Contrariwise

I leave home tomorrow afternoon. In some ways, I am absolutely ready to go home–to my new home, my ACE home. I needed a break, but I’m ready to go back.

I’ve really appreciated the time to work (which I will resume for a little while after I post this) while not having to go to work. I managed to get my lessons planned for tenth grade for the next two weeks! This is a substantial accomplishment, especially after the semester I had. I set up my grade book for next quarter and my attendance record for next semester. In the process, I accidentally deleted some important files, but that just means I’ll have to cart home some papers to scan. I ran across a couple of PDF-to-text converters that might come in handy. I read almost all the stories I want to teach my ninth-graders for the next month or so, including the ones for my ACE-required unit. I still have plenty to work on (like managing the paper load), but I think I have hope again.

I have had fabulous times with my friends over break. The day after I flew in, I went to Guy and Becca’s Christmas party, where I got to see Scott for the first time since…last year’s Secret Santa! I left there and went straight (and technically late) to Kaitlyn’s graduation party to see all my CSC friends. I told Chris S. about my difficulties, admitting that community became more important than anything else. He, in his new seminary-informed wisdom, suggested that God might have been teaching me the importance of community through those very experiences.

Last Saturday, I went out to see the National Christmas Tree with Guy and Becca (Picasa-patched photos forthcoming). I commented on the Metro ride in that I was finally feeling like a normal person again. It wasn’t just swiping my Metro SmarTrip card that did it. It was chatting with old friends, doing something fun, and not feeling strangled by my teaching life. I didn’t have to be Miss W. anymore. I could be just Lindsay, and that was good enough.

On Monday, I met Jim at the Shrine for daily Mass. I make it a point to go to one daily Mass when I’m home over Christmas break, usually on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, but that was suppressed for the Holy Family this year. So, when he suggested meeting for Mass, it fit quite nicely into my plans. I got there just in time for benediction. I hadn’t expected it at all; I always thought they did exposition after Mass on Friday, but it’s before on Mondays. And I had just been thinking about the Divine Praises that morning. I skipped a line while reciting it during benediction (”Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother”), but I remembered “Tantum Ergo” quite well. Mass was fabulous, as always. We went back to CP for lunch and much-anticipated conversation.

After I left Jim, I picked up Maura and wound up back at the Shrine. I showed her the rosary windows in the apses of the Upper Church, and I got a closer look at some of the shrines on that level. There’s so much majesty to the Shrine that it’s impossible to take it all in at once, and difficult even over time. It’s the Catholic Smithsonian.

New Year’s Eve in College Park was lovely. Jim hosted the party on behalf of his current and former housemates. I got to see even more old friends, meet his new girlfriend, play Catchphrase and Apples to Apples, and ring in 2009 feeling like a real twenty-two-year-old.

Family time has been a little difficult, as it always is. I’ve become such a different person than I was when I lived here full-time, but my family’s the same. Even if that means I should come back more, that’s not possible right now. I know family is essential. I do love them. I think I’m only beginning to understand now that you can never go home again.

These questions are fairly weak, but I’m trying to build back up my blogging habits. Blogging is still writing. I don’t want to lose my love for writing.

1. What is your biggest waste of time in your home? I spend a lot of time walking across the house to fetch things or find people. It’s not wasted time, though, because moving around keeps me the tiniest bit active, and it helps me stay awake as the night wears on.
2. When at work, what is the activity that you find wastes the most time? My principal has told us that it’s “not an option” to stand in the hallway outside our doors while the students are changing classes. I rarely do it, and no one has called me on it. I usually spend the time transitioning between classes (erasing, opening different textbooks), which I think is a better use of my time than watching students walk by. I get out there when I can, but it’s relatively rare.
3. I’m skipping the third question because it’s not applicable and inappropriate.
4. What is the biggest waste of time on the Internet? Getting lost in links. The Internet is such an enormous place that it’s very easy to click from link to link to link, not realizing that hours are passing underneath you.
5. What do you do at a restaurant to waste time when waiting for your meal? I don’t think of it as wasting time, but I usually just continue the conversations that were going on as soon as I sat down. Restaurants are good for delicious food, but the conversation is usually better.

via the Friday Five @ LJ

Happy new year! I rang in 2009 at a fabulous party last night, so I caught up with the next two episodes of the History Channel’s Seven Deadly Sins tonight: gluttony and sloth. As I suspected (after writing and publishing my last post, unfortunately), watching a few more episodes gave me a more balanced view of the series, even if the content is still unbalanced.

Gluttony was referred to as “the most paradoxical” of the seven deadly sins, the paradox being that eating is a necessity of life. Gluttony is so easy to commit that it was made to seem foolish that simply eating or drinking too much could be so wrong. There was even discussion of a hormone, lectin, that is underproduced by people with a certain genetic defect, and which causes overeating because of the inability of sufferers to realize that they aren’t facing a famine. Even if that distressingly obese mouse proves that lectin is to blame in some cases, sin is still sin. Extreme overindulgence shows a lack of discipline and respect for food and the body. It’s an easy sin to commit, but so is all sin. “Everybody’s doing it” is a lousy excuse across the board.

