Mulberries and whatnot
It turns out there are quite a few red mulberry trees in the yard, all of them female, and thus bearing fruit. What is equally certain is that the wildlife has known about this for much longer than me. Never having seen any mulberries on them, I had assumed they were male trees. Nope. They're just getting picked completely clean. I did a bit of research and it seems that they propagate pretty well by cutting, so I may give that a shot later in the summer.
The blackberry brambles are also blooming like crazy now. They should be spectacular by late June. Hopefully the birds will be too full of mulberries to care.
A Baltimore Oriole stopped by the feeder out front, just long enough for me to get a look before moving on. I stuck a sliced orange out there to see if he'd come back, but nothing so far. Here I thought the Indigo Bunting that hung around one day was going to be the high point, but no! The hummingbirds have also begun staking out the feeders in the front and the back. Begun, the nectar wars have.
Still nothing in the swarm traps, but it's early yet. The weather's been on the coolish/dampish side the last week or two and the clover is just starting to bloom hard, so maybe another few weeks to go.
Charisms
Last night's Mystagogy session explored charisms. I was frankly a little nervous - so many lists! and tongues? Yikes.
In the end it went very well and I got several requests for the slides afterward. Glad to oblige. We closed with a prayer by St. Catherine of Siena, which led us to a short discussion about the Dominican Tertiaries and other third orders. It turned out we had a Tertiary in our midst. She spoke at length, and it was really neat stuff.
The presentation wound up with a look at charisms and how they might manifest in concrete, down-to-earth ways. You might look at something like Tongues and decide it's just a bridge too far, but if you've found yourself drawn to being a Lector, or have a natural gift for the written or spoken word...well...you might have a charism! Find yourself engaged in social justice works, letter-writing campaigns, and the like? Maybe you have the Prophetic charism. We turn out to be more charismatic than we think.
Next week is Prayer Life, a personal favorite.
In other news, I'm slowly assembling backpacking gear for a potential trip this fall, just the two of us. I haven't been backpacking since high school, and our attempts to camp with bunch of little ones left very little time for relaxation. Having rediscovered the joys of hiking this seemed like a good next step.
Currently reading: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer 📚
Grand news!
So I guess the big news first: we're to be grandparents! Our daughter and son-in-law gave us the news just the other day and we had to sit on it for a bit longer, but now it's all out in the open! Neither of us feel old enough to be a grandparents. And there are still kids here at home! Just as we feared expected! Still, we're over the moon. This kid is going to come into a family with eleventy uncles and aunts (on both sides) and who-knows-how-many cousins when it's all said and done. Further reports as events warrant.
We finished The Woman in the Window; neither of us liked it very much but we were determined to see how the story finished up. When it finally ended, our mutual reaction was "well...that was certainly a thing."
By contrast, I am still very much loving How to Read the Water. I go to sleep at night dreaming of ripples, streams, waves, and bays. I also recently received Volume 2 of Emergence Magazine. I try to follow them online but much of the writing demands a level of attention from me that only a physical copy can provide. I've only gotten through the first couple of pieces in it, but will be ordering Volume 1 as soon as it's back in stock.
My employer has declared tomorrow to be a wellness holiday for all employees and I intend to do a bit of hiking if the weather permits. As it happens, the trail I'm thinking about tracks closely along a lake so I figure my eyes will be on the water for most of it.
I'm in the midst of the Mystagogy period for our recently-received and it seems to be going well. I attempted to do this all remotely last year but attendance dropped off pretty badly after the first session. Zoom fatigue, I imagine. There's a good number of folks who've turned out for these first few post-Easter sessions and the energy they bring comes right back to me so we're having a good go of it. This past session was on the laity, and our threefold vocation as priests, prophets, and kings. We focused in particular on the lay apostolate, which will dovetail nicely into next week's session on charisms. Pivoting from learning to living seems like it ought to be fairly straightforward but after a long period of preparation (several years in some cases) and the rush and emotion of the Vigil, the week or two afterward might feel like something of a letdown.
