matching tracksuits

Retirement

Monday 11 February 2013

It's not something one expects to read: "Pope to step down." "Pope resigns." Since it hasn't happened in centuries, I guess it's inevitably big news. "Pope prepares for a monk's life" reads one headline, only partially satisfying speculation about what a retired pope might do with his time.

This will be the first papal election I've witnessed as a Catholic convert, and unlike eight years ago, I have some definite preferences for a new pope. Of course, it's not up to me in any sense, so further speculation and wish-making seems fruitless. Whoever is Benedict XVI'sÂ successor, he won't be the last, and if history is any guide, it's unlikely he'll do much radically to change anything in the church. It's odd: I find myself more in step with more traditional Catholics every day despite my agnostic, progressive past, but there's one "progressive" change I'd like to see in the papacy: a non-European. Peter Kodwo Appiah Cardinal Turkson has been mentioned as a very possible successor, and I find myself thinking that there could be no better selection for a church that calls itself the Universal Church.

A Bit of Time Out of Doors

Sunday 10 February 2013

The Boy has been sick the last few days. Recurring fever, loss of appetite, congestion. The pediatrician says it's nothing serious -- at least, no visible infection or signs of other serious issues -- but it means late nights and tired days for us all, especially K.

A bit of sunshine and fresh air in the early afternoon, though, leaves him smiling and ready for a nap.

God in the Dative

Sunday 10 February 2013

We must not help our neighbor for Christ, but in Christ. [...] In general, the expression "for God" is a bad one. God ought not to be put in the dative.

One of the more difficult, perhaps the most difficult, challenges to learning Polish was getting accustomed to its inflected nature. In English, we tell who did what to whom in a sentence by syntax, where it appears in relation to other words. In the sentence "The dog bites the man," we know who is doing the biting and who is being bitten by the order: subject verb object; biter bites bitee. Polish and other inflected languages determine these things by adding endings (inflections) to the words. Instead of meaning coming from word order (subject verb object), it comes from word endings. The different meanings are called cases. The subject of a sentence is in nominative case. The direct object is usually in accusative case in most inflected language, but Polish is an odd ball because some direct objects are in genitive case, and all direct objects of negative verbs are in genitive case. Indirect objects, to whom or for whom (i.e., "We gave the dog some treats."), are in the dative case. In Polish, that usually means adding "-owi", "-ze", "-u", or "-i"to the end of the noun. In English, we just slip it between the verb and the direct object.

So what puzzles me about Weil's contention that we shouldn't put God in the dative is how it seems to fly in the face of so much we hear in contemporary Christianity in America. We have "10 Things Young People Can Do for God" and "How to Work for God Effectively" and "Working for God in the Public Square" to name a few articles one can find easily enough. Indeed, it seems to have a Biblical basis. So I wondered what Weil might mean. Perhaps it's a case of not limiting oneself to the dative case but also the instrumental, accusative, genitive, locative, and vocative cases.

Independence

Saturday 09 February 2013

Independence comes in small developments: gripping a bottle.

Riding a bike.

School Dance Misogyny Mystery

Friday 08 February 2013

Dear DJ Splatz (or whatever you clever name is),

I'll have to admit that I was somewhat surprised, and pleasantly so, when you called down a young man at our school dance this evening for getting a little out of control. Slinging his shirt around and dancing in an overtly sexual manner, he was clearly out of line at a middle school dance. I commend you for calling chaperons' attention to it and insisting that he leave the dance. At the time, I thought that such a strong response was entirely called for and set a much-needed example for students, and my opinion of you improved greatly. You later began talking about the need to have "good, clean fun," and while I thought, "My definition of that term is probably different than yours," I very much appreciated the sentiment.

The next song you selected for the dancers, though, seemed to negate everything you were trying to accomplish with that warning. I'd never heard the song -- for I don't listen to such trash -- but the lyrics of the refrain stood out clearly: "To the window, to the wall, / To the sweat drip down my balls (MY BALLS)." At least that's the lyrics that lyrics007.com displayed when I Googled "window wall sweat drip balls."

Really? You're going to reprimand someone for sexually explicit dancing and then play that song? When I read the rest of the misogynistic lyrics of this piece of garbage, I wondered how producers could have cleaned it up for a radio-ready version, so filled it was with the lowest, most degradingly misogynistic profanity imaginable. Which lyrics do you think were going through their mind as the song played, the radio version or the vile original? Of course, we don't have to wonder about the lyrics coming out of their mouths, but it is particularly distressing to see a bunch of sixth-, seventh-, and eight-grade girls ~~singing~~ (who are we kidding? it's rap: it's merely talking, shouting, or mumbling to a generally-computer-generated beat) shouting about sweat dripping off their -- well, you get the picture.

