3.5 Time Outs: Thinking Catholic

Thanks once again to our host, Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who won’t mind if I’m slow on registering with Mr. Linky due to my temporary change in vices while I’m out here in the desert.  Right Larry?  Maybe?

Click and be amazed.

1.

This afternoon at lunch Dad saw me coveting the editorial page of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and quick shoved a library book in my hands before a fight broke out:

What the monks already told you. Explained.

I’ve read as far as Chapter 4, and Kahneman has explained several of his and his colleague’s discoveries about human thinking and behavior that are, reportedly, surprising.  I’d read a few of them elsewhere, so I wasn’t surprised when he introduced me to them.  What surprised me was this: It’s all straight from the playbook of any Catholic priest worth his salt.  Practical Tips for Advising the Penitent 101.

2.

Here are some samples.

Revolutionary Scientific Discovery: People can be primed to think and behave a certain way.  For example, seeing images or hearing words related to a particular theme (money, old age, happiness) causes people to embody habits and values related to that theme, without even realizing it.

What Your Priest Told You: Read your Bible, watch EWTN now and again, and throw away that trashy magazine.  We are influenced by what we see and do, so pick your influences wisely.

Revolutionary Scientific Discovery: Willpower takes effort.  It’s hard to resist temptation when you are exhausted from another task.

What Your Priest Told You: Take care of yourself, get a good night’s sleep, and don’t surround yourself with temptations.

Revolutionary Scientific Discovery: You can only concentrate on one task at a time.

What Your Priest Told You: Fill your time with wholesome activities so you aren’t so tempted by sinful ones.  If you feel tempted laying there in bed, get up and go do something else.

There’s more just in the first four chapters, but that’s a start.  Great book so far, I’m going to try to find a copy when I get home.  For those of you who don’t want to read 481 pages of summaries of scientific research, just go talk to your priest.  He already knows what it says.

3.

I have really enjoyed wandering around the World Series of Poker.

Yes, that surprised me too.

3.5

. . . paper towels.  They are our new controlled substance.  I have to keep them hidden away in our bedroom, thus harnessing the power of sloth to defeat the temptation to extravagance.  Otherwise we’d go through a roll a day, easy.  Even though we have a basket of perfectly good dish towels right on the counter.  Which each get used once before being tossed in the dirty laundry by certain people I live with . . . I’d lock them* in the bedroom, too, but I can’t tolerate that much sogginess.

***

Well that’s all for today.  Tuesday is Link Day for all topics, help yourself if you are so inclined.  I’m still out of town so comment moderation is slow, but as long as you limit yourself to one link per comment you’ll escape the spam dragon and your brilliance will eventually see light of day.  Have a great week!

 

*The towels, not the children.  There is no way I’d store my children in my bedroom.  They’d use up all the paper towels.

3.5 Time Outs: The Vice Chest

Thanks once again to our host, Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who likes lawn tools.  I think he’s serious about that.

Click and be amazed.

1.

Vice is on my mind this week, as I head out to Las Vegas to drink mudslides go on a very spiritual retreat with a group of NFP-lovin’using, mostly-Catholic ladies (and a few spouses).  I’m also going to spend a few days with my dad and stepmom*, and have lunch with one of my favorite Orcas Island Fire & Rescue diesel-genius people.

SuperHusband is staying home to suffer mind the children.  He’s going to pawn part of that job off on our unsuspecting friends.

2.

So, vices.  We inherited one of these:

But we didn’t really need an ice box, what with already owning a big white electric-powered refrigerator.  Also, the ice wagon hasn’t come to our block in ages.  So we store other things in it.

3.

Which is how we started calling it the “Vice Chest”.  Because at first we stored our liquor in it.

Then we had a child, and needed to store the liquor up high out of reach, and my brother gave us a television.  And after a few years of owning a TV, it occurred to us that the magic box was not strictly limited to playing home videos (original purpose) or Raffi (new best friend).  Rather than sitting home bored out of our minds because you really can’t take a toddler and a newborn to the symphony or the jazz club or art house cinema, and you really can’t do a whole lot else useful with a baby, toddler, and one on the way making you puke all hours . . .  we could acquire a DVD player, and watch something other than hand-me-down Raffi videos.

And that buying a DVD — even at full retail — was cheaper than hiring a babysitter.

