Veterans Day

This past veteran's day, Mudpuppy and I went up to the Saint Mary's University Veterans Memorial for some quiet prayer observing the day. We were joined by a few friends. This has become something of an annual ritual since the memorial was erected. We prayed for all veterans...especially those we know personally, who are cherished friends and family members...and we prayed for peace, so that this little one and all children might never know the horror of war.

And we once again read the words of the Church, from the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, #497:

The Magisterium condemns “the savagery of war” and asks that war be considered in a new way. In fact, “it is hardly possible to imagine that in an atomic era, war could be used as an instrument of justice”. War is a “scourge” and is never an appropriate way to resolve problems that arise between nations, “it has never been and it will never be”, because it creates new and still more complicated conflicts. When it erupts, war becomes an “unnecessary massacre”, an “adventure without return” that compromises humanity's present and threatens its future. “Nothing is lost by peace; everything may be lost by war”. The damage caused by an armed conflict is not only material but also moral. In the end, war is “the failure of all true humanism”, “it is always a defeat for humanity”: “never again some peoples against others, never again! ... no more war, no more war!”

Memorial Day

On Memorial Day, we went up to the Saint Mary's University campus and did a May Day "crowning" (in quotes because obviously we couldn't get to the statue to crown her). We prayed the Angelus with the kids: ". . . And the Word was made Flesh: And dwelt among us...." And we prayed for peace.

As anyone who has read this blog for a while knows, we have a very ambivalent attitude toward these "military" holidays. On the one hand, we have family and close friends who have volunteered with the military, and we know many good people in the military. It does seem appropriate to honor the sacrifices they make for the sake of the good.

On the other hand, we are mindful that the Church has always taught that war has no place in the kingdom of heaven, that it is always a failure of humanity. And we are aware that, too often, our military has been involved in actions that can only be described as horrific; the indiscriminate firebombing of whole cities comes to mind as deserving condemnation. More recently, we read this L.A. Times minute-by-minute analysis of how a U.S. Predator drone killed 23 civilians, including two small children, in Afghanistan. More disturbing than the civilian deaths (thousands have been "collateral damage" in the past ten years) is the attitude of the drone team as revealed by transcripts of their chatter, which can only be described as sickening: their enthusiasm for killing their "targets," their mockery of the civilians' prayers by the side of the road, their resentment at cautionary suggestions that some of the targets may have been kids. Their cavalier attitude upon learning that their targets were civilians, including women and children, reminds me of the kind of black humor and self-excusing talk that we're told is common in abortion clinics. It's another example of why resorting to violence as a solution to social problems ultimately hurts us more than it hurts our victims.

Later that evening, we went to the Winona Catholic Worker, which is usually host to a handful of veterans --  some of them homeless, others hungry for food or conversation. We heard that earlier that day -- at about the same time that we were doing our May crowning -- the workers were getting cursed out by an angry veteran dressed in his uniform, complete with various medals; he had apparently come straight from one of the many Memorial Day ceremonies around town. He was angry with the Catholic Worker volunteers because they'd just told him they didn't have a bed for him that night.

Perhaps I would feel less ambivalent about these military holidays if we said fewer words around stone memorials during services that conflate respect for our veterans with a subtle endorsement of the wars we send them to fight. Perhaps I would feel more warmly toward Memorial Day if we truly remembered our veterans -- beginning with the ones who need food, shelter, and someone to listen to their stories.

Caption contest

OK, what's your caption for this picture?

Temptation in a nutshell

So, Bear is asking me questions about spiritual warfare and original sin at the breakfast table. (Don't they all?) After bemoaning so much evil in the world:

Bear: "Sometimes, I just wish I could kick the devil in the face."
Me: "Well, son, I think you really ought to let God take care of that. You stay away from evil and trust in God."
Bear: "You mean let God kick the devil in the face?"
Me: "Yes. Basically."
Bear: "Yeah, but, it would be so much more satisfying if I could do it."

There, my friends, is the essence of temptation in a nutshell.

(Catechetical moment followed.)

--Starling

GraceWatch temporarily suspended by Google

So, nothing funny to report here today. Our Google account was temporarily disabled for a while today. When I logged on this evening and tried signing in to my e-mail account (on Gmail, a Google service linked to my Google account), I got a message saying our account had been suspended due to suspicious activity. It asked me to verify the account by entering in my mobile phone number so they could text message me with a verification code. At first, I balked at this, thinking that our simple mobile phone doesn't do text messages. But the only other option was a link leading me to this page. Among other things, it says:

If you've been redirected to this page from the sign in page, it means that access to your Google Account has been disabled.

In most cases, accounts are disabled because of a perceived violation of either the Google Terms of Service or product-specific Terms of Service.

Google reserves the right to:

• Suspend a Google Account from using a particular product or the entire Google Accounts system if the Terms of Service or product-specific policies are violated.

• Terminate your account at any time, for any reason, with or without notice.

