bearing blog

"Church bars severely autistic boy from Mass"

This story reported in the Strib today will have you scratching your head.

The Rev. Daniel Walz, disturbed by what he said is Adam's dangerous behavior, filed court papers to bar him from the Church of St. Joseph with a temporary restraining order against his parents. The Races are ignoring the order, which they see as discriminatory, and getting support from advocates for the disabled.

But before you come down hard on Rev. Walz, consider what he has to say about the boy, who is 6 feet tall and 225 pounds:

Walz, the church's pastor for three years, said in an affidavit that as Adam has grown, the situation has worsened, and the boy has been "extremely disruptive and dangerous" since last summer.

Walz alleges that Adam struck a child during mass and has nearly knocked elderly people over when he abruptly bolts from church. He also spits and sometimes urinates in church and fights efforts to restrain him, Walz wrote.

The pastor wrote that Adam's parents often sit on him during mass to restrain him, and sometimes bind his hands and feet, pulling a rope under the pew so his father can control the line from behind.

Walz wrote that Adam once pulled an adolescent girl -- an exchange student staying with the family -- on top of him, grabbing her thighs and buttocks. And, at Easter, Walz alleged, Adam ran from the church, got into the family van and started it, then got into someone else's car, started it and revved up the engine.

If you read on, you will find that the mother does not contest these claims much, although she uses different words to describe them.   According to the mother, for example, Adam pulled the foreign exchange student onto his lap because his parents often sit on him to comfort him. 

What an awful situation for everyone involved. 

"Disruptive" -- noisy, very distracting, interrupting, etc. -- is one thing.  'Tis a fact of life that small children can be disruptive through no fault of their own -- even if their parents scramble them out of the room as fast as they can climb out of the pew.   And yes, disabled youth and adults can be noisy, interrupting, and distracting too, through no fault of their own.   This is all just a fact of life.  Some people just happen to come with more obvious problems than the rest of us.  We still have to welcome them to the sacraments. 

"Dangerous" is another matter.   The mother admits that the boy climbed into the driver's seat of a stranger's car in the parking lot and that it was running?   One word:  LIABILITY.  It is pretty hard not to see that there is a problem here.

The article claims that the church offered the family certain unnamed accommodations, and the family refused; and that the family asked for certain accommodations -- one is mentioned, it's ambiguous, but I think it means that they asked to have all the other parishioners get out of the aisles while the family leaves the church -- and the church has not provided them.  It is hard to judge the situation without knowing what the suggested sets of accommodations were.  Certainly the parents, their son, the parish priest, and the other parishioners all have rights under Canon Law that must be respected.   I'm also wondering if the bishop has been involved at all in the decision to ask for a restraining order against the family.

Note that this takes place in rural Bertha, MN, where it's not quite so easy to shop around for an accommodating parish as it might be in the Cities.  (There are only 2 parishes within 10 miles and 14 within 25 miles).  I think if my family was struggling with a family member who, because of a disability, was making other people reasonably frightened, I might be inclined to look for a Mass offered at a hospital chapel, or find a priest willing to celebrate Mass at least sometimes for my family in my home.   

Blogging Daughter Zion: Ratzinger's definition of "world-view."

A bit that I liked very much, and that can inform a great deal of contemporary discussion.  The Episcopalians, apparently in the midst of a split along the lines described in the first part of this quote, should take it to heart! 

(Except where noted, the emphasis, the bracketed comments, and the paragraph splits are added by me.)

The confidence with which Jesus' birth from the virgin is denied today [he means, I think, by theologians in particular, not the average Joe] cannot be explained on the basis of the historical problems [e.g., the age of the biblical texts, the existence of similar stories in non-Christian traditions].  The underlying, actual cause which spurs the historical questioning lies elsewhere:  in the difference between our modern world-view and the biblical affirmation and in the presupposition that this biblical affirmation can find no place in a world scientifically explained.

At this point the then the question must be raised:  what is a "world-view"? 

To what extent is it a determinant of our knowledge?

Closer scrutiny and reflection...of components of our own and previous world-views allows us to say this:  a world-view is always a synthesis of knowledge and values, which together propose to us a total vision of the real, a vision whose evidence and power of persuasion rest upon the fusion of knowledge and value. 

