Weekend Thoughts

I took the Armadillo for a shakedown cruise this afternoon. It had been running a bit rough lately, and I had some work done on it in anticipation of the drive to Mass in Greenville on Sunday. It was still acting up, so we would have to attend Mass closer to home.

The Big Blue, our 15-passenger van, is in the shop getting a fender replaced. THAT is a story I can't really tell, for Carolyn asked me to stop publishing vehicle strikes. That is too bad, because it is kind of fun describing how various creatures have a tendency to collide with our vehicles. Why, just last weekend, the same weekend the van got hit in a parking spot at Cha-Cho's, a bird struck the Armadillo at 65 miles per hour. There is nothing like the sound of a bird colliding with a car at high speed….

Back to the shakedown cruise. There I was, driving along with two of my daughters – the middle ones – listening to Paul Anka singing that that old Billy Idol song, “Eyes Without a Face.” It was just bizarre, yet it seemed to make sense, seeing as how Billy Idol recently made an album of Christmas favorites. Still, I can’t imagine old Billy singing ‘Ave Maria,’ complete with his permanent sneer. The song also seemed to fit in with a lot of the strange goings on from the past few days in North Texas.

To begin with, we got an interesting prayer card this week from the American Life League. At first I wanted to toss it, but then I got to thinking. Impeachment is highly unlikely - recall the last time we tried to impeach the president, and wishing ill of someone is not charitable. So it makes a lot of sense to pray for our president's conversion. Another reason to pray for the conversion of our president is because real charity is willing the ultimate good for another, and the ultimate good is to go to heaven. Consider that the executioner of St. Charles Lwanga(above, with companions) later converted to the Faith. Consider how St. Paul goes from being a hunter of Christians to being one of the greatest Saints. Also contemplate this quote from St. Thomas More, where he expresses a desire to see his persecutors in Heaven with him one day:

"More have I not to say but like as the blessed Apostle St. Paul, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, was present, and consented to the death of St. Stephen, and kept their clothes that stoned him to death, and yet be they now both twain holy saints in heaven, and shall continue there friends for ever, so I verily trust and shall therefore right heartily pray, that though your Lordships have now in earth been judges to my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together to our everlasting salvation."

St. Thomas More

I wish I could pray this same prayer. Some day, I hope, but not today.

So pray for our president's conversion. Pray if only for yourselves, for I think he is going to put the hurt on the things I care about the most: Pro-Life issues, family, freedom of conscience for physicians, home schooling, just to name a few in no particular order. Now, if I can get my scanner to work, here are both sides of the prayer card, courtesy of the American Life League:







Here is someone else praying for this....

This was only one of many strange things which happened this weekend. Right after receiving Our Lord in Holy Communion, while trying to kneel and pray on the floor of a cramped and sweltering chapel, my three year old daughter came up to me and asked if I could 'do this.' She then proceeded to twist her tongue and stick it out at me. "After Mass," I assured her.

Last night I watched the movie Persuasion, based on a story by Jane Austen. Simply put, a woman is advised to dump a suitor against her wishes, meets him years later, and they marry at that time. The movie was quite good, but like all Jane Austen movies, the main characters looked as if they had just ingested a bolus of helicobacter pylori shortly before the filming began. Every woman in the movie needed a bit of Maalox.

Apparently, in the time period when Persuasion takes place, military folks were not thought of well, because the military was thought of as a way for ordinary folks to rise up in society. I don't know about status or royalty, but my time in the Air Force was a tremendous blessing in terms of helping me realize my dream of becoming a doctor without taking on a prohibitively large debt. Although we are not part of the elite of North Texas, we do have a roof over our head, clothes on our backs, food in the fridge, and only TWO junked lawn tractors in the driveway!

While waiting for the Armadillo in the shop, we learned about Triple Combo Cooking Power and what it will mean to the busy homemaker. We watched a T-bone steak, salmon fillet, a 10-pound turkey, and much MUCH MORE! get cooked in minutes rather than hours.

I ordered three.

Two things struck me at the local Albertson's. One, when did camouflage pattern become fashionable? The same color scheme I thought I would be wearing when I died for my country is now covering people of all ages and sexes.

The second thing is that a lot of music from the 70' and 80's consisted of the lead singer yelling at us. In the few minutes I was in the store, I heard Michael McDonald(formerly of the Doobie Brothers) yelling at me about 'real love,' followed by the Electric Light Orchestra(E.L.O.) screaming about something being a 'living thing.'

I have no answer to these questions, but I do have pictures of little birdies learning to fly. These two were sitting on our front porch checking out the big wild world: