSDAY
Chicken tikka masala and brown rice

Okay. So my friend Kyra (the one who makes those magnificent chain mail necklaces and rosaries) sent me a wonderful box of nutso food from her local nutso food market.

[img attachment=”112000″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”kyra package” /]

We didn’t feel emotionally strong enough to open the instant natural jellyfish, but the garam masala and the ginger paste smiled encouragingly. Here’s how that worked out:

I have zero experience with Indian food. Some guy said that he read 25 different recipes for chicken tikka masala, and the only thing they all had in common was chicken. And I had chicken. So I didn’t worry too much about missing kind of a lot of the ingredients in this recipe.

I had chicken breasts instead of thighs,
bottled instead of fresh lemon juice,
no ground coriander (I just put extra cumin),
butter instead of ghee,
ginger paste instead of fresh,
tomato sauce instead of paste and chopped tomatoes,
no cilantro,
and milk instead of cream.

I know.

I once read that, if you’re in confession and are all balled up with scrupulosity, just tell the priest, “I am unable to judge the gravity of my sins,” and let him work it out.

It turned out . . . good? I think? The good news is, I have an all-consuming cold, and could barely taste it anyway. Kind of a lot of work for a dish that, to me, shyly hinted at cinnamon. But after I took a few bites, my nose started running like an arroyo in springtime, so it must have been spicy, and Mr. Husband liked it.

Before I made dinner, we enjoyed a series of comic mishaps as we went to the bank, the other bank, the comic book store, the other comic book store, the candy store, the burger place, the library, the other library, a few other miscellaneous places, and of course the children’s museum, where my 16-month-old girl had a tense showdown on the musical stairs with a somewhat smaller 17-month-old boy.  Oh, he stood down first, believe me. The other mom was like, “Wow, he’s never shy like this at home!” and I was like, “Lady, he did the right thing.”

So we got out of there, and then downstairs from the museum was a brand new Indian restaurant and grocery. “Fate!” I says to myself. “Fate has taken me in hand, and I will buy something in a bag that will round out this wobbly ethnic meal!”

To the helpful Indian lady, I explained my dilemma (basically, “I am white”), and she generously offered me a torrent of advice, gushing like an arroyo in spring, except that I couldn’t really understand her. I am fairly sure she said she just grabs whatever is in her cabinet if she doesn’t have the right ingredients. It was this that empowered me to use Hunt’s spaghetti sauce in my tikka masala.

I know.

After this, we suddenly had an urgent need to rush to the corporate office of the donut shop where my daughter works, and then it was closed anyway, but we’d already been out for eleven hours in a vehicle which blasts roasting-hot air on my feet; which meant that no, no, no, I was not going to do more driving to the other side of the other town to pick up rice, which had not spontaneously generated itself in the cabinet, despite being on the list.

I did, however, go to the local gas station (which, I noted with an interior sob, is owned and run by an Indian family) and got eight bags of boil-in-the-bag rice. I chose boil-in-a-bag brown rice, because I was sad about the whole whiteness thing.

I know.

We also had the dried mango candy and the chewy ginger candy, and they were fabulous. If all candy tasted like that, there would be peace on earth, and as our noses ran like arroyos in spring, our hearts would overflow with the gladness of ginger and tamarind, whatever that is.

As long as I’m single-handedly ruining Indian food, I think I’ll add capers if I ever make this again. It just sounds good. I couldn’t find any mention of capers as an ingredient of tikka masala, but why stop now? Maybe I’ll garnish it with diced marshmallows and serve it on a bed of Froot Loops.

***
FRIDAY
Mac and cheese

It’s still hot.

Oh, and I hereby escape copyright infringement for the photo at the top by providing a link to the source, which is entirely relevant to this post, which gushes and flows with cultural sensitivity like an arroyo in spring.

Hey, it’s that car! You know, that super crazy car you see driving around town! What is the deal with that car, anyway? What’s the story of that car’s owner, and what made him slip the bonds of what is normal and routine, choosing instead the path of the bonkers?

Whatever the story, That Car never fails to cheer us up when we spot it. Locally, we have at least five That Cars:

1. Duck Truck!

During the school year, we drop off the older kids at one school, then go home, pick up the younger kids, and drop them at another school, and then glumly wait for the glum carpool kid to turn up so we can all glumly get to the third school. We are not a morning people, and this segment of the day is nobody’s favorite.