This is, however, the very basis of the problem:  the plausible values embedded in the practice of a specific time attain through their conjunction with what is known a certitude that they do not enjoy of themseves and which, under certain circumstances, can become a barrier to more exact knowledge.  The plausible [that is, I think, the set of commonly-held cultural values] can direct investigation toward truth, but it can also be truth's opponent.

I think it would be instructive here to consider-- to the limits of my own historical understanding -- a past error caused by a past world-view, namely, the general rejection of the findings of Copernicus and Galileo.   To the theologians of the time, the metaphorical "centrality" of man in creation (a value shared with today's Christians), together with observations of heavenly bodies (a collection of  true knowledge), together with a plausible-for-the-time idea that creation reliably reflected metaphorical realities (a value that is very different from one held by most of today's Christians)  implied a physical centrality (an untruth).   

The world-view which would force us psychologically to declare the virginal birth an impossibility clearly does not result from knowledge, but from an evaluation.  Today, just as much as yesterday, a virgin birth is improbable, but in no way purely impossible.  There is no proof for its impossibility, and no serious natural scientist would ever assert that there was. 

What 'compels' us here to declare the...improbability an impossibility, not only for the world but also for God, is not knowledge but a structure of evaluations with two principal components: 

• one consists in our tacit cartesianism---in that philosophy of emancipation hostile to creation which would repress both body and birth from human reality by declaring them merely biological;
• the other consists in a concept of God and the world that considers it inappropriate that God should be involved with bios and matter.

The following sentence, I suspect, is much wittier in German:

...[T]he cause of the denial is due to the world-view, yet its consequences touch our understanding of God (our God-view).

Contrary to the usual presentation the real dispute occurs not between historical naiveté and historical criticism, but between two preconceptions of God's relationship to the world.

MODERNIST:  "You only believe in the incarnation because you don't understand history.  If you knew how the biblical texts were really produced, you'd understand what they really mean and what they really imply."

CDL.  RATZINGER:  "Excuse me, let me restate this to be certain that I understand.  I affirm the real truth of the incarnation and the virginal birth.  And this is because, according to you, I do not know very much about the current scholarship in the field of biblical exegesis."

(long pause, deadly penetrating stare)

MODERNIST:  "Aaaah!  The eyes!  Like gimlets!  They burn!"

CDL.  RATZINGER:  "Very well then. Moving on." 

For the preconception that what is most improbable in the world is also impossible for God conceals the tacit presupposition that it is impossible both for God to reach into earthly history and for earthly history to reach him.  His field of influence will be limited to the realm of the spirit.  And with this we have landed back in pagan philosophy such as Aristotle elaborated with a singular logic:  prayer and every relation to God is, in his view, "cultivation of the self". 

If in the final analysis this is reality, nothing but the "cultivation of the self" can remain.

This is of course an argument that I have seen repeated many, many times, but doesn't Cardinal Ratzinger have an elegant way of putting it?

My swim bag.

After I finished taking a year of swimming lessons a few years ago, and started trying to swim for fitness, I only managed to do it a couple of times a month.  Part of doing it more frequently has been developing a well-stocked, ready-to-go swim bag. 

I started with the bare bones.  My bag had

• one lap suit from the local sporting goods store
• one ugly old beach towel (I wanted one I wouldn't miss if I kept it in my bag), big enough to wrap up in
• ordinary Speedo swim goggles from the local sporting goods store
• one ordinary black latex cap from the local sporting goods store
• my YMCA membership card

This is, I think, the minimum that anyone needs to swim for fitness.  About 2 minutes into my first swimming lesson, I discovered that the swimsuit I bought a few years back mainly because it flattered my figure was no good for lap swimming; it wouldn't stay put.  So I bought a proper lap suit on sale for about $45.    It took a few more lessons before I finally admitted that I would be more comfortable with goggles and a swim cap (if your hair is very short, a swim cap is optional).   The towel goes without saying.  My "Y" card represents, of course, access to a pool or body of water in which to swim.

As I decided I needed them, I acquired a few more things to stuff in my bag.  Much would be good for any exerciser, not just swimmers.  Let me stress, though, that none of this is necessary -- I could get a good workout with nothing more than suit, goggles, and towel.