Well, now what?
They are not at all displeased to hear they - all of us actually - are still very much at the beginning. Yes, reception creates a demarcation point, but now it's salt-and-leaven time with a new understanding of things, new graces, and new knowledge.
In other news I got cajoled into joining the new-ish youth program at our parish and attempt to moderate small group discussions...with seventh-grade boys...on the virtues.
Saint John Bosco, pray for me!
I kid, but only a little. There is, to be sure, a fair amount of goofing around - but most of them are well-catechized and we get really good discussions. They also come up with some very interesting questions. Last night's session was on the need to forgive our enemies. One of our priests teed off the evening: love - as an act of the will - does not depend on sentiment or emotion. I wanted to use this a leverage point in our discussion. You might not ever come to like someone, especially someone who has hurt you and never apologized, but you can still choose to will their good just as God does. Forgiving them down the road may be more about letting them out of your head more than anything like reconciliation. This, I thought, might make the concept of forgiving one's enemies a little easier for them to get their heads around.
Instead, one of them asked if we could (or had to) forgive someone after we died. Even say, our own killer. Luckily for me, Father was roaming the groups at that time and took that one for me. This, in turn led to more Last Things questions and a bunch of our time got eaten up, which was fine. By then I was starting to lose the small bit attention they were giving me.
Gardenwise, the beds are in and mostly planted: tomatoes, peppers, and spaghetti squash. I need to order a little more fill for one of them and we'll plant some cucumbers. The final bed will probably be a mish-mash of these leftover flower seeds I have. We'll turn over one of the beds in late summer and use it for garlic, which we'll harvest next spring. The pots out front are full of herbs and the older apple trees are tantalizingly full of little bitty apples. Here's hoping enough are spared for a harvest!
It’s raining today so I’m building the raised beds in the garage. They’ll eventually be moved outside of course. Daisy is here keeping me safe from the rain, FedEx, Amazon, and UPS.
Currently reading: How to Read Water: Clues and Patterns from Puddles to the Sea by Gooley, Tristan 📚. Picked this up, along with Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer on a recent road trip which included a stop in Savannah, Georgia. I love hitting indie bookstores when traveling, and find myself gravitating to the nature and regional sections every time. We started an audiobook on the trip and have had to re-borrow it from the library so we can finish it: The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn.
It’s nice to take a break from theology for a bit. We tried one of the Brother Cadfael mysteries (we’re on something of a mystery-genre jag right now) but it was a little tough to follow in audio format. Will definitely be looking into them in hard-copy at some point.
Got the grape trellises in. I’ll do the wire tomorrow and maybe plant the pair of vines on Sunday. It’s going to have to wait until after I get back from an overnight camping thing with the youth group. On deck after that are the elderberry cuttings, a replacement climbing rose, and the long-delayed raised-bed rebuild.
Expanding our orchard! Today we picked up a pair of Arkansas Black apple trees, along with a Cortland for pollination. Also grabbed a Keiffer pear to replace the one we lost a few years ago. Finally, a pair of muscadine grapevines: ‘Tara Bronze’ and ‘Triumph.’
I’ve wanted to try grapes for awhile now, so it’s high time to dive right in. Lot of holes to dig tomorrow.
Currently reading: Purgatorio by Dante Alighieri 📚
For the perpetual excuse
of Adam for his fall — “My little Eve,
God bless her, did beguile me and I ate,”
For his insistence on a nurse,
All service, breast, and lap, for giving Fate
Feminine gender to make girls believe
That they can save him, you must now atone,
Joseph, in silence and alone;
While she who loves you makes you shake with fright,
Your love for her must tuck you up and kiss good night.
— Auden
Here’s how we can be more like St. Joseph, whose solemnity we celebrate today.
- Pray a lot.
- Don’t say much.
