Weekly Links - gospel, wine, matchmakers, movies, and more!

photo credit: Betsy Barber

I'm still counting this post as getting my links up on the weekend, because my kids are home from school today in honor of Lincoln's birthday. That said, here is your weekly (!) good reading from around the web:


On Faith:
"Why I Don't Share the Gospel" - it's all about joy.

"Our Prayer Instincts Are Backwards" - why we start in the wrong direction when we talk to God.

"Today Is Susanna Wesley's Birthday" - Susanna Wesley is one of my favorite saints. I love reading about her!

"What My Grandmother Taught Me About Church" - a moving memorial from Russell Moore - also good reading for parents and grandparents out there who want their children to grow up loving the house of the Lord.

"When God Writes Your Story" - this testimonial about books and faith is one of the most beautiful things I've read.

"Lord, You Said There Would Be Wine" - one last good piece of reading for Ordinary Time.



General Interest:
"Interview with a Former Professional Matchmaker"

"Fiber: the least sexy weight-loss tool" - my thanks to my friend Becca for this link!

"Old Movie Review: UNBREAKABLE" - this makes me want to watch this one, and ...

"Hail, Caesar!" - and this review really makes me want to watch this one!



I hope you have a good week, and especially a good beginning to Lent on Wednesday.

-Jessica Snell

Weekly Links - All Saints' Day Edition!

My weekly* round-up of interesting reading from around the web:

-As a Christian who appreciates science (and science fiction!), I enjoyed reading this interview with the Pope's astronomer.  A highlight of it:

Rather than learning something theologically new, what I take from my discoveries is a more general sense of the “personality” of the creator. It might be compared to discovering a trove of old manuscripts where you think one of them might be some unpublished play of Shakespeare. You’d be excited because it might be a wonderful new work, or even just a window into what he was thinking while he was writing. But you also need to be sure it really is Shakespeare that you’re reading, not some other writer.

- Our family loves the show "Mythbusters", and so I enjoyed this article: "The Craziest Myths the Mythbusters Have Tackled, According to the Mythbusters".


- Now onto religion and society: "This Is Your Wake-up Call" is a sober reflection on abortion and one of the hardest stories in the book of Judges.


- Simcha Fisher on "Rogue Laughter in a Flippant Society" - I especially liked this paragraph:

. . . think of the difference between an eleven-year-old boy laughing about sex, and a forty-year-old married man laughing about sex. The grown man has probably earned his laughter; the boy can't have done so, and is laughing partly because he wants to look more experienced than he really is. True laughter, and the best jokes, come when we have some experience with the subject matter -- when we've faced something big and have survived.

- Anne Kennedy on "Celebrating the Reformation". Good, timely stuff:

The church cannot go beyond the gospel. The Christian doesn’t graduate from a saving knowledge of Jesus into something better later on. So also, the Christian cannot ascend to something higher, cannot move on to some better, fancier doctrine. From the moment of Jesus’ first infant cry, to his sorrowful and painful death, to his rising again, to his crushing of his enemies under his feet those who love him can never cry out someone else’s name for help, they can never give glory to themselves or to another, they can never be sustained by some other grace, they can never lean on and be ruled over by some other authority than Jesus’ own Word, they can never be tethered by some other faith.

-Reformation Day yesterday, All Saints Day today - and yet it's still Ordinary Time!  So, here's Anna Gissing on "Living in Ordinary Time":

. . . many Protestant Christians have been re-learning the rituals and habits of living into these churchy seasons as a way to inhabit the gospel and to structure our lives in a way that helps us remember that God is the author of time.

-Speaking of Reformation Day, I enjoyed this dense bio on "Katherine Parr: Reformation Queen of England and Ireland".


-AND, speaking of All Saints' Day, here's a lovely sonnet by Malcolm Guite for All Hallow's Eve.