So the Vice Chest went from storing liquor to storing DVD’s.  The name still fit.

3.5

And then I rearranged a year or so ago, and the Vice Chest moved to our bedroom, and all it held was old extension cords behind the top left door, and the poor piece of furniture was moping for lack of a mission.  Until this spring I discovered the new controlled substance in our home, and now it holds

***

Well that’s all for today.  Tuesday is Link Day for all topics, help yourself if you are so inclined.   Post as many as you want, but only one per comment or the spam dragon will eat you up and I’ll never even know.  Have a great week!

 

*Not as much my stepmom this round, because she has a sideline gig** cashiering at the World Series of Poker.  My dad says it sounds like crickets in there.  Literally.  Silence and the squeak of chips.

**Technically her profession is running medical laboratories.  And then for fun in the winter she works for H&R block doing taxes.  We could basically say she is an exceedingly resourceful and hard-working fun hog.

Gregory the Great Academy – Marketing Genius

Just arrived in the mail from the monks at Clear Creek Monastery, a free CD and this pitch for Gregory Great the Academy:

I was recently talking to a mother of two SGA graduates.  As her sons transitioned to college, she marveled at their development of character . . . Once, during his first home break from SGA, she asked her oldest son to help her with the laundry.  Without any comment or complaint, her son proceeded to gather up the laundry in the house and clean his own room as well.

Inferior schools talk about college acceptance rates.  Before you put down your tuition deposit, ask the questions that really count.

Theology of the Body Conference, Simpsonville, SC July 6th & 7th

Why is Church teaching worth standing up for?  I’d be remiss if  I didn’t tell you about the Theology of the Body Conference in upstate SC this summer – July 6th & 7th.  I won’t make it out this year — I’ll be home attending a wedding, yay! — but I was able to go to Family Honor’s TOTB conference in 2002, and it was top notch.  Speakers this year include Janet Smith & Ray Guarendi . . . you can’t go far wrong with talent like that.  Check it out.

Hey and if you ever wondered where my header and sidebar photos came from . . . yeah, upstate SC has a few little secrets in those mountains.  Good place.

7 Takes on Modesty: The Case for Rules

Pray for Allie Hathaway, then click to find more quick takes at ConversionDiary.com

Whenever I gather with Catholic women, we all agree: Modesty is important, and we want more of it.  Especially at church.

But many of the same people who want more modesty do not want rules.  And there are some good arguments from the no-dress-code crowd:

• Modesty is context-dependent.
• Any rule can be “worked” to create an immodest outfit that meets the letter of the law.
• Unless the rules are too strict.
• Burkas burkas burkas.
• Pants.  Pants. Pants.  Paaaaaants.

Add to that two bad arguments that fill us out at seven:

• Modesty is all about interior disposition.  (No, it’s not.)
• Rules about modesty are sexist.  (No, not the ones we’re talking about.)

Today I give you seven reasons parishes, schools, and families ought to consider making some specific rules to define modest dress.

1.  Modest is not only about interior disposition. I refer you, for a start, to this excellent post by Rebecca Frech on how guys are different from girls.  Can a guy work himself into a sweat just imagining things?  Certainly.  But that doesn’t change the reality that having a woman’s body in front of his eyes provokes a physiological response — the same way putting a plate of fresh-baked brownies in front of a girl makes her . . . well, you know.  Put the brownies away.  Away.  Please.  Now.

2. You have to get dressed.  Everyday. Modesty is not some abstract principle debated by philosophers and mathemeticians.  Girls have to choose what clothes to buy, and then which ones to wear in which combination.  This is not some theoretical exercise, like wondering what you’ll do if a hurricane should hit your corner of North Dakota.  Either the clothes you put on today are modest, or they are not.  You have to know.

3. It’s not fair to leave girls with nothing but judgement calls, and no hope of getting it right.  Yes, there are many, many classy outfits on the border between modest and not.  At home with mom, or in the fitting room with a trusted friend, you can say, “Yeah, that skirt’s a smidge short, but it’s a heavy fabric that won’t fly away, and with opaque tights and a sweater, you’re okay.”  Given how hard it is to find decent clothes on short notice and a tight budget, yes, this is sometimes the reality.

