St. Jerome

Today is the feast of the great Doctor of the Church, St. Jerome.  Known for being the translator of the Bible, St. Jerome may be just as famous for his irascible temperament.  There's something about the pure humanity of that personality trait that makes him particularly lovable to many of us.  We grab hold of the faults of the saints with jealous hope for ourselves.

 I've been known to have a tad bit of a temper myself... (Ask anyone.) So, yeah.  I feel a comfortable companionship with a saint with the same problem.  Our William, also a little man of extremes, has adopted St. Jerome as his patron in crankiness, too. But we can't use our shared weaknesses as an excuse.

The remarkable fact of Jerome's bad temper is that he managed to overcome it.

Years of prayer, study, and solitude -- and the sheer will to be mild-mannered for love of Christ -- tamed the lion, St. Jerome.  It's possible for all of us to do the same. The saints weren't born holy, they willed to be holy -- they worked and prayed for it.  No matter the bad tendency, we can all do the same. We just have to want it badly enough.

In my iconography (if I became a saint), I'd have a tame lion by my side (for temper) a canary on my shoulder (for flightiness), and a turtle running on a hamster wheel (for laziness).

St. Jerome by Fra Filippo

Intercede for us, please, good St. Jerome.  Help us to will to overcome our faults, to be sorry for our sins, and most of all to love God with the great love that you learned to have.

* For links to more history, traditions, and coloring pages for the day, go here.
* The children's assignment for today was to choose symbols for their own iconography, showing 1) what chief fault they had to overcome (like St. Jerome's lion for temper), 2) what God-given talent they would need to develop for God's glory (signified by St. Jerome's book), and 3) one other symbol of circumstance or action that would pinpoint them in history or habit (like St. Jerome's cell in the desert).  What would be your iconography?  It's an interesting meditation!

But, now for something a little quirky and off the wall...  

Does anyone out there recall Dion DiMucci, the 1950s singer of The Wanderer?  Confronted with his mortality after the death of Buddy Holly (story is he actually turned down a seat on that fated flight), DiMucci found religion in the '60s, and after a couple decades of serious Bible study, he found all roads led to the Catholic Church, converting to the faith in the '90s.  Since his Catholic roots are uniquely twined through the pages of the Bible, it's a no-brainer that DiMucci is a particular fan of our St. Jerome.  He penned the following blues ode in honor of today's patron.

Not to be confused with Sousa's The Thunderer...


* And here's a little something even quirkier...  St. Jerome would faint -- but, in the interest of full disclosure (and because something about the absurdity of it tickles me),  here's the line dance tutorial for "The Thunderer"

The Feast of Michaelmas!

"Who is like unto God?!"
St. Michael statue at unknown location

At Castel San Michel, Rome, Italy

In Kiev, Russia

At the Church of St. Michael, St. Michael, Minnesota, USA
(Still trying to verify this location for sure, though)

At Hauptkirche Sankt Michaelis, in Hamburg Germany

At Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, Ireland

Basilica Santa Maria de Guadalupe, Mexico City, Mexico

On the Boulevard San Michel in Paris, France

He's everywhere, our St. Michael, the guardian of the Church, the protector of the Blessed Sacrament, our defense against the devil, his wiles and disguises.  Through the ages of the church, the Faithful have recognized his power, honoring him in statues and art, hymns and prayers.  In this day, in particular, when the Church labors so piteously under the assaults of the devil - through the heresy of modernism, the general acceptance of impurity and impiety to the rise of Islam in all its horrors throughout the world, we have to remember, more than ever, to call upon St. Michael.  Through his strength and the intercession of the Blessed Mother, we can recognize the devil and defeat him.

For coloring pages and lots of links, history, prayers, and traditions for the day, you can run over here.

But just for this post today -- here's a little tidbit I don't think I've shared before:

*  In 1817 Pope Pius VII granted an indulgence of 200 days once a day for saying the hymn, Te Splendor (including antiphon and prayer) with a contrite heart and devotion, in honor of St. Michael the Archangel in order to obtain his patronage and protection against the assaults of the enemy of man. He also provided a plenary indulgence for saying the hymn every day for a month together, after Confession and Communion, and praying for the intention of the pope.

Here's the English translation:

Te Splendor

O Jesu, lifespring of the soul,
The Father’s power, and glory bright!
Thee with the angels we extol;
From Thee they draw their life and light.

