Battlescar Glorifica

My Lenten reflection for today is on the glorification of the wounds we suffer in this life. I have heard a number of priests say that our scars in this life, both physical and emotional, will not be erased from our glorified bodies at the resurrection but will be glorified themselves and will add to our glory. An analogy (you knew it was coming): I have a rhodalite (low-grade garnet) I was given at a jewelry show, and I decided to have it polished and set in a ring. When it was polished, a flaw that had been hidden in it showed up as a vermilion streak in the middle of the dull purple stone. It looked like a sunset! The jeweler who polished it for me said the flaw made it much more beautiful, and I agree. In the same way, our scars and flaws will transform us from plain old low-grade rhodalites to unique and beautiful jewels.

People often wonder why the Apostles couldn't recognize Jesus after His resurrection until He spoke to them. I would think there is a simple explanation: His body was already glorified, and that certainly included the wounds He had received during His Passion. He was beaten and scourged and pierced by thorns, nails, and a lance. He probably had a glorified black eye or two and a glorified fat lip on top of everything else. If He was that badly beaten, He would have been hard enough to recognize even before glorification! We can't really criticize the Apostles, since we have never seen someone face-to-face in a glorified body, never mind one whose face had been beaten to a pulp before glorification. I for one cannot say if I'd know my own best friend or brother by sight in such a circumstance!

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I Let My Pens Speak for Me

True Adventure: Frosty Fern!

Sorry, no Lenten reflection today either. Instead, let me tell you about Frosty Fern, which is actually a club moss (selaginella krausianna) that I got just before Christmas, when my parents came to visit. We saw them at the grocery store, and my mom and I thought they were just adorable, so we bought one for each other for our birthdays. I have mine at work, but it has been quite an adventure! It was starting to get dried out in spots, so I looked it up online and found they need high humidity and do well in terrariums. So my officemate and I put a vase upside-down over the top of the pot, and at first it looked much, much happier, but then last week my officemate noticed that part of the plant was moldy! GROSS!!! So I cleaned all the mold off of it and found a huge vase I could put it in right side up, where it seems to be reasonably happy. Now it has higher humidity but some air circulation too so hopefully this will be the end of its adventures!

Saturday Anna Bananna II and I went to the health club and I had a medium latte before hitting the treadmill. The good news: I went three miles in only 35 minutes! The bad (?) news: my heart rate was SUPER fast, getting as high as 180 and staying well above 170 for the better part of a half hour. Is this dangerous? Afterwards I felt fine, but my face was bright magenta! Yikes!

Yesterday I talked Rich into going skiing in the tiny amount of snow we'd gotten the night before. We went to a park with a lot of hills, and I kept tumbling over. Rich had a camera with him, so he captured one of these ignoble falls on film. Part of the problem was that there was barely any snow left by then, so we spent half the time on grass and leaves, and part of the probem was that we left the trail. Then we discovered the church a block from his house was having a spaghetti dinner, so we had TWO plates of spaghetti and meatballs and TWO desserts. (They were small desserts.)

OOPS!!

Finally I went home, thinking I'd spend a quiet evening nursing my bruises and washing the mud out of my clothes, and then my brother and sister-in-law called to say they were in town! So we hung out at a restaurant where the waitress recognized me from the bus by my purple velvet bucket hat (so I have TWO famous hats!!), and at one point my brother said to his wife, "I may be a blonde but I'm not THAT dumb!" For some reason I thought he said, "I may be a bong..." so we got a lot of mileage out of that one. Seems like a pleasant life, but I tell you, if I were an inanimate object I'd be a timbale - then I'd have men hitting on me all the time! However, Anna Bananna II has convinced me that being a professional timbale player would not be the best idea because apparently they can get kidney problems from all the muscle damage from hitting their hands so hard! She showed us all (meaning Rich, Kathbert, and me) an article about a drummer whose urine looked like cola! Yuck! Guess I'd rather have functioning kidneys than get to play with a salsa band. Maybe if I took up the trumpet...