But what if you’re a teen who wants to get it right?  Girls deserve reliable guidelines — a set of simple tactics for choosing an outfit that will work.  It’s no fair to tell teens “cultivate a sense of modesty,” but refuse to tell them what they need to do in order to avoid being gossiped about prayed for by the ministry team.   Modesty isn’t hard.  99% of the time, if you follow a few basic rules suitable to your time and place, you’re gonna be good.

4. Clear rules help you better judge the judgement calls.  Fashion is weird and unpredictable.  Pretend for a moment you have a rule along the lines of “skirt needs to touch the knees”.  Just pretend with me, it won’t hurt.  It’s only pretend.

Okay, so we’re pretending about our rule . . . and now we have a skirt with a slit up the side.  Having already said, “Well, this much leg is okay, that much is too much,” we have a basis for deciding whether the slit is revealing or just convenient.  How does it compare with other skirts we’ve decided are A-OK?

5.  Clear rules end arguments.  If you’re the youth minister charged with deciding whether an outfit meets spec, you don’t have to use your imagination.  You can say, “Shoulders not covered.  Go grab a t-shirt from the supply closet.  Not my rule, parish policy.”  End of argument.

At home, of course, you have to admit you’re the bad guy and just stick to your guns.  And of course your daughter is going to try to negotiate all the stylish concessions she can.  But at least she can shop knowing that no matter how obnoxiously tacky you think the new sequins-and-puff-balls day-glow-bubble-skirt style is, if it’s below the knee and not too tight, and she buys it with her own money, you have to let her wear it somewhere.  Not necessarily anywhere you, your family, or your nationality are known.  But somewhere.

6. Clear rules give girls something to stand on against their friends.  It’s not easy to be that kid who doesn’t get to wear what everyone else is wearing.  Yes, of course girls ought to have lots of guts and inner convictions, and be totally unafraid to stand up to their idiotic “friends” and get new ones if necessary.  Yes, of course a girl should rather face death itself than ever utter a single word against her honorable, admirable, eminently reasonable parents.  But seriously?  Give the poor kid an easy out.  “It’s the dress code for youth group events,” or “My parents have a rule against it.”

7. Clear rules sharpen the debate.  So your right-wing fanatic friend (or pastor, or DRE) swears that exposed ankles are the first step on the way to Hell, and that many a collarbone had led a man to perdition.  Putting together a tentative list of rules, and then opening it up to scrutiny, helps better answer the question.  You can flip through photos from the parish picnic and say, “Look, Sister Immaculata is showing some calf and it’s okay.  Let’s up our hemline rule a few inches, I think the guys can take it.”

You have to get dressed.  Every day, every woman in the universe answers a question with her body: “I think this outfit is just fine.” Why not do it with the confidence?  Make some rules.  Ask for input. Try them out.  Adjust as needed.

At CatholicMom.com: Homeschool Planning & Setting Priorities

Homeschool Planning: You Can’t Do Everything in which I talk about the trade-offs my family makes in order to bring our curricular fantasies down to earth, and put together a homeschool curriculum we can actually sort of accomplish, more or less.  Also in which we discover I’m much better about wanting to study Latin than about actually studying it.

3.5 Time Outs: Teen Boy Chastity Bleg, Part 2

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, this bringing old meaning to Man, you’re sick.

Dozens of takes, 3.5 at a time.

1.

The reason I’m asking internet strangers, instead of my dearly beloved, for advice on teen boy chastity, is this:  The SuperHusband has ample experience with “Teen Boy”, but neither he nor I had much exposure to the whole “Chastity” thing until well after our teen years.  So while we can tell you all about the Marriage-NFP Experience, if we were to draw on our own high school experiences for guidance on how to parent our boy, well, that would not be the most successful method.

And since this is the AoA 3.5 Takes, the Man Event to exceed all Man Events, I’m going to keep on asking.

2.

Here’s the round-up of answers so far:

Darwin wrote from his own experience: Avoid Porn, Develop Aesthetics.  That was very encouraging — we have both the porn-free household and the collection of art books (really just two or three, but it’s a start).  And I never would have considered the topic this way.  I’m really glad I asked!

