7 Quick Takes (#9) Shameless Pulg Edition

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I've been back home for a week now. Time flies when you're sicker than a dog and still trying to work your butt off.

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I'm always looking for an excuse to use the above cartoon. So, what have I been doing? I volunteered for another website: YOUCATholic.com. I'll be blogging and putting together the unit on ethics. The biggest issue I've had so far is not being able to find a YOUCAT in all of Syracuse NY. You wouldn't think that would be an issue. Syracuse isn't that small of a town, but you'd be wrong.

 



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Next Sunday will be my 5th article for Ignitum Today. As I am writing this, the site is down, but as soon as it's back up, you need to check it out. Writing for IT has been enormously helpful for me in developing my blogging skills. Although I'm still not a great writer, I'm a lot better than I was when I first started at IT.

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I'm helping with publicity for a new organization in town called the John Paul II Center For Women. It is something that Syracuse is in desperate need of. They work on promoting Catholic teachings in regards to the dignity of women, specifically NFP and Theology of the Body. I'm running their FB page and I'm working on their blog right now. I hope to get a Twitter account going soon.

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And last but not least, my Feminists for Life internship. Of course, it got going to a running start while I was in MO visiting family and friends. I was on the computer a lot more than I would have liked to during my visit. I've already been learning a lot, though, and I've met online some like-minded pro-life feminists. Including a dude. Yes, men can be feminists, too.

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As mentioned above, James and I did bring home a lovely souvenir from MO. We are both full of snot. Our throats hurt. James is clinging to me, because, hey, mom's supposed to take this stuff away right?

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That pretty much covers everything. I've renewed my efforts at finding work that I can actually get paid to do. I've volunteered again to review a book for Patheos. I promise it will be better than my last one. And James just pulled himself up on dad's footrest! My big boy!

 

 





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7 Quick Takes (#8) Cool News Edition

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This is a couple days late because I was traveling this weekend. I've left MO where I've been for the past month visiting friends and family to go back to NY. I'm homesick already. Anything to cheer me up. :(

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This momma braved the tornado that hit Moore, OK while in the hospital, in full-blown labor. 

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This baby was saved by a 3-D printer. Ain't modern medicine cool?

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Say it with me: Awwwwwwww... This guy made an engagement ring that could light up whenever he was near her. 

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I know it isn't very Christ-like of me, but I can't help feeling good about this. The founder of Girls Gone Wild was convicted for false imprisonment and assault. He is exposed once again as the piece of work that he is. I hope he someday realizes how completely immoral it is to take advantage of drunk women to make a buck. 

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Maybe we can learn a few things from Japan about how to treat mothers in the workforce.

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I think we could all learn a thing or two from this woman. She didn't look in a mirror for a year, including her own wedding day. In our culture which is so obsessed with looking good, I think we could all benefit from covering a few mirrors.

 

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7 Quick Takes (#7) Warrior Momma Edition

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There ain't nothing ugly about this picture. (Pardon the language though.)

Source: This awesome site called "How to be a dad"

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This momma gave a part of her liver to her baby who couldn't wait any longer for a donor.

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Women like Stacie Crimm, the mother of this little girl, who gave up cancer treatment for their unborn babies.



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Of course, I'd need to mention the mothers who have scars across their guts and sometimes even deeper scars on their souls from births that went wrong. We've had a long, hard road to travel in recovering from our children's births. 

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A couple months ago, there was a tragedy in my neck of the woods. A man carjacked and kidnapped a mother and daughter. He tied up the mother and raped the daughter. The mother escaped and got the man's attention so the daughter could run away. The mother was murdered. The daughter is safe. The man is in prison, apparently having a hard time.

 

The mother clearly sacrificed herself for her child. She had the courage to sacrifice herself in such a horrendous situation so that her daughter could live. It's almost insulting to call her only a "warrior." She is clearly much more than that.

 

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Doctors gave up this baby for dead, but this warrior momma gave her daughter skin to skin contact and within minutes her heart rate became normal and she was breathing on her own. All this mother wanted to do was to make sure "she didn't die being cold," but she ended up saving her life.

 



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Source

 

And a talk about warrior mothers cannot be complete without birthmoms! These are the women who held on to their babies for 40 weeks, gave birth to them, and then gave them up for adoption. These women are no less mothers than the women who raised them. They did what all mothers have to do, sacrifice themselves for their babies.

 



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7 Quick Takes Friday (#6)

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Today I'm officially graduating with my Master's in Pastoral Studies! Yay! Now, if I could only find work...

