7 Quick Takes Friday (vol. 80)
I have new reading suggestion for anyone who’s ever considered writing a book: Chapter After Chapter by Heather Sellers. Whether you’re a seasoned author or just starting out, you’ve got to read this. It’s not a technical how-to book like the other one I was raving about in #1 here, but rather offers advice and encouragement about the process itself.
It’s like if you could sit down and have a cup of coffee with a friend who knows all about writing books, and have her give you just the right mix of tough love, practical suggestions and shouts of “you can do it!” All aspiring authors need this on their bookshelves.
After this week’s post about churches as places of help, a reader sent me this fascinating article from National Geographic about people who have endured harrowing escapes from North Korea. Evidently among the defectors there’s a saying: when you get to the other side, “head for a cross.” (On page 5 of the article.) In the brutal world of North Korean refugees, who are often exploited by drug dealers and underground prostitution rings, Christian churches are havens of safety. The whole article is a must-read.
I had to change one of my passwords last week, and I realized that it was kind of a symbolic moment. It’s one of those passwords that I’d started using years ago, and had had so long that I’d forgotten who or what had originally inspired it. When I changed it last week I remembered that it’s the name of a famous atheist, and I’d originally chosen it because I’d loved his work. Funny how sometimes remnants of old ways of life hang on in the strangest places.
On another conversion-related note, I went to a wedding last week and had a delayed ah-hah! moment. Like most of the weddings I’ve ever attended it was completely secular, and it followed the typical format of people standing when the bride walked down the aisle, some readings, the vows, etc. Something seemed familiar about it, and I realized: this is like the Mass! Everyone stands at the beginning of the service, there are three readings, then a homily, then the vows (at a wedding Mass), then everyone stands at the end. I’d always thought that people just randomly came up with that format, so it was neat to recognize the roots of wedding ceremonies.
An email I sent to my husband last week, about ten minutes after my mother-in-law, Yaya, arrived (“D.” is our five-year-old son):
I can tell this is going to be a good visit. I’m laughing so hard right now I can barely type. Yaya wanted to watch Fox News, so she turned on the TV. It came on to the International Rosary on EWTN (which, admittedly, probably does look a little strange with all the soft-focus shots of people gazing at the sky and chanting something in a foreign language while holding beads) and it’s stuck at a really loud volume. D. really wants to change the channel himself but is overtired and having trouble with the new remote. She’s trying to be patient but just cannot stand for it to be on this boring and weird show. So what I’m hearing from the living room is the droning sound of the Hail Mary in Japanese punctuated by Yaya yelling “WHAT IS THIS SHOW?! TURN THE CHANNEL! PUT IT ON FOX NEWS! FOX NEWS!” over a soundtrack of D. screaming and canned angel music.
I keep thinking about these custom coffee stencils that Cheeseslave was talking about a while back. I don’t even drink coffee these days, but I feel like I need them. For something. Anyway, they’d make a great gift idea for anyone looking for gifts for graduation, teachers, Father’s Day, etc.
For those of you who are doing the Novena to the Holy Spirit, I just realized that someone has put all the prayers on Youtube. Cool idea. I know a lot of people prefer audio-visual stuff to reading, so I thought I’d collect them all in one place. Here are the links: Day 1 (Spirit); Day 2 (Fear of Sin); Day 3 (Piety); Day 4 (Fortitude); Day 5 (Knowledge); Day 6 (Understanding); Day 7 (Counsel); Day 8 (Wisdom); Day 9 (Fruits of the Holy Spirit).
Have a great weekend, everyone!
I look forward to reading your posts!
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7 Quick Takes Friday (vol. 78)
I just got our tickets in the mail for my husband and I go to the Benedictine monastery Mt. Angel Abbey in Oregon for their Art and Wine Festival on June 26! We’ll be staying at their retreat house for a few days for a retreat/vacation to celebrate my husband’s 40th birthday. Check out some of the pictures of this place — it’s gorgeous! Anyone else planning to be there?
We’re using old frequent flyer miles to get up there, and the retreat house’s daily rate is cheaper than a lot of hotels — and it includes three meals a day. It’s so nice to be able to do a vacation that’s exciting, spiritually fulfilling and doesn’t cost a small fortune.
