Can an earnest Catholic woman FLIRT?

Okay, I'm not so sure I've ever really done a lot of flirting. My parents' voices personalize my superego, and a very efficient job it has done of keeping me meek and restrained over the years. But it took me aback when, back in May, a friend asked me just who I was flirting with these days. Or maybe it was "how many?" he asked.

Did I say "taken aback"? My dears, my friend is a 6' tall good-looking Catholic gentleman... it embarrassed the everliving daylights out of me!

So... I began to do some heavy evaluating.

Actually, this predates the query posed by my friend. For a little less than a year now, I've been in the midst of a major paradigm shift (more on that some other time). I have been holding past relationships up to the Light of the holiest of Christian ideals, ideals explained and illuminated in John Paul II's Theology of the Body and been grieved by the compromises I've been willing to make over the years.

I've also found myself brought back to myself, to my right mind, after years of carelessness and compromise of long-ago ideals. Consequently, I've been motivated to evaluate and modify my behavior so that my future life might be of a different, superior quality than the past.

Simultaneously with the attitude change, I've found myself being shown, through the Grace of the Holy Spirit, memories of conversations that had brought about or contributed to those compromised relationships. Grievously painful, that.

My conclusions are still in process of being fully formed, but here's what I've got so far:

*I have come to believe that flirting is not about friendship or about the cultivation of wholesome comraderie, but is, rather, about sex. It addresses, seeks to appeal to, that more carnal base of operations whereby men and women are superficially attracted to one another.

*If my friend and brother takes himself to "the BOX" (i.e., Confession) and one of the things he has to bring before God is the sin of carnal thoughts...
and if those carnal thoughts found their point of entry into his mind through some immodest or suggestive comment I've made -- or if he is not Catholic but still sins, knowingly or not, in consequence of my provocation --
... then I'm guilty of sinning against my brother, to whom I ought to be devoted to help attain Heaven.

*I also have bought into a worldly view of relationships, particularly dating and courtship relationships, or of attracting and inviting relationships, that I'm no longer complacent cannot be in violation of what I believe as a Christian.

So, for the time being:

I renounce flirting. I'm going to do some more evaluating of the topic and general, and my habits in particular.

Let me know what you think, and I'll let you know how it goes.

Counting blessings...

There are times when I feel like a salmon trying to get upstream, pushing against vigorous, if not overwhelming, currents of emotion and circumstance that seem determined to leave me stranded and dying where I sit. It's too easy to look at the negatives and to become entrapped in hopelessness and despair, or at least despondancy.

Counting blessings may seem like Pollyanna's game, but it is a decent antidote. I know it from experience.

One of my journals, a couple of years ago, I began with the sole intention of recording daily blessings. It was a bad patch, my nerves were raw... I felt about to go under for the third time. Then I watched through my bedroom window as a bluebird lighted on the ground outside. The sunlight catching the blue and rose of his breast and face gave me a momentary sense of being transported beyond myself --

I felt as if God were sending me a brief message of cheer and hope.

I realized that there are many such moments in each day, certainly each week, that I owed Him to pay attention to. I began jotting them down:

The bluebird. A small herd of deer in my yard when I returned from choir practice. The cloud arrangements. The smell of fresh-plowed earth; the smell of same earth with raindrops penetrating it. The butterflies flocking around the buddleia. The quail I watched for over an hour from the kitchen window - positioned under the front-yard dogwood, thrusting his little chest and chin out as he called "Bob-WHITE!" The Canadian geese honking overhead as they approached Hawthorne's pond. The hawk circling the field. A hug from a friend. The fragrance of incense during Mass...

So many ways God tells us He loves us and has not abandoned us!

and Life AFTER

Discovering your husband or ex-husband is gay really isn't the end of the world. It only feels that way for a substantial period of time.

We all deal with it in our own way (some ways healthier than others). I remarried after eleven years, an event I wish I could delete from my history as much for its brevity as for its horrific wrongness. But at least he was straight! (which is one of two reasons I got involved with him in the first place, the other being that he really enjoyed talking to me)

I've had relationships with men that were far from healthy, but thankfully, with only one exception, an integrity was maintained throughout that allows us to still be friends in varying degrees.

I learned something in that process -- no I learned a lot of things, beginning with

1) I really like being a woman, and I'm glad God made me one.
2) I really like being me!
3) Mom was right: I didn't amount to a hill of beans. I amounted, am amounting, to a great deal more.
4) Dan was right: I am a "trophy."
5) My own instincts are most of the time spot on, worth paying attention to -- at the very least investigating.
6) God brings dignity and beauty to each of our lives - and if we keep an inner ear tuned to learn His voice, we will see His gifts to us.
7) Before we can be honest with others, we have to have the courage to be fundamentally honest with ourselves.
8) Anger is part of the process. It's not the defining part, or the terminal part. It just sometimes feels that way.
9) Soul companionship is more memorable, more re-live-able, than the most mind-blowing sex.
10) I'm just getting started.

Let it be known...

I got an email a little while ago from a friend down under -- that's Australia, by the way -- urging me to be gentler in my treatment of Dan. He may not have had the choice, she said...

I believe the beautiful boy I used to love was denied his choice by age 14 when the selfish bastard seduced him. Maybe there was even a selfish bastard before the one I knew about.

Just what culpability Dan faces for his homosexuality is known only to God, Who is a just God as well as a merciful One, Who alone has the true and full knowledge and perfect understanding of all the factors that cause us to do the things we do.

I don't believe Dan will get off scott free simply because of some verbal assent of Who Jesus Is; salvation requires more of us in return to His sacrifice. But I trust God to be fair -- to Dan, and to me.

I do blame Dan for what has happened since. Maybe that's uncharitable, maybe it's unfair. But it's the way I see it, and it's the way I'm calling it.

Hey, Dan -- an open letter to the Ex-

Dear Dan,
Since Beth has so graciously published me in the Greensboring blog (where do people hang out, if they think Greensboro is boring? They ought to move further south!) I have some hopes that you might recognize and check this blog out. If you do --

I am ready to file for the ecclesiastical nullity procedure in the Church. I was Confirmed in November, 2002 -- my conversion story is very early in the archives of this blog. You and I discussed this nullity idea several years ago, when I first began exploring converting, I think you'll remember, and you offered no objections at that time. I need a current address for you, so the Tribunal can contact you and offer you the opportunity to participate in the proceedings.

I assume you likely will prefer not to participate; however, if you tell the tribunal rep that, yes, you're gay, you're out, and it's not something we discussed before we were married, then that's the end of it, I'm free in the eyes of the Church to date, marry, get on with my life. If you choose not to participate or to cooperate with the tribunal rep, then they'll come back to me asking for witnesses: family, friends, anyone who can give a statement about our marriage, our lives now, etc. I'd have to name your parents, your siblings, others... and I'd rather not -- not so much to protect you as to protect them. I know Richard and Lila are elderly and have been plagued with poor health in recent years. Remembering Lila, I dare say it would upset her terribly, and she'd come back and harp at you about it.

I hope you'll be willing to cooperate. I really, really want this.

Our older daughter told me next to last time I saw her that you're living with a partner now. I hope the life you have chosen for yourself is everything you were promised it would be. My life is quiet and I am happy, really, in just about every way imaginable.

Give the girls my love. Remember to keep a generous portion for yourself. I get angry, resentful (I am adept at understatement, you see)... but I do remember, don't forget, the boy I used to love... who was my hero in defending me against Mother... who held me and cried with me when I had the miscarriage... who held me and shared the awe (despite the brutal nausea) of my being pregnant... who helped me get through difficult and frightening labors... who helped me first to know the Lord and so paved the way for the Faith I now find such joy in... my friend.

There are some people, friends, from the old days you might want updates on if you want to contact me.

You know how to reach me -- the email address Judy had for you is now closed, of course (as I suspect you know) -- I still am at the same address and phone number I've been at for 12+ years now. Email is the most consistent way to reach me, though. Judy can give that to you, of course. I have no contact with Deann and won't use her as an intermediary.

Take care.
Laura

Hey, Beth --

Thanks for the heads-up in the Greensboro gay blog. Now I might be able to track Dan and let him know I need him for the nullity process -- either him, personally, or a bunch of family and friends witnesses. I don't think he wants that.

I miss the charming, lovely, affable boy I used to know. The fellow who used to be such a wonderful and companionable friend. If you know what happened to him along the way, I hope you'll pop in and tell me where I can find him. The snide, snarky, deceitful, selfrighteous contemptuous buzzard I knew in later years is no fun at all.

Oh, and while you're so busy being so pleased with yourself for joining the Fairy Prince in blaming me for everything (do queens bear no responsibility for their choices and the hurt subsequent and consequent to thosse choices?), perhaps it will interest you that I continued with my therapy- until Dan cashed the insurance check instead of turning it over to the therapist like he was supposed to do. He, on the other hand, told one therapist, "I know a marriage takes a lot of work, I just don't want to be bothered," and the other he just quit coming, always had something "better" and "more important" to do.

Both counselors (both women, by the way -- how come you haven't commented on the idea that homosexuality is fundamentally misogynistic at its core?) still remember him. Less than fondly.

Yet grace abounds...

I began the questionaire for the nullity petition for the Diocese of Raleigh before I was hired at OLA, and the questions brought about such an intense re-living of the experiences, the loneliness, the memories of Dan's hostilities, that I hadn't finished the petition in four years.

But I want to celebrate the many ways God demonstrated grace to me and helped me along.