Christian LeBlanc (this one) writes:

I’d tell my boys that all the trash you see on the net or movies or mags has nothing to do with real men, real woman, and real sex. It’s just a way to get money out of morons. In fact it’s the opposite of those real things, and only idiots waste time on it and screw up any chance of meeting and loving a real woman like my wife, who as my children know is The Most Glorious and Beautiful Woman God Ever Created.

August from Contra Niche say:

If you teach young men to value their first born, they will get in the habit of thinking about whether or not they’d want whoever it is they are looking at (and attracted to) to be their kids mom. It is very effective, especially if you imagine a smart little five year old berating you for your lack of foresight.

Valuable reminders, and it is so helpful to hear this from a man’s perspective.  Larry D.  assures me he has a post in the works (give him time, he’s got the plague), and I’m looking forward to that.

3.

So here’s a two-part question I still need you guys to answer for me:

• How should a boy deal with the, shall we say, overwhelming physical urges, that are known to afflict young men?

• And how does a mother, or father, provide these bits of practical advice without making the boy die from embarrassment?

The going advice in popular culture is not so helpful, since it tends to run exactly counter to CCC 2352 and 2396.

So guys, you know how ladies fill magazines with practical tips on cutting calories and avoiding over-eating at holiday parties?  We need the pocket guide to keeping it in the pocket.  I’m going to temporarily open this blog up to anonymous comments, and as long as they are Catholic* and on-topic, I’ll let them through the moderation queue.   What works?

Please tell.

3.5

 . . . Anna knew right away: Slugs.  If you ever need a cheap date, invite a slug.

Well that’s all for today.  Tuesday is Link Day for all topics, not just chastity and garden pests.  Help yourself if you are so inclined.   Post as many as you want, but only one per comment or the spam dragon will eat you up and I’ll never even know**.

*By “Catholic” I mean “all that is true and good”.  Your own faith or lack thereof is not the question.  A commitment to purity suffices.

** If your perfectly good comment gets stuck in spam, please TELL ME.  My e-mail in the sidebar works.  I get too much spam to check the spam folder post by post, but I will happily go fish out your misfiled comment if you let me know it’s in there.

 

QUICK UPDATE: I’ve turned off the anonymous comment feature (6/7/2012).  Amazing how much spam this one post generated — apparently hit all the right keywords.  I don’t *think* any honest humans were caught in spam (yes, I read it all), but you are always welcome to e-mail me if your comment gets eaten by the spam dragon, and I’ll rescue you.  Thank you to everyone who answered, here or elsewhere.  I’ll do a round-up post soon.

3.5 Time Outs: Assorted Measures

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who’s got all your Apocalypse needs covered.  Especially Robot Apocalypse.

Click and be amazed.

1.

Yesterday was our 17th Anniversary.  We had dinner on the screen porch — steak, tater tots, spinach, cantaloupe, champagne.  Even the kids were full before dessert.  I can’t remember when it started, but we’ve taken to having a family dinner for our anniversary, and pointing out to the kids that it marks the founding of our family.  Which makes it their holiday, too.  After the kids went to bed, parents finished the champagne and got into the cheesecake.

2.

Best Water Meter Ever. It takes several layers of those cheap all-paper plates from Aldi if you’re serving steak.  Why paper?  Because the septic system is old enough to run for president, which in septic-years is much more than a little stately silver around the ears.  We’re avoiding all excess water usage until we can get a new drain field cut in sometime next week.  And so the SuperHusband installed one of these on the back patio:

It’s connected to the hose for a water-supply, and underneath, instead of drainpipe there’s a one-gallon bucket.  It’s fascinating seeing exactly how much water you use to wash hands or brush teeth.  Major incentive to conserve water so you don’t have to keep hauling the bucket off to some suitable corner of lawn.  Can I count this as school?

3.

Bleg: Boys, Porn, and Chastity. Had a friend in for tea Sunday afternoon, and she gave me a timely head’s up on the reality of tweenage boys and the very rapid transition into Exceedingly Immature Manhood that is somewhere on the horizon for our boy.  (Right now, the only girl he likes is the dog.)  Since I know that at least a few of my readers are:

1. Men.
2. Fathers of teens boys and former teen boys.
3. Catholic of the Chastity is Good, Sin is Bad type.
4. Remember what it was like to live inside the body of a teenage boy.

or:

1. Are married to such a person.

or:

1. Are the grown son of such a person.

Want to offer any advice?  Practical.  Links, comments, a post of your own and link it back here.  I’m all ears.  Anything helpful.  Thanks!

