bearing blog

Prayers of St. Francis.

There's this prayer called the Prayer of St. Francis.  It's printed on the back of every holy card of St. Francis I've ever seen.  There are a couple of hymns that consist of its words set to music.  It goes like this:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

As always, there are alternate versions floating around, too.  I particularly like the middle part of the prayer.  How many of us petition the Almighty for consolation, understanding, and love?  Ought we not petition Him as well for the capacity, opportunity, and will to console, to understand, to love?  How often do we do that? 

As nice as it is, that prayer doesn't appear to have been written by St. Francis at all.  Here's a Wikipedia article on its origins.  Incidentally, if it had been written by St. Francis, we'd probably be aware of it; the Catholic Encyclopedia says, "The literary materials for the history of St. Francis are more than usually copious and authentic. There are indeed few if any medieval lives more thoroughly documented."

Here's something that really was written by St. Francis, in 1224 (and was first mentioned in print only four years later, in a biography of him by Thomas of Celano).

Laudes Creaturum ("Praise of the Creatures")

Most High, all-powerful, all-good Lord,
All praise is Yours, all glory, honor and blessings.
To you alone, Most High, do they belong;
no mortal lips are worthy to pronounce Your Name.

We praise You, Lord, for all Your creatures,
especially for Brother Sun,
who is the day through whom You give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor,
of You Most High, he bears your likeness.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Moon and the stars,
in the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.

We praise You, Lord, for Brothers Wind and Air,
fair and stormy, all weather's moods,
by which You cherish all that You have made.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Water,
so useful, humble, precious and pure.

We praise You, Lord, for Brother Fire,
through whom You light the night.
He is beautiful, playful, robust, and strong.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Earth,
who sustains us
with her fruits, colored flowers, and herbs.

We praise You, Lord, for those who pardon,
for love of You bear sickness and trial.
Blessed are those who endure in peace,
by You Most High, they will be crowned.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Death,
from whom no-one living can escape.
Woe to those who die in their sins!
Blessed are those that She finds doing Your Will.
No second death can do them harm.

We praise and bless You, Lord, and give You thanks,
and serve You in all humility.

Stylistically, it's rather different from the other, isn't it?  Not nearly as tidy.  But... it has a better claim to the title Prayer of St. Francis (although it is not the only one he wrote).

Scrupulosity, good works, etc.

Jimmy Akin answers a reader's question about scrupulosity and in the process, I think, clarifies some stuff about the importance of good works.

Good works, therefore, are not of themselves necessary to remain in a state of grace. They may help you stay in a state of grace by building good habits that steer you away from sin, but a lack of good works IS  NOT A MORTAL SIN. If you are a baptized baby and you die before you are capable of doing good works, you don't have any, but that doesn't keep you out of heaven. Similarly, if you're an adult convert and you get baptized and then run over by a bus so that you don't have a chance to do good works, you don't get kept out of heaven.

The key to going to heaven is our reception of and remaining in God's grace. It's his grace that gets us to heaven.

Good works are a natural outgrowth of his grace working in our hearts, and he rewards us for cooperating with his grace in doing good works, but the thing that would keep us out of heaven is mortal sin, not having an insufficient number of good works.

Scrupulosity is "a disordered fear that one is sinning or is in danger of going to hell."  Ultimately, it marks a lack of trust in God's mercy, but I think scrupulosity tends to be involuntary --- like obsessive-compulsive disorder, which Jimmy alludes to in his post.

It's the sort of problem that might actually be helped by therapy --- except that you had better choose your therapists carefully, lest they try to rid you of your "guilt complex" by eliminating every honest impulse toward repentance.  The point is balance and perspective:  Neither scrupulosity, nor presumption.

Tribunal.

Amy Welborn has a good post that starts with the Pope's speech to the Roman Rota (which serves as an "appeals court" in marriage cases) and winds up with a quote from a man whose Tribunal experience led him to the same conclusion I have come to re: the high annulment rates in North America:

...my Tribunal experience has been a real eye-opener, especially in light of the contraceptive and divorce mentality I encounter in most people, including Catholics. In fact, these mentalities are so pervasive within North American society that after four days on the Tribunal I found myself declaring as many marriages invalid as the next judge ... and wondering to myself whether any marriage attempted today in North America is valid.