First was my church. I wasn't Catholic in those days, didn't even dream I ever would become one. I was a fervent evangelical, member of evangelical churches, and those churches, and the people in them, were great support to me even while they didn't know I was experiencing all the other, ugly stuff.

I realize now that even in the 70s, when Dan made his first announcement to me that things were more complicated and painful than he'd let me know before, I could have gone to our pastor, a lovely man named Dale Brister, who would have been fully supportive and helped me see my way through the crisis. There were men and women in subsequent churches, too. But everybody loved Dan, and it was such a horrible thing to accuse him of... and there was that horrible burden of being wholly unable to talk about some things, back in those days.

But the emotional and spiritual support was there, and the grace.

The man who'd very much wanted to have an affair with me was, in a strange and convoluted way, another gift of grace. There was something comforting about being found desirable, adorable, by a man, even a man not my husband. And Bernard was responsible for re-awakening my love of reading and a hunger for reading things far more substantial than I'd known up until meeting him. He was really responsible for getting me to read C.S. Lewis' meatier works, and Watchman Nee, and excerpts from other theologians. Bernard was enchanted by my mind, when Dan thought I was stupid.

Then I got to go to Guilford College. It was my first academic success, and I was discovering abilities and loves I'd not dreamed myself possible of. I was encouraged and applauded by brilliant men and women whose credentials I couldn't dismiss as I had been able to minimalize Bernard's admiration. One professor, the one I was accused of having the affair with, who had something of a reputation for being impossible to get along with, told one of his colleagues, and it got back to me, that I was "one of the most brilliant students to come down the pike in (his) entire career."

That one remark did more to awaken me to my own value and merit than anything else I had encountered. It was easy not to take the commendations of other professors quite so seriously; they were warm, affirming men and women, "nice" people, which made their enthusiasm for my developing abilities easy to dismiss from serious consideration.

Still, had it not been for those men and women -- Beth and Mel, Joe and Ellen, Carol and John, Becky, Ann, Jeff... -- I don't think I could have finished college, no matter how startling Rudy's praise had been. They were my community, my family, my support as my marriage to Dan was falling apart and as I was going through the nightmare of discovering he is gay.

More recently, other friends have come onto the scene as instruments of mercy, healing and grace. There was Jim, my former boss, who discussed intellectual and spiritual issues with me between legal cases, and who inadvertently started the ball rolling toward my falling in love with the Church. There have been other teachers, colleagues, bosses, who have brought about degrees of healing and restoration over the years.

And now, there is the Church, the Sacraments, to hold on to, giving me literally Jesus Our Lord, Himself, in tangible and concrete ways.

I have to say that the real test of God's goodness to me is that I can say with all earnestness, I wouldn't wish what I've been through on my worst enemy... but I also wouldn't take a million dollars for it. I like this woman I'm becoming. Right now I'm in the midst of a major paradigm shift (more on that later?) and I am excited about my present and my future as I've never been before.

Such beauty on the horizon!

It's not just gay men who make terrible husbands; other men with serious psychological issues are nightmares, too. And not only gay men are misogynists. But homosexuality is a particular sort of misogyny -- dispising the feminine on such a deep level that the man has only contempt for a woman's body as well as her mind and soul.

Dan and I were part of the same circle of friends throughout high school. Then, during our senior year, Dan was hired by the same variety store I worked at, so we were spending even more time together. After we graduated, we'd go out, sometimes with a couple of friends, sometimes just the two of us, after work, hang out together until almost 11:00 (my weeknight curfew)... it was late August, immediately after one of our friend's wedding, that we had the great revelation that we were wanting to spend all our time together, had become immensely important to one another.

While we were dating, Dan was companionable, good-humored, loads of fun. He was always the life and heart of our gang, anyway, and I basked in his intelligence and sense of fun and adventure. He never pushed about sex, and, since I'd been wracked with guilt about a prior, unchaste relationship, I thought Dan was noble, self-disciplined. After all, he'd been instrumental in the formation of my Christian discipleship for more than two years; he'd been an exemplary (if sometimes overzealous) Christian youth.

We'd sit and talk for hours, building our dream castles, yes, but also grounded in various realities in our lives. He was a staunch defender against my mother, who could be so cruelly critical.

Actually, we both had issues we were running away from. I loved my parents and wanted to be close to them, but they had made it clear that if I ever left home without their approval, I'd be cutting myself off. I had to get out, my mother was mentally ill (I didn't know it then, but she wasn't in the hospital for headaches - Daddy felt it was in my best interests to "protect" me from knowing too much).

I didn't know it then, but Dan had issues and fears he was running away from, too. He'd been seduced, at age 14, by the adult relative of another of our friends; it had left him scarred, afraid of his own sexual inclinations. It wasn't self-control that had kept him from trying to score with me.

Then, after we were married, he immediately became distant, uncommunicative, unaffectionate. I'm an affectionate woman, and even the most casual of one-armed hugs, or a hand resting on his arm or shoulder, would bring about a violent reaction: he'd jerk away from me as if scalded, make a snorting noise, and say, "Don't! You know that annoys me!"

After we moved to Greensboro in '82, he began working at the YMCA, where he met whole new groups of people. Some of them became his friends. He began, every couple of months, announcing that he was feeling restless and that he was going to go visit some of his friends. They never called the house, never were named, never were met. I had no friends that he didn't know -- most were from Church -- and even the good people we knew from our church, he became unreasonably critical of. He even seemed hostile toward some of them.

I became desparately lonely. A therapist from Focus on the Family, whom I had written in near-desparation, called me on the telephone, and as I described my situation, he warned me that he was concerned, advised me to seek out local counselling. "You're at extremely high, frighteningly high, risk for an affair," he warned me.

I had the opportunity. We had a friend from church who thought I was beautiful, witty, intelligent, and very desirable. I wasn't interested. I wholly believed that, if I'd just follow the rules and be faithful, God would give me a miracle. It didn't come the way I wanted it to.

It has to have been horrible for Dan. Son and grandson of Baptist preachers, highly idealistic... He had a lot to risk if his worst fears were grounded in reality. I believe he thought that getting married, functioning sexually with a woman, perhaps fathering children, would be all the barometer he'd need to assure himself of his "normalcy."

I think that's the way it was, anyway. He won't discuss it with me now. Or wouldn't, last time I talked with him about it. This was more than ten years ago -- he'd come out to our daughters, and according to them, to his parents and siblings. I asked him, how do you reconcile the contradictions between your strong Christian commitment and this lifestyle you've adopted? His answer was distressing, even in those days before I ever attended my first Catholic Mass: so long as he believed and acknowledged Jesus Christ as the Son of God and his personal savior, his salvation was assured.

He was already attending the Metropolitan Community Church.

If only he'd been straightforward with me, said something along the lines of, "Laura, I'm so sorry, I've really tried, but..." and owned some degree of responsibility, even attempted some empathy for the agony I was going through, it might have made the present more bearable. But he never has been, and has only lied, deceived, and manipulated. Whatever his choices have been, they are all my fault.

Now that I have your attention...

Okay. I've just "outed" myself as the ex-wife of a queen, and already I've gotten an email from a woman who saw the post and wanted to let me know I'm not alone -- she has a friend going through a divorce after some 20 years of marriage and three children... same issue.

That's probably why I decided to go ahead and lance this latest emotional absess in public -- to try to offer, however limited my ability might be, some support for other women who are discovering themselves to be caught in this nasty trap of ultimate misogyny. One summer, when I was working for a lawyer, a little more than ten years ago, we had no less than four women clients who had discovered their husbands' treacheries. I suspect the problem is far more widespread than most people have ever considered.

We need a support group. There are support groups for every other wacko disorder coming down the pike -- why can't there be a support group for women recovering from emotional and spiritual exploitation and abandonment by men who prefer other men?

We all have frightening similarities. One of my friends pointed out that gay men who marry tend to pick "trophy wives" for themselves. At first I snorted in disbelief; I've always thought of myself as very plain and ordinary. But then I went back into the box of mementos and dug out my high school senior photo -- and saw a really lovely girl smiling out of that picture -- clear green eyes, long hair, sweet smile... (Thanks, Pal -- for seeing me with fresh eyes and shocking me into seeing myself anew.)

We also were idealistic, trusting, perhaps gullible. All five of us were very religious; we had picked me with strong religious ideals, also. We had married with great hopes and expectations only to be confronted during our honeymoons with strangers who did not enjoy intimacy with us, who began to withhold affection and attention and conversation from us, who always had a plausible excuse for same... We all suffered unbearable loneliness and a downright neurotic response of trying to be perfect so we could be worthy of the love of men who so obviously despised us. Most of us had become humiliated by the necessity of always initiating sex (and most of us, being loving and passionate women, were attempting to initiate often).

We gave up lives of our own, in most cases -- interests, hobbies, friends -- because our husbands demonstrated resentment of anything that distracted us from them. Also, we were hopelessly optimistic that someday, somehow, our husbands would come out of their trance and want our company, our affection... and we wanted to be on hand when the moment finally arrived.

For me, the breaking point was my success in college. After years, first from my mother and then from Dan, of being told I was dumb and that I'd never amount to anything, that I was only tolerated out of pity, I was discovering my intelligence, my love of learning, the value of my intuitions, at Guilford College. I made Dean's List -- something no one would have believed possible before I enrolled there. I was the happiest I'd ever been, and I think it drove Dan crazy that I could be appreciated, supported, validated by anyone who discredited his contemptuous opinions of me. It was the first day of Finals Week, Fall Semester of my third year at Guilford, when he announced that he was leaving me.