- Tim Challies is Canadian, but I think his wise words are a comfort in any political climate: "I Went Away for Just 6 Days":

The temptation is not only to put my hope in politicians but to put my despair in them as well. I will be tempted not only to find too much joy in the election of the person I voted for, but also to sink too far into despair in the election of the person I did not. Either way, whether I soar too high or sink too low, I am declaring that I have put my trust in a man more than in God. I have forgotten that, ultimately, it is God who rules over and through earthly rulers.

-Finally, my friends and family and I found this article on "The Things that Drain Each Personality Type Most" scarily accurate.



Happy All Saints' Day, folks!
-Jessica Snell



*Or, if we're honest, biweekly.

Book notes: "At the Still Point: A Literary Guide to Prayer in Ordinary Time", by Sarah Arthur

I loved the concept of this book: a selection of poetry and prose for each week of ordinary time, given as an aid to prayer and devotion.

And I love even more that Sarah Arthur was able to pull that concept off.

I didn't read this quite as slowly as suggested, but I did read it slowly. Bite by bite, over a long period of time. (And in Ordinary Time, no less!)

It worked really well that way. I delighted in how often the author offered me up selections by authors like Rossetti and Herbert. I enjoyed the chance to read authors I hadn't heard of before. I really liked the way each week had a theme, and the way the readings fit those themes.

I have to admit that the intro didn't really do it for me (and, sadly, I read it long enough ago that I don't remember why - so you can just as well chalk it up to me being silly as to any fault on the part of the author), but I really, really enjoyed the book itself, so . . . well, ignore my reaction to the intro. The book is great, and I can see using it for many Ordinary Times to come.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

This post contains an Amazon affiliate link. (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Ordinary Time: "the work of living"

The challenge of Ordinary Time is that it doesn’t feel important. It can be difficult to sustain a sense of time as holy through the forty days of Lent, or even the twelve days of Christmas. And yet we need a season when the decorations are taken down and the work of living is done.  

- Ann Dominguez,  Let Us Keep the Feast: Pentecost and Ordinary Time


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Ordinary Time: a chance to become integrated people

 Thus Ordinary Time is our chance to be whole people. Integrated people, for whom Christmas and Easter were not isolated holidays, but life-changing events that have transformed the very fabric of the world and our experience in it. We are to become people in whom the Living God grows and breathes and inspires work which brings Him glory. Ordinary Time is the season in which we become saints by the daily, unchanging disciplines of confession, repentance, forgiveness, celebration, and service, that our lives would reflect the glory of Christ the King.   

- Ann Dominguez, Let Us Keep the Feast: Pentecost and Ordinary Time




Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links - the year, the time, and the wine

"The Year of Not Putting Up With Things":

Maybe we should blame it on the practice of frugality that seems to have come with my German heritage, but I've put up with a lot of minor inconveniences over the course of my life...little things being not quite right, particularly in my home or in my wardrobe. A belt doesn't fit quite right. A dress rides up funny on one side. A shirt feels a tiny bit too short. The trusty black pumps I've owned and worn for years have started to separate from their strap on one shoe. The toilet in the guest bathroom splashes the lid when you flush. The rug in our living room is too small for the space. Our air conditioning has never worked.

"The Best Wine in the History of the World":

He was about to perform his first public miracle. Let me frame that a different way. He was about to formally and publicly introduce himself to his bride—the church—for the first time. I wonder if Mary’s request sounded to him something like, “Go on, son. Ask that girl to dance.”

"Routine Life":

Some mornings I wake up feeling ready to do it all again. Ready to get out of bed (after drinking coffee, of course), face the day, clean, prep meals, homeschool, do laundry, break up fights, nurse the baby. But some days, I just feel do not feel it. I do not feel like getting up and doing it all. Those days generally do not go well. But sometimes, something happens to arrest me mid-day and change everything.

 Usually, that thing is . . . work.

"how do I Run a Micro business and homeschool?": this whole thing was interesting, but I love, love, love Christine's observation about her home:

 I don’t decorate the house – it’s the lab for making projects in, it isn’t itself a project. 