• A pair of "flip flop" sandals to get me from the locker room to the pool to the shower.  It's safer to navigate the stairs (yes, there are stairs at my Y between the locker rooms and the pool) and shower room with something on your feet.   Also, I can slip them on to pick up a child from swimming lessons without breaking the no-street-shoes-on-the-pool-deck rule.
• A second towel, one of those super-thirsty super-compact PackTowls, to help get my hair dry faster (or even to wear on my head out of the locker room in a winter hurry).  I still use the ugly old beach towel too.
• A mesh hanging bag, full of all the stuff I need to shower and get presentable in the morning:  shampoo and conditioner, facial cleanser, moisturizer,  anti-perspirant, razor and extra blades, toothbrush and toothpaste, comb, and a handful of hair clips and a bandana for tying my hair up or back if necessary.   If I was a makeup wearer, I'd have that too.   None of this is actually necessary for most workouts -- a good rinse in the shower is enough to get most of the chlorine out -- but it's extremely convenient to have it, especially for early morning.  Who wants to get ready twice when once will do?  (A nice bonus:  with all this stuff pre-packed,  it's a snap to prepare an overnight bag on short notice.)
• A waterproofed workout plan:
  • The plan.  It's a piece of paper on which I've written out the drills and laps I want to do in the order I want to do them.  Ideally I would make a new one for each session, but it's good to have a sort of "default" plan ready to go.  Mine is pretty simple and fits on a 3x5 piece of paper.  Having a plan makes the workout more interesting, and more beneficial than just "oh, I'll swim for 40 minutes and stop."
  • The waterproofing.   You can laminate the plan -- very effective but perhaps time consuming if you don't own a laminator.  You can put it in a page protector -- not too bad but bigger than I need.  You can put it in a Ziploc bag -- an excellent and easy solution.  Or (my favorite solution) you can recycle old Tyvek envelopes:   Cut them up and write on the scraps, wet or dry, with a #2 pencil.
• A one-touch lap counter.  This little toy was a bit of a splurge, but I love it for timed workouts.  I always lose count and then I don't know how far I swam.
• A combination lock.

  All these things live permanently in the bag.  When I get home from swimming, I take the bag right to the laundry room, where I either put the towels and suit into the next basket of laundry waiting to be washed or hang them up to dry and be re-used; the bag stays in the laundry room until the towels and suit are dry and I can repack it.

There are a few other things I would like to put in the bag.  Here is my wish list:

• A set of workout clothes, with sports bra and running shoes, kept dry and separate from the swim gear, so I could substitute a treadmill workout for a swim workout -- for instance, if the pool turns out to be crowded or closed.
• A set of spare clothes and a diaper for my toddler.   
• Hand paddles and swim fins, a great way to increase resistance and also to develop stroke.  One of these days.

But to put anything else in there, first I am going to need a bigger bag...

Finding the time to exercise: the love and marriage model.

Swimming twice a week has been working out pretty well for me.  I have been going on Mondays and Thursdays most weeks, different days if the schedule requires.  I'm optimistic we can increase it to 3x/week after 2x has become an ingrained habit.  This morning as I hurried to my car -- I went before Mark had to leave for work -- I was thinking about magazine articles on "finding the time to exercise."  They always have lots of tips, but never the tip that turned out to do it for me.  For example, from this page:

• "Once you have the motivation, you will have the time... define your goals.  Be very specific and very realistic."  (What, "I want to exercise twice a week" is not specific and realistic enough?)
• "Wake up a half hour earlier."  (We all know how reliable that is with co-sleeping nurslings.)
• Run with a friend.  (OK, so now we have two mothers' busy schedules to coordinate...)

Or from here:

• "Use the childcare at the local gym."  (This sorta works.  It works for two of my children.  But the youngest is despondent when left there, despite plenty of effort on our parts to get her comfortable.  I won't let her cry for an hour, and neither will the YMCA staff, God bless them -- they will fetch a crying child's parents post haste.)
• "Put the baby in a stroller and go for a walk."  (Well, I can do that, but it's hard to get up to a steady pace when there's also a seven- and four-year-old to manage.  It's fine for a pleasant stroll but not for serious exercising.  And what do you do in Minnesota in the winter?)
• "Go for a hike with your baby in a front carrier or sling... Make sure your baby is well supported — a sling is fine for a walk around the block but not for a more rigorous urban walk or a hike through the hills."  (HAHAHA okay this site has lost me, clearly the author doesn't know what she's talking about.  Anyway, again, I love hiking, but all that stopping and waiting and coaxing and cajoling a tired four-year-old is not great for keeping your heart rate up.  The only kind of hiking I've found good for exercising both mom and little kids is a hilly route with a lot of neat rocks to climb on, and the closest one like that is about an hour away.)