Thy thousand thousand hosts are spread
Embattled o‘er the azure sky;
But Michael bears Thy standard dread,
And lifts the mighty cries on high.

He in that sign the rebel powers
Did with their dragon prince expel;
And hurl’d them from the heaven’s high towers
Down like a thunderbolt to hell.

Grant us with Michael still, O Lord,
Against the Prince of Pride to fight;
So may a crown be our reward,
Before the Lamb’s pure throne of light.

To God the Father glory be,
And to his sole-begotten Son;
The same, O Holy Ghost, to Thee,
While everlasting ages run.

Ant. Most glorious Prince, Michael the Archangel, be thou mindful of us; here, and in all places, pray for us to the Son of God most high.

V. I wilt sing praises to Thee, my God, before the Angels.
R. I will adore Thee in Thy holy temple, and praise Thy Name.

Let us pray.
O God, who in the dispensation of Thy providence dost admirably dispose the ministry of angels and of men; mercifully grant that the Holy Angels, who ever minister before Thy throne in heaven, may be the protectors also of our life on earth. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

A Tour of the "Back Ten"

Our Tour Guide Today:  Gabriel

First, you have to go around the well...

 (Slap a mosquito.)

It's always good to prime the pump and get some water going once in a while. (Which means every time you pass by it if you're nine years old...)

Now come this way, past the old well cottage and the old boats.  I want a boat like this some day.  Now just follow me, Mommy.  I cleared this path a couple days ago.

Except this is one place I didn't get cleared.  Don't worry, Mommy.  There's only a little stinging nettle.

And here we are at the creek.  Only it's mostly dry now since it hasn't been raining.  You can just jump right down in here now and not worry about falling in. You don't want to jump down?  Well, you can just walk on top over there if you want to.

(Thanks, Gabe.  I appreciate that.)

This way now to the neat part.

Is this the neat part, Gabe?
Yep.  Pretty much.  Look how cool these roots are to climb on, Mommy!

Cheese.
(Now can we keep going?)

We like to climb back up right here.

(Slap a mosquito.)

Here's our neighbor's corn field.

And here's a good patch of Stinging Nettle.
(Slap a mosquito.)

Here's "Rosie," what you can see of her...

(You guys don't mess around with Miss Ann's trucks and cars,* do you?  You'd better not.  I'm talkin' spiders and snakes.  And snakes and spiders...)

Yeah, yeah, we know that, Mommy.  We don't go around them.
 Follow us through here now...  and under here...  and, are you still there?  VOILA!

THIS is the best part!

In little boy world, it's right up there, anyway.  Dominic and the girls helped the little boys build this the other day.  You know what it's used for, don't you?

I had some crazy idea when I first saw the kids building it that this was the makings of a sweet little Irish-looking stone wall to line the driveway up to the house...  

Silly me.

More Outside Later...

* Miss Ann is our very awesome landlady, a superwoman car mechanic (who looks like a very petite June Allyson) who collects cars, antique and otherwise, to rebuild.  She has them parked here and there throughout the property.  Boats, too.  And antique car diagnostic equipment.  And, you just never know what else....  Makes for interesting hikes around here!

How Things Are Shaping Up

Inside

If you've got a minute or two, I'll give you the mini tour...

Here we have Dominic, doing one of many things he does best.  First, he put the white board up for us yesterday, then he decorated it with one of our favorite faces...

 (There's Theresa there, too... Another favorite face.  ;)

***

Behind Dominic working at the white board, you can see the wonderful kitchen island.  A lot of the day happens right here. The rest of the kitchen is all set up, fully functioning, and somewhat small, maybe, but convenient and very homey.  You can see Theresa at the computer behind onion-chopping Cathy there; the printer is finally hooked up so my piano maven can print out some music, but there's no internet on that computer yet.  Not a biggie, since I have it on my laptop (Deo Gratias for small favors!), so the kitchen computer is working chiefly for school work.  Among other things, the children's daily math gets done right here.

***

Don't you love this now? The lovely bowed window over the kitchen sink? It's awesome. We can't get enough of  the views out our kitchen windows!  You can just see the structure of the old windmill through this one. See it?  The working hand pump is just beneath it there on the other side of the car.

***

And here, to the right of the window and just the other side of the stove, we have the pantry.  It's definitely smaller than some we've had, but it's very convenient, and we're making it do nicely. 