Hey, I've got one of those project-lab houses, too! :D

"I love this bar (and a recipe)":

Houston, we have a problem. Even though I know that I can make something akin to a Larabar in my food processor and have a great granola bar recipe that most of our family will eat, even though I no longer buy boxes of granola bars or nutri grain bars for the children I cannot resist the lure of the bar.

There is something about the presentation, the bright colors, the many flavors, that seems to beckon. Eat me! They cry. I am interesting and fun and come in my own individual wrapper. I have as much protein as a chicken breast but taste like fake cookie dough coated in fake chocolate. Eat me and you can skip taking your multivitamin! I can make you happy!

"Op-Ed: An Ode to Ordinary Time": I'm not quoting from this one, because the fun is in the scroll-down reveal.

"Guinevere and Julia: The Platypus Reads Part CCX":

. . . it's a necessary part of all romance and adventure that we not be allowed to weasel out every time our beliefs land us in hard places. 

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Ordinary Time, 2012

Our priest pointed out this Sunday that it's almost Advent - that's the next season up!

. . . of course, that'll be in about five months. :D Ah, Ordinary Time!

Now that the kids are out of school and running about the house in a happy, noisy pack, putting on impromptu plays and wrestling matches, it really seems like Ordinary Time. It didn't till now.

Ordinary Time, the time where nothing special is happening, so we just count the days. Count the days and the hours, count the books read and the rooms decluttered, count the calories eaten and the workouts completed, the words written and the dishes washed. One, two, three . . .

It's the time where we're just allowed to lead our good lives. To quote the Bard: "Serve God, love me, and mend."

And yet everything seems to crowd into these good days. Doctor appointments and trips to the dentist, conferences and camping, visits with family in town and out . . . there's hardly a space of two days together where I can appreciate the normal rhythm of our life.

Still, "Serve God, love me, and mend." That's the spirit I want for my summer. God, in your mercy, help me serve you, love my loved ones, and mend.

Peace of Christ to you all - peace, peace, and more peace, in God's mercy -
Jessica Snell

Summer Thoughts

It must be summer: I've started decluttering the house.

I've decided that every item in the house must give me a justification for its continued existence. I'm going to ask every thing in the house: 1) do we want you? and, 2) if we want you, where would we expect to find you?

At least, that's the plan.

I'm also still chewing on King's concept that novel-writing ought to be a three month affair. I have about 10,000 words (maybe less?) to go on the current one. If I reeeeaaalllly pushed myself, I could finish that with the month of June. And I've got another one mostly plotted. Which makes me curious if I could do a three month push (July-August-September) and finish an entire novel in three months. 1000 words/day would give me 65,000 words by the end, if I just worked weekdays, and that would actually be the right length for this particular novel, which is a fun little contemporary romance.

Hmmm . . . I can foresee the failure of this plan already, but that's not making me feel less like trying it.

Plus, I'd have to rewrite the current novel at some point. I wonder if I can do both at the same time?

Again, I can see the crash and burn coming. But I still want to give it a go.

On top of that, I have a list I've been keeping over the past month of house projects. Stuff that just didn't fit in the school year, but that would be nice to have done. A lot of it overlaps with the decluttering. Here's what I've got so far:

-sew Bess' birthday dress (um, this is a two-year old project. If I don't finish soon, it won't actually fit)

-sew Adam's long coat

-sew my long coat

-make my measurement template

-have various friends over for supper

-get our Story of the World mp3s onto CD, so the kids can listen to them up in their room.

-get my bike (+bike trailer!) in working order

-get bikes for the two big kids

-help the big kids learn to ride their bikes

-go through our closet

-go through the linen closet

-go through the downstairs closet

-go through the downstairs bookshelves (I've done the upstairs already - yay!)

-go through our coffee table/nightstand (this is where I keep stationary supplies)

-Magic Eraser the upstairs walls

-Magic Eraser the downstairs walls

-Magic Eraser the stair rail

-organize my recipes

-join Facebook (I know, I know . . . it's evil, but what are you going to do?)