UNLESS THERE’S THE DUCK TRUCK. Every so often, without warning and without explanation, there will be an enormously heavy, military-style dump truck parked in front of the school. Nobody knows why. There is no one in the driver’s seat, and the back is packed with miscellaneous furniture, auto parts, a blue plastic wading pool, one of those grubby dog igloos . . . and two geese.

That’s all I know. Okay, so it is a goose truck, not a duck truck, but shouting “DUCK TRUCK!” turns our day around. It’s wonderful. They seem like happy, spry, well-cared-for geese. They just happen to live in the back of a camouflaged dump truck parked in front of the school, okay?

2. Real Bill the World Exercise Champion! 

This energetic man’s exercise biography is painted in white all over his brown van. He does unbelievable numbers of sit-ups and jumping jacks, and there are raw eggs involved, and he can run backwards for way longer than you’d expect. Even reading about it is exhausting.

The upbeatness of it all is fairly encouraging, but then I saw he had carved a slot in the side of the van and painted the word “TIPS.” It’s a college town, with lots of frat boys. I get mad thinking about what they must stuff in that slot. Why can’t they leave Real Bill alone?

3. The Repent Van!

Speaking of frat boys, we also used to see a terrible van with “REPENT” painted all over it. Surprisingly effective, at least on me. I would draw up to a red light, see the Repent Van, and think, “Well . . . but . . . okay, fine, all right, I will.” Can’t really think of an argument against it. What, I have nothing to repent of? What, I refuse to repent just because a terrible van told me to? If this van were a guy, he’d be dressed in camel hair and eating locusts, and then what would I do, eh? Just keep on driving to Wendy’s like nothing happened?

Recently, the prophet traded his van for a Pepto-pink Repent Jeep, and he added some fluttering “REPENT” flags. It’s less persuasive now; not sure why.

4. The Batmobile! ish

There is a guy who drives an old black Corvette with a bat symbol painted on the side. Sometimes, for a festival or parade, he also wears his Batman costume, although he is of slight build.

Batman-ish demonstrates one of those developmental stages you won’t hear about from your pediatrician. In children ages two to about nine, he elicits thrills, admiration, even a little hysteria. IT’S BATMAN!!!!! DADDY, DADDY, BATMAN IS HERE! Then, when the child turns eleven or twelve, they stop thinking, “When I grow up, I’m going to be just like him!” and they start thinking, “Gee, that guy spends a lot of time pretending to be Batman. Huh.”

The other thing is, you can tell he’s shy. He likes it when people say, “Heyyy, it’s Batman!” but he doesn’t look them in the eye. One time, there was a pretty woman in the passenger seat, but only one time.

5. So I says to my husband, I says, “That’s four. Now I just need one more to round out the post.” And he says, “Simmy, it’s you.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, all naïve, despite having been married to this man for eighteen years.”You mean, like, this post is so me? Or it’s on me to come up with something else?”
And he says, “You are the fifth car.”

That can’t be right. Just because it’s a frankensteinishly-rebuilt 15-passenger van with blue racing stripes and peeling pro-life bumper stickers, with a 10-cylinder engine that is always goading me into trying to catch some air on the awesome hill just before the police station. Just because I sometimes spend four or five hours a day tooling back and forth and back and forth around the same 15-mile radius, shouting back at Diane Rhem and trying to drown out the “BONG BONG BONG” of the “you left your lights on” alarm that we keep disabling with wire cutters and it keeps resurrecting itself. Just because it’s crammed with feral-looking children and makes a ludicrously suggestive “squeakity-squeakity-squeakity!” sound when you put it in park. Just because every time you open the door, four seltzer cans and a boot fall out, and every time you close the door, you have to thread the floppy rubber weather stripping back on first.

He’s trying to tell me this is a vehicle that people around town notice and remember? He thinks that people say, “Hey, it’s That Car!” and they wonder what my deal is?

Yeah, well. REPENT.

 

***
Photo of Repent Van (actually a completely different Repent Van from our local Repent Van) by mike krzeszak via Flickr (license)

We’ve decided, as a nation, that a woman who wants an abortion should be able to get an abortion. We’ve decided that she has the right to do whatever her conscience allows, and that her freedom to choose or not choose abortion is a choice that should be protected. This bill simply confirms that healthcare providers have consciences, too, and that their choice to participate or not participate in abortions is a choice that should be protected.

Read the rest at the Register.

