bearing blog

Leaven bleg.

So I was reading the Exodus/Passover account this morning and it occurred to me to wonder: 

What kind of leaven did the Israelites in Egypt use, anyway?  I mean, obviously (I think) it would be a naturally occuring yeast, but how did they work with it?  Was it like a sourdough, where you use some of the last batch to leaven the next batch?   Or was it fresh leavening added to every batch?   

I'm just wondering, exactly what did they have to do differently, in terms of recipe, when they were commanded not to leaven their bread.

Was the process changed much when, many generations later and in a different land, the Jews were keeping the Passover feast in the time of Christ?

Snakes on a Plane.

OK, this entire blog --- starting from the bottom of the archives and going up --- made me laugh. 

Here is a quote from Samuel L. Jackson to whet your appetite.

"As soon as I opened the script and saw the title, I was like, ‘Cool!’ Hopefully that’s not a euphemism for something else,” says Jackson with a laugh. "And sure enough, I go there and there’s 500 snakes on a plane. Can you believe they were going to change the name to ‘Pacific Air 121′? What is that?"

I really should NOT sit down at the computer when I go down to get a glass of water in the middle of the night. 

(I must say, though, after I read the quote from an actor who played a passenger that, um, bit it early in the movie, I'm ready to see it myself...

In fact I read the script and, as it turns out, accuracy and believability don’t really matter in a film entitled SNAKES ON A PLANE! )

I have to close this post, or I won't be able to stop myself from adding more quotes from the site.  The exclusive script review, for example, with spoilers... and the fan art, including a movie poster for Snakes on a Torus... 

H/t Scrutinies, of all places.

The spirituality of children of divorce.

An interview with Elizabeth Marquardt, author of Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce.

Q.  I imagine that children of divorce would also struggle with seeing God as a parent.

A.  When I asked them if God is like a father or a parent, their reactions would tell me as much about what they thought about their parents as what they thought about God. One woman said, "God's not like a parent. God is something smarter than us." Another said, "God seems more distant, like a manager."

Q.  How does divorce affect how the children of divorce read the Bible?

A.  Let's take, for instance, the parable of the Prodigal Son. The children of divorce don't focus on the end of the story, when the child comes home and is welcomed by a loving parent. They focus on the beginning of the story, when someone leaves the family home. For them, it's not the child who leaves the home; it's the parent. ...One young woman told me, "When I hear the parable about the Prodigal Son, I always think maybe one of these days my dad will decide to come back, too."

...Then you realize that the parable is supposed to illustrate God's love and compassion and presence --- the ever-present, steady, everlasting presence. But children of divorce see themselves in the role of the father waiting for the child to come home; that's the role of God in the story. They have to be their own protector. They have to be the one waiting in the doorway for someone else to come home. It's a scary and anxiety-producing place for a child.

Interesting.

The armchair psychologist, seeking an explanation for my conversion to Catholicism and in particular for my marriage to a man from a firmly Catholic family, might point to my experiences as a child of divorce.  According to Marquardt, that's not such a common response; kids from divorced families tend more toward evangelical churches or no church at all.

What we've lost.

Rich Leonardi visits his father's boyhood parish church, slated for closing and sale.

Before leaving, I was permitted access to the massive choir loft for a full view of the apse and nave. At the risk of sounding maudlin, I started crying. This church, which at its peak celebrated five Masses during the week and seven on Sundays, which my father and his family spent countless hours serving and worshiping in, probably won't survive. I grew up less than five miles away. Why had my father never taken ten minutes on a Saturday afternoon to show me this place? And then I felt bitter. We traded heavenly cathedrals like this for barns in the suburbs? We gave up Mozart's "Requiem," Byrd's "Mass for Five Voices," and Schubert's "Mass in G" for guitar-strumming, tasteless "family masses"? Justice must require the payment of a debt attached to the destruction and neglect of so much beauty.

It's not so much that the guitar-strumming family masses, in and of themselves, were such a bad idea.  As a supplement to the heritage we already had --- why not?  Fads come in, fads go out, that's life.

But as a replacement for "out-dated" beauty?

I'm Catholic; I'm thirty-one. I'm angry that a whole generation before me threw all that splendor away, and wants me to say "Thank you" that I have guitar-strumming family masses instead.   My generation of Catholics has only scattered scraps of Catholic culture, that we have to pull together into a crazy-quilt, something that we can hand down to our children.   It's not clinging to the past when we ought to move forward; it's sorrowing that our inheritance was squandered.   And it's not an alien experience here in America:  what race's children hasn't sorrowed, at times, over what was lost when their parents were (by force or by choice) "assimilated?"

Blogger and matchbook-collector James Lileks has written, if I remember right, that he'd give up a year of his life to spend ten minutes walking city streets in the 1940s. I don't know if I'd give up much life for it, but I have a sort of "Twilight-Zone" fantasy that goes like this:  I am walking down a city street and happen to pass a crumbling, graceful church, the sort built to serve throngs of immigrants in the mid-1800s, just as daily Mass begins; impulsively I step in, and find myself transported back to, oh, 1920 or so, just for half an hour.   

It's part of that cultural poverty that I can't even tell you what I would see there, except for the few things (and they are the crux on which it all turns) that, by the grace of God, have remained.  I just wish I could go, and come back, knowing what it's like to be immersed in the peculiar otherness that was Catholicism in America before it became "American Catholicism."