I'm not planning on rushing any of this. I'm picturing a leisurely summer (as leisurely as it ever gets with the Ducklings). I'm planning on working away steadily, and seeing where I'm at come September. I hope to be pleasantly, um, pleased. Further along than I was before. With a happier, easier-to-care-for house that I had before. (Less stuff means less to pick up.)

And I'm a J. I like having a plan. And the plan is not necessarily to get everything done, but to know what comes next. That's a plan I can live with.

Does summer get anyone else's gears turning? It's Ordinary Time, folks. It's the glorious green season of the Holy Spirit. Time for work and play and joy.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

bad sympathy cards

Today I ordered some cards online. I like having birthday cards and such on hand, so I can send out a card when the occasion presents, and I've been getting a little low.

While I was ordering, I looked at the sympathy cards that were available. It's not something you want to have to send, but there you are. The problem was, most of them were awful. They came in packs, and while there was always at least one I could see sending (usually something along the lines of, "With sympathy . . . we're praying for you"), most of them were atrocious. It ranged from the cutesy-pukey ("How good it is that all the tears we ever cry are collected by angels") to the theologically bad ("Those who have given of themselves to others will live forever in each heart they have touched" - as my husband says, "what are you saying? Jesus lives in my heart, my uncle's gone to heaven!").

I decided that for times that call for a sympathy card, I'm going to stick to getting out a blank notecard and praying that the Holy Spirit will help me write good words.

That's something I've started doing with cards generally. I really started doing it when I was writing thank-you cards during my hospital stay. I'm still not great at writing cards, but I'm finding that when I ask for the Holy Spirit's help in sitting down and expressing some good thing - gratitude or encouragement or joy or sympathy - He does help me. It's still not a great skill of mine, but He helps clear my mind to focus on the task, on the person I'm writing. It feels like He helps me in loving whoever I'm writing to, and that's what really helps me actually put decent words down on paper.

So next time you sit down to write to someone, I encourage you to pray first.

Actually, it's also something I've taken to doing before I answer the phone or when I log onto my email. Usually it's a short prayer, something like, "Lord, please be between me and whoever is on the other line." But we are to pray without ceasing, and though I'm not perfect at it, these small interactions are another place I've found where I can invite the Holy Spirit into my day-to-day life, which is, of course, where He has the right to be anyway. And it helps me pay attention to what He might want me to do or say.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Link: Jesus Christ Victor

Over at Touchstone's Mere Comments, Anthony Esolen explains exactly what it means that Christ is our King, and that our King is Christ. I especially appreciate this insight on today's gospel, that of the repentant thief on the cross next to Jesus:

He does not speak to Jesus man to man. He speaks to him as subject to King: "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom." That can make sense only if he understands, somehow, without any theological sophistication, that Jesus is both Lord and God. He's asking Jesus not only to remember him, but to forget -- because he knows well what kind of life he has led. Only God's memory conquers the grave; only God's forgetting cancels out our wickedness. The thief's prayer is granted, and he enjoys a privilege unique in history: the only Christian to die next to Christ.

Read the rest of Mr. Esolen's essay here.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Christ the King Sunday

Tomorrow is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the church year. Also, my favorite ordinary (i.e., not-a-major-feast) Sunday. And I'm not entirely sure why. The picture in my head when I think of Christ the King Sunday is a big tangle of the beginning of the second part of the Te Deum ("Thou art the King of glory, oh Christ/Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father . . .") and the Christo Pantokrator icon and the music of "Crown Him with Many Crowns" and vaguer pictures of what the last judgement will be like.

I think my affinity for the day goes back to the first time I really celebrated Lent, when I chose as my meditation for the forty days C.S. Lewis' essay "What if this Present were the World's Last Night?" and the John Donne poem from which it took its title. It's a great essay (the poem's good too) that I recommend to everyone, and Lewis made in it the point that the main two things that Christ said about His return was that He would certainly return and that we certainly would not know when, leading to the third point: because we do not know when He will return, we ought always to be doing what we ought to be doing, so that He will find us doing it when He comes back.

