Yes, FINE, you raised over $4,000

Time for this big mouth to Google “Let It Go karaoke lower pitch.” And find out if we still have any Percocet in the house.

Stay tuned. And hey, Robin is still hoping to hit the $5,000 mark! Every penny will go to something good and worthwhile, I promise you. It’s much easier to make wonderful soap when you’re not worried about paying for rent and groceries until that first batch sells.  Thank you, so much, to everyone who’s donated so far. Except for Brandon Vogt, and Brandon Vogt knows why.

My interview on Omaha’s Spirit Radio

I had the nicest conversation about my book with Kris McGregor of “Discerning Hearts Presents” yesterday morning. It will be broadcast later this week, and also Saturday morning at 11 am Central. It just went into the online archive, and you can listen here.

The Sinner’s Guide to Natural Family Planning ON SALE.

Use this link and get my book directly from Our Sunday Visitor for only $8. You too can have the SGNFP experience, now at a discount . . . BUT FOR HOW LONG????*

* a few weeks

Thank you / Don’t you dare

LOOK WHAT YOU DID!

About 24 hours after I first posted about Robin’s GoFundMe campaign, she is fully funded. She can now get started buying supplies and equipment to make and sell lovely, lovely goat milk soap to support her family. This is amazing. This is wonderful. And I don’t mean to sound smug, but this is utterly predictable, because I knew you guys were this generous! People have been donating, sharing, and offering prayers and encouragement for Robin nonstop. So, so great.  From the bottom of my heart, thank you for helping my friend.

Robin is over the moon, and can’t wait to start ordering supplies. She has been working on setting up her kitchen and figuring out where everything will go.  Now would n’t it be nice if she had a little more wiggle room while she’s getting started? The $3,000 is for supplies and equipment. Anything over and above that amount will go to food, rent, and utility bills, which are still constant worries for Robin and her family.

So, I may have accidentally announced last night that, if Robin’s fund reaches $4,000, I will post a video of myself singing “Let It Go” from Frozen.  People seemed kinda enthusiastic about the idea, so I went ahead and listened to “Let It Go” for the first time, because I’ve been wrapped in a miraculous hermetically sealed cocoon of Let It Go Unawareness so far.

And you know what? FINE, I’ll sing it. It’s a stupid song, and has too many notes, but I suppose you all have to work your time off purgatory somehow.

So if you haven’t donated, please consider it! If you haven’t shared Robin’s page on Facebook or Twitter or what have you, please share! If you, for some penitential reason, want to hear and see me singing this sucky little song which is exactly the kind of music I hate the most and am entirely unsuited to perform, then spread the word! We can do this (don’t you dare).

Polio and Mumps are manageable diseases

Here’s something I just saw on Facebook, in response to an article about lies spread by pro-vaccine doctors:

These illnesses are manageable. Here are some children managing polio:

PIC children with polio on all fours

And here is a baby managing whooping cough (pertussis):

I’m closing comments on this because there is NOTHING TO SAY. I understand being afraid of vaccines. As with so many worthwhile things, vaccines have some risk. But to say that the diseases they prevent are “manageable” — well, there is nothing to say, except stay the hell away from my kids. I like them breathing.

 

At the Register: Teaching Contempt for Rules

Yay, my hometown made national news! Boo, my hometown is exactly like I remember it, which is why I’m here and not there.

Can you help my hard-working friend?

This weekend, my friend Robin Broun of Kentucky launched a GoFundMe campaign. Her goal is to raise $3,000 to buy supplies for a soap-making business in her home, so she can support her family.

I know there are fundraising pleas allllll the time. I’m not going to try to guilt you into supporting this one (although if you could take a minute and share the page on Facebook, Twitter, or elsewhere, that would be wonderful).  The soap is gorgeous and luscious in its own right, allergen-free and lovingly crafted. Take a look at this picture:

Is it weird that I want to eat this soap? Fine, so it’s weird.

I just want to tell you a bit more about Robin.

You have seen movies where a girl grows up and gets dealt one bad hand after another — but she keeps struggling? And where she grows up and has children of her own, and wants a different life for her kids — and keeps getting knocked back down? But she keeps struggling?  And where malicious and cold-hearted people seem to hound her at every turn, and no matter how much personal sacrifice and humiliation she goes through, she picks herself up and tries again the next day? And she keep struggling?

This is Robin. She has a number of medical problems which make it impossible for her to work outside the home — but she can’t quite qualify for disability services, because she appears healthy enough to work. She wants to work. She just can’t, right now — not outside her home. She has no car, she often has no phone minutes, and, probably worst of all, she feels like people are constantly judging her and blaming her for her desperate situation. She is afraid that people will think this is just a lark or a hobby she wants to diddle around with.

It’s not. In fact, it could be a life-changing project, something that could lift her out of a truly desperate situation, into self-sufficiency and stability.

Right now, she suffers from constant and severe panic and anxiety. She is selling off her furniture — not nick-nacks, but things like her couch and TV — to make rent.  She is working steadily on patching together a more stable means of income, but anyone who’s tried to navigate the social services system — especially with no car and an unreliable phone — knows that these things take time, and sometimes leave you high and dry. She works so hard to keep her family together and to give her kids a stable and dignified life, but she just has so very little to work with.