I hold out some hope of a revival, and I want our family to be part of it.   I don't yet know what that will mean for us, but I'm keeping my eye out for it.

"Half-assed but happy: Interior design for the broke and impatient."

Jenn at breed 'em and weep has learned an important lesson about interior design for the busy mother:  Lower your standards.

I know my limits now. Wallpaper removal is not for me. I don’t care what the guys on This Old House say. I don’t have the resources, I don’t have a handyman or a nice Shaker man to seduce. Even if I did seduce a skilled handyman, I wouldn’t have the stamina to keep him entertained for as long as it would take to do my kitchen the right way. And it seems pointless to seduce a half-assed handyman when I can just seduce myself and get the same results.

Read the rest, it's funny.  I'd sympathize, except that the handyman-seduction strategy* has been going well for me.

*Or is that tactics?  I can't remember.

"Sharia Catch-22."

Abdul Rahman, the Afghani who was facing the death penalty on charges that he converted from Islam to Christianity, has been freed for lack of evidence. 

At first this sounded like a joke (hasn't everyone seen the old sign-outside-the-church saw, "If you were accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?") but it turns out that there isn't sufficient evidence that Rahman is mentally competent to stand trial.

Or so the prosecutor says.  My thought:  the Karzai administration had to frantically grasp for some solution that would satisfy the law and the constitution--- which, inconveniently, really does make apostasy a capital crime; the large fraction of the population who, inconveniently, consider this to be a good thing; and the American government that backs his. 

I take Christian martyrdom --- you know, the old-fashioned kind where you don't take bystanders down with you --- pretty seriously.  Nevertheless, I was amused by this exchange at Ann Althouse's blog:

Ann, posting: Was Rahman mentally unfit?   "Rahman, [before his release], said he was fully aware of his choice and was ready to die for it, according to an interview published Sunday in an Italian newspaper La Repubblica."

Commenter twwren:  It's Sharia Catch 22. He must be insane becuase any sane Muslim would reconvert to Islam therefore he cannot be executed.

Ann, in update:  I like having that part of the law and note that, extended, it would mean that anyone who embraces martyrdom for religion is insane. That's a useful idea. I hope they propogate it.

There's more good stuff in the comments at that post.

Birds at the feeders.

In order of appearance so far this season, with snow still clinging to the ground and with our yard denuded of vegetation:

• Rock pigeon
• House sparrow a.k.a. English sparrow (male and female)
• Black-capped chickadee
• Common grackle
• European starling
• House finch
• Downy woodpecker (mate-pair)
• Northern cardinal (male)
• Dark-eyed junco

We saw the last four all for the first time within twenty-four hours, which made for a very exciting day.  Let. Me. Tell. You.

I'm aware that many feeder fans classify pigeons, grackles, and starlings as pests, a sort of avian squirrel, better shooed away so as not to waste the finch-food on it.  At our house, for the time being, every bird is equally exciting. 

The pigeons in particular have been fun to watch, because their color variations make it possible to recognize individual birds on return visits.  My kids have christened one of them, a mottled gray-white bird, "Snowy Pigeon."

And I had no idea that grackles, up close, were so severely beautiful.   I had thought they were all black.  But in fact, they are tricolored:  the body is black, but the rear end is a deep violet and the head is an iridescent, very dark green-blue.

"Islam is a religion of peace, tolerance, kindness and integrity. That is why we have told him if he regrets what he did, then we will forgive him."

So says Ansarullah Mawlafizada, the Afghanistan trial judge presiding over the case of Abdul Rahman. 

That "If" in the quote?  It's a big "if."

Mr. Rahman does not deny his crime, nor does he appear to regret it.   He stands accused of converting to Christianity.  If he refuses to renounce Christianity --- and so far, he has --- he faces the death penalty.

There is a possibility that the state will bow to international pressure and release him; but the result of that might well be a lynching, according to this WaPo/AP article:

Senior Muslim clerics demanded Thursday that an Afghan man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity be executed, warning that if the government caves in to Western pressure and frees him, they will incite people to "pull him into pieces"....

"Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die," said cleric Abdul Raoulf, who is considered a moderate and was jailed three times for opposing the Taliban before the hard-line regime was ousted in 2001.

Take a look at the pics of Rahman in the article:  you may be looking at a genuine martyr.  Let's hope not.  Let's hope that thinking Muslims and thinking Christians, however, start sitting up and paying attention.

No miracle in Dallas.

Last week in Dallas, there were reports of a possible Eucharistic miracle.

A blessed Eucharistic host in a parish church had wound up on the floor for some reason -- reports varied as to exactly why.  Per requirements for proper disposal, the priest placed it in a glass of water to dissolve.  Then he forgot about it for about four weeks.  Later, noticing that it hadn't yet dissolved, he added more water.  He reported that the host turned red and expanded.  Kerfuffle ensued.

The Cafeteria is Closed reports that the matter was submitted to the bishop and the material in the glass was tested; results are in:  "fungus and bacterial colonies."

Hey, you can't blame them for checking it out.

Just in case.

The patron saint of plumbers is St. Vincent Ferrer.

(Thanks to Jamie of Selkie for inspiring me to look it up.)