 The only option from this page was to contact Google via some form; they said they might get back to you if they had new information to communicate.

Yikes.

Fortunately, our mobile phone does do text messages, as I found out when I went back to that page and requested the verification code. Obviously the account was restored.

When I logged into our Gmail account, it was obvious that someone had been sending out spam and using our e-mail address as a "cloak." That is to say, when they sent the e-mail out from their computer, they disguised the originating information to say that the spam originated with us. There were about 100 bounced e-mails in our inbox.

It's fine that Google has a form for contacting them, but I know from traweling the webmaster forums that Google customer service ranks somewhere below the ninth circle of hell, which is to say that if you ever receive individual attention from a person -- especially if you're dealing with a disabled account -- it should count as a miracle.

What do we have associated with our Google account? hmm.... Our e-mail address, our family blog which is essentially the only copy of our family journal, all the e-mails in our e-mail account, an online photo collection, and our Google Adsense account, which is a very substantial portion of our household income (about 15 percent). It's a little disturbing that Google can turn off such a huge part of our life with the flick of a switch just because some criminal took advantage of us.

This isn't just an issue with Google, though. Increasingly, we're being encouraged to move our digital lives to the "cloud" -- the cast network of computer servers that make up the Internet. Really prolific Facebook users are in a similar position.

What to do to guard against this? I have no idea. Right now, I have a crying baby to attend to.

"I made it one year."

Today we remember the anniversary of my sister's brush with death -- and of the week-long period of waiting and worrying that followed. At this point a year ago, we were truly unsure whether she would live (the odds seemed heavily stacked against it, since she'd been on CPR for forty-five minutes), and if she lived, whether she would be capable of being a mother and wife to her family. It would take more than a week for us to realize the miracle of her survival and near-complete recovery.

She reflects on this day last year at length in her blog:

Today as I stood outside holding Anna who is now a year old, waiting for Dennis to get the kids out of the car (they had just gone to the sledding hill), I thought to myself, "I'm standing here today. I'm standing here, holding my baby who is a year old, waiting for my husband and kids. I made it one year."

 We're glad you made it, Becky. Truly, let's use every moment as though it were more precious than gold....

Marking Veteran's Day

This morning, Mudpuppy and I joined several others at the Veteran's Memorial on the campus of Saint Mary's University for an informal period of reflection and prayer to mark Veteran's Day. As I sat there with Mudpuppy in my lap, I thought of the young men remembered by the memorial, most of whom never returned from World War II. I thought of my grandfather, a young man fighting through southern Italy, watching a distant battle from the second story of a building and wondering why men fight. I thought of my brother-in-law, anxiously waiting out mortar attacks in Baghdad. I thought of the many veterans I've shared meals with over the years at the Winona Catholic Worker; many of them saw combat in Vietnam.

So many generations of young men. And I looked down at the baby in my lap and wondered whether he would join their number.

We ask young men to risk their lives and to do horrific things that leave them with nightmares for the rest of their lives, and then we throw big stones in the ground, fly the flag, and tell them how grateful we are. Perhaps as an afterthought we mourn war as a "necessary evil."

Just as people have been doing, generation after generation, for thousands of years.

Instead of perpetuating this tradition, maybe it's time that we honored our veterans by admitting that the evil of war is never necessary, that it is always a failure of humanity. Perhaps if we could admit that, without castigating ourselves for that failure, perhaps then we could begin to imagine a different path.

Here is what we read, quietly, at the prayer vigil. This is a selection from the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, chapter 11:

494. Peace is a value and a universal duty  founded on a rational and moral order of society that has its roots in God himself, "the first source of being, the essential truth and the supreme good".[1017] Peace is not merely the absence of war, nor can it be reduced solely to the maintenance of a balance of power between enemies. Rather it is founded on a correct understanding of the human person and requires the establishment of an order based on justice and charity.

Peace is the fruit of justice, (cf. Is 32:17) understood in the broad sense as the respect for the equilibrium of every dimension of the human person. Peace is threatened when man is not given all that is due him as a human person, when his dignity is not respected and when civil life is not directed to the common good. The defence and promotion of human rights is essential for the building up of a peaceful society and the integral development of individuals, peoples and nations.

Peace is also the fruit of love. "True and lasting peace is more a matter of love than of justice, because the function of justice is merely to do away with obstacles to peace: the injury done or the damage caused. Peace itself, however, is an act and results only from love".

495. Peace is built up day after day in the pursuit of an order willed by God and can flourish only when all recognize that everyone is responsible for promoting it. To prevent conflicts and violence, it is absolutely necessary that peace begin to take root as a value rooted deep within the heart of every person. In this way it can spread to families and to the different associations within society until the whole of the political community is involved. In a climate permeated with harmony and respect for justice, an authentic culture of peace can grow and can even pervade the entire international community. Peace is, consequently, the fruit of "that harmony structured into human society by its Divine Founder and which must be actualized by men as they aspire for ever greater justice". Such an ideal of peace "cannot be obtained on earth unless the welfare of man is safeguarded and people freely and trustingly share with one another the riches of their minds and their talents".