3.5

On Saturday I bought an 18-pack of Busch Light.  I tasted some, warm.  It’s kind of sweet — sort of a malty fruity seltzer product.  Interesting.  But it’s not for me.  It’s for

***

Well that’s all for today.  Tuesday is Link Day for all topics, not just beer, chastity, and laundry tubs.  Help yourself if you are so inclined.   Post as many as you want, but only one per comment or the spam dragon will eat you up and I’ll never even know.

Rant-o-rama: The Pornification of Everything

Brad Warthen posted a photo of the controversial Time Magazine cover over at his blog.  I won’t here, though I suppose you’ve seen it.  I’ll describe it in a minute. 

Time poses as a respectable newsweekly, and so it’s supposed to be reporting about real issues.  The topic at hand is delayed weaning, and we are supposed to be upset that a three-year-old might still be nursing.  Difficult to get upset about that, unless you can somehow stage it as a sexual issue.  Keep in mind that typically a three-year-old still needs help with bathing, toileting, and often may need diapers changed.  Can a child be sexually abused as part of all that?  Sure.  Would there be any reason to suspect a dysfunctional or abusive relationship merely because a parent looked after a child’s hygiene?  No.

I’m going to describe the photo, and what’s noteworthy is that there is nothing unusual about this.  I can be pretty sure that if I draw the right readership, I’ll be told I’m an uptight prude for calling the mom’s outfit immodest.  These are the clothes young women wear to serve in ministry at church, for example.  It’s all so normal.

Mom:

Mom’s wearing ballet flats — nothing tiltating there.  Which also make her as short at possible.  Important in a minute.

Mom’s wearing tight jeans — technically, these are tights.  Wonder of spandex, we can now have “pants” that fit like something which, a decade ago, went under a skirt to keep your legs warm in winter.

Mom’s wearing a camisole.  Remember camisoles?  They used to go under your clothes.

And that’s it.

We, as a culture, think this is normal.  Girls dress this way at church.  Well you know what?  It’s not normal.  It’s underwear.   And when you pose someone in her underwear on the cover of a magazine . . . it’s that type of magazine.

Now I know your daughter who dresses this way is sweet and pure and innocent, because I’ve met her or a girl just like her, and in addition she’s delightful, polite, intelligent, and devoted to her faith.  I don’t question her motives.  She’s just wearing what they sell.  But still.  She’s walking around in her underwear.  And doesn’t know it, because everyone else is too.  The empress has no outerwear.

So.  On the cover of Time, we have a woman in her underwear.  A young, beautiful woman.  Her eyes and her posture say, “I dare you.”  Or, perhaps, “Come and get it.”  We’ll go with “I dare you.”

Now for her boy:

He’s three, but he’s a little taller than a typical three year-old.

He’s dressed like a little GI – camo pants, grey knit shirt, running shoes.  Grown-up hair cut.

He’s standing on a chair, which though you know doesn’t make him taller, really, your eyes see that head way up by her shoulder, and your brain thinks “twelve years old.”

The clothing, the relative heights — this preschooler has been done up to look like a pre-teen boy.  In an age when grown men do their best to look like pre-teen boys.

Recap: A woman in her underwear, with a child made up to look like a grown-up, doing what grown-up men do in their bedroom with their wives during intercourse.  That’s child porn.

It’s not about breastfeeding.

Allow me to hurt your brain a little more.  Make that boy pose like a GI caught with his pants down.  Have mom kneel down, same outfit, same “I dare-you-eyes” as she reaches up with a baby-wipe to clean that bottom . . . child porn.

It’s not about breastfeeding.

It’s about the fact that our culture is sex-obsessed.

It’s about the fact that if you even mention modesty, you must be some kind of Victorian prude (I’m not so impressed with the Victorians, but apparently some people are).   Even among Catholics, the hot thing is to declare modesty is context-dependent, and more about a state of mind, and anyway here’s a picture of someone, somewhere, dressing this way fifty years ago, so that makes it modest.  Also, look at this piece of classic art.  We all know artists were protected from impurity until 1957.  And then it degenerates into the Burka argument, since neither Nazis nor pedophile priests can be brought into the discussion so easily.