Sloth was “the most insidious” of sins. I think this was the best episode yet. Instead of outright criticism of Pope Gregory for conflating acedia and tristitia into the one sin of sloth to “make room” for another, the various critics examined how the two sides of sloth are different. I think of acedia as spiritual laziness. Acedia is the negative spirit that just doesn’t do anything. It’s laziness and opposition toward work or exertion of any kind. Tristitia is closer to despair and hopelessness. I felt that the show’s producers handled the questions of medically-diagnosed depression, suicide, and moral loss of faith very well. They left it open to the viewer to decide how to understand sloth, as sin or science.

As I watched tonight, I thought about the previous episodes and their seeming ignorance of the nature of sin. Never in the four episodes I’ve seen (all that have aired so far; it’s a new series) has anyone defined sin. It’s a standard expository procedure: you have to define your terminology. If you don’t understand what sin is, it’s clearly impossible to figure out why these seven are so deadly. There was never a comparison of these “deadly sins” to the non-deadly ones–or an acknowedgement, even if only lexical, that there are non-deadly (read: venial) sins. I’m eager to see how anger, greed, and especially pride pan out, and if the History Channel will ever (try to) tell me what sin is.

Sarah hosted this week’s Catholic Carnival. She always adds a clever spin to the list of posts; I wish I had her creativity! She’s a full-time mom and blogger and she still stays herself. If only I could have that kind of balance in my life.

The rosary theme this week groups the submissions underneath the glorious mysteries, with first-person reflections from Mary’s point of view by James M. Hahn. I always associated the joyful mysteries with Christmas; back when I used to pray the rosary daily, I prayed them for the entire octave. The Marian focus is clear this time of year, though. I much preferred them to the “updated” nativity story I read on Boundless last night.

James’s own submission is a great read. I was thinking at Mass recently that, if I ever do have children, Mass will never be the same for me. I’ll either be busy taking care of them and worshipping at the same time, or I’ll be thinking about where they are at those moments, united with me through the Eucharist across time. Like James, though, the Catholic habits I’ve built will undoubtedly remain.

Owen of Luminous Miseries relates his daughter’s experience of “feeling empty” after going to a Protestant service before Mass one Sunday. I’ve never been to a Protestant service, but I would go if I had a buddy. Based on hearsay (which I know is a tenuous foundation), I think I would miss Mass to much to switch permanently.

Adoro te Devote (love that hymn!) offers a whole slew of conversion/reversion posts. My spiritual journey is similarly long and complicated, so I can relate. If you love any kind of -version story like I do, give hers a read.

Related to, though not in the Carnival is Larry’s post at Acts of the Apostasy on CatholicGoogle. I use Pro-Life Internet in place of Google for my Firefox search bar, so I’m not in the market (so to speak) for a new search engine, but the concept is interesting. It’s distressing to see that some are still surprised that faithful Catholics do exist, though. I would assume that someone using CatholicGoogle would want to find Church documents, no?

Finally, related to Larry’s post is this AP article on iBreviary. Just when I thought high-tech Catholicism was limited to the Holy Spirit I have as my cell phone background, the LOTH bursts onto the iPhone app scene. Now that’s what I call claiming the modern world for Christ.

I just finished watching a special on the History Channel about the seven deadly sins. They had two episodes tonight, on lust and envy. I love all things church-related, so even though I rarely watch the History Channel, I watched both episodes to see what they were up to and to compare. The differences –and the similarities–were striking, and a little bothersome.

The episode on lust was far more religiously-themed. It seems almost ludicrous to say that the special on the sin of envy was less religious, but I know what I saw. Lust was never once separated from love. Having read and prayed and thought as much as I have about the true nature and purpose of sex, love, and marriage, I know that lust is not love, and love not lust. Pope Gregory the Great’s reform of a fourth-century monk’s list of the eight terrible temptations of man into the traditional list of seven was made to seem like another crazy Catholic whim. The beginning of the tradition of priestly celibacy, then, followed from the desire to crush any possible enjoyment of sex. Marriage, the show concluded, was clearly promoted to eliminate all that. Modern society should succumb to its natural tendencies toward lust, then, and stop pretending like it isn’t profitable and natural.

That, of course, is ridiculous. Marriage, even sacramental Catholic marriage, is about union and procreation both, not one without the other. Lust and love are different. Like every other sin, deadly or venial, it is not the fact that such desires exist within the human heart that is sinful, it is the action that follows from the desire. One of the expert commentators finally said that, to my relief; I think it was the rabbi. In their defense, they did interview a Benedictine priest, and the visual presentation was excellent, but the content left much to be desired.

The episode on envy was not as anti-religious, but just as uneven. Envy was portrayed as the most common of the seven deadly sins, the one that everyone experiences but hides. (Aren’t they all like that?) It was a much more historical examination of envy: the power that fuels capitalism, equality, and the drive to better oneself. Envy, they reasoned, wouldn’t be so bad if you could just harness it a little. They separated the vindictiveness of envy from the distraction of jealousy, but that was as good as it got. They interviewed random high school students just to have them say what we all know: people, especially teenagers, want what others have. Just like lust, gluttony, pride, and every other sin, it’s the failure to harness temptation that leads us to sin.

Honestly, if I wanted information on the seven deadly sins, I’d probably be better off with The Divine Comedy–and that’s fiction!