Newsy Stuff

I've gotten word that my Love2learn Moments will soon be playing on Baton Rouge's Catholic Radio (1380/WPYR).

Also, I'll be speaking at the Northern California Homeschool Conference & Curriculum Fair in Napa, California, on July 16th. My talk is on engaging the culture. The conference is co-sponsored by Kolbe Academy and Ignatius Press. It is a free conference, with no pre-registration necessary, and will feature Joseph Pearce.

A Few Quick Book Notes

A Man Named Dave by Dave Pelzer - This the third book in an autobiographical trilogy by a child abuse survivor (It follows "A Child Called It" and "The Lost Boy".). The abuse was horrible, but the meat of it is understanding how he survived psychologically and how others unraveled the lies and eventually rescued him from his abusive mother. This third book focuses on his adult life and how his past affected him and his loved ones. I also found his attempts to understand his mother and the culture she grew up in to be quite fascinating. A harrowing and engaging book, though you can feel the uncomfortableness of the author sharing his own story. Definitely worth a read, but best read in the context of the series, I think.

 

 

Patriotic Grace: What it is and Why We Need It Now by Peggy Noonan - This was an interesting, thoughtful, quick read. I'm not so sure about her predictions of a large-scale catastrophe in the U.S. (in terms of an attack on the electric grid, or something like that), nor all of her solutions, but I really liked her points about the need to change the tenor of our political discourse, including: we have to be careful that politics doesn't become our religion! Amen to that!

 

Not So Much to be Defended As Shared

I know this is old news by now, but did any of you watch the Today Show segments from the Vatican last week? It was really a very nice, though not at all a fluff piece, and the Today Show crew was guided by Archbishop Dolan. Dolan's been a favorite in this household since he took Milwaukee by storm in 2002 (you can read a little bit about that at my old blog, Studeo). I think he's done a lot of great work, but a particular strength is how able he is at the important art of meeting people where they are and helping them move forward, even if it's just a little bit. A big piece of that, I think, is trust in God and a setting aside of fear. After all, a strong faith should help us to remember important things like: God will help us say the right thing at the right time and He has promised to protect his church.

When Archbishop Dolan went to New York, we watched all of the proceedings on EWTN. A particularly memorable part of what we saw was an interview he did with Raymond Arroyo. Among many other questions, Arroyo asked him about a tough moment in his time in Milwaukee, when he received a letter from a number of his priests asking him to consider having some dialogue on the question of celibacy. To many people, this seemed like a very contentious and controversial question. But Dolan always seems to know where he stands. He answered Arroyo that we don't need to be afraid of questions and that the Church is always willing to talk about things.

That was a really striking idea to me. Not an entirely new concept, but an important one that I hadn't seen with quite that much clarity before. It certainly has an application within my home too - to react kindly and patiently to any questions my children have and to develop a home environment in which they will be (hopefully!) comfortable bringing questions to me. Questions and doubts are a natural part of life and should be treated accordingly (and graciously!).

Somewhat along these lines, the interviews with the Today Show (which you can view through the link in the top line of this post) made me realize/remember that our faith is not so much something that needs to be defended (though there is a place for that) as to be shared with others. I know I sometimes get my priorities confused in this regard.

My thoughts came about also from some training that John and I did over the weekend in order to get involved in the marriage preparation ministry at our parish. The facilitator of the training very wisely informed us that we may very well be these couples' gateway into the church. That's a tall order. Thank goodness we're supposed to lean on God! :)

And on a related note...

This is a quote I really like from Archbishop Chaput's book, "Living the Catholic Faith: Discovering the Basics"...

'Go, make disciples of all nations was the last command Jesus gave to us before returning to His Father. It's a big one. How can simple people like us convert the world? That brings us back to Mary, and to the apostles at Pentecost. They changed the world by letting God change them and work through them. We don't need to be afraid. We need to be confident in the promise made by Christ Himself: 'I am with you always, to the close of the age.'


