Tiramisiu

Chosing between the good and the best is never easy...

For instance, if you have a very large tub of tiramisiu, a very tired little boy, and a long way to go do you...

A) feed him all the tiramisiu at the start of the journey, and watch him accelerate down the road like a snowball down a mountain

B) walk a few feet ahead and offer a fingerfull of tiramisiu, and repeat until you get home, carefully rationing it so that it doesn't run out before you arrive.

C) carry him, and the tiramisiu in seperate arms, ignoring the whining. Then, when you get home, eat the tiramisiu in front of him.

D) Drive. Duh.

Well, since A doesn't guarantee he'll run in the right direction, C isn't possible for someone who doesn't weightlift and has a 15 kilo son, and D relies on having fixed the .bleep. .bleep. Car, B was pretty much the only workable solution. I wiped his mouth carefully before he got in the house. Let's just hope my wife never gets into the habit of reading my blog.

Love you honey!
I'm so dead.

We had an absolutely wonderful day yesterday celebrating Easter, from the traditional Polish barszcz in the morning, to the huge community meal that we had in the afternoon, it were fab. He is risen indeed! Allelulia...

Only 38 more days left of Easter :)

The real, real, real truth... No really...

What is it about our society that makes people believe that vampires can rise from the dead, but Jesus couldn't? What is it that makes people think that the Catholic church wants to take us back to the dark ages - when a brief look at history will show you that Europe was carried out of the dark Ages by the Church?

What makes people think that the Church, which brought schools and hospitals and the scientific principle to Europe; is somehow against progress?

And why, why, oh why... Does everyone seem to think that Nelson Mandella started his inauguration speech with "our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure?" words he never spoke in public... Or that Obama wrote his famous speech entitled 'just words'

Where has the human tendency to look a little bit deeper gone? That desire to do a bit of research and really discover for ourselves what is true, really, really, really true... And not just a passing fad or urban legend - have young people stopped believing anything is true, or can they just not be bothered to find out?

By the way, please don't take my word on the speeches, check them out for yourself.

Car manuals and angels

I don't pretend to be an expert on angels, which is unusual for me, because I normally pretend to be an expert in everything. The car, for instance. Having ascertained that it is indeed the starter motor which is causing the problems; conveniently and utterly inaccessibly placed in the centre of the engine, one should call a mechanic. One should not think . . . I'll have a go taking that out myself, and I won't read the manual, because I can't be bothered. The car manual, btw, clearly mentions that you need to disconnect the battery first.

So when the electric shock hit I was underneath the car, and the resultant spasm made me bang my head against the underside. It also numbed my arm and half my tongue. Ouch. Or I should say owwth.

So where was I? Oh yes, angels. One of Augustine's commonly quoted maxims was "I didn't invent original sin" - but since the proclamation of original sin at the time was rather low key, it seems that that is what his correspondents had postulated. I rather suspect it will be the maxim of one of the saints of our day and age "I didn't invent guardian angels"

How many choirs of angels are there? Apparently nine, and if you believe the bishop that I've been reading, that hasn't been under question since 600 AD (or ABJ if you prefer after the birth of Jesus). The bishop is Martin Schmid, writing in 1963, in German.

Anyway the guardian angels don't have their own choir - every angel at some point serves as a guardian angel - but before you say that this introduces a disparity of power - 'hey i wanted that angel' it doesn't. God has ordained that each person should have a guardian angel that best suits them and therefore the choir that the angel is drawn from may differ - but all who serve as guardian angels assume the stature of an angel of the ninth choir. So the mode of the angel may change - but that is also in accordance with our own nature - but not the power.

So the top three choirs:
Seraphim, angels of love; cherubim, angels of power and wisdom of the Word; thrones, angels of life. Don't think renaissance and cute little babies with wings. That's not scriptural. Imagine fiery 20m tall figures blazing with light, and with very sharp swords, who say to the cowering shepherds "do not be afraid"

Four to six: dominations, powers and principalities

Seven to nine: (theological) Virtues, (i.e. Faith, hope and love)
The archangels
The angels (including guardian angels)

I would definitely like to see some more teaching on angels in parishes... But I guess car manuals don't read themsleves either. Oh, and thank you, guardian angel that I didn't fry myself today.

Balance and peace. Babies and bath water

So my moral theology essay came back with an A- on it. Happy about that. It wasn't the highlight of the day, though. The highlight of the day was my wife's jubilation to discover that our wombified baby has rearranged herself head down, which means that it's 70% likely to be natural birth time instead of caesarian. That is a load of her mind.

By the way, I know that wasn't a word in the ordinary sense...

We got invited to a wedding too. Lots of good news today. Yes, we will be going.

Our little naturalist decided to escape from the changing table and run round the garden in circles, squeaking with delight. Being a kind hearted, gentle and generous man I ran to get some cold water and followed him round flicking dribbles at him, to more delighted squealing

Augustine, Aquinas, clever people. Said what they meant, and meant what they said. What more can you ask?

Wasting Time Creatively

Assuming that you too occasionally start a sentence "Life is too short" and finish it with something you've decided not to do; I just wanted to share a couple of my musings on family time.

I'm already a dad, and my wife is expecting our second baby in four weeks. No, I probably won't be blogging on the day that my baby is born. Life's too short to blog when you should be paying attention to what's going on in front of you.

A lot of it is about conservation of effort. Right now I have an essay to write for my degree, an article to write for the diocese, and then, of course there is spending time with my family - which means that sitting on a path sorting out pebbles is right at the top of the list, priority wise; along with fixing the car (probably the starter motor), spending quality time with my wife (long overdue) and... oh yeah, sitting in the sunshine.

Holidays... love them. Life's too short not to.

By the way, do you like the title? Sounds like the title of a book, doesn't it?