Oh, he was magnanimous, as always -- it wasn't me he intended to leave, only our "dump" of an apartment (cinder blocks on a concrete slab, built in the late 40s); I could come with him or not, as I chose. Basically -- he put it in such a way that, if I chose not to leave college, not to come with him, the divorce became solely my fault. But I knew that if I ever moved from that apartment (which rented for $90 a month in a day when the going rate for 2-bedroom apartments was closer to $500) I'd have to give up school, success... and myself. I let him move on his own.

Of course, I wouldn't know about his gay friends and the double life he'd been leading for several more months, but the pathology of our relationship was beginning to lose its grip on my soul.

Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are!

I can't find Dan, my first husband. I have the paperwork ready to file for my nullity petition with the Diocese of Charlotte, and when I tried to call and let him know he's going to be contacted about it, the old number I had for him has been disconnected, and I've since learned he's no longer with the employer I last knew of. We had promised one another, long ago, that for our daughters' sake we would always be able to stay in touch with one another. Evidently he has changed his mind and forgotten to tell me about it?

This is not the first time he's made a major change and "forgotten" to tell me. Some five months after we separated, he had oral surgery. This was the first time he'd had any kind of medical need in the entire time I'd known him (more than fifteen years, at that point), and since we were supposed to be working on reconciling, it seemed only right to me that I should be with him for this crisis. But, no, he had already arranged another friend to take him to the oral surgeon's and to be with him as he recovered: his friend Randy. I was welcome to stop by his apartment after I got off work, of course, and when I did, and when I met Randy and saw him and my handsome husband together, all the other problems we had had over the years suddenly made sickening sense to me: they were in love with each other.

Dan had tried to tell me of his homosexuality a couple of years after we were married. We'd been having trouble since the honeymoon -- arguments over lack of communication, Dan's sudden intolerance for physical affection and companionship. He'd cracked a joke after our honeymoon, that after we'd consummated our marriage his only thought was, That's what all the fuss is about? We'd not been intimate before, and I'd admired his self-control; it turned out he just wasn't interested.

Then after one particularly ugly quarrel, in which I'd pointedly asked him if he wanted a divorce since he obviously did not like being married, he broke down and began to weep. He told me a story he now vehemently denies: of being seduced by the older relative of one of our friends, at the age of 14. It was a mutual masturbation scenario, as he told me of it then, but it had left him strongly marked. "I've always been afraid, if you hadn't fallen in love with me and married me, that's where I would have ended up," he said.

This was the mid- to late-'70s, when nice people still didn't discuss some things. There was no one I could trust with the burden placed upon me, and it was terrifying. I was physically sick for three days, then I pushed the conversation and all its attending risks and revelations back into the depths of my memories... until meeting Randy popped the cork and let it all come spewing, spurting, geysering out.

A couple of my friends have been wanting me to blog about this for a while, and it's not something that can be done once for all. Discovering that one's most intimate life partner is gay is a devastating experience, but for me there was also a mercy: for years, Dan had tried to turn everything into being MY FAULT, and because Dan was wonderful, smart, likeable, and my parents' favorite, he had to be right; now I knew that if I'd been perfect it would not have been good enough.

What I don't understand is how he has been able to face our daughters all these years and tell them, repeatedly, that his homosexuality had NOTHING to do with our divorce, continuing the theme of "It's all your mother's fault." He even invented an adulterous relationship for me (greatly exaggerating a very benign "mutual admiration society" with one of my professors to fit his needs for self-justification)... and my daughers believe him.

This one is going to develop over a while. There are too many of us in the world, women who have been betrayed by this ultimate misogyny, this rejection of ourselves for our very womanhood, to remain silent any longer. I've been paying for this man's deceits for thirty years. It's time I found my voice, and this blog is where I'm going to sing.

TONIGHT IS THE NIGHT!

Tune in to your computer, at www.theclassicalstation.org -- click on "Listen Online" and stream the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, featuring the North Carolina Master Chorale, performing Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2, the "Resurrection." I've written about this elsewhere.

Oh, do, please listen in!

8:00 p.m. Eastern Time. The concert will be re-broadcast later in the month, but I forget that schedule right now. You will see it on WCPE's web page.

oh! and do please let me know what you think!

Today would have been my mother's 78th birthday, had smoking-related lung cancer not taken her life fifteen years ago, on March 7, 1991. She went into respiratory failure; for three weeks the doctor told us she could go "any minute now" as she struggled and fought for each attempted breath. In the end, when I, weeping, told her there was no more help for her suffering, she waited until we were all out of the room, then she simply let go.

Her final illness was something of a Purgatory for her. All my life, she was suspicious, critical, isolated, unable to fully love or accept the love I her daughter and several of her extended family and friends had tried for years to give her; in those final days, she was amazed at how lovely and kind everyone was; she, who had such an aversion to public displays of emotion, patted my arm to comfort me as I wept at the sight of her struggles for air, of her body swollen and splitting from fluids building in her tissues, in her skin, when her kidneys began to fail.

My mother was able to make choices regarding her own health care in her final months, and she faced death with a greater dignity, courage, and peace than I had seen her facing life. Her doctor said -- and you must know that my mother was not an easy patient -- that he'd seldom seen such courage and dignity in the face of the decisions my mother had made when she received the diagnosis that she had cancer.

Unfortunately, too few people are allowed to make the decisions my mother was able to make -- that is, to leave matters of life and death in the hands of the God Who gives us life. My mother, for all her eccentricities, peculiarities, and (what we politely call) "problems," did believe in God, and she was willing to let Him do what He wanted with her life, including ending it on His terms, in His time.

Most people aren't alowed these choices. Instead, they are the victims of another sort of "choice" -- the choice of therapeutic abortion. A child is conceived through the choices of its parents, to engage in sexual intimacy; the child, an inconvenient reminder of perhaps an undesired responsibility that comes with intimacy, becomes disposable. An appointment at a clinic, some ten minutes in stirrups, a surgical procedure or a vacuum extraction rips apart the preborn's limbs and little torso, and the matter is over and done with.

Or is it? The women I have known over the years who have had abortions -- and some of them have actually had more than one -- suffer for their "choice." Something happens in the mind and soul of a woman who denies the most profound aspect of our sexuality: our ability to bear children. She becomes either severely depressed in grief for the wrong of her choice -- and these are the lucky ones; the others, who deny that they have done anything wrong, or that the procedure has had any consequence in their lives, seem to be operating in an emotional 2-dimensional world. This is hard to describe, but perhaps you have known women who have gone from one bad relationship to another, who have denied responsibility for other choices, who seem always to be searching for some elusive something that they can never quite identify, much less attain... searching for some peace and serenity that is never to be found where they are searching.

Abortion is murder, yes. But let us not forget the surviving victims of this action: the women and men who live with the reality of a child dead by their own choosing.

Abortionists will never tell the whole story of abortion. It's bad for business. Abortion as an industry represents maximum financial gain for minimum investment of time, energy, or interest. It is in the best economic interests of abortionists to try to persuade the general public that abortion is simple, easy, "safe." It is the latter claim that is the biggest lie. When a living soul is killed, a procedure is not safe at all -- and emotionally, spiritually, it is a death sentence for all who seek, obtain, and aid the procurement of said services.

Only a Righteous Judge -- appealed through by most sincere repentence -- has the power and the authority to commute that sentence.

Let us pray today for all who are harmed by the deceitful and demonic rhetoric of abortion "rights" -- the unborn, yes - but also mothers, fathers, grandparents, friends... nurses, doctors and all whose hands are bloodied by this atrocity.

Two more days...

don't forget to tune in -- www.theclassicalstation.org
Monday, 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time...

A baby in trouble

I've been approved by the county, despite my not being a fully certified teacher, because of the critical shortage, to tutor homebound students. My first, I have listed in the margin, right, in my prayer requests. "C" is a cute girl, 17, recently emancipated. Her baby was not due until October, but was born prematurely in July. The baby has been home, but has begun having seizures and has been admitted to one of the large teaching hospitals in this State.

"C" is proving herself a self-sacrificing mother, agreeing to breastfeed her baby for the baby's sake (most teen moms bottle-feed). She came by the school to pick up her work yesterday, and we met for the first time. She looks so thin and rather haggard. My heart aches for her, and I wonder about her relationship with her parents and about other issues that shouldn't even be on the page when we are talking about a girl so young.

Please pray for "C," her boyfriend, and their little baby girl, who is so thin and frail to have to put up such a fight right now. And please pray for me as I work with "C" to help her complete high school this fall; she's up for graduation in Decmeber.

I greatly appreciate it.

I think I've seen more pregnant students at our high school this fall and last year than during the previous ten years combined.

Strange how attitudes have shifted in a single generation. When I was in high school, back in the 70s, the idea was becoming accepted that if you really really loved someone and were in a committed relationship with him, it was okay to sleep together. That was hte polite euphemism for having sex, of course.

Nowadays, virginity is regarded as a shameful burden to be gotten rid of as quickly as possible. And in some elements of the culture (I'm sadly speaking of some pockets of the black community), boys aren't men until they've fathered children, and girls aren't regarded as "real women" until they've become pregnant.

I'm also disheartened by how irreverently and casually I sometimes overhear girls talking about sex, even oral sex. I was so backwards through my adolescence, I thought oral sex was the same thing as French kissing!

Dear God in Heaven! Where is the innocence of childhood anymore? Our children are losing out on so much that is precious! And how can we recover it without a lot of aggressive work?