So, in closing, if you find yourself this evening wondering why that boy was dancing like a sex fiend, I'd suggest you review the lyrics of the songs you play.

Sincerely,
A Teacher Who Will Probably Never Let His Daughter Go To A Dance He Doesn't Personally Chaperone

Sunrise

Thursday 07 February 2013

Work as Prayer

Wednesday 06 February 2013

Benedictine spirituality sees work as a kind of prayer. The rule of Benedict teaches that, through daily, mundane work, we can achieve holiness. Like so many holy orders of so many other religions, Benedictines from the beginning understood the beauty of the simple life. Theirs is an asceticism not only of the body but of the mind as well.

I thought of these things this evening as I was puttering about the kitchen, cleaning up after K went to bed, emptying the dishwasher, wiping off the counters, drying the remaining dishes that had been sitting in the sink drying rack. I continued wondering how work might be prayer as I went upstairs and, on an odd whim, pulled out the ironing board and iron. K earlier in the evening had expressed a certain frustration at how things in the house tend to build up: our to-do list seems always to be expanding, rarely if ever contracting. But if work is somehow prayer, I thought, that means we have paths to holiness all around us.

Yet that helped very little: how exactly is pressing a heated piece of metal against fabric to steam out the wrinkles in any way prayer? It occurred to me that it might be a question of re-framing what "prayer" means. Growing up in a decidedly non-Catholic home, I always had a very strict and limiting view of what prayer was or could be, and it make the Catholic notion of prayer seem somehow foreign. Marian devotion and prayers to saints were most decidedly and perversely wrong. But the Protestant notion of prayer might be closer to the Catholic notion of worship, and so Catholics through the centuries have had a broader view of what prayer is than Protestants.

Yet that still didn't help me understand how work might be prayer until I began thinking about motivation. I'd purposely put most of K's clothes on the top of the to-iron pile because I was doing it for her, to help her feel a little less behind, and it seemed somehow silly to be ironing my own clothes. "I helped you out by ironing my shirts and pants." It just seems somehow unseemly, arrogant.

Work in some sense then can be prayer through having a selfless motivation for work. Perhaps that's a first step in understanding Benedictine spirituality. Or perhaps it's just late night rambling of someone who should have been in bed some time ago.

Evening Rituals

Tuesday 05 February 2013

Climbing, scooting, homework, making friends with the cat -- it's all part of the evening ritual. And with an infant, that ritual paradoxically includes the unexpected.

And a little boy who goes from silly and giggling to sick and crying in a matter of a few evening hours is one such exception, which trumps everything else -- especially a silly blog.

Old and New

Monday 04 February 2013

I took an old lens last night -- a 50mm 1.8 from an old Nikon -- and put it on our D300 body. I don't know why: the thing didn't work with our D70, so why would it work with our newer model? Simple: the D300 has an aperture lever, which means I can actually dial in a given aperture and the camera knows which setting I've selected and can compensate the exposure accordingly.

The results were shockingly sharp. It's too bad the thing is virtually impossible to focus with the lens being manual everything and the camera lacking a focusing plane.

It's another reason to love Nikon: a 20+ year lens works with a modern, digital SLR.

February Sunday

Sunday 03 February 2013

The Nexus has become a favorite of L's: she is consistently aware of the battery status and always willing to give a friendly reminder when it's getting low, which would be daily if we let her use it as often as she would really like to. She learned quickly how to install new games, uninstall boring apps, and customize various aspects of the desktop -- for lack of a better term. Promoting interest in all things tablet, in other words, is not a problem.

What is a problem is fostering interest in all things spiritual. Well, in anything spiritual. Perhaps it's a function of her age as well as her super-hyper personality. Still, we try. We have nightly prayers, but that often turns into something of a spiritual/mental wrestling match. We go to Mass regularly, but she's always more interested in the playground afterward than anything happening during Mass.

It occurred to me the other day that perhaps joining the two might be fruitful. I installed Laudate, a Catholic missal/prayer/encyclopedia/everything app on both her and my account, and showed her a couple of our nightly prayers this morning after breakfast.

"What's this?" I asked.