Our culture hears the word “breast” and thinks “sex”, since sex is what everything is about, all the time.  We worry about three-year-olds nursing, because we know that by five the girls will be dressed like little prostitutes — surely that boy must be getting warmed up for his kindergarten girlfriend.

I edited out the last paragraph because the SuperHusband said it exceeded even the bounds of Rant-o-Rama.  For those who feel shortchanged, I point you to this excellent, charitable, and informative post on modesty over at Aggie Catholics.  Where they are kind, and hip, and not at all ranty like your cranky hostess here.

7 Quick Takes: Mother’s Day. Liquor Store Edition.

1.

In my family growing up we had a set of Mother’s Day rituals — taking Mom out to breakfast, going to the garden center to buy flowers to plant for her, sometimes even exchanging of gifts and cards.  When the Boy was born, I expected SuperHusband to just know what to do.  After all, my family’s traditions were hardly secret — you see that kind of stuff on TV.  I assumed everyone just knew.

Except that he didn’t.  Tears ensued.  Until I discovered one year that actually, there is a much, much better way:

2.

Making my own breakfast.  Why not have a day a year devoted to eating exactly what I want, prepared the way I like it, and you other people please just stay in bed and give the mother an hour of quiet to enjoy it?  It really is better.

3.

But I did tell the poor man what I wanted this year:  For him to please get repaired the watch he gave me a different year.  It needs a new battery and a new clasp, and yes I could take it to be repaired myself, but you know, he’s a mechanical engineer.  What a great way to show his love, driving to the store himself to oversee the repair of a tiny metal mechanical device?

Luckily there’s no deadline, except that I’d really love for it to be fixed by the end of August, when I go to the Catholic Blogger Foretaste of Heaven Conference.  Where our lovely 7-takes hostess will be speaking, no less.  I am wildly excited.

4.

Last year for Mother’s day, SuperHusband gave me a reprint of this book:

Which taught me how to make my own vinegar.  Seriously easy and you feel so crunchy-granola, and also it uses up wine ends.  And it is better than anything you can buy.

Small hitch: The cloth-covered Famous Grouse bottle serving as miniature vinegar barrel reminded the SuperHusband he wanted to resume homebrewing.  He’d been on a long toddler-rearing hiatus.  So he did.  Causing us to stop buying wine.  But I did the calculation, and it is cheaper to buy a bottle of Aldi wine and make vinegar out of it, than it is to buy Publix-brand red wine vinegar.  So that’s what I do.

5.

Speaking of famous grice: The SuperHusband was in the doghouse the other week, and to demonstrate the sincerity of his love, he came home with a bottle of Laphroaig for me.  Which was a tiny bit strange, because I had not been grousing about a lack of single-malt.  And the stuff is expensive.  But in a moment of virtually Therese-like holiness, I figured: Hey, this is good!  Might as well enjoy it!

He really does love me, you know.

6.

A prayer for Allie Hathaway is prayer for her mom, too.  You can’t go wrong.

7.

The American Frugal Housewife was not the first historic housekeeping title on my shelves.  The previous Christmas the SuperMother-In-Law, who knows me well, gave me this one:

Mrs. Beeton’s is much heftier than the Frugal Housewife, and addressed more towards homes with servants, and our servants are mostly the electric type anymore.  But I came across this eminently reassuring and useful* bit of advice about the rigors of breastfeeding and the avoidance of colic:

The nine or twelve months a woman usually suckles must be, to some extent, to most mothers, a period of privation and penance, and unless she is deaf to the cries of her baby, and insensible to its kicks and plunges, and will not see in such muscular evidences the griping pains that rack her child, she will avoid every article that can remotely affect the little being who draws its sustenance from her.  She will see that the babe is acutely affected by all that in any way influences her, and willingly curtail her own enjoyments, rather than see her infant rendered feverish, irritable, and uncomfortable.  As the best tonic, then, and the most efficacious indirect stimulant that a mother can take at such times, there is no potation equal to porter and stout, or what is better still, and equal part of porter and stout.

And with that, I bid you a Happy Mother’s Day.

*Do not use this advice. Or if you do and then need sue someone, sue Mrs. Beeton.  Her idea not mine.