One of the reasons we chose Mt. Angel is so that I can finally meet my long-lost cousin, Br. Claude Lane. I posted about it back in 2007, but the short version of the story is this:
A couple months before my husband and I were going to enter the Catholic Church, a relative from my dad’s side of the family told me I was related to a Benedictine monk. I was shocked: that side of my family, all Baptist and Methodist country folks who have been in Texas forever, is the last place I would ever expect to encounter a monk! (“We thought it was very exotic to have a Catholic in the family,” my relative commented in her initial email.) It turns out that he and my dad’s cousins had been in close touch for a long time, but I’d just never heard about him. So our June trip will be not only a vacation, but a mini family reunion as well! You can read about Br. Claude’s amazing work as an iconographer here.
The other day my mom was watching the kids, and when I came home my five-year-old son announced that she had given him some money for cleaning up. I ooh-ed and ahh-ed at what a big boy he was, and asked him how much money Grammy gave him. I expected him to proudly produce a couple of shiny dimes, but instead he whipped out five dollar bills! In typical grandmother fashion, my mom thought it was not extravagant at all. I pointed out that $5 for ten minutes of work (cleaning up his own mess, I might add) comes out to $30 per hour, which is the equivalent of $62,000 a year. I keep telling her that if we’re going to be paying the big bucks, we should at least stir up some competition for the job to make sure we get the best candidate:
HELP WANTED
Title: Living Room Cleaner
Duties: Throw toys all over living room, then return them to toy basket while dancing to peppy clean-up song
Experience required: None
Salary: $62,000/year
I’m turning in my resume today.
A friend of some friends of ours is currently out on the Mercy Ship, a hospital ship that sails around and provides free medical care to the poorest of the poor. I’ve been riveted by the stories she’s been sharing on her blog. What an amazing organization!
I haven’t done an update about the book in a while, so here’s the latest:
- I work on it almost every day, but I continue to be shocked by how long it’s taking.
- It’s taking such a long time because I’m trying to make it a fun read, something that even someone who didn’t have a particular interest in Christianity or conversion would enjoy.
- I’m so glad I scrapped that first draft. I’ve learned an enormous amount about what it takes to write a quality book over the past year. This new version is more like a second book than a second draft of what I originally wrote.
- Going from essay-writing to narrative-book-writing is like going from juggling two balls to ten. It’s the same basic skill set, but requires practice and patience to get it right.
I had a little “Jen moment” where I blurted out a commitment to my agent that I’d have this draft done by June. Unfortunately, at the rate I’m going, September would be a much more reasonable estimate. Late September. I’m not exactly sure how the word “June” worked its way into my email, or how I’m going to come anywhere close to hitting that deadline. Should be interesting!
The other day I sent out a video of my son playing t-ball in the back yard. My mother-in-law, Yaya, called to ask who that man was who was narrating it. Umm, it was me. The exchange made me reflect on whether or not I think I have a man-voice. I decided that I don’t think I do (you can hear me in #2 here), but I may end up huffing helium before my next radio interview, just to be safe.
I look forward to reading your posts!
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In memory of a lost cat
Our cat is gone. We have no idea what happened to her: animal control and the local pounds don’t have her, and the neighbors haven’t seen her recently either. She simply disappeared.
We didn’t exactly sign up to be cat owners. She belonged to the ex-wife of the house’s previous owner, and we were under the impression that he would take her to the pound before we moved in if we didn’t want her. My husband is allergic to cats and we were expecting our third baby in three years at the time, so we weren’t exactly looking for another little mammal to keep alive; but she was an outdoor cat and very friendly, so we agreed that she could stay.
I hadn’t realized how much I associated her with my religious conversion until she was gone: we moved into this house the night of my first confession during Lent 2007. The fluffy, all-white cat was there, out in her kitty bed on the back porch, looking on through the window as I stood in the kitchen among moving boxes and told my husband all about the amazing experience I’d had.
It was thanks to her throwing up on our carpet that I first learned what it means to die to self, and the surprising story of her ownership history taught me a lesson about “little” sins that I’ll never forget. She helped me learn how to grow in faith despite the imperfections of life, such as the morning that I was praying Lauds as part of my reckless experiment with prayer, standing at the back door and soaking in the glow of the morning sun, only to glance down from my prayer book and see a decapitated squirrel that the cat had left at our doorstep. (I will note, though, that her tendency to drop these little gifts was balanced by the fact that she helped out with the whole terrifying scorpion infestation thing.)