So, on Christ the King Sunday, I think both about the greatness of our Lord, His absolute righteousness, and the absolute obedience He expects from us.

And yet, somehow it's heartening, and not disheartening. Because He's going to come back for us, and - as one of my college professors told us - He always gives what He demands.

So Christ the King Sunday is, to me, the most comforting Sunday, because it is the one where I remember that everything is going to come right. Christ will surely come, He will judge the world, He will judge us. But, as Michael Card said, we will look into our Judge's face, and see a Savior there.

Thanks be to God!

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Happy All Saints' Day!

The Lord is glorious in his saints!

So, whose stories are you going to tell to your children today?

On our walk back from the grocery store, I talked to Bess about saints, and how saints are people who loved the Lord very much and who were, with his help, holy in what they did. And we talked about St. Brigid, and St. Mary, and St. Peter and St. John, and St. Augustine and St. Monica. About how Brigid fed the poor and visited those in prison, and how Peter walked on the water with Jesus and John was Jesus' friend and Augustine wrote about God to help other people understand God better and how Monica prayed a lot. And we talked about how all of these things were things that made God happy and how Bess could be a saint too by loving the Lord Jesus and doing the good things he wanted her to do.

And do you know what my daughter said when we reached our front door? She volunteered that a Jesus-pleasing thing she could do was "share my candy with my brother when I have a bowl of candy and he doesn't."

Yay! She gets it!

Our other plans for All Saints' include reading some picture books of the saints' lives, singing our new hymn a lot AND . . . seeing our new baby! Yep, we have an ultrasound today, and I can't wait to see this squirt who has, FINALLY started regularly wiggling around so that I can feel him or her.

And it seems like All Saints' Day is a good day to see our new little one, because we hope that he or she will be a saint one day too. May all our children love our Lord and Savior.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Ordinary Time and the Creeds

I can feel Advent and Christmas beginning to bear down on us, even though it's almost August. What can I say? In my family, my mom always started her Christmas shopping in January, and when it gets to the end of summer and I find my Christmas list less than half-fulfilled, I start to feel behind.

But it's still the long, green season of the Holy Spirit, to quote Jessica Powers, and it feels like the whole of the season has been filled with the Creeds.

(A quick side-note: as I'm writing this, my children are having their "quiet time" in their room. Although right now it sounds like what they've decided to do with their "quiet time" is have a shrieking contest. Oh well, as long as they stay in their separate beds while they squeal back and forth, it's okay with me. But somehow, I couldn't keep writing this post without giving you a feeling of the "SHRIEK!gigglegiggleSHRIEK!" soundtrack that I'm hearing in my house right now.)

This summer, we taught our now-three-year-old the Apostle's Creed. And saying it altogether is now part of our bedtime routine, right in between the Lord's prayer and praying for our family. (I give you a direct quotation of my daughter's nightly prayer: "Dear Lord. Please bless Aunt Rho and she can do well. Give her good night's sleeps. Amen.") We made up hand motions to go with the Creed and even my one year old son raises his hands at the end ("and life everlasting! Amen!")

I have trouble now, when I read the Creed during my own quiet time, not using the strongly rhythmic entonation we developed when teaching it to my daughter: "I beLIEVE in GOD the FATHER. ALmighty MAKER of HEAVEN and EARTH." I can't say "he descended into hell" anymore. It always comes out: "he DEscended into hell."

But in a way, it's a good thing. I've thought more about the Creed this summer, teaching it to my daughter, than I ever have before in my life. There was one day, during Morning Prayer, when I just read it slowly, and hit something like contemplation as I pictured what each of those short, succinct phrases actually meant. "He was concieved by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary". Really? Really? How can that BE? After "almighty maker of heaven and earth", how did he get small enough to be an embreyo?