Fair Warning -- !

Just over a week, now -- October 2, 2006. Raleigh's own WCPE, a.k.a. THE CLASSICAL STATION will be broadcasting the North Carolina Symphony's performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2, the "Resurrection" Symphony. Performing with them is -- TA DA!!! -- the North Carolina Master Chorale.

Go to the link I've provided and fiddle about with the Listen Online Feature. Check the exact time of the broadcast, too -- so you'll not miss a single minute of this wonderful (if I do say so myself!) performance.

Oh! and, uh, pass the word along, will ya? To other bloggers? Forums? Wherever?

Hey, Who Are Y'All?

I check the site meter from time to time, and I'm startled by the people who check this blog -- Y'all come from all over the place! I recognize some of the visitors -- monarch is Angela Messenger, for instance -- but some of you, I'm baffled to know who you are.

How about logging in a "Howdy" here? Let me know who you are?

ReDecorating the Blog

Thanks to Chris who is taking some time to help me jazz up the appearance of the ol' blog, here. I have no idea how to do the techie stuff, and she's a great help.

The painting in my header is The Annunciation by Henry Tanner. A friend of mine posted a photo of it in a website I sometimes visit, and I fell in love with it. I love the way Tanner doesn't try to anthropomorphize the Angel, but lets him stand as a being of brilliant Light. And Mary looks so young, so baffled by this amazing and unexpected event. Even the rumpled rug appeals to my imagination.

Watch in coming weeks for more redecorating advances.

Oh, yeah, Muslims are peace-loving, rational...

NOT.

HERE is the text of the highly controversial -- uh, let's put that in quotes, shall we? "CONTROVERSIAL" speech by Benedict XVI that has Muslims world-wide writhing with their knickers in knots, murdering nuns and setting churches afire... and Here is the text of the alleged apology offered by His Holiness, our beloved German Shepherd. Scroll down to see the English translation of the text of the apology.

Yeah, it's a real peaceful people who go on rampages killing nuns and burning churches in response to a speech that has only quoted a Medieval writer and asked some earnest questions.

When are the PC crowd going to wake up and smell the coffee, here? Is it going to take another 9/11-type attack on the U.S., on our home turf, before people realize we are at war with some violent, demon-possessed people, here???

Yeah, I pray for the conversion of Israel, and of the entire Islamic world. We've got a lot of people over there headed to hell faster than you can say "dozens of virgins in Paradise? Bilge!" and the thing is, they're trying their darnedest to take us with them.

In Memoriam

September 11, 2001

Five years later, we're all remembering where we were that day, what we were doing, how we heard the news that our beloved Nation had been attacked by terrorists. I was at home in the back end of the house and Rusty was in the living room watching Good Morning America. He hollered to me that something was happening in New York, and I came in and saw the tape replay, and watched and watched...

It felt like perhaps the prelude to Armageddon. This sort of thing was not supposed to be happening in our country, it was so horrific.

I still think the President was wrong about one thing -- he repeatedly calls terrorists "cowardly." I don't think they're cowardly. It takes a particular kind of courage, or at least carelessness, to blow oneself up for a principle. No, what the terrorists are, is evil, an evil we are not accustomed to facing here, to even acknowledging exists.

So here we are. Several of my friends' sons have been overseas, a couple of friends' husbands... one of my old schoolmates flies choppers for the National Guard and has been in Afghanistan.

Back home, I go into convenience stores up in Raleigh ... operated by Arabs. I remember the days when I was travelling with Rusty; I stopped between NC and Louisiana several trips at several different hotels over the year and a half, and they were operated by Arabs. One of them had a fundraiser jar on the counter for a charity to benefit orphans and other needy children -- the same sort of fundraiser we heard after 9/11 was being used as a front in order to raise money for the terrorists' activites. I was glad I had told the desk clerk that I support work for the poor through my own church.

I know there are Christian Arabs. I know that being an Arab is not an automatic link to terrorism. But I'm afraid. The men who commandeered the airplanes on 9/11/01 might have been students with me at Guilford, or clerks at the convenience store where I bought my gas, or at the hotel where Rusty and I stopped over on our wedding trip. I am afraid now of people who have a different ethnic base than my own; it feels as if they are infiltrating the country, and that some day soon, on a given signal, they will all rise up in a frenzied jihad and our American streets will begin to run with blood.

Meantime, there is that outrageous faction of American culture that embraces death, that deconstructs history and proclaims from our college and university campuses, and even from our high schools, that it is our own fault the Muslim extremists hate us so violently. We have become the "evil empire" even within our own borders, to our own citizens.

We are at war; but how can we fight such a war as this? The war of misinformation and deceit? The war of Me First and Self-Esteem over responsibility? The war in which the Evil One presents sin as heroic and virtue as neurosis and disorder? The war of demonic proportions that seems bent toward the sacrifice of our own god-fearing culture?

I feel helpless at times. I will do my best to be faithful where I am, but it isn't enough. We are trying to do too much in solitude, in isolation; we do not have enough of a sense of unity from within our own ranks, because these are things we cannot freely talk about. This is not a war about two nations opposing one another, but of two philosophical paradigms -- one out to destroy the other, the other sometimes frighteningly slow to demonstrate its determination to thrive and to contain the other in its own small geographic confines.

The demi-god of self-esteem

My friend Matt said it best: self esteem is a condition more to be feared in the U.S. these days than mortal sin. '

Had a parent conference at the high school today. The student in question, an almost-sixteen year old, is a mainstreamed "Special needs" or "exceptional" child who blew up and went on a rampage in my classroom on Friday.

This is a kid who, despite his "exceptional" status, has an extremely high IQ (part of the profile of his particular designation). He's been mainstreamed because most self-contained EC classes are for the nearly-retarded, or those kids so behaviorally disturbed that even if their IQ is normal, they are rendered incapable of learning.

So this kid is mainstreamed because the law says it is his "right." But the rights of the other 33 kids in that particular class, of having their lesson without the distraction and disruption of this boy -- whom, truly, I have grown quite fond of! -- talking and misbehaving throughout the class, and of being safe from such explosions as he occasionally demonstrates, are totally disregarded.

Why isn't he assigned a "tech," or a "wraparound," an adult aid who can help corral his enthusiasm and excessive social energy into work, or who can see a problem bubbling beneath the surface and remove him from the class before he come roaring through like a dirvish, throwing his book bag onto the floor and ripping the telephone out of the wall?

Because the humiliation of having such an assistant might damage this poor boy's already-low self-esteem.

The psychologists have conveniently, sentimentally forgotten that self-esteem is just another word for self-respect, and self-respect is gained through self-control and accomplishment -- the very things this poor kid is being deprived of because the "experts" have decided that self-esteem is about having one's own way, about being treated as part of a herd rather than as an individual, rather than about merit.

And people wonder why it's taking me so long to commit to school to get my certification requirements... It's because of the politically-charged policies of classroom management and behavioral guidelines our full-time teachers have to put up with on a daily basis.

The ONLY way a sensible change can be effected is if a sufficient number of parents of the other kids in that class call the school administration and express concern and outrage that a regularly violent boy -- a boy who evidently has a reduced sensation of pain, so when he punches his fist through a wall, he doesn't feel the pain -- is allowed to dominate their child's classroom. And I can't recommend it, and too many of the parents aren't going to do anything because, like me, they wonder what the use is.

So -- if you're a parent, become an activist, please. Demand reasonable rules and limits in your child's classroom -- from your child's classmates, and from your child. Don't get suckered into the "self-esteem" vacuum.

Where in the world did I go???

Back again. Don't know how long. I seem to go through these spells of enjoying writing, then hating it, finding it burdensome. Well, not so much the writing itself as the horrible suspicion that I have absolutely nothing to say that someone else hasn't said previously, and better.

For starters, though, I want to toot my own horn. Back in... I guess it was July, because July 1 is the first day I record in my journal, I woke up bright and early with one conscious thought: IT'S TIME. Didn't have to think twice to know what that was all about.

I started that day walking once around my neighbor's field. Took me a little more than twenty minutes. For several weeks, I walked around that field once every single day, except some rare evenings when we were under severe thunderstorms.

After several weeks, I drove the field and discovered that my route was taking me, from back door and home again, roughly 3/4 mile. I also discovered that the "U" of the field, from the driveway nearest my house, around the back and up to the road on the south end, was just a smidgen under 1/2 mile. So I started going around the "U" of the field and home again, a wee bit more than a mile.

That's where I am stuck for the time being, and I'm quite contented with that for now. A mile a day -- and I'm doing that whole mile in what used to take me to walk the 3/4 mile loop -- is a darn good clip for a big ol' heifer like me.

Since July 1, I've dropped from a size 28 to a 24. I've lost more than fifteen inches (I didn't think to measure until I'd been walking almost a month) I got on the scales of the school health room on Thursday, and from my highest KNOWN weight (I didn't weigh for a couple of years, and I know I gained weight in that interval, because that's when I wound up in the size 28) -- I have lost at least forty pounds. My friend Rachel says it has to be at least 50.

Insert image of big, cheesy grin HERE.

What am I doing besides walking? Well, one thing I am NOT doing is "dieting." Too lazy, too skeptical to follow a diet, count calories, fat grams, etc. Bugger all that mess.

I am eating fewer and fewer refined foods and more and more whole foods -- whole grain breads, brown rice, whole wheat pasta when I eat pasta at all. I've also made the transition from sweetened to unsweetened tea, so my sugar consumption is down by more than one-half. (Still have to have a little sugar in my morning coffee, I'm afraid).