She began to read, "G-l-o-r -- Glory be!" She was eager to continue reading: "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. Amen." And then, without prompting, without a word from me, she crossed herself: "In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit." (She can't seem to remember to add the proper "of's" in that prayer...)

We read another, and it was the same. Odd, how ritual forms without us really realizing it. Odd and hopeful.

As for the rest of the day, it was a fairly typical Sunday. Some posing for pictures in her new church clothes, a gift from her godmother in Poland.

And some play time with an ever-dearer friend up the street, W. K and L introduced W to "Super Farmer," a Polish game that really requires no Polish language skills at all -- just a bit of forbearance when an unlucky throw of the dice wipes out all of one's livestock.

That in itself took a bit of acclimation for the Girl. The first time she tossed "wolf" and lost everything, there was a complete breakdown -- crying, shouting, pouting, stomping. Tonight's final game, the loss of everything brought a calm, "Oh well," and a gentle passing of the dice.

And where was the Boy throughout all of this, the prayers, the games, the chaos? It all happened during his two naps, leaving him inconveniently out of all the photos. He didn't seem to mind.

Bearing Gifts

Saturday 02 February 2013

With K and the Boy back, things are returning to normal. Which is to say, there's more mess -- why does doubling the child count quadruple the mess? -- and more noise. The mess, well, I could live without; the noise is the best soundtrack to my life I could imagine.

When K returns from Poland, she always brings gifts from the family for us all. (It makes it sound like she's often going to Poland alone when in fact this was just the second such trip.) This year's theme for the Girl: logic games. One in particular, sort of an ever-changing maze, has captivated the Girl. She sat this morning at the refrigerator, twisting and turning the various mechanisms, making this and that pattern. The Boy, on the other hand, was thrilled with the bagel wrapper and his newly discovered skill of scooting around in a circle.

For her part, K brought back a new love of good old fashioned Polish rosol.

A whole chicken, some parsnips, carrots, and celery, and several hours of slow simmering produces the ultimate comfort food.

Comfort food now for all of us.

Feeding and Sleeping

Friday 01 February 2013

He sits on my lap, Friday night and he’s tired. His head resting on my chest, he slowly opens his mouth as the spoon approaches. The pureed fruit in his mouth, he mushes it against his gums, swallows, and looks up at me. His glassy eyes stare off into the distance, and a balled fist slowly comes up, rubs an eye to theÂ accompanimentÂ of a little fuss. I feed him the entire jar of fruit, and it’s clear that he won’t last much beyond the last bite. Within a few minutes, we’re upstairs, his head on my shoulder as I pace about the darkened room. Moments later, he’s asleep.

The great honor of being a parent is being present in those moments of ultimate trust, those moments that make us so very mortal. I am responsible for two of his most basic, mortal needs: food and a quiet, safe place to sleep. As the Girl grows moreÂ independent, these needs come less immediately from my hands: she takes food out of the refrigerator for herself; she prepares her own snacks and even helps with her own meals. It’s easy to take those basic responsibilities for granted with her. But with him, K and I are still everything — for a while.

There and Back Again

Thursday 31 January 2013

K and the Boy have returned from two weeks in Poland. We spoke on the phone, we video chatted via Skype, but the simple fact was they were there while the Girl and I were here.

And yet we look through the pictures K took and it's just as if we went there: the familiar visits; the time spent around the kitchen table; the walks in the fields around K's folks' house; the pictures at the small chapel on the way to the river; breakfast with the sun streaming through the window; the silly play on the kitchen floor.

We weren't there, but we can see the whole story in a handful of pictures.

Final Night

Wednesday 30 January 2013

One last night without K and the Boy, which means one last morning without K and the Boy. While L and I missed them terribly, a lot of good came from our single-parent experience. With a little extra work and planning in the evening, the morning ritual has been cut substantially. Having to do double duty in the evening mean pushing some tasks onto the Girl, so she can now complete the evening bath project, from drawing the water to dressing, without any help from an adult. Life in generally has just grown a bit more streamlined -- at least the redundant, daily things that we tend to push through to get to the more interesting stuff. And yet we've also re-discovered that those redundant, daily things that we tend to push through can be the interesting stuff: the eternally relearned lesson.

A Day in the Life

Tuesday 29 January 2013

Chalk dust is a thing of the past, as are dry erase markers. Today, I'm more likely to be frustrated with some technological glitch rather than dry skin from chalk dusk or headaches from whiteboard cleaner. The advantages, of course, vastly outweigh the disadvantages.