In short, as a Traditional Catholic canonist, I can safely say that since the sexual devolution of the sixties, the rise in marriage annulments has not been because of the Second Vatican Council and a more liberal application of canon law, but because of a selfish and unrealistic understanding of what marriage entails by your average person entering into it.

That's what I think.  We have too damned many annulments granted in the U.S.  It's not because annulments are too easy; it's because weddings are too easy.  As Amy says:  "stop witnessing the marriage of every baptized Catholic who walks into the rectory and asks for one."

7 myths about the Challenger explosion.

"It didn't explode, the crew didn't die instantly, and it wasn't inevitable."  Are your twenty-year-old memories accurate?

One of the best articles on the subject was written by Edward Tufte, author and designer of several beautiful and elegant texts on the visual display of quantitative information.  The same material appears in this book.

His story:  Engineers indeed tried to convince managers not to launch the shuttle on such a cold day.  But they attempted to make their points with some very poorly-designed charts and graphs.  Had they used better ones (Tufte provides an example of what might have been), the decision to launch not only would have seemed ill-advised, but would have been shown to be foolhardy.  (To my knowledge the article is not available online, but a sample of the most damning material --- the graphs the engineers made to show to the decision-makers, together with Tufte's reorganization of the exact same information --- appears in a book review here.)

Communication is important.  Very important.  Often we think of communication as a text-based endeavor.  We can evaluate text:  this is bad writing, that is good writing, this one is concise and clear, that one is windy and obscure.  The same accusations can be leveled at quantitative information --- charts, graphs, diagrams, maps.  And yes, lives depend on them, sometimes.

Marcher.

Over at Orthonormal Basis, thoughts from one who took part in the San Francisco March for Life.  Worth reading.

(h/t DarwinCatholic.)

Home, again.

Light blogging over the last few weeks has been for a good reason:   Saturday we moved into our new house, just three months after the "big digger" showed up.  Leslie, the GC (general contractor), tells us that the certificate of occupancy was granted one year to the day after she mailed the brochure we'd requested.  So:  that's how long it takes to build a modular house in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Friends came over to help us move all the big pieces.  "This is interesting," one said as he carried boxes down the steps of one house, out the door, across both yards, and into the house next door.  "Never helped with a move like this one."  We left a lot of odds and ends, as well as... detritus... of various sorts, in the old house to deal with over the course of a couple of weeks.  It's got to be cleaned from top to bottom, and much of it has to be repainted, so it won't set back the sale very long to go through the junk a little more slowly. 

The first day, we discovered a few bugs.  The shower in the master bathroom ran and ran and never got warm.  Was the water heater not set right?  I had to go to the basement and read the owner's manual to find out!  (Yes, 120 deg F.)  Must be the mixing valve.  Call Leslie!  After dinner, a puddle appeared under the dishwasher.  Hmm.  Call Leslie!  Then we discovered that when you turn off the light from the top of the basement stairs, all the lights in the basement go out as well.  Call Leslie!

We're still eating dinner on a wobbly card table, and I spent $500 today at Wal-Mart and IKEA getting things like toilet brushes and laundry baskets and chairs and spare sheets for the guest room (Mark's parents come up to visit this week to help frame  walls and sew curtains and that sort of thing).  But it's starting to feel pretty good.

Pics to follow when I figure out which box has my camera.

"This is such a safe, comfortable place."

Hey!  It's my family doctor, in a wonderful, positive article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune about the only pro-life family medical clinic in Minnesota:

The AALFA Family Clinic's uniqueness goes well beyond its name and decor. It offers services that most family-practice clinics offer, with one major difference: As a self-described "Christian prolife clinic" that serves primarily Roman Catholics and evangelical Christians, it does not refer patients for abortions or prescribe birth-control pills or other forms of contraception, said Dr. Mary Paquette, one of AALFA's three physicians.