Robin is very proud of her eight years of Army service. She is very proud of her lovely daughters. She has eleven years of experience making this cold-process goat milk soap.  This soap making venture is sensible and achievable.  She explains the process, the ingredients, the benefits of goat milk soap, and lists the items she needs to buy to get started on her page.

So I am asking you to donate if you possibly can — even five or ten dollars (although more would be superb!). And whether you donate or not, please share this post, or share her page directly wherever you can.

 Robin Broun Handmade Goat Milk Soap! Spread the word!

And please, of your kindness, say a prayer for Robin’s success and peace of mind. Thank you, my friends.

Jane Fonda’s Incomplete Workout

Look what I found!

We used to drink $1 beers and play darts at Penuche’s all night, then come back to campus and do this workout. Tried it this morning. Lasted 11 minutes. Hello, again, treadmill, which I can do while keeping and eye on the kids and reading Call of the Wild.  I think we understand each other.

Seven quick, gratifying reads

–1–

Okay, so this

Pope Francis waving

 

is not exactly this

Agentinian Pirate guy

but if you want to understand someone, it’s always helpful to learn a bit about the culture they come from. From Matadornetwork.com (huh!): 15 differences between a normal friend and an Argentinean friend. Cute.

 

–2–

A quick and insightful post from Clare Short, The Mantilla Blues, which is not really about veiling, per se, but about how we think we can hide from God by doing God stuff, and God is like, “Stop it, silly. I can see you.”  Short, sweet, smart.

 

 –3–

A longer but just as insightful piece from Jessica Griffith (yay, I found a great new author! New to me, I mean): “Against Gratitude.

[I]t seems it’s no longer enough to endure or even embrace the endless Sisyphean chores of parenting and life. We Christian parents must enjoy them, and our children must enjoy them, and the key to obtaining this joy—and the measure of our faith—is our gratitude for it all.

We mean well, but our current obsession with gratitude is just another indication that we’ve lost our heads in a race to make the mundane glorious. We aren’t shocked to find God hiding beneath the salt cellar, as the art critic John Berger once put it—we fully expect him there. We’ve already Instagrammed the saltshaker and tagged it blessed.

This no longer strikes me as worshipping a God of small things, the little way of St. Therese or Brother Lawrence, but as making gods of small things, holding up the trivial and the banal and calling it transcendent.

Not to beat a dead horse, but I think she’s getting at something that I wanted to drive home when I was responding to the claims that you can so guarantee fidelity in marriage, because grace. Griffith says,

It is good to be mindful of [the presence of God making good out of all things]—of course it is—but the moment we think we can trace his movements through our days is the moment we deny the mystery of those movements.

“Truth is not something that can be possessed like a tea-cosy,” Caryll Houselander wrote. Or, as her publisher Frank Sheed put it, “Really seeing it includes seeing why we cannot see more of it.”

Yes.  Many critics groaned that I was  overemphasizing the pain and suffering that are possible or even likely in marriage. In fact, I was rebelling against the taming of marriage. Love doesn’t fit inside a goody bad marked “grace” that you get at really nicely planned weddings. It’s heavier than that, but in many cases, it’s much, much,ever so much bigger and better than that.  I was talking with Fr. Dwight Longenecker about this yesterday, when we recorded a radio interview (to be broadcast later):  we need to stop expecting love to be like Disneyland — and we need to stop wishing that love will be like Disneyland. Not because it’s too much to expect, but because it’s too little.

 

–4–

So, Jennifer Fulwiler’s memoir, Something Other Than God, is coming out soon. I read it. On my treadmill. I stayed on my treadmill longer so I could finish reading it. That’s how good it is.  And how good is Jen Fulwiler? She is offering a free ebook to anyone who pre-orders her book.

Details here. The ebook is called The Family-First Creative:  47 Tips for Following Your Dreams While Putting Family First.  Nice!

 

–5–

Remember the wonderful photos of Pope Francis hugging that hugely joyful little boy named Dominic?

PIC Francis embracing Dominic

 

Well, his family recently did a fundraiser to buy one of these brilliant new devices, which allows disabled children to walk along with their parents.

I didn’t even hear about the fundraiser until it was over — because the project was fully funded in five hours. See, there are good things in the world and even on the internet!

 

–6–

And not even a read, but definitely gratifying. Or, not gratifying, but, look, if you like this kind of thing, it’s exactly the kind of thing you’ll like:  Celebrities that Look Like Mattresses.  For instance, Mickey Rourke and his doppelmattress:

PIC Mickey Rourke and mattress
It was hard to pick one photo that would give you an idea of what this feature is about, because I really don’t understand what it is about.

 

–7–

And finally, either the most or least gratifying thing you will read all week:  my son’s 4th grade teacher sent me this artifact from his recent classroom political campaign:

 

Okay, so he doesn’t even know how to spell his own middle name, but that’s actually not a bad life plan: Think hard, try to do what is right, and then just walk away.

I will be on Busted Halo’s Sirius XM radio show Friday at 3 Eastern

The Busted Halo Show with Father Dave Dwyer

The Busted Halo Show on the Catholic Channel (channel 129) with Fr. Dave Dwyer. Hope you can catch it!