We never did decide on a name. The previous owner named her Emma. My then-three-year-old son came up with White House, presumably inspired by the color of her fur. The neighbor girls called her Snowball. Yaya named her Possum, a humorous nod to an uproarious controversy that erupted when Yaya wanted to bring a wild possum she’d trapped in her yard up here for the kids to play with; I won, and the varmint stayed in Houston, but she called the cat Possum after that.
The last time I saw the cat was on Good Friday, almost three years to the day after she first came into our lives. I’d often agonize about how we’d take care of her on our tight budget; it never occurred to me that she might just disappear. I would have expected that I’d feel more relief about not needing to deal with the cat anymore, but I’m finding that I actually miss her. It was part of my morning routine to hear the soft padding sounds of her paws on the back window when I first walked into the kitchen each day. It’s weird to be greeted with silence.
So goodbye to Emma White House Possum Snowball, wherever you are. We’ll miss you.
7 Quick Takes Friday (vol. 75)
Oddly enough, I’m not very enthusiastic about returning to some of the things I gave up during Lent. For example, I drastically limited my recreational internet time from Ash Wednesday to Easter, and the result was that the time I did spend online was purposeful and focused. Now that those restrictions are gone, I’ve quickly learned that, nine times out of ten, randomly clicking around on the internet ends up making my state of mind worse rather than better. I’ve decided to try to make a more lax version of my Lenten restrictions a permanent part of life. Anyone else trying to make long-term changes based on what you learned during Lent?
We’re going to the ARCH Homeschooling Conference in Houston next weekend (April 16th and 17th). We were going to be in the area to visit Yaya anyway, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to check out all the cool stuff they have going on and see Danielle Bean speak. Anyone else going to be there?
Speaking of which, a few people have asked what we decided about school choices for our children. We found a cool part-time Catholic private school, where the kids will go to school (uniforms and all) two days a week, and we’ll homeschool the other three days. We start with that this fall.
It seems like such a great solution, so I’m praying that it works out. If it doesn’t, I’m not sure what we’ll do: as we discussed here, I’m daunted by the idea of full-time homeschooling; but I’m also not excited about the idea of the kids going to full-time school either, only because I do love the idea of having the time and flexibility to do some home-based education. I try not to worry about future problems, so I’m just going to take it one day at a time and see how it goes!
I recently finished the classic memoir A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken. I was Googling around for more information about Vanauken and came across this beautiful, must-read essay about having “the wholeness of vision” on abortion. The piece is about Vanauken’s final book, The Little Lost Marion and Other Mercies, in which he details his search for the child whom his deceased wife gave up for adoption. Now I really want to read the book, but the cheapest copy on Amazon is over $60 and my local library doesn’t have it. Anyone know where I can buy a copy of The Little Lost Marion for less than an arm and a leg?
I am not always modern art’s biggest fan, but I have to say, this is cool: an artist set up a fake Prada store in the middle of nowhere in west Texas (we went to that area for our honeymoon, and it was a nine-hour drive from Austin, across mostly empty roads). The installation looks like a real Prada storefront, but the artist plans for it to get vandalized and for the building to fall apart as a statement. I’m sure it’s symbolic of all sorts of stuff about capitalism that I don’t understand. Pretty awesome.
On Wednesday I finally had lunch with Stephanie from La Vie Catholique. I’d been reading her blog for years and knew that we lived in the same area, so it was a long-overdue meeting. She has a great conversion story (that involves meeting French husband in an online chatroom) and writes all sorts of deep posts about stuff like sanctifying grace and reception of the Eucharist that are like smart and stuff. She is also an unbelievably talented seamstress, as you can see from her sewing blog. Given all this, I brought nothing to the discussion, but she was kind enough to chat with me anyway.
I just love my rosary from Rosary Army. They give away free rosaries made of twine that are super durable; I can throw mine in the jumble of my purse without worrying about it getting messed up. I used it all during Lent to pray when I was out and about. Best of all is their one-page sheet with all the prayers of the rosary, a list of all the mysteries and which days to meditate on what, etc. I think their mission is fantastic. If you’d like for them to send you a free rosary, just fill out the form here!
I look forward to reading your posts!
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