Rapture

Have you ever heard me go, "WEEEEEEEEEE!!!!" in delight like a 3 year-old girl? No? Sorry. Had you been with me three minutes ago when I first watched this you would have...in fact, if you want to hear it, give me a call before you hit play and we'll watch it together. That would be fun.

Lenten Prayer

I waffled a bit as to whether or not I should post something about my lenten prayers. After all, isn't this supposed to be a time of repentance and humility? And couldn't this be seen as the type of boastful praying on the street corners that Jesus warned us about? But then I got embarrassed and didn't really want to share anyway. So now I am, because now it is an act of self-mortification.

I have recently taken to praying the rosary, tough in a slightly tailored fashion. Instead of saying the Hail Mary on the smaller beads I say the Jesus Prayer and I change the focus of some of the Mysteries (mainly just the last two Glorious Mysteries - I understand that the Catholic veneration of Mary is more nuanced that most people think and I believe we need to rediscover more female heroes of our Faith, but there are still some things I am just not comfortable with). If you are unfamiliar with the rosary and all I'm talking about, here is a good summary of the whole thing.

During Lent the Sorrowful Mysteries are said every day (the agony of Jesus in the garden, Jesus scourged on the pillar, Jesus crowned with thorns, Jesus carries his cross, the crucifixion of Jesus). The other day, while meditating on Jesus being crowned with thorns, I thought about how at this point, when the world was mocking his Lordship, he was more Lord than ever. He was as much Lord then as he is now at the right hand of the Father and as much as he will be at his second coming. At this stage, in this type of humiliation, we see what type of Lord rules the Kingdom we have been called to be a part of. Here, crowned with thorns, is our King; this crown of thorns is indeed a crown. He is a different kind of King, so we are to be a different kind of subjects.

This expanded what had been a pretty self-centered prayer time into the corporate realm. Almost without realizing what I was doing I changed the Christ Prayer on the following beads to "Lord have mercy on us."

Indeed he has.

Just Good Writing...In A Way

You may have already seen these on another blog or in an email, but that is ok. It's no trouble for me to write these things to you again, because they're funny. I'm not too sure how true the story is, but is goes that these were all taken from High School creative writing assignments.

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.



2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.



3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse, without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.



4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.



5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.



6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.



7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.



8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.



9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.



10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.



11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.



12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.



14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.



15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.



16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.



17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.



18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.



19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.



20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work .



21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.



22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.



23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.



24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.



25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.