Mom My Ride

Here is a funny little video that my wife's friends were passing around for a while. Enjoy!

Do You Know This Man?

His name is Steven Pressfield and he's been kicking my ass for over an hour.

My new friend Mark of the Kindlings turned me on to Pressfield at our last writer's meeting. I got the CD of his book The War of Art at the library and have been listening to him describe all my bad habits as if he knew me. It's a bit spooky.

I'm about a third of the way through the book and it's very good. He writes very directly, in a no-bullshit manner. So far he's spent a lot of time talking about what he calls "Resistance". This is a term he applies to anything that keeps us from doing our work. As far as I can tell, Resistance is roughly equivalent to Freud's thanatos impulse, or Death Wish, that force in our lives that moves us toward death and not life. The life force (Freud calls it eros) pushes us out of the comfortable womb, through pain to life. Thanatos moves against this, seeking pleasure that ultimatley leads to death. You can imagine the deadly effects of trying to be a grown man inside a womb.

Pressfield says that there are a million ways that Resistance can manifest itself--writer's block, illness, addiction, drama--but it must always be combatted by doing one's work, what one was put on the planet to do.

He seems to be headed toward Mother Theresa's "faithfulness, not success" comibined with a heaping helping of Josemaria Escriva's philosophy of work. I'll keep you posted.

The Queen

This is a picture of the beautiful woman responsible for blessing/genetically rescuing the children whose images you see littered throughout this blog. She is the finest woman I know. Most people are mystified by her decision to consort with likes of me (I include myself in that number), but she does, and I'm keeping her.

Chesterton says that limiting yourself to one woman is a small price to pay for the privilege of being able to see one at all. He was thinking of my wife when he wrote that.

He also had this to say about the "drudgery" of motherhood. It applies equally well:

To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors, and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, sheets, cakes, and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute.
--"The Emancipation of Domesticity" from Chesterton's 1910 classic What's Wrong with the World.

The Defense of Christianity

"You cannot evade the issue of God, whether you talk about pigs or the
binomial theory, you are still talking about Him. Now if Christianity
be. . . a fragment of metaphysical nonsense invented by a few people,
then, of course, defending it will simply mean talking that
metaphysical nonsense over and over. But if Christianity should happen
to be true - then defending it may mean talking about anything or
everything. Things can be irrelevant to the proposition that
Christianity is false, but nothing can be irrelevant to the
proposition that Christianity is true."

G.K. Chesterton
Daily News December 12, 1903

Makes Good Better

Here is an outstanding little commercial that captures the Natalist philosophy quite nicely.  Hat tip to Mamapajama.

Full Houses and Zip Codes

I met a guy after church on Sunday who also has 5 kids.  I told him we both had full houses: mine is Queens full of Jacks, his is Jacks full of Queens.  (At least I think that's how you say it.  I've got 2 boys and 3 girls, he has the reverse.) 

 

 

Anyway, I asked him if the kids were born at "NFP Spacing" (every two years).  He said, "Almost exactly."  I told him we were the same way, and he said something I'd never heard before: "Ah, you have a ZIP code, too."

 

I love it--a ZIP code: 86420. Sophia, Joseph, Olivia, Annamaria, Max.

This is worth reading: Making Babies: A Very Different Look at Natural Family Planning

Blessed R. Drapeau

So, I'm sitting around worrying about my finances, when this comes in the email:

Matthew 6: 24-34
Jesus said to his disciples: “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you--you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ´What will we eat?´ or ´What will we drink?´ or ´What will we wear?´ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today´s trouble is enough for today.”

That's uncanny, right?

Sophia keeps asking me if we're poor. I'm not sure what she thinks it means to be poor. I ask her if she's going without anything she needs, she says "no". I ask her if she's unhappy, she says "no". I ask her if she knows her Mama and Papi love her, she says "yes". I ask her if she loves her brothers and sisters and if they love her, she says "yes". I tell her that there are a lot of people with more money who can't answer those questions the same way, so, no, we're not poor. But she has eagle-ears (if there are such things) and always manages to overhear Mama and Papi talking about money. What a kid.

Anyway, rich we ain't. At least not in the "we-don't-look-at-price-tags" way. But, I've got half a dozen friends who love me like a brother, supportive parents and in-laws, cool siblings (including brothers-in-law and their wives), five amazing, beautiful, loving, and fun kids, and a wife whom future generations of women will pray to under the title of "St. Amy Elizabeth, Martyrfamilias". That's a lot.

Annamaria Francesca

 
 

So, here's our version of Marilyn Monroe just hanging out.

Olivia in Italy

 

This picture is framed in my office. My sister-in-law-in-law Pat took this when we were in Italy. Have you ever seen a cuter picture?

Joe Cool

 

Joseph is a funny kid with a funny sense of "cool". Notice how he's dressed for the hottest day of the year (114F): long sleeves, long pants, one glove.

In the other picture, the "lazy eye" look he's going for was deliberate. "Remember, Papi? Trevor did this? It's cool."

 

Field of Flowers (Narnia the Musical)

Here is Sophia's big solo from Narnia. We are so proud of her!

Here is everybody's favorite little guy, Macky. He's so cute, it isn't fair to other boys his age.