I'm a happy camper! Stay tuned for further updates.

Insert another image of big cheesy grin NOW.

A couple more photos of OLA

And here are two more photos -- another of the Sanctuary, but to the right you can see the statue of St. Joseph and the Child Jesus, in a beautifully painted niche (the border of the niche is trompe l'oeille, by the way, not real molding). The chasuble Father Ricardo is holding for a guest to see was a gift from a parishioner; it was hand-embroidered by cloistered nuns, "Carmelitas," from Mexico. I was present when it was given to him, and when I held it up for him to see fully, I caught a faint perfume of incense clinging to the fabric. Looks and even smells holy!

The Altar and the Tabernacle

These are the angels that keep vigil on either side of the Tabernacle.

The Altar

The altar at OLA is really beautiful. If you look closely, you may be able to see the red vein in the marble that cuts through the middle of Our Lord's face. It's very dramatic, startling.

During the Dedication, relics of St. Augustine were embedded in the altar.

Rhythm is NOT NFP!

It never ceases to amaze me how persistent some "scientific" people can be in promoting error as truth.

I wrote a reply, which may or may not make the cut for publication, so I will post it here for you to consider. Maybe you can submit your own reply to the article?

My letter:

This is an interesting hypothesis, but the author has lost me in the second paragraph by saying that "rhythm" is the only method approved by the Catholic Church. Whether Bovins has confused rhythm with NFP or presumed the two methods are one and the same, it is an inexcusable error in a scientific report.
Rhythm is using a calendar, assuming the "standard" 28-day cycle, to guesstimate when ovulation occurs. It is highly fallible, most obviously because very few women actually experience the "textbook" 28-day model for the menstrual cycle promoted as part of the rhythm method.
Natural Family Planning, or NFP, on the other hand, depends on recognizing certain physical symptoms of fertility and approaching ovulation -- changes in quantity and quality of cervical mucus discharge, the shape, placement and consistency of the cervix itself, and a few more complicated techniques like basal body temperature. It can be used to try to achieve or avoid pregnancy.
NFP is approved by the Church for use in extraordinary circumstances (couple abstain from intercourse during the time a woman is fertile) because it does not interfere with a woman's natural cycles, because it is consistent with a respect for life, and (this is very important!) because it shows respect for the nature of the marital sexual union as an analogy of the mystical union between Christ and His Church. (People think the Church is anti-sex.... ahhhh, if only they knew!)
NFP is proven to be more than 98% effective, more effective than any other contraceptive measure. Of course, it involves the inconvenience of paying attention to fertility symptoms and of a degree of self-denial, but it is extremely effective. Moreover, every couple I know who have practiced NFP are enthusiastic advocates of it -- yes, that includes the men, who say that periods of abstinence enrich their elationships with their wives and make the times of intimacy more gratifying.
Oh -- some studies indicate that NFP couples actually engage in sexual intercourse more times per month than non-NFP couples.
Finally, I am not comfortable with the promotion of "assumptions" without a presentation of the basis from which said assumptions occur. One can easily dismiss the premise that rhythm leads to more deaths in consequence: embryonic deaths can occur from flaws resulting from unhealthy ovum or sperm (ostensibly because of "old" sperm left in the fallopian tube to fertilize the ovum), but they can also occur because of biochemical hostilities brought about by mechanical and/or chemical impositions of artificial birth control methods. However, the thing Catholic consider is that embryonic deaths due to lack of viability is not the result of a hostile act against life in general or the specific conception. This is of paramount importance.
I recommend Bovens and anyone else interested in the subject read Kippley and Kippley, The Art of Natural Family Planning, and the Papal Encyclicals: Pope Paul VI's Humanae Vitae and John Paul II's Evangelium Vitae: John Paul II's work on Theology of the Body (synthesized for easier mental consumption by Christopher West) is also seminal.

Our Lady of the Americas

And here are two shots -- an exterior at dusk and an interior of the Sanctuary immediately after the Dedication -- of Our Lady of the Americas Catholic Church. Beautiful, eh?

Laura and the Bishop

Bishop Peter Jugis, Diocese of Charlotte, is a man I can love - a good, holy and orthodox pastor of the flock. One of the great thrills of our Dedication was the opportunity to meet this man. (Yes, I kissed the ring.)

Oh, all right --

Gee, thanks! To Angela Messenger for tagging me with this:

Accent: sorta Southern, y'all
Butter or Margarine: butter!
Chore I Hate: folding and putting away laundry
Dog or Cat: cat!
Essential Electronics: computer!
Favorite Cologne(s): Crabtree & Evelyn's Wisteria or Summer Hill
Gold or Silver: gold
Hometown: Aberdeen, NC
Insomnia: Once in a while
Job Title: Music Director! (that's one that has my mother's ashes whirling around in her urn)
Kids: 2 grown and "launched" (and sorely missed)
Living arrangements: with two cats
Most admirable trait: Do I have any admirable traits?
Nicknames: just plain ol' Laura
Overnight hospital stays: when I had my kids
Phobias: heights
Quote: "More! More! is the cry of the mistaken man; less than All will never satisfy" (William Blake)
Religion: CATHOLIC! (Thanks be to God!)
Siblings: one sister
Time I wake up: between 7 and 7:30 if I can "sleep in"
Unusual talent or skill: Do I have any unusual talent or skill?
Vegetable I refuse to eat: I think I like them all
Worst habit: brooding over things that bug me until I exhaust myself over it
X-rays: dental, knee and upper spine
Yummy stuff I cook: EVERYTHING I cook is yummy!
Zaniest thing I did: Never in a million years will I publish that in a public forum! But my second zaniest thing is that last summer, for the first time in my life (and I'm 48) I sunbathed in the nude and went skinny-dipping... er, "chunkydunking"

I guess I'll pass this on to Randy, since he's the only other blogger I know personally.

Apologies, again, for being derelict in posting.

I have some photos of the new church where I've been hired as Music Director -- and as soon as I have some time to play with the new camera and download the pics, I'll post some to this site.

I'm enjoying my work in the Church, which is helping me hold steady during this phase of Depression Season. I have some built-in time before the Blessed Sacrament several times a week, and it makes a difference.

Off to make copies for choir practice...

God bless you!

Cajun "Rosary"

Too funny! Thanks, Linda, for sharing this!

Depression season arrives again

I was driving home from Raleigh after Tuesday's Lord of the Rings rehearsal (yep! We're singing it this summer with the NC Symphony -- check out this site! -- and I wasn't feeling my usual euphoria after a rehearsal.

Then it hit me: depression season. It always gets me this time of year, don't know why, some anniversaries in more than a month, but can't put my finger on why it starts in mid-May.

The body knows what the mind chooses to forget, and when we haven't allowed ourselves to adequately grieve, or address a sorrow, the body repeats it for us until we've done.

Now until mid-July, though, with the anniversary of my dad's death on July 10, I'm in the dumps.

I was diagnosed in '91, not many weeks after Dad died (only four months after Mother). Mom's old doctor knew the family history well enough that, when I went to see him for vague infection-type symptoms, he knew the questions to ask; he answered the riddle of years' worth of suffering for me. He gave me a prescription for a fairly popular antidepressant.

I hated taking the pills. It was nice to be able to get out of the morning and to get through the day without wanting to retreat back to my bed at every opportunity, but I also felt rather flat and incomplete. Things I had enjoyed before were meaningless to me while under the influence of the meds. I felt as if I'd lost the emotional equivalent of depth perception.

It's odd to think of depression carrying gifts and graces with it, but it does. A mockingbird's song is exquisitely beautiful any spring, but even more so when it becomes God's voice in cheer and encouragement during dark days. Colors of the sunset have more vividness, greater brilliance during the bad times. Poetry is wiser, deeper -- music more eternal.

I stay out of bed, days, taking nutritional therapies. It's not perfect, but it gets me through the hard times without robbing me of important, valued parts of myself.

This year I'm going to make a more concerted effort to develop some of my "melancholy" gifts and abilities during this season. Be prepared to have some of my attempts at poetry inflicted upon you -- and maybe more prose essays and short stories.

Ya just never know what I'm going to come up with, around here.

Thanks for the prayers.

What CAN we do with a drunken sailor?

Make him sing Samuel Adler's "Rogues and Lovers"?

Okay, I am relieved none of my fellow choristers read this blog, because I'm about to make an embarrassing confession:

I ENJOYED SINGING THE ADLER!

Mostly. It would have been more fun if some of our sopranos didn't sing so much like white women or divas (Imagine a heavy soprano vibrato singing "Limbo, Limbo, Limbo Limbooooo") and if there hadn't been so much bitching and moaning among the ranks... but by and large, it was just good fun.

This is a piece that really showcased the North Carolina Wind Orchestra, but it offered some stretch for the imagination for the chorale, also. It begins with some wild percussion work (yeah, even wind ensembles use percussion) -- then we joined in a rolicking rendition of "Drunken Sailor," followed by the English folk ballad, "He's Gone Away," "Limbo," Banuwa," "Valencienita" and finally "Gypsum Davy" -- all folks songs about loves or rogues.

It was a little schizophrenic-feeling at times, but what the hey -- so is life.

I also enjoyed the Holiday Pops concert pieces with the NC Symphony, last November. Music doesn't have to always be stodgy and highbrow in order to be fun to sing. Boogers! to the naysayers and whiners.

Man, am I TIRED!