(Wait, while I was googling around, I did find a pretty cool stroller gadget that some of you with medium-and-little kids might like.  check this out...)

And then there's all that "you have to do it for yourself... make time for yourself..." me me me talk in a lot of motivational articles.  This has never worked to get me exercising.  For one thing, if my husband takes the children for an hour, there are a hundred things I could do "for my self" besides exercise:  take myself out to eat at a nice restaurant, go to a coffee shop with a good book, get my hair cut, catch up on school planning to buy more time later, blog, etc. 

For another thing, I'm not convinced it's a healthy attitude for me to adopt, the "I need to decide to do this FOR ME" attitude.  For some women, who tend to be very giving, selfless, and generous, yes, cultivating the habit giving one's self permission to do a thing for their own well-being is important.  But some of us, ahem, have never really had difficulties putting ourselves first, and motherhood is the main training ground for the "love your neighbor" thing.  I'm not convinced it's a good idea for me to start doing anything new FOR ME because I'm still hanging on to a lot of FOR ME already and am trying to let go of it.

So.  Here is the tip -- it's really two parts -- that tells how I managed to swim twice a week:

I asked my husband to make a commitment with me, for the good of the family, to give me an hour at the gym twice a week.

I guess it's sort of understandable why magazines with names like, oh, I don't know, SELF, wouldn't be printing tips that amount to "Ask your husband to let you go to the gym."  It is pretty antithetical to the "do it for me" mindset.  I should add, by the way, that it's not "instead of" active whole-family outings like weekend hikes, it's in addition to them.  But let me take this apart a bit, and show you why it worked so well. 

• The first part is the "good of the family" mindset.  Instead of me doing it for me, or even him doing it for me, Mark and I together are making this commitment for our whole family.  It is obviously better for the whole family when I get some exercise every week.   They say it lowers my stress and helps me sleep better:  everybody wins.  It improves my odds of living longer, which is also good for everyone, especially Mark.   It sets an excellent example for the children.  And it helps us meet our family goal of being active together as a family, because often we go to the gym as a family.
• The second part is the asking for a commitment from him.  Mark is a sensible guy and if I ask for something that I really want and that's good for our family, I can trust him to provide it even if it's a sacrifice for him.  But he can't read my mind; he needs me to ask for that particular block time when he must be in charge of the children.   And because it's a recurring commitment, we have to schedule it each week, together. Along with "When are we going to do the shopping this week?" and "Who is going to take Oscar to his Wednesday night class this week?" we have to ask, "Which two days am I going to get to the gym, and what time?"  Once again, this is good for the family -- it's a weekly checking-in between Mark and me, it's a thing I'm grateful he's agreed to do for me, and it's setting a good example for the children.   
• The third part is receiving that commitment from him as a gift and using it the way we agreed on -- giving it back, so to speak.  I asked for those two hours a week for a reason, a reason that was -- I said this before -- "for the good of the family."  I am accountable to that reason.   I can't use them to get a haircut, or go shopping, or sit and read a book (unless on an exercise bike).    No matter how urgent, they aren't allowed to displace this specific commitment that Mark and I have made to each other.  Not only must I use the time for the purpose we planned, I also have to use the time efficiently -- five minutes to get into my suit, fifteen minutes to shower afterwards, means only forty minutes in the pool, and that in turn means that if I want that workout to be a good one, I have to get better at swimming so I can swim more yards in my allotted 4o minutes.

Interestingly enough, this "tip" also happens to fulfill some of the chirpy tips at those other sites.  "Tell another person about your plans."  "Schedule exercise into your week."  "Go to the gym with a friend" (in this case, Mark, who does his time with the kids in the kids' area and then goes to run after I come back from the pool).

And doesn't it seem to be a good metaphor for marriage, too?

Literature-based American history through 1812 for the Grammar Stage. Part 4: Colonial Expansion and the Western Frontier.

Previously in this series:  Introduction.  Part 1.  Part 2. Part 3.

This is a much shorter section, to be covered in only two weeks. 