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Of course, I didn't go into the degree for the dough. I went because first I thought I wanted to be a DRE. Then, I thought I had a calling to be a hospital chaplain. Now, faced with a pile of student loan bills, like many of my fellow grads, I'd just be happy to get a job that is in my field.

Source

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So, what am I passionate about? While my academic and personal experience backgrounds are primarily in end-of-life issues, I've had a lot of beginning-of-life issues fall on my plate lately. These include but are not limited to: helping women with unplanned or crisis pregnancies, helping women with painful birth experiences, and reclaiming women's bodies from the abortion and birth control industries. A lot of this stems from the birth of my son. He was unplanned and his birth was traumatic. It makes me very, very sympathetic to women who are not as lucky as I was and those with much scarier stories than I do.

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Now, the funny thing about life issues is that they are all interrelated. When the use of contraceptives goes up, so does the abortion rate (I know the citation there is biased, just bear with me). When we start killing severely handicapped babies to "spare them pain", we are pressuring adults with disabilities to die as well. On the other side of that coin, I find it remarkably inconsistent for those who are "pro-life" to be war-mongers and pro-death penalty as well. For faithful Catholics, election day should be torture, because we cannot with a clear conscience vote either Republican or Democrat. It's as simple as that.

 

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It's all about the consistent life ethic:

If one contends, as we do, that the right of every fetus to be born should be protected by civil law and supported by civil consensus, then our moral, political and economic responsibilities do not stop at the moment of birth. Those who defend the right to life of the weakest among us must be equally visible in support of the quality of life of the powerless among us: the old and the young, the hungry and the homeless, the undocumented immigrant and the unemployed worker.

Such a quality of life posture translates into specific political and economic positions on tax policy, employment generation, welfare policy, nutrition and feeding programs, and health care.

—Cardinal Joseph Bernardin
in Consistent Ethic of Life (Sheed & Ward) 

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On a lighter note, another video my confirmation kids shared with me:

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So, a chapter of my life is over. I don't have to learn anymore, do I?

 



 

Nope, once a theology student, always a theology student. Especially if said theology student is wanting to become a Lay Dominican.

 



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7 Quick Takes Friday (#5)

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This will be a post of images. I'll likely write more on some of these later:

A Praying Mantis praying through Mary

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Mary holding the baby Jesus. I'll leave you to contemplate this image for a while.

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Pope Francis, future patron saint of the socially awkward

 

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My son someday?

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I don't know if I'll miss these days or not.

 

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Annunciation by John Collier

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Yeah, I don't miss that.

 

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7 Quick Takes Friday (#4)

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My baby turned 1 yesterday! He had a rough night the night before. As my husband said, he was trying to help us relive our last night before he was born when we couldn't sleep because we were both terrified. But we weren't terrified this Wednesday night. We were angry because my son wouldn't stop crying unless he was nursing and he wouldn't nurse without biting me. I wonder in retrospect if his teeth were hurting him, but I wasn't able to think clearly at 3 AM.

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Yesterday was a pretty normal day, except we went to Applebee's for dinner. James couldn't eat anything there yet. We brought some baby food for him, but he wouldn't take it. We considered telling the staff that it was his birthday just to see how he'd react if they all started singing to him. The service wasn't great though. The waitress made us angry so we decided we wouldn't bother with the singing after all.

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In a couple weeks we will have the obligatory messy cake face picture. I'm kind of bummed he won't be able to eat any of it. Unless there's a miracle and he suddenly decides that food that doesn't come from Mommy isn't so bad after all.

Baby's first diabetic coma

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It really appears that James is going to be walking before he's crawling. Earlier this morning, he tried to stand up on his own using my footstool.

Someday James will be able to stand and make that exact face without his Dad propping him up

 

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Not a whole lot else happening in my corner of the world. My Confirmation kids shared this video with me:

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On a related note, am I the only person in the northeast whose heard of a teaching Mass? It's a Mass where the priest stops every once in a while to explain why we're doing what we're doing. I went to a couple of them in MO. The RCIA program did one annually. My Baptism/Confirmation/First Eucharist was one. My wedding was supposed to be one (it kinda was). I really think my Confirmation students would benefit from having one. If anyone reading this is from central New York and knows a priest who does them, please let me know.

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James is having his one year check-up this afternoon. Here's to hoping there is no shots involved!

 

She looks so excited to be there.