Though I had no idea that this would end up being our theme during Ordinary Time this year, I think the Creed is a fitting theme for this time of year. We look at Christ's birth during Advent, his death and resurrection during Holy Week, and other parts of his life on other high holy days. But Ordinary Time is a good time to stand back and look at the whole thing, the whole of our faith. And where better to find it all put together than in the Creed?

Maybe next year we'll have graduated from the Apostle's the Nicene. :D

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Ordinary Time

I’m still enamoured with the idea of blogging through the church year, but only a few weeks into the long, green season of Ordinary Time, and I’m wondering what exactly to blog about.

But I’ve discovered the answer, I think: ordinary holiness.

So, for the long green season, barring the occasional high holy days that crop up (All Saints and All Souls, anyone?), I’m going to be blogging more about the homemaking part of homemaking through the church year. Stuff about housework, gardening, and especially parenting, both the practical stuff and the abstract stuff. For me, homemaking encompasses both the physical care of my family and house, and the spiritual, relational work there is to be done in a family and home. Ordinary Time (which means “counted” or “ordinal” time, not “normal” time) is, I think, a good time to work on ordinary life, on the day-to-day duties, honing our ability to live in a way that is pleasing to the Lord.

So that’s what I expect this blog to be about during these next few (hot, hot, hot, swelteringly hot) summer months. Ordinary holiness for Ordinary Time. And if you can keep the different uses of the word “ordinary” straight, you’re more on top of it than I am. ☺

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

A couple of experiments

One of the characteristics of a good homemaker, I think, is that she is an irrepressible experimenter. Always tweaking her household routine, always trying to make things a little better, make things run a little smoother. Though she sticks with what works, anything that doesn't is liable to be changed, to see if it can be made more efficient, more welcoming, more homey.

I've found myself in the middle of several experiments. I blame the new year.

One of them is this blog. I had so much fun during Advent, that I decided that trying to celebrate the whole church year was a good idea. And being a writer, I thought that writing about it every day would be the best way to spur myself towards learning how to celebrate it. So far, I'm happy with this experiment. At the end of the year (St. Andrew's Day! or thereabouts), I'm hoping that I'll have laid the groundwork for celebrating the church year every year for the rest of my life.

Another one I started last week, and it came about largely because of this blog. Doing research for this blog has had me digging into the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) more than I have since I first started attending the Episcopal Church and was trying desperately to learn the order of service! And in doing that, and in thinking about how to celebrate the church year every day, I've rediscovered morning prayer.

Since I have kids, the biggest part of my particular homemaking job is taking care of my children. And one of the most time-consuming aspects of that is nursing my son, who's only 10 1/2 months old. I usually use the time he's nursing to read, but I've decided that, at least some of the time, I ought to be reading more edifying stuff than movie reviews on the internet. So, for at least the next week, I'm going to try reading the morning prayer service out of the BCP while I'm nursing Gamgee down for his morning nap. I tried it a few days last week, and I did it this morning, and so far it seems to be doing exactly what I'd hoped: it's ordering my day. Starting the day praying along with the Psalms and hymns and prayers in the BCP is starting my day with the reminder that the earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, that I am the Lord's and all that is in me is his. It's very good.

And it seems like a good experiment to start during Ordinary Time. :)


The Morning Prayer service is almost like a mini-church year all on its own. It has the same structure every time you do it (like each day has morning, noon and night), but small pieces of it changes day to day based on the season, the day of the week, which Psalm you've read last and, also, just whatever things are on your heart to talk to the Lord about, during the "other intercessions" part. I like that pattern of sameness and change. We need both.



And that's sort of the way homemaking experiments work too. You might experiment with vegetarian meals, but you still feed your family something healthy every night. You might experiment with how and when you clean the bathroom, but you still make sure that your family has a decent place to wash up. You might tweak your laundry schedule, but you still want to make sure your family has clean sheets. Sometimes our techniques change, but our big, overarching goals don't. I might learn more about what it means to obey the Lord, but I expect that even when I'm eighty, obeying him is still going to be on the top of my list of what I want to accomplish.