Image: By Souter, David Henry, 1862-1935

The phrase “custody of the eyes” always gets a lot of play in modesty discussions (which always ramp up around swimsuit season). In general, the phrase just means “watch where you look,” and it usually has to do with not staring at somebody else’s body parts. This is just good old, practical Mother Church teaching us how to behave so we don’t get into trouble: if you’re a man who is tempted into lustful thoughts by a woman’s cleavage, then keep your eyes on her face. If you’re a woman who’s tempted into lustful thoughts by shirtless joggers, then keep your eyes on the road. Don’t want to get burned? Keep your hands away from the fire. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with fire; it just means that you have to know what your weaknesses are, and act accordingly.

But the phrase “custody of the eyes” is used in a non-sexual context, too. This etiquette guide for Mass says,

After receiving Communion, keep a “custody of the eyes,” that is, be conscious to not let your eyes wander around. Instead, it is proper to keep your focus in front of you, with your head toward the floor … A “custody of the eyes” is also important for those who are in the pews who have yet to join the Communion line. It is not proper to stare at those who have received Communion. The time of Communion is a very intimate, personal and for many an intense time.

Isn’t that interesting? The purpose of custody of the eyes is to help us focus on what’s important at the moment — and also to preserve the privacy and dignity of other people. That latter aspect — preserving the dignity of the other person — is often missing when we discuss custody of the eyes. We often talk about how important it is to keep custody of the eyes when we see some stranger who turns us on. The most basic purpose of this is just to protect ourselves. It’s not sinful to feel attracted to someone attractive, but we don’t want a simple and natural attraction to transform itself into lustful thoughts that corrupt our hearts; and so we avert our eyes when necessary.

But the other purpose of custody of the eyes, and the more profound one, is to protect the person we’re looking at — to avoid turning him or her into an object, something to be consumed, something to be subjected to our own needs and ideas. Something, not someone.

And so I’d like to introduce the phrase into yet another less-common context. Many of us, men and women, could use practice keeping custody of the eyes when we’re looking at someone to whom we are not attracted, lustfully otherwise — someone whose dress or behavior we don’t approve of, someone whose appearance repels us.

Lust isn’t the only passion that needs reining in.

Here’s an example. When I was shopping yesterday, I saw an enormously fat woman wearing short shorts and a cherry red shirt that was cut so low, it was hardly a shirt at all. I mean, gravity was being disrupted. Light was going there to die. Whatever you’re picturing right now, it was more outrageous than that. I mean!

So, as someone who takes modesty seriously, what did I do? I thought bad things about her. I jeered at her in my head. I imagined how annoyed I would be if I had had one of my young sons with me. I compared my weight with her weight. And I concluded that she — not people like her, but she herself — was what was wrong with America today.

This was all in a matter of a split second, of course. I didn’t stand there gawping at her; and pretty quickly, I caught myself. I made a conscious effort to think about something else, and I moved along. But if I had been practicing custody of the eyes, I would have moved along much sooner, because I need to protect myself — not against lust, but against the sins of nastiness, cattiness, and disdain. If I had been practicing custody of the eyes, I would have just moved along automatically when I realized my weaknesses were being exposed.

But that’s not the best I can do. How much better would it have been if I focused on protecting not only myself, but this woman. How much better if, by long, well-established habits of charity in my thoughts, words, and deeds, I had found it very easy to see this woman simply as another child of God.

This should be our goal whether we’re gazing at someone who is immodest, or sloppy, or whose style is too trendy, or too pricey, or too pretentious, or old fashioned, or bizarre, or pointedly too modest, or too anything. We should be accustomed to finding Christ in every face.

It’s normal and understandable to feel anger and frustration when someone makes life harder for us by presenting us with temptations. But it’s a horrible mistake to be content with our anger. There’s no point in fighting lust if we’re just going to dive headfirst into hate! That’s like curing your crack addiction by switching to heroin. Lust is a sin because it crowds out love. Custody of the eyes is a tool for achieving this end, and is not an end in itself. Its purpose is to help us to love.

That must be what true holiness looks like: not just snapping my eyes away from some no-good tart who can’t be bothered to look decent, but practicing custody of their eyes for so long that it’s easy to see the actual person in, to paraphrase Mother Teresa’s phrase, “the distressing disguise of the slut” (or the slob, or the fatso, or whatever). It’s not enough to think, “Oh, how trashy; better look away.”  I should be learning to look at anyone and see Christ.

Custody of the eyes shouldn’t, ultimately, make us see less of a person. It should help us see more.

***
This post originally ran in a slightly different form at the National Catholic Register in 2013.
Photo: Craig Finlay via Flickr (licensed)