***

Right around the corner from the kitchen now... We've set up a little school corner in the dining room.  This room is the center of the house; the big ole table is in here and the correspondingly big ole wood stove, and not much else.  There's a little tiny bit of space of bookshelves, but that's it.  We're still working on this area.  See that weird yellow stripe behind the pinecone wreath?  We don't know what that's all about.  At some point, we plan to paint this room a warm subtle yellow -- with no stripes.

***

Look this way now, just across the room from the little bookcase on the other side of the laundry room door...  I need some small shelving here, I think, to store more of our daily school supplies.  This is where we'll do our "together stuff," when we're not crowded around the island in the kitchen doing it.  (Seems like that's where it wants to get done lately...)  Still working on this corner, too.

***

Kitty-corner from the globe and skeleton...  Can't have autumn without these guys.  They're tucked in the far corner of the dining room, between the boys' bedroom door and the doorway to the 'master suite,' which contains our room and a small full bath. There are six doorways off of this central space and these are just two of them!  The kitchen and living room enter into this room, as well as the laundry room, June's bedroom, and these two doorways.  This dining room is Grand Central Station!

***

Here's the one good-sized bookcase we've been able to fit in this house.  It stands on the dining room wall next to the entryway to the living room. You can see only a small sampling of our books have made it in so far.  We still have some bookbins to go through (to say the least); since our shelf space is so limited here, we have to be really picky!  Pictures and pumpkins are holding the books' places until we decide what we want to bring in from storage. (Oh, and there you have William in his raggedy old pirate pants.)

***

Here's the wood stove.  We're hopeful that it'll provide the majority of our heat this winter.  We're in the market now for a new chainsaw to add to the wood in the woodshed to make that possible.

***

And the dining room table, of course.  (Weird how all the electrical outlets in this house are waist-high, isn't it?  We're not sure why this is...)

***

And the last corner of the dining room to share... This is opposite the school shelves, between June's door and the entryway to the living room, where we'll keep the little statue of Our Blessed Mother.   We're still working on how we want this to look; she needs a new pedestal, for one thing, and that electrical outlet is sure an eyesore. (We've got to figure out a way to hide that...) The bigger statue, unfortunately, just won't fit in this small house, but we'll make a place for it most likely in the summer kitchen.

***

Now we come to the living room.  When we first saw the two bright yellow (happy face) walls, we blanched, deciding immediately that they would have to be painted. But adding furniture has seemed to tone the color down a bit, and it's actually rather grown on us.  We may repaint it a slightly lighter yellow later, but for now, it actually kinda makes us happy.  It goes really well with the fall decor!  Check out Moon Man there, holding his candles in the window.  And the chess set is up and ready to be used!

*** 

Here are the Chenoweth Crows (not a Halloween decoration so much as that they're on my family crest, doncha know). They're checking out the view in the window over the new couch.

***

The venerable old green cabinet works nicely in this house.  All our school books are behind these doors, as well as our DVD collection.  The cabinet over there on the other side conceals our VHS tapes.  Dan just bought us a new VCR so we can watch them all again!

***

On top of the VCR cabinet, we've set up our little autumn village.  We're still working on it, though, and plan to add a branch with handmade autumn leaves and a big smiley moon to the picture before we're finished with the whole scene...

***

And on the other long wall is our piano -- sometimes known as "Jeremy's Piano," since he was the seminarian we thank for helping us get it.  We found it for $50 on Craigslist, and thinking it was too good a deal to be true, it was only with his certified piano tuner's OK that we felt comfortable even going to look at it.  At the end of the big moving day, we took Jeremy and the empty moving truck with us to go check it out, and providentially, this little piano turned out to be perfect in every way!  It's just the right size and by all accounts plays especially well.  Our statue of Mater Dei rests, at least for the time being, on top of the piano, with Frater Philip's painting of Bag End hanging above it on a convenient nail.  We're planning to work on this whole wall, though, over time.  I think we'll put a shelf over the piano for our statue, which will make space to put a piano light on the piano -- and I expect there will be some switching out of art before we decide how to arrange the rest of the wall.  Time will tell how it all ends up.

Next:  How Things Are Shaping Up: Outside

A Dog and Her Boy

Make her smile, William.

 "Come on, Penny!  Smile!"

"Now's not the time for kissing!"

"Good girl, Penny.  Are you smiling?
 Did you get that, Mommy?"