As of Sunday, Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, will have been the law of the land for 33 years. But AALFA, believed to be the only clinic of its kind in Minnesota, adheres to what its doctors and patients view as higher principles.

Paquette, her husband, Dr. Matthew Paquette, and Dr. Paul Spencer, along with a physician's assistant, a nurse practitioner, two nurses and many of their patients, believe that life begins at conception. "We are called to care for each patient with love, care and respect from conception to old age," Mary Paquette said.

AALFA's philosophy and highly personal care have won it a large following -- 5,000 active-account patients over the past two years, said office manager Nancy Grace. Patients come from throughout Minnesota and other states.

Patients interviewed on a recent morning expressed admiration for the clinic and its approach to care.

We only recently switched over to AALFA.  It is a forty-minute drive, but absolutely worth it.  The article focuses on Mary Paquette's adult clients, but the family practice physician's attitude toward and with children is compassionate and positive, too. 

A detail the article doesn't note:  Mary Paquette treats women and children; Matt Paquette treats men and boys older than twelve.

The mystery of the Erin Bird.

Milo, age 2, loves birds.  He and I are hanging out together tonight while Mark takes Oscar skiing, so it seemed like a good evening to check out the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Online Bird Guide.  When I showed him the page, Milo pointed to the pictures just to the right --- the little group of four --- and said, "Itza wood duck."  He's right, there it is, in the lower right hand corner.  (For that, I have Hannah to thank, because she bought a few little stuffed birds with bird calling chips inside, including the wood duck --- here's some for sale. Note the wood duck.)

The way this goes is, I show him a bird and tell him the name.  He repeats it.  Then I play the sound, and while the sound is playing, he shouts "Honk!" or "Birdie birdie birdie!" or "Drink your tea!" --- according to whichever it sounds the most like, no matter what sort of bird it is.  (He has learned that the Canada goose says honk and the northern cardinal says birdie birdie birdie and the eastern towhee says drink your tea.)

As we listen and look, I'm hoping to find the identity of the mysterious "Erin bird" that kept startling me when we went camping with several adults and children last summer here in southeastern Minnesota.  Whatever it is, it sounds exactly like a small child shrieking "Erin!!!!" which is guaranteed to get my attention.  I figure it's probably a bird of prey --- certainly not a sparrowy type of call.  The red-tailed hawk is a strong possibility, because they are very common here, but the call doesn't sound exactly right to me.   (If you have RealPlayer, you can listen to the call by clicking on the multimedia link partway down the page for each bird.)

Anything other than black and white would be a perversion.

Some AOL user got to this site today via a Google search for the question "Are gay couples committed to monography?"

Code Pink shuts women's mouths?

Speaking of speech in opposition, there's always the tactic of putting one's own speech in the mouths --- or on the placards --- of others.  This interesting tidbit came via PubliusPundit.  You've got to compare and contrast two photos, and I'll try to make it a little easier than PP did.  :

First, go here --- why not open a new window? --- and scroll down to the second photograph, which shows a young Iranian woman participating in a protest against sex discrimination under Iran's Islamic leadership.  She wears an olive-green button down blouse, a black headscarf, and a distinctive ring on her left hand.  She holds one piece of paper aloft and thrusts forward another, bearing writing in Arabic, towards the camera, which has caught her mid-shout.

Found her?  OK.  Now check out the banner at the top of this Internet ad at CodePink.  See anyone familiar?

I don't suppose they got her permission, do you?  I mean, maybe this young woman is anti-war in general, which is certainly her prerogative, and maybe like the signers of the statement mentioned in the ad she is opposed to the "senseless war in Iraq" along with the other items mentioned.  But do we know?  And doesn't that picture, paired with the text of the appeal, sort of imply that the demonstration she marched in was an anti-Iraq-war demonstration, and not an anti-Iranian-government, pro-democracy demonstration?  Is that fair to her?

And what did they do to her mouth?

(h/t Instapundit)