- Go where you’re told — and stay there until told otherwise.
Books: dug out a collection of short stories I haven’t touched since college - Stories of the Old South, edited by Ben Forkner and Patrick Samway, SJ. Last night I read “Athénaïse” by Kate Chopin. I could have sworn I read The Awakening at some point along the way, but I’m looking at plot summaries and I’m either mistaken or I’ve forgotten every bit of it. In either case, I want to read more of her work.
Still working my way through Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth and trying to get caught up on all the magazines which have landed.
Dick Hoyt, RIP
Dick Hoyt, who inspired thousands of runners, fathers and disabled athletes by pushing his son, Rick, in a wheelchair in dozens of Boston Marathons and hundreds of other races, has died, a member of the family said Wednesday.
He was 80.
I'm a runner and have been on and off since high-school. I got into it because my father was a runner. Never serious, no events or anything like that. It was just something to do. I drifted away from it and came back in the years since then. An idiotic accident at home wrecked one of my ankles and I was told that impact-stuff like running was basically off the menu for me. At about the same time, I became aware of some middle-aged doughiness so I took up cycling. I loved it and built up to a couple of century rides. Then my wife started running, then we both started cycling together, and then we settled on just running, so that's what we do. The ankle seems to have healed over the years and other than a slight shortening of my stride, the effects are minimal.
We're fortunate to have a beautiful greenway trail system nearby, which lets us run along the local river without having to worry about cars. We've each done a couple of half-marathons and have settled into a nearly-year-round habit. For me, it amounts to 10 miles/week. This seems to be enough to keep the my endorphins going, heart healthy, and weight in check.
I can't say I love 100% of every run while I'm doing it. Some are better than others and I feel like I could go all day. Others are a fight for every step. I always like the way it feels to be done with a run. I say all that to say this: I have, occasionally, wondered what it would be like to complete a full triathlon. I know men my age (I just turned 50) who have done it, so I have a passing familiarity with the training regimen, and that's where it stops for me. I don't have the time, and even if I did, I'm not sure my joints could take it. So I balk at the training.
Dick Hoyt completed 6 full Ironmans, 234 other triathlons, and 67 marathons. Oh and he also ran/biked across the US.
And all of these while pushing and pulling his son Rick, who is quadriplegic and has cerebral palsy. He'd push him on a wheelchair, pull him in a raft for the swim, then sit him on a two-seater bike.
His son, who doctors insisted should be institutionalized - "he'll be a vegetable for life," but who went on to attend public school and graduate from Boston University.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace.
Currently reading: Stories of the Old South by Ben Forkner 📚
Liliana Porter
The Frist Museum here in town is hosting Picasso: Figures, showcasing all of the wonderful (and weird) ways that Picasso portrayed the human form over his career.
Upstairs, visitors can find Man with Axe and Other Stories by Liliana Porter. If you've ever looked at the I Spy books with your kids, it will be right up your alley.
The Porter work was wonderful stuff; these two detail shots really don't do it justice in terms of scale.
Keeping the World in Being
I’m attracted to Cassian’s writings and the work of other early monastics because they reveal parallels between the era of the desert fathers and our own; they, too, lived during a time when the known world was coming unhinged. In 313 CE, when the Roman emperor Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, thereby marking the beginning of Christendom, men and women of conscience knew that the wedding of church and state was not a betrothal: it was a betrayal. The early anchorites withdrew from this arranged marriage because they knew that Christendom could no longer sustain their inner lives, that civilization had in fact gone mad. They left the cities and withdrew to the Egyptian desert, where the vastness of their spiritual hunger could be met by an equally vast landscape.
From Keeping the World in Being: Meditations on Longing, by Fred Bahnson. This is a wonderful a piece which resonated deeply with me after this long, eremetical year. I sought the desert fathers frequently in recent months and found, especially in the Conferences and Institutes deep wisdom well-suited to this enclosure-of-circumstance.