It's been a glorious but grueling two weeks. On Friday and Saturday, May 12 and 13, the North Carolina Master Chorale performed with the NC Symphony in Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2, the "Resurrection" Symphony. There were two nights of rehearsals with the symphony prior to the performances, and a nearly 200-mile round-trip drive for me for each... although I shouldn't whine because I skipped the second symphony rehearsal so I wouldn't have to drive, and another soprano very kindly offered me hospitality on Friday night, so I only made two trips in all.

You can read a lovely but incomplete review here.

What I mean by "incomplete" is that I wish he'd had more to say about our performance. I've written to him c/o the website with these comments:

I think it needs to be said that Grant Llewellyn is a joy for a
vocalist to work with. He knew exactly what he wanted from us for the
Mahler, and he knew how to ask us for it. He was easy to follow in his
direction, and the transition of working with two different conductors
(Al for rehearsals, Grant for performance) was as nearly seamless as I
suppose it is possible to achieve.

I think, based on Mr. Rossman's praise of our performance, that the
joy we felt in performing this work had to have been transmitted to
the audience. By the time our final phrase -- "zu Gott, zu Gott wird
es dich tragen!" -- dissolved into echoes, I think if I had stepped
off the loft railing, gravity would have had no power over me.

Rossman also didn't mention that both nights, before Llewellyn could even drop his baton after the final chord, the packed house was on its feet cheering. He and the soloists were called back to the stage no less than four times, and each time he lifted his hand toward the loft to acknowledge us, the cheering only swelled louder. I've never experienced anything so exhilerating, and I'm told by people who've all but lived in that auditorium that they'd never seen anything to equal it.

The concert will be broadcast on WCPE on October 2 as part of their North Carolina Symphony Concert Series. Their signal can be streamed over the internet, and I'm sure I'll be putting reminders in regularly between now and then so you won't be likely to miss it, come October.

Then this past Saturday night was the Master Chorale's own subscription concert, reviewed here. We met on Saturday morning for our dress rehearsal with the North Carolina Wind Ensemble, then had our performance that night.

I like Ken Hoover, who also hosts WCPE's wonderful sacred music broadcast on Sunday mornings. But, again, he missed some things I want the world to know. We sang the religious selections of this concert in mixed octets rather than straight voice part arrangements. I was between a baritone and a bass, which I liked quite well; I find it easier by far to blend my voice against the tembre of another voice part than against another soprano. Of course, one feels rather naked hitting high A's and B-flats without another soprano standing by one's side. I have had nightmares since Saturday of being off-key ever so slightly or blasting my gentleman friends' ears with those high notes.

Standing in mixed groups as we did gives the piece a stereophonic quality that can't be achieved when voice parts are standing together. It really is a lovely effect for those listening from the audience.

The "Kyrie," the opening movement of the Mass, begins with the women singing in four-part harmonies, a capella, a theme repeated by the men. It is tender and sorrowful, but it swells to a grand sweeping chord -- a chord that echoed and re-echoed off the walls, waves of sound pouring back upon us after for glorious seconds after we had broken our sound. There is supposed to be only a very brief pause after this "Elieson" to take a solid breath before continuing; Al had to sustain the pause until the echoes had died away. It was splendid from the choir loft; I wonder how it sounded from the balconies and the orchestra level.

I had not sung the Gloria nor the Credo in Latin before this piece, so I had copied my English translation over the Latin words in my score. I was able to "pray" the piece as well as perform it. Bruckner does a wonderful job in translating the religious themes to a musical setting. The "Et ascendit in caeli" is even whimsical, traversing a C major scale, graced by a little sixteenth note "bounce" to "in caeli" ("He ascended into Heaven"). At "et mortuos" ("He will come again in Glory to judge the Living... and the dead") we suddenly drop in volume to what feels like an over-the-shoulder-glancing sort of caution.

The Gloria had a fugal "amen" that is the most complicated part of the entire Mass, so far as I am concerned. I struggled and struggled with it in rehearsal - it's not hard at all when you're sitting at home alone at the piano! but combined with other voice parts and instrumentation, it can be a right booger! -- then, as a gift of grace, during the performance I just sailed right through it as if I'd been born singing it.

My favorite part of the entire Mass -- in the liturgy as well as in the concert piece -- is the "Agnus Dei," "Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world". This piece was tender, and awe-filled, and beautiful. It begins in unison then divides -- the second sopranos actually sing above the first sopranos for part of this, and it's required of us to hit high G's softly -- a very difficult task. Yet it works.

The Bruckner was over so quickly! It seems a shame that something so beautiful, that we worked so diligently over, should only receive one performance to a very small audience.

I'll save my comments on the Samuel Adler "Rogues and Lovers" for tomorrow or Friday.

Sweet dreams, everyone, and God bless you.

In Search of Femininity

I recently raised the question on one of the forums I participate on, "What is Femininity?" and I got some very interesting answers.

Please understand, I asked this question because I've not been quite sure what it is, myself. It certainly is not something I grew up with, having a mother who suffered frequent debilitating migraines, spent her days with a nose in a book and was dead in spirit before she turned forty. I needed an answer!

Well, as might be expected, the men and the women saw femininity in very different ways. Without exception, the women were focused on "girly" things like perfume, clothing, make-up, jewelry, and so on. They were concerned with what made them feel "pretty" and womanly.

The men, on the other hand, were concerned with moral and emotional differences in the sexes. Domesticity played a large part in the answers I received -- particularly cooking (I wish it were so simple! I love to cook!)Men associate femininity with those qualities of moral virtue, kindness, gentleness, and a sense of sanctuary from a difficult world.

Thoughts? Post 'em here, please.

Master Chorale ROCKS!

Friday and Saturday the NC Master Chorale performed with the NC Symphony in Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2, "The Resurrection." This is a strong complex work with three fully symphonic movements, a fourth movement featuring a contralto soloist, and a fifth movement featuring soprano and contralto soloists and a full chorus.

We've worked and worked on this piece -- and I've worked particularly hard because it's the first time I've done anything in German before. Those German vowel sounds bear no relation whatsoever to vowels as I've known them all my life! "Hor" is pronounced like "Her" and there's this "u" that fits somewhere in the palate between "You" and "yih" and "Yeah!"

Working with Grant Llewellen and the NC Symphony was a huge charge of energy. He's a wonderful conductor, and unlike most instrumental conductors (band or symphony) he understands and appreciates vocalists (he's formerly from the Handel and Hayden Society). His directions were sensible, coherent, and do-able.

Meymandi Hall in Raleigh was quite full for both performances, even the Friday night one. And both nights, almost before Grant could lower his baton after the final, great, thunderous chord, the crowd was on its feet, cheering. Four calls back to the stage each night -- thunderous applause that only swelled louder when the Master Chorale was acknowledged...

It's hard to return to the real world after something like that.

You can hear this performance in October, when the Symphony Concert series aired on WCPE is broadcast. It's scheduled for October 2. You can stream WCPE through your computer, so I hope you'll tune in.

UPDATE: 5:00 p.m., 5/15 -- and here's a review you might enjoy reading.

Why can't a man...

... be more like a man?

If there's anything the world does not need more of, it's sensitive New Age guys, men who want to abdicate their leadership roles in home and society to women, who've become more like women than women themselves.

I just sat in on a conference with the father of one of my students who has been suspended because of disruptive behavior. When she copped a haughty, defiant attitude, her dad tried to sweet-talk her into being nice.

Now, if that had been me with my dad... let's just say there would have been no question whatsoever who was the boss in that situation -- and it must be said that Daddy wouldn't have had to have raised a hand to me, either. He would simply have been in my face, letting me know in no uncertain terms, that I WOULD behave with respect toward my elders and my betters, OR ELSE... and he wouldn't have been the least concerned who was looking on to the display.

And you know what? My dad would have been absolutely right in doing it. It's not the administrator's job to correct that sort of behavior, although the two I was with certainly would. But it should be the parent, who has been raising the child and has to have the child go home with him at the end of the day. If the parents, especially fathers, abdicate their leadership roles with their children, then who can possibly compensate?

No one can. The child loses.

The dope on tropes

It's almost impossible to find a new, English-language setting for the Mass that doesn't have a series of tropes for the Agnus Dei.

Agnus Dei, for you non-Catholics, is Latin for "Lamb of God." At the end of the liturgical prayers, before the distribution of Communion, we sing/pray: "Lamb of God Who taketh away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace."

Well, these modern settings -- Marty Haugen's Mass of Creation, Christopher Walker's Celtic Mass, for instance, just to name two (and both of which, by the way, sound so perky and 60s Rock Opera that I'm not sure how they wound up in a Mass instead of on a stage somewhere)-- offer a series of "verses," presumably to keep the faithful occupied while all the hordes of Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion (NOT "Eucharistic Ministers!") are piling forward and being served Communion themselves:

Lamb of God...
Bread of Heaven...
Tree of Life...
Prince of Peace...

The problem with these tropes, as they are called (a literary device, words conveying imagery, subsituting for the literal thing they are depicting) is that they competely detract from what is going on in the Mass at that point in time.

We have observed the Birth of Christ on the altar with the Consecration; now we are at Calvary. The common misconception is that we Catholics attempt to re-sacrifice Christ at every Mass; perhaps it is better to think of this moment in the Mass as a bringing out of eternity (kyros) and into our own time (chronos) the once-for-all Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. Here we, through the Mass, are transported to that moment when the spotless Lamb of God was lifted up for my sins, and yours, those of the whole world, prefigured from the earliest pages of Scripture, through Abel's sacrifice, the ram that took the place of Abraham's beloved son Isaac on the altar, to the Passover Lamb... in the New Testament John the Baptist identified Jesus as "The Lamb of God" (see image above) and finally to the cry of the Church in Heaven in the Book of Revelations, "Lamb of God!"