496. Violence is never a proper response. With the conviction of her faith in Christ and with the awareness of her mission, the Church proclaims "that violence is evil, that violence is unacceptable as a solution to problems, that violence is unworthy of man. Violence is a lie, for it goes against the truth of our faith, the truth of our humanity. Violence destroys what it claims to defend: the dignity, the life, the freedom of human beings".

The contemporary world too needs the witness of unarmed prophets, who are often the objects of ridicule. "Those who renounce violence and bloodshed and, in order to safeguard human rights, make use of those means of defence available to the weakest, bear witness to evangelical charity, provided they do so without harming the rights and obligations of other men and societies. They bear legitimate witness to the gravity of the physical and moral risk of recourse to violence, with all its destruction and death".

 Let us pray that our children will become prophets of peace.

Why We Kneel In Church

(Just to prove I can contribute to this blog, it's S again.)

So a few weeks ago we had a rough day at Church (I tell you, people without kids have NO IDEA how different Mass is with them). My kids are squiggly--not really bad, just squiggly. They were squiggly squared that day, and getting the three of them to kneel without violence seemed to be mission impossible.

In the car afterward, I said to them with more than a tinge of exasperation--"Kids, this is important. Why do you think we kneel during the Liturgy of the Eucharist anyway?" Short silence.

M: Because Veronica did.

Me: Um, what?

M: You know, on that picture in the stations. Veronica kneeled down to wipe the face of Jesus. So we kneel, too.

Me: (flabbergasted into silence, thinking "That's good. That's REALLY good.")

So now when she is squiggly during the Eucharist, I remind her to "be like Veronica." There are a lot worse images.

Washing feet -- and everything else in sight

Today I took M along with me to our Holy Thursday service, which was as great as usual. As people were washing one another's feet, I couldn't help reflecting on the day I'd spent ministering to sick kids. J in particular has it really, really bad. Let's just say I did more loads of laundry today than I think I've ever done in one day in my life: towels, sheets, blankets, clothes, rugs. I spent a few hours in the bathroom with her, too, moving her from the bathtub to the toilet and back again every 10-15 minutes.

Washing feet in ancient times was dirty work -- practically no paved roads, and poor sanitation, you know. Washing a child, and nursing her and getting up with her, is also a "washing of feet," and in its way, just as holy.

B is sick with nausea and a low fever, but not as bad as the girls, thank goodness. M, meanwhile, is almost completely recovered. I would have said she was all the way there, except that she took another three-hour power nap this afternoon, and she collapsed in the middle of church tonight (right during the Gloria!) -- fainted dead away, making quite a scene for the people around us. I was going to take her home, but she wanted to stay -- which she did, seated.

On the way home, M pointed out the moon -- a "bowl of milk in the sky." And tomorrow is Good Friday.

Do all sea monkeys go to heaven?

So B’s sea monkeys died today . . . a day after he got them started . . . and at his own hand. He was pretty inconsolable.   

You have to understand that we have been putting him off about getting a pet for, oh, about three years now. . . . Mostly on the grounds that a) I already have three little mess-makers to clean up after without voluntarily introducing a fourth, thank you very much, and b) allergies. We are working on the allergies issue to see whether we might be able to get a cat (cats are reportedly very fastidious). For three whole years he has been begging for a dog, a cat, a frog, anything at all, really.   And then he got the sea monkeys for Christmas (from a relative, not from us), and such jubilation and expectation you have never seen. He sat there watching the bowl of tap water on his dresser for a good chunk of the evening yesterday. He even set up lamp nearby “to give them more heat.” And he fussed over them most of the day today, which is how he ended up dropping the container on the floor, spilling all the water and the nearly invisible sea monkey eggs.   

Great weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued. “I wish I could go back in time,” he moaned. I let him curl up with me in bed while he worked it out. Then we went online and bought replacement sea monkeys for $13. (We could order replacements by mail for $7 if we were willing to wait up to six weeks.)   That made him feel better, although he was still upset about “killing” the sea monkeys. He was somewhat consoled by the idea that they are with God now—“playing and having fun in heaven.” Still, after our evening prayer, he wanted to have a memorial service with a song and everything.   

Now, I am not big on brine shrimp in the first place, but I’m all for supporting his budding sense of the sacredness of all creation (no matter how small). So we talked a little bit about how every creature is part of God’s creation, and how the Book of Revelation suggests that all of creation will participate in Christ’s salvation (if not in the same privileged way that humans do). Then we sang “All the Ends of the Earth.” You know, that’s the song that goes: “All you ends of the earth, all you creatures of the sea, lift up your eyes to the wonders of the Lord . . . .” Perfect for sea monkeys.