Don't be afraid of the world. The Holy Spirit is on your side. Charles Spurgeon once said, 'The way you defend the Bible is the same way you defend a lion. You just let it loose."

Baseball!

IMG_1707, originally uploaded by Chez VH.

I'm really quite behind in my blogging, but just had to mention how our baseball game went a week ago Friday. We get to a Major League Baseball game once in a blue moon. I'm a huge San Francisco Giants fan, but have been to more Brewers games than Giants games.

The kids have really gotten excited about baseball (and the Giants especially) since the Giants won the World Series last fall. And so, we thought we should try to make it to a game when the Giants came to Milwaukee. In fact, I asked for it for my birthday, not quite sure if we could find reasonable tickets. Fortunately there was a deal at Sam's Club a few weeks ago - $10/ticket for the $40 seats. We jumped on it.

Two days before the game we had tickets for, one of our favorite Giants' players, Buster Posey (who subsequently won the All-Star voting for his position) broke his leg and tore several ligaments in a traumatic and highly controversial home-plate collision. We were bummed! He was one of the players we were most excited about seeing in person.

But we pulled ourselves together and figured the Giants' would be especially in need of fan support at an away game, after a losing streak, after losing a key player. We found all the orange and black clothing we could and made LOADS of signs.

We arrived at Miller Park about an hour before the game and ate dinner at the car (a.k.a. tailgating). It felt really funny walking through rows of tailgaters all in blue on our way through the parking lot. It definitely felt like everyone was looking at us (maybe it was just the six kids - LOL). But it was fun to stumble upon the rare Giants' fan who was pleased to see us. The camaraderie in being such a minority was amazing.

The game didn't look too good early on, which didn't surprise me. I thought we'd be in tough shape. But suddenly, things began to turn around (maybe because my husband decided to start cheering with the rest of us, instead of going for the Brewers!) and it turned into a really exciting game. After Posey's injury, the Giants brought two players up from the minor leagues. This was Brandon Crawford's first game in the majors and he managed to hit a grand slam. Only the 6th time that's happened in history. It was a great moment, partly because the team needed the boost, but also because we could suddenly see all of the other Giants' fans in the park.

One news article mentioned that Brandon Crawford hit a home run in front of 500 people that Wednesday, and suddenly pulled off a grand slam on Friday in front of 40,000!

Here's a video of the great moment. It sure seems like we can hear our own screaming in part of this:



Because we were such a big cluster and the other fans were so few and far between (perhaps a few hundred obvious ones in the whole park), we got noticed a lot. One Giants fan came to the game with a bunch of friends who were Brewers' fans. He walked by us early in the game and shrugged in disappointment about how they were doing. After the grand slam he paid us a visit and gave all of us high-fives individually.

We were a little nervous at the end of the game, because the score was close. We were expecting to see Brian Wilson (the Giants' amazing closer-pitcher) come out to help hold back the tide. But no Brian through the 8th inning. Our seats were not greatest - the players we could see best were out in left field (and we couldn't see them very well). But when Brian Wilson finally came out to pitch in the 9th, you couldn't miss "the Beard". And, naturally, he came through.

The pitching was perhaps the most amazing thing to watch. Getting to see Tim Lincecum AND Brian Wilson pitch in person was a real treat. Oh yeah, that and watching Brandon Crawford's stats on the scoreboard jump from .000 to .333. :)

There were a few slightly rude comments from Brewers' fans (it was a night game and so there was definitely some drinking going on), but most people were curious and interested.

It was such an exciting game that the whole family has been pumped up about baseball ever since. We have an online subscription to MLB.com's audio stuff - which basically means we can listen to all of the baseball radio broadcasts. The kids have hardly missed a Giant's game since then.

giantsfanspic, originally uploaded by Chez VH.

This is a much better picture than the one I found earlier. We sure felt conspicuous walking through a sea of blue with all of our orange! :)