• Seton, Chapter 8, "Colonial Expansion"
• Foster, The World of William Penn
• Daugherty, Daniel Boone
• Gridley, Pontiac

Genevieve Foster's book is not only a portrait of a very interesting personage, it covers the whole time period from 1660-1718 in a nice broad survey.   Marion Gridley's Pontiac is an easy-reader biography, very sympathetic to Pontiac, and well written for an easy reader, I thought.  The illustrations are a little cartoonish but not objectionable.

James Daugherty's  Daniel Boone took me a while to decide on.  It is wonderfully written and beautifully, provocatively illustrated.  It was the first of all the books that I read, myself, cover to cover, for the sheer enjoyment of the riveting story.  But... it was hard for me to choose it, nonetheless. It contains frank treatment of the violence between frontier settlers and native Americans -- the murder of settler families, retaliation by settlers against local tribes, etc.  (Read Wikipedia's article on Daniel Boone for some background).  This is, shall we say, an uncomfortable topic.  Am I a skilled enough presenter to cover this topic without giving my kids an Indians-are-bad-guys attitude?  Many of the illustrations are quite violent, depicting armed, scary-looking Shawnee. 

At first I thought, "No way -- the kids are going to remember these 'scary Indian' pictures more than anything else."  But I kept picking up the book and flipping through it again.  Even though the illustrations were very violent, I noticed that they were pretty balanced.  The colonists and European armies are depicted with their weapons too -- my own bias, I think, led me to think of these "familiar" warriors as less menacing than the depictions of the Shawnee.  Furthermore, the more I looked at them, the more I saw that Daugherty had given all the people in his illustrations a tremendous dignity.  Whereas a lot of children's illustrators of that era depicted native people as childlike and primitive, Daugherty's Shawnee were... fearsome.  Powerful.  Worthy adversaries.   And if you look closely at the pictures, which are sort of whirling montages of images, you see that through his illustrations Daugherty has also tried to tell both sides of the story.   You see the settler with his rifle, pointing, giving instructions to his terrified wife through the crack of the cabin door as she's barricading herself and the children inside.  But another illustration shows the Shawnee warrior standing in resistance, over an image of a Shawnee woman crouched, face turned away, over the body of a child.  They're really quite amazing illustrations.

In any case, too, Daniel Boone's story is really a very fascinating one -- it's hard to believe that one man could have so many different experiences -- and his story, which takes place in Kentucky and Tennessee at a time when it's easy to forget that anything was happening outside the 13 colonies, is really worth telling.

So... I recommend it.  There are still caveats to be made about the language -- read it aloud, because you might choose to substitute for certain charged terms used to describe the native people.

Next up:  we return to the 13 colonies for "Life In Colonial America."

Late-seventies salmon loaf, plus a bleg at the bottom.

Whole Foods for the Whole Family, published by La Leche League International, is one of the weirdest cookbooks I own.   First, there's that goofy photo on the front cover, with wild-n-crazy Dad scooping spaghetti right into chef-hatted Junior's mouth, while behind her simpering mug Mom is clearly resigned to thinking, "I'm never going to get that dress shirt clean."  Then there's the style:  from the bright-red comb binding to the names and hometowns of the ladies who submitted the recipes, it screams "PARISH FUNDRAISER COOKBOOK." 

And when you get past all that -- what an odd collection of recipes it is.  It's as if Betty Crocker had a separated-from-birth twin sister -- Rainbow Crocker -- who was raised by hippies on an organic farm.   (Catholic hippies, though.)    Betty gives you "Guidelines for Proper Freezer Storage,"  "Timetable For Blanching Vegetables," "Food Safety Tips" and a glossary of such technical terms as "shred," "cube," "bake," "scald," and (I kid you not) "refrigerate."  Rainbow, on the other hand, provides helpful articles on churning your own butter, growing your own sprouts, identifying different kinds of tofu, introducing solid food to a nursing baby, dyeing Easter eggs by boiling them with onion skins or blueberries. 

There are a lot of seventies-style health food ingredients like soybeans and bulgur and wheat germ, with comments from the submitters like "I tried for years to find a soybean-based casserole my family would eat, and finally I tried this and now everyone loves it!"  There are a lot of casseroles, containing not cream of mushroom soup but Medium White Sauce made from scratch.  There is a recipe for Beef 'n'Liver Sloppy Joes. 