The Latin, therefore, is restricted to identifying Him with the words consistent with the Scriptures: "Lamb of God!" Not, you will observe, "panis caelestis" or "arbor vitae," but "agnus Dei" -- Lamb of God. It is through the gory shedding of His blood that we have hope of salvation, forgiveness from sins, victory over sin and death. Only the image of the Lamb is acceptable here.

My first happy act as the new Music Director of Our Lady of the Americas Catholic Church has been to abolish the use of those distracting tropes and to begin a return to our full recognition of Christ as the Spotless Lamb of God.

Pray for me and my new parish.

Yikes!

Boy! A lot of traffic yesterday -- thank you all so much for popping by.

I'm a Mandarin! What are you?

I'm a Mandarin!

You're an intellectual, and you've worked hard to get where you are now. You're a strong believer in education, and you think many of the world's problems could be solved if people were more informed and more rational. You have no tolerance for sloppy or lazy thinking. It frustrates you when people who are ignorant or dishonest rise to positions of power. You believe that people can make a difference in the world, and you're determined to try.

Talent: 54%
Lifer: 31%
Mandarin: 56%

Take the Talent, Lifer, or Mandarin quiz.

One of only 16% according to the test. I'm ridiculously pleased, for what it's worth!

Spring, and young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love...

even non-human males.

It's spring, and my dear, devoted Bubba is back to bringing me love tokens. Last year his offerings included several little lizards (skinks), a dead mockingbird, a small rat, a dying baby bunny, and a live! squirrel.

This morning a few minutes before 4:00 a.m., his meowing woke me up from a bizarre dream I was glad to be awakened from. I thought he was asking to be let out -- it was raining heavily and threatening to storm when we went to bed at 10:30. But when I staggered to the back hall and opened the door, he never came to me.

Then it hit me... that soft little gutteral "meow..." I turned on my lamp and rolled over to see him reaching his paw under a shirt that had fallen on the floor. I lifted the shirt and... it was a baby mouse. He grabbed it with his front paws, looked up at me and said, "Meoaow" again, but just at that moment the mouse jumped out of his hands and darted up under the bed.

All this winter, I've not seen a sign of a mouse in this trailer, and what does that stinkin' cat bring me? A MOUSE.

Which is why I'm up and at the computer at 5:30 on a Saturday morning. grrrrrr.....

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RANDY

It's all his fault I'm blogging. May your arrival at the half-century mark be a joyful occasion, Gorgeous. God bless you!

I think I'm back

Blogging, as Randy has told me repeatedly, is something that needs to be tended to on a daily basis.

Problem is, I don't have something sparkling and witty or wise to say every day. I don't even have anything vaguely interesting to say every day (witness the fact that it has been more than a month and a half since I've attempted to post!)

Moreover, I am, where my writing is concerned, a perfectionist. I don't particularly care whether school papers and books stay piled on the living room floor for several days; if they don't make noise, I don't really notice them. But when it comes to words -- I want everything "just so" and I am only far too aware of how far below my ability the blog writing I've done actually comes.

I beat myself up over it regularly and have mostly talked myself into abandoning the blog altogether.

However, life goes on, and maybe I needed a break from this sort of writing for a while. The last couple of days, however, I've been thinking about a lot of things and the accompanying idea to them all has been "hmmm, ya know, I oughta blog about that!"

So here I am.

I'm utterly astonished that anyone has actually continued to READ this thing while I've been M.I.A. -- and thank you for that. I make no promises about trying harder or doing better... I'll just do my best while I'm up to it, okay?

God bless you!

Update on Catalini

I've just about abandoned this blog, so much going on these days, but I got a delightful email from Catalinni that I wanted to share with you. That woman is such an inspiration to me! (I've altered some names to protect privacy)

I've had so many emails asking for an update I thought I had better get on with it and bring every body up to date on what's been going on in my life since the last one.

As you know I am undergoing my third round of 6 chemo treatments and my 2nd treatment was February 7th. I have had 10 chemo treatments all totaled thus far.

The nurse pre-treats me by running different drugs through the IV to prevent allergic reactions and nausea and other side effects all of which have done their job so far. Then she gives me 3 hours of taxol ( the first chemo drug) followed by 45 minutes of carboplatin. This web site explains it all for the curious who want to know all the gory details.

But on this 11th treatment my body decided to develop an allergy to the carboplatin. It's not the cancer that kills you -- it's the kill or cure treatments. First my hands started to itch and then they went hot pink and so did my face. I had trouble breathing. They ran for a doctor who tried a couple of different antidotes before they found the right one. They continued the treatment without incident.

They say if your palms itch it means you are going to get money but I am still waiting for my ship to come in.

March 7th I had my 3rd chemo treatment. This time they pre-treated me with benadryl before each drug, but that didn't work either. This time the rash spread over my whole body and it took 3 doctors and 3 drugs before they were able to clear it up. By this time it was 7pm and the nurses were supposed to go home at 5pm so they did not continue with the carboplatin.

Dr. Hoskins ( I call him Dr. Faulty because he is a dead ringer for John Cleese on that British TV show - Faulty Towers) phoned me yesterday and said they will not be continuing with the carboplatin in future.

He said it is not safe to administer it anymore because it could be fatal. He said he has done a good job of keeping me alive this far and doesn't want to see me drop off from the drug. He said the taxol will do its job without it, it's just a little better when they use them both together. I asked does that mean my life will be shorter now?. He said “about 15 minutes shorter.”

Anyway I trust his judgment because - as he says -he is doing a good job of keeping me alive so far. I told him my short term goal is to be here to welcome the new grandboy in July, and my long term goal is the 2010 Olympics. My nephew Dr. Don has promised that if I am still here, he is taking me to the Opening Ceremonies. Dr. Faulty says he can promise me the July deadline. As for 2010, he said “I'm not so sure but I will do my best.”

Other than a few side effects, and a chronic bladder infection, I am enjoying my life immensely. The highlight of my life was the night my son John took me to a real live Canucks Hockey game at GM Place in Vancouver.

I watch all the games on TV and I go to a lot of John's hockey games. He plays in an adult league in his community. But this was the most exciting evening I have ever had. Just being part of the crowd and the yelling and screaming and seeing the players in person was just a fantastic experience. They have giant TV screens way up over the rink and they keep the crowd riled up with signs “NOISE” “LOUDER” and they play loud raucous music and hands clapping to get the crowd clapping their hands. It's just so crazy to see all these adults letting their inhibitions go and just making absolute fools of themselves. Some of them dress up and paint the Canucks logo on their faces. And every time the Canucks scored a goal the whole audience of fans stood up and cheered and whistled and waved flags and towels and banners and whatever else they had in their hands. Just wild and crazy. I loved it so much.

Last Saturday, Sid and By came over and took me out for sushi lunch and then came back and cleaned my apartment – vacuumed and tidied and did a whole bunch of little jobs that I can't do. Put up the shower curtain, changed light bulbs sorted out junk, organized shelves and carried the junk to the dumpster. My house feels so clean and tidy. About a month ago John had sent in a carpet cleaner who steamed cleaned the whole apartment. That was my Christmas present from John and Sarah.

George comes over often and does little jobs and keeps my computer running smoothly.

Spring Break is this week and next, so my grandkidz are having turns visiting me. Tuesday I had such a busy day. I took my grandgirlz to the mall and spoiled them rotten. I let them empty my piggy bank of the dimes nickels and quarters and share the money.

Rosie had her red pyjama bottoms on. All the teens go out in their pj's these days. So I said , “does that mean i have to wear my red satin pyjamas to the mall too?” She said yup. Then she went thru my hoodies and picked a red one for me to wear. And I had to wear my red wig, because Roxx is a redhead. I said people will think I'm your sister. So here I am walking around the mall dressed like a teenager in my red satin pj's. And nobody even noticed. Lotsa people looked at my red wig with a curious look but nobody noticed my pj's.

George drove us to the mall on his lunch hour. We lunched at the Food Court, after which we went to the dollar store and shopped up a storm. Luv those Dollar Stores. Becca, age 9, bought make-uppy things and Rosie (age 13) bought incense and an incense holder for her bedroom.

Then we took Becca to Go Bananas – the indoor playground. The rule is that your child cannot be left unsupervised, so Roxx stayed with her while i went shopping at Walmart. and then when i came back she went shopping.

George came back for us after work and they all had dinner with me. Then they had to rush off to Rosie's guitar lesson. All in all it was a very tiring but wonderful day.

I had one day to rest up because Thursday the grandboyz came for lunch.

Their amazing Super Nanny, Maddy, brought all 3 of them on the skytrain, seabus, and bus all the way from Surrey. And she was still smiling when she got here. Come to think of it I did that for a lot of years with my 3 sons and lived to tell the tale.

I always do theme meals for the kidz so we had a St. Pat's Day lunch party. With hats, and decorations, green tablecloth and napkins, green slurpies and the Irish Rovers music.

Then Maddy trooped Harry and Jimmy back the way they came, leaving Tommy for his sleepover. Hurricane T. that is. Can't wait til he's 7.