"Cheese? Say Cheese?"

(How about Braunschweiger?)

OK. One more little smile for the road.

See y'all later!

Rainy Day Rambling

The picture here at home this afternoon: 

It's raining outside again.  We're not as giddy about the rain as we were when we first arrived in Nebraska, but after a lifetime in arid Colorado and 40 weeks in desert Las Vegas, it's possible we'll always appreciate it more than most. It smells so good, for one thing -- and you can practically hear the earth slurping it up.  We're all just sitting around now, smelling and listening....  because, honestly, after a couple weeks of unbridled romping and climbing and exploring outdoors (and unpacking and cleaning and organizing indoors), we're happy to have a rainy day excuse to vege out a little bit.

So, for posterity -- this is us, vegging: 

I'm tucked into my favorite recliner with my computer, of course, and all the children are somewhere within my line of vision, except Anna, and  I'm not sure where she is -- probably snuggled upstairs somewhere, writing on her book. Gabriel passes by every once in a while; he's looking for a notebook to catalogue the fish he plans to catch as soon as he gets a new fishing pole. Cathy is making quiet sounds in the kitchen, getting ready to bake another apple pie. Theresa is here with me in the living room, playing a medley on the piano -- themes from The Village, Pride and Prejudice, and the Lord of the Rings to start out.  The floor behind her (and in front of me) is an ocean for William and his battleships filled with little men.  He likes to play to the soundtracks, but pauses now, as the melody shifts to the theme from To Kill a Mockingbird.  

It seems everyone stops what they're doing when Theresa plays this tune.  I think the memory of it passed down through my DNA to my children; they seem to know, like I do, that this music plays our ancestry and the culture of my southern childhood. I guess maybe I've told them so, more or less with words. But even without the personal history, the melody suits the autumn season; the house even seems to recognize it and pauses to listen.

The notes follow the leaves trickling down with the rain outside the window right now. It all reminds me of southern things: the music, the smell of apple pie, the rain, the trees...  Even though we're only one state away from our old Rocky Mountain home,  half the time I can imagine I'm at my grandparents' house in North Carolina.  So much is more reminiscent of the south than of the west here.  Funny, for instance, how the progress of the season so far seems different in Nebraska than what we knew in Colorado.  Autumn happened all of a sudden back there: one day it was summer, the next day it was fall, and then BAM! Winter.  But here is more like what I remember from my childhood in the southeast. It's all a little more slow and genteel, the change of the season. For instance, the trees towering around our house are still mostly cloaked in green this 23rd of September, only changing bit by little bit, a patch here, a patch there. It's an unhurried process, this Nebraskan burnishing of golds and reds; it daily changes the view out of every window of the house, but only minutely so far.  It's like "I Spy," looking for new fall leaves every day, but even as we enjoy the game, we're a little sorry knowing we'll watch the fall landscape keep on changing until it fades into browns and greys and the trees are stark and bare.  ==sigh==  And then winter.  More like a whimper and a sigh than BAM!

At least when the leaves are all gone, we'll be better able to track the movement of the squirrel families on the property. I loved doing that when I was a little girl.  But my children have never lived anywhere that there were squirrels!  Strange, I know, but true.  The little boys are atwitter with excitement about the squirrels, though, let me tell you.  I was studying Catechism with William on the front porch the other day, when I noticed him lose attention; his eyes focused over my shoulder, instead of on his book.   And then suddenly, "Squirrel!" he shouted, pointing toward the branches.  You know, just like that dog in "UP"... ? Yes, indeed.  We don't study on the porch any more.

But, back to the cozy living room.  Theresa is finishing up the last notes of the theme of To Kill a Mockingbird now. I wish you could have heard it. (Maybe I'll film it sometime soon so you can.)  This music was just right for today, though, with its themes of  nostalgia and change -- the bittersweet loss of innocence and old ways, mixed with the hopeful expectation of good things to come. Just right for us at this juncture of our lives. We've come through a lot in the last few years, through so many disappointments, so many moves and changes...  It's been difficult in a lot of ways.  We miss our far-away family and friends and we miss the old way of living in the familiar old places, but  it's all good; we're glad to be here now. We have a feeling that God hand-picked this place for us, and that this is exactly where we're supposed to be. Underneath the rain- soaked old trees, listening to beautiful music, waiting for pie to come out of the oven.  I hope I can somehow find a way to deserve all my blessings.