 









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7 Quick Takes Friday (#3)

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The weather has been beautiful all week here in upstate New York. James and I have managed to go on a couple walks. Even today, although it's windy and the sky looks like it could open up at any moment, I still have the patio door open because the temperature is fabulous.

Source

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I'd like to take the time to thank you all for reading my posts about my healing from my C-section. It felt good to get that all out in the open. Thank you for being so understanding. In case you missed them, here are some links:

My first Ignitum Today article

How getting sick again helped me

How my son's baptism helped me

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Spiritual direction was pretty much required at my grad school for everyone in my program. Upon graduation, they highly recommended that everyone in ministry have a spiritual director. Now, I don't really have a ministry right now unless you include motherhood or this blog, but I do have a spiritual director. My meetings with her have been very good. She challenges me a lot to let God in to places of my heart or my life that haven't been opened in a while. I mention all of this because I would  recommend that anyone in ministry have a spiritual director. I got in contact with mine through the Spiritual Renewal Center. Yes, this future lay Dominican is getting spiritual direction from a Franciscan Sister. Don't knock it. It works for us.

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It's official, my son likes blonds. We've already noticed that he stares at blond haired women and gives them his best smile. He watches intently TV shows that feature them. Once, during Holy Week, I put on EWTN and there was a blond woman playing the keyboard and singing. My son silently watched her until the credits rolled and then he started yelling at me like, "What just happened? I was watching that!"

What makes it all official though was yesterday at Mass. James tried the entire service to talk to a two-year-old blond girl. Every time he faced her, he looked straight at her jabbering away so, of course, I tried to keep his face pointed the opposite direction. I also tried not to crack up. It was too freaking cute. She kept saying "baby, baby," staring completely fascinated by my son and my son tried so hard to talk back. I didn't know you could have such a preference when you aren't even a year old.

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When we got home from church yesterday I tried once again to get my son to eat baby food. I told him, "I'm sure that cute little girl is eating real food by now." My son didn't care.

Actually not James. Looks a lot like him though.

 



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My son doesn't care. Just like a honey badger. (explicit language warning)

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Seriously now, researching for the post I'm gonna publish later, I came across some cool stuff:

 

 

Virginity is becoming more common, yay!

 

 

 

 

 





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7 Quick Takes Friday (#2)

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Sorry I haven't posted much this week. My computer died Monday. It has been mostly resurrected. I still need to reinstall [read: my husband still has to reinstall] Microsoft Office. My computer still has some of the quirks it had before, which makes me nervous. But, my dear husband stayed up until 2 am once this week to try to fix the sucker, so I feel loved.

Source

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My internship at Feminists for Life is starting soon. w00t!

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My Bible study ended yesterday. I highly recommend the book that we used:

 

 

The Year of Faith Bible study was very good. It led to some very fruitful discussions and I know some of the women in my study learned a lot. I only have two complaints: 1) If you don't know some of the basics of the Catholic faith, some of it will go over your head. Especially in the first couple weeks, I found myself doing an introduction to the issues in the readings because some of the ladies in my study didn't have the foundation to understand the reading. 2) It's not really Bible centered. It does give the Biblical foundation for many Catholic beliefs. I particularly liked a chart in which he gave the scriptural references for every thing in the Nicene Creed. But if you're looking for a Bible study that will help you understand the Bible, you need to look elsewhere.

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My next project will be a Theology of the Body course. We will hopefully be using "A Crash Course in the Theology of the Body" by Christopher West. I already have the CD and I can borrow the DVD from someone in the diocese offices. The only possible expense for my parish will be the books (if we want the books, they aren't necessary). Which is good because the Bible study cost my parish over 200 bucks.

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I have some good memories of using the Crash Course in college. It was pretty much an annual thing at my Newman Center. It would usually take us a semester meeting once a week for an hour or so listening to part of a lecture and then discussing it. One thing I remember very clearly was a girl named Ginger who would start conversations with "Well, what do you think?" It became a running gag by the end of the semester. I'm surprised that I lost my book for it although given some of the notations I made in the book, I could see myself intentionally throwing it away. Like a lot of people, I had some rough times in college and there are plenty of things I would rather forget.

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But on a happier note: My first article for Ignitum Today will be published this Sunday! I wrote about my C-section (which isn't the happiest story) in honor of C-section Awareness Month. I'm really excited about this new position. The people I'm working with are awesome and I'm looking forward to learning more about writing.

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Let me finish this one up with a goofy video that we've all seen, but it's still hilarious:

 



 

It's peanut butter jelly time!

 







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