We watched old Our Gang movies and Harry Potter. On Friday I took him to see the Shaggy Dog and we took our own popcorn and drinks. Sarah picked us up from the theatre. When Tommy was leaving he said “bye Grandy, I love you, even if parts of you are missing. I still love what's left of you.” Out of the mouths of babes.

I looked out the window this morning and said “Thanks for this beautiful day and thanks for letting me live to see it.” It's just like Easter Sunday out there. I went to the Noorouz Bazaar with my Iranian friends and her two daughters. Walking up the bus people were stopping and smiling and saying “isn't this a beautiful day ?”

So all in my life is still running smoothly except for the few side effects. I just keep plodding on. I'm gonna live, live, live til I die.

Forty Days of Lent

I heard a little when I was growing up about Lent, those forty days preceding Easter, from friends who always "gave up" something. Or at least, they would talk about giving something up. I never saw the point, thought they were being silly.

Now I see the point.

Lent is a penitential season preceding not only Easter but Holy Week, the Passion drama. We take on certain mortifications, voluntarily, to try to do a couple of things. First, we want to bring our bodies, wills and egos into a greater conformity with the Gospel. Careless self-indulgence can make us spiritually insensitive; the Lenten absinence is a good antidote. We also want to identify ourselves with the sufferings of Christ, Who suffered all so that we could be reconciled to the Father.

It isn't as bad as it sounds. Some people give up red meat -- I am going to do that this year. Others give up habits, like smoking, that are detrimental but have a strong hold on them, a strong attachment. We are also encouraged to add to our lives -- through extra devotional reading, or works of mercy that we would normally avoid.

The point is to move further away from our comfort zone so that we can become more pliable in the Master's hands. I want to encourage my non-Catholic friends to adopt some act of self-sacrifice during this time, and offer it up to God, as an experiment. See how He transforms you through the offering.

Perfect... in the Potter's Hands

When a potter sets out to make an object, he first takes a lump of clay and plops in onto his wheel. At least, that's the way it's done these days, when clay is obtained commercially and not from the clayhole out in back of the shed. In the old days, as I've been told, the potter would get a quantity of clay, dump it onto a table, and begin sifting through it with his fingers in order to locate pebbles and other debris that had to be removed before the clay could be worked. Then he'd have to either let the clay dry out a bit in order for it to be pliable, or add water to it for the same end.

But whenever he places that clay on the wheel, only he knows what the final product is intended to be. All you or I could see would be a quantity of clay. But that's okay -- it's supposed to be only clay at this stage of the process, and it's perfectly a lump of clay.

Then he starts to turn his wheel (old-time potters around here use foot-treadle wheels). With calm certainty the palms of his hands and his fingers press against the clay, which rises up and takes shape as he directs.

Not until the process is well underway can you or I tell what the potter is making -- a bowl, a vase, a mug... but the potter knows. And even in those early, unidentifiable stages of the process, the clay is perfectly being shaped in his hands. At each stage of the process, the work-in-progress is perfect, exactly what the potter wants it to be at that moment.

You and I, the Bible tells us, in the Psalms and in Jeremiah, are clay in the Potter's hands. We are not now what we are going to become, but at this point in the process, we are perfectly what we ought to be in His hands. Not yet perfected, but becoming so.

and a new Conversion begins..

Talking with my friend Lina, who's talking with her son's girlfriend... Joy has felt the Presence of Christ in the "gold box," the Tabernacle, and said her "Yes!" to Him. "It makes sense now," she says.

That "Yes" is the single most important word Joy, or you or I, will ever utter. I said my "Yes" to Christ back in the summer of 1975, after I saw Him hanging on the Cross, beaten to a bloody pulp with his flesh in gaping lacerations, for the sake of restoring me to union with the Father. Not "the world," mind you, but me, Laura, individually.

But we keep saying "Yes" as we discern His personal will for us. Yes, He wants us to live in union with Him, close to His Sacred Heart. But what vocation? Marriage or consecrated celibacy? What lifework are we called to? What individual mission at any given moment of the day?

And which sins are we hanging on to? What grudges? What vanities of mind and heart do we treasure? When He asks us to hand them over to Him, to protect us from the harm they can do us, do we willingly offer Him our "Yes"?

The Apostle Paul urged the Roman Church to be transformed by the renewing of their minds -- them, and us, too. This is conversion, and it is an ongoing, lifelong process, not once for all. We cast ourselves into His arms, as it were, but then there is this ongoing occupation of becoming so like Him that we others can see His likeness in our lives, as they can see my dad's in my face.

Conversion Story getting wider readership

I was blessed immensely to be able to attend the Fourth Annual Ignited by Truth Conference in Raleigh over the week-end, where I got to hear former Baptist evangelist Steve Ray, author of Crossing the Tiber and several other wonderful books and video series (see the website), not only give his testimony but also provide some exciting biblical background -- and geographical as well as Scriptural context -- to many of the Gospel foundations of our Faith.

I got to meet Steve after his initial talk on Friday evening, and yesterday I sent him my conversion story, "Prelude and Fugue in Faith," which as many of you know was one of the first things I awkwardly posted on this blog (back in the April and May archives). Well, Steve has posted "Prelude and Fugue in Faith" on his website, along with many, many other exciting stories. If you go to the site I linked above, then look along the top directional bar to "Stories," you should not have any trouble finding it.

I also urge you to take some time to become acquainted with his Catholic Convert website. It's packed with some wonderful articles and papers that Steve and others have prepared as they've come to share their own decisions to become Catholic -- a fantastic resource for those of us who are called on to defend our Faith! and who isn't?

Actually -- Steve made a point I want to share with you. When he and his wife attended their very first Mass, Janet came out afterward shaking with rage. She was angry with their Protestant tradition for lying to them... but she was even angrier with Catholics for not telling them the Truth. Friends, we aren't just to defend our Faith, we need to be out there assertively sharing it. Are we? I haven't been, but that's going to be changing as of NOW.

and more updates --

Got an email from my friend Donna last night -- her daughter-in-law Jenn is doing well, and the baby is a boy! They are all very excited about this. There will be no more grandchildren after this one (so they are all determined at this point) and this will be the one boy in a cluster of girls. So far, Jenn is doing well and has not had the problems with her heart that troubled her earlier in this pregnancy and throughout her first one. They all say Thanks for the prayers.

I also saw Eric at school this week. His wife is "hangin' in there," and they say, "Please keep praying. It's the only thing that's getting them through all this mess."

And in today's news...

Our local paper has published the news that one of our doctors has turned in his license to practice medicine in response to accusations that he has behaved inappropriately with female patients. Of course, the reporter didn't stop with just the basic information; he had to go into great deatail about just what sort of inappropriate contact the doctor had been alleged to have had with the women filing the complaints against him.

This happens to be... my doctor. He's also a fellow Catholic, a member of my original parish, a husband and a father. When my ex-husband had a medical crisis early in our marriage, this doctor was his admitting physician and saw both of us through a difficult and, for me, frightening episode. I've seen him since for sinusitis and other general ailments (fortunately for me, the only sorts of ailments I suffer).

When I started attending Mass in anticipation of converting, he and his wife were among the first people I became (re-)acquainted with. They were warm and welcoming. At one point they looked at property that was for sale adjacent to mine, and I had hoped we would become neighbors. I've observed this man with his family in Mass and at local restaurants -- I've seen his patience and kindness with a highly energetic son and with crying babies.

I don't understand how a man, serious about his religion and blessed with a lovely and affectionate wife and beautiful family, could fall in such a flagrant way, but I know it does happen. I don't know how a woman, knowing her husband, the man to whom she is linked, body and spirit, has violated the promises of their marriage covenant, can survive such a blow... but women do it every day.

But this wife has the additional burden of particular details of her betrayal and humiliation being placed in print for the general public to read and talk about. The extent of the detail was certainly not necessary; it seems to me that prurient interests were being catered to, not genuine reporting.

Whatever happens in their family, this newspaper article has made their situation even more difficult. There must be some means of holding reporters and publishers to moral responsibility, sensitivity to those innocent people whose lives are disrupted by scandalous disclosures, common decency.

and in other news...

In addition to Abby, I've been sent an update on the two individuals who were listed as undergoing spiritual discernment. My friend says one of them has simply lost interest, and the other seems never to have had any intention of really learning about the Church but was more intent on converting her from Catholicism.

It's a very strong reminder for me, though, of the need to daily pray for the conversion of souls.

Prayer Update: baby Abby

I've received a nice, newsy email from Abby's grandmother, and she has good news about baby Abby, who has been the subject of many of your prayers following her diagnosis, shortly after her birth, with thyroid problems: I am very well and Abby is doing brilliantly as well. Her medication is working well, she just needs regular check ups and as she grows her dosage will be adjusted. She is a very happy little girl, she sleeps all night (nearly every night and is developing a very giggly personality.

I actually removed Abby from the prayer list a while back, but I'm glad to be able to provide such a good update. Deo Gratias!

I think I'm back...

Hi, Friends --
I've been away, more than not, for more than a month now. First it was computer problems (thanks, Pete, for saving my laptop for a few more hours of hard grind!). Then it was illness -- I've had upper respiratory problems including repeated sinus infections and laryngitis since the day before our Messiah performance (that would be December 9/10). I'm starting to get back on my feet, and I hope to resume regular posting...

... not that I have much to say that will change the face of the nation. I've got several drafts going of some new stuff... including a stab at some reflections on the recent uprisings of Islamic extremists (?) over the Danish cartoon images of Mohammed... we'll see what winds up for the world to see. Thanks for your ongoing prayers.