All this is to say, despite the very weird nature of this cookbook, there are a handful of recipes -- even some of the weird ones -- that I make again and again.   If you want a whole-foods version of an Americana recipe, it's the first place to look.  For example, suppose you are a beginner cook and you want to make 100% whole wheat pancakes.    Normal cookbooks tend to instruct you to make pancakes with all-purpose flour and suggest that you could substitute "up to a quarter" of the flour with whole wheat, you know, if you can stand that sort of thing.  This one, well, it just gives you the whole wheat version.  (Takes a bit more liquid than white flour pancakes.)

OK, so:  one of the recipes my family loves is the salmon loaf.  I'm not guaranteeing you will love it.  It's kind of a weird recipe with weird seventies health food ingredients.  But it's very easy, and a nice way to fit a bit more fish into your diet with little forethought required.  I think it comes out of the oven a little dry (especially if you're expecting something like meatloaf or, conversely, like fried salmon patties) but that is easily overcome by serving it with some kind of a sauce or condiment.  My kids and husband are perfectly happy with ketchup.  I have served it with cucumber-yogurt-dill sauce -- like tzatziki.  I have served it with white sauce made with dill and a little horseradish.  I have served it with aioli.  Tonight (while my kids and husband put ketchup on theirs) I used tartar sauce from a jar, and thought it perfectly fine.  We had it with olive-oil-and-lemon-sauteed asparagus and summer squash, buttered bread, and sliced tomatoes.

Here's my slightly adapted version of their recipe.  Serves 6-8.

• 2 cans (14.75 oz each) "traditional" salmon, e.g., with the bones and skin -- I prefer the more expensive red sockeye, but pink is ok.  Trust me, you won't notice the bones.
• About 3/4 cup milk
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup each:  rolled oats, oat bran, and wheat germ
• 1 1/2 (that's 3/2) Tbsp lemon juice, more if you like
• 2 Tbsp finely minced onion, more if you like
• 1/2 c roasted and salted sunflower seeds
• Salt and pepper to taste

Drain salmon, reserving liquid.  Mash salmon with its bones and skin in a bowl.  Mash it really well.  Try to make the skin and bones disappear.   I use a potato masher.  Mix salmon liquid and milk to make a little bit less than 2 cups.   Add remaining ingredients and mix very well.  Let the mixture sit for 15 minutes or so. 

For a drier, firmer loaf:  Line a 9x13 glass baking dish with parchment paper and oil it or spray with nonstick cooking spray.  In that pan, form the mixture into 1 large or 2 small flattish, ovalish loaves.  OR for a moister, crumblier loaf, divide the mixture between 2 oiled loaf pans.  Bake at 350 degrees until firm, 45 minutes to 1 hour.

  Now for the bleg.  When I make meatloaf, I top it with a ketchup-vinegar-sugar glaze and run it under the broiler till it's bubbly and a bit caramelized.  It's terrific and everyone raves about it. I would really like to figure out some sort of sweet glaze that would work like that for the salmon loaf.  Only not tomatoey like ketchup.  What do you think might work?  Something teriyaki-ish?  Or fruity, like a chutney?  Or should I just stick with the tartar sauce?

Recommended links.

I really wish I had time to comment more on each of these not-very-related links.

Sister Mary Martha dispenses advice to a godparent Godparent who asks, "[M]y godchildren aren't going to Mass any more and aren't learning about their faith. I'm concerned about this, but unsure what to do, as I live hundreds of miles away, so can't take them myself, and don't really feel as though I should tell their parents what to do. Do you have any advice for me on being a good Godparent to the children of a lapsed Catholic?"

CJ responds to a line about "appropriately draped nursing" in a churchy magazine:  "If you ever want to push my buttons with a nuclear-powered cattle prod, you can just call me up and read that sentence to me.  It is wrong in so many ways I can't even count them, though I'm certainly going to give it a try...." (link to CJ giving it a try)  I share in her rant -- it ought to be acceptable for a young baby to nurse in a church pew.  (Thank goodness for magazines to warn us that we should be 'appropriately draped' when nursing in public!  Otherwise I know I'd have gotten in the habit of stripping to the waist every time the baby cried.)

Finally, Amy has a thread about why substitutions like "Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier" for the Name of the Triune God just don't cut it.  The comments on the thread are fantastic, much worth reading, and I'm not just saying that because one is from me.  I particularly like the insight that, as much as the words "Father," "Son," "Holy Spirit," we need to consider the introductory "...in the name of the..."  Fruitful meditation, that.