Lord have mercy.


So what are you all trying at home that's new and different? How's it working out?


peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

the lessons of Christmas

Well, ever since boldly declaring that I was going to write about how we ponder the lessons of Christmas during Ordinary Time, I've had a conversation that goes something like this running around in my head:

"The lessons of Christmas, yes. The lessons of Christmas. Huh. I'm sure there must be some."
"You have to write about them!"
"Yes. Yes, and knowing what they were would help a lot with that."
"C'mon! It's Christmas! You've celebrated it since you were born!"
"Yep."
"Nngh!"

The truth is that what stood out most about Christmas for me this year was the little physical things, and not the great spiritual truths. It was doing something every day for Advent with my daughter that was new and different. So there was lots of playing with Nativity sets, lots of "yes, that's Mary, she's Jesus' mommy" and not a lot of contemplation of Mary being Jesus' mother, that is, of God being born as a human, that is, of the Incarnation.

But Mary thought about it. She pondered it. She treasured it in her heart. And she's the one who had to feed and diaper the Incarnation every few hours! (to borrow Meredith Gould's wonderful phrasing)

How tired she must have been. Because her mothering was real mothering (as Jesus was true man), even though it was mothering the Lord Almighty (as Jesus was true God). Here's a collect from the BCP on the subject:

O God, who didst wonderfully create, and yet more wonderfully restore, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share in the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, thy Son Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.


So, Lord, may what you truly assumed be truly healed: our humanity. Even my own. Even in the little things, the physical things, that I do with my kids. May I really learn what I teach my children about you. May I understand "Jesus loves me, this I know" with all of my heart and mind and soul and strength. May I ponder your Incarnation, may I treasure the truth of it in my heart. To your glory. Amen.



peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

Ordinary Time, part II

That last post didn't go where I expected, so let me get back to Meredith Gould's definition of the first stretch of Ordinary Time by saying: I'm planning on doing a series of Ordinary Time posts looking at just those lessons of Christmas and preparations for Lent that she mentioned, over the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

Ordinary Time

In, "The Catholic Home", after defining the church year as a "temporal cycle [which] follows an unbroken succession of seasons commemorating events and mysteries of faith organized around the birth, life, death, and ressurection of Jesus the Christ", Meredith Gould describes the first Ordinary time - the time between Epiphany and Lent, the time we're in now - as:

Weeks between the Baptism of the Lord and Lent providing time to contemplate and live the lessons of Christmas and to prepare for Lent.

In some ways, I feel like I've started this blog at an odd time, given the subject matter. I started it just before Ephiphany, right before a long stretch of Ordinary Time, in between the great feast seasons.

Except that most of the year is Ordinary Time, the time when we count (in numbers, ordinals) the Sundays since the last great feast. Most of our lives are ordinary time, counted after great celebrations, like weddings and births. Whenever you say, "I'm thirty," you're saying, "This is the thirtieth year since my birth," in the same way that the hymn board might say, "3rd Sunday after Epiphany."

And it's a green time. I think of Pentecost as the long, green season of the Holy Spirit, a phrase I'm almost positive I read somewhere, but that seems so precisely descriptive that I can't remember where it was I first came across it.

I tend to think of Ordinary Time as the Church's season, the season after Christ has come and gone, and has yet to return, after the Holy Spirit has come, and stayed. The time when we're supposed to work out the salvation that has come to us, and work it out in fear and trembling, and in work, because it is Christ who works in us.

I know that the "ordinary" in Ordinary Time doesn't mean "normal", but I still can't help but think of it that way. And to us, "normal" is a life infused with the light of God, because He did come, and did die and rise and will come again, and yet is with us. With us in the middle of work, of play, of everything. So even saying, "It's January 25th, 2007" is saying, "It's the 2007th January 25th since Christ came." The year of our Lord, 2007, as they used to say.

Normal time, ordinary time - and Ordinary Time - is a time of life lived in the presence of God. Praise God that that's what normal is, when we are His!


peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

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