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T is Back Up Over!

T is back from Down Under, and she really enjoyed her trip. She fed kangaroos (the "deer of Australia") and saw lorikeets and koalas in the trees. The funniest part of the trip was when she and her cousin saw a street artist in Sydney, who called on her cousin to help him with his act. (Her cousin really stands out in a crowd; he's 6'7", or as he once told a woman who asked his height, 5'19" and she replied in surprise, "Wow, I could have sworn you were over six feet!") The artist asked T's cousin to put him in a strait jacket so he could escape from it, and he reminded him, "Now don't cock this up because it will be my ass on the line. Remember - your cock-up, my ass!" (You might have to say that out loud to get it.) T got really into cricket and "footie," which is something like American football and rugby combined, but she said you can't "root" for your favorite team because that's a naughty expression over there, so you have to "barrack" for them. Also, people ask how you're going instead of how you're doing.

The other night I dreamed that T and I were going to a show on some holiday, like New Year's Eve or something, but my parents were visiting so we had to bring them. To make things even more Freudian, we ran into old Hoodoo Head, whom I have mentioned previously. We went to a nightclub where a rock band was playing, and their final number was a rousing number in Hawaiian with a raucous chorus of nonsense words (No way, ee-whoo) that we all sang along to. There was even a hula dancer! T and I were totally getting into the song, but my parents and Hoodoo Head were bemused by the whole thing, since they didn't know the song and wondered how we knew it so well. I woke up in a WONDERFUL mood and quickly recorded the song on my answering machine while it was still stuck in my head. It doesn't sound familiar, but Siddhartha the Turtle of Enlightenment will sing it for you, and you can tell me if you recognize it.

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The Annunciation (A Day Late)

Yesterday's Lenten reflection, which I didn't think to write until today, is on the Annunciation, when the archangel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would be bearing the Son of God. Think about what God was asking of her: she lived in a culture where an unmarried woman could be stoned for turning up pregnant, so her saying Yes to Gabriel's message wasn't a foregone conclusion at all but an incredibly brave act of agreeing to do God's will, no matter the cost. Mary was willing to risk her life because she believed it was more important to do what God asked of her than to play it safe. This is no exaggeration; even today in the Middle East, women are routinely killed for getting pregnant outside of marriage or even for being raped.

In the Gospel it says Joseph was a righteous man, which meant he could not take an impure woman as his wife, but he was also merciful so he planned to divorce Mary quietly. In a way, he was agreeing to take some of her perceived shame upon himself, since everyone would assume the child was his. We often think of Mary and Joseph as extraordinary people who didn't have second thoughts about doing what God asked of them, but they were humans like us and must have had their doubts and fears. We should remember that when we think of Mary's fiat, that she was risking more than a little embarrassment when she agreed to bear Jesus.

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Bella Bunny

Here is a picture of my coworker's new rabbit, Bella. She is a Holland Lop, just like my Charlie. Holland Lops are known for their small size and sweet dispositions. Just like her name, Bella is a little beauty!

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Render Unto Caesar

Not a real Lenten reflection today, just a continuation of my discussion of coins. When we were children, my brother saw money as something to spend on candy and toys. I, on the other hand, was always fascinated by it for its own aesthetical qualities. I collected dollar bills by their serial numbers and coins that struck my fancy. Below are some "coins" that pose an intresting question: if in the Gospel Jesus said to render coins unto Caesar because they bore his likeness, who would get these coins?


Proteus is pretty straightforward. The next one - the space shuttle? Then a coin collecting club, shamrocks, musical instruments, and angels. Perhaps this is heavenly currency? More likely the silly coin they send along with appeals for money from a Catholic charity...

Below are some actual coins (and some other fake ones) that have no value beyond their face value but I found interesting because of defects and damage they have acquired along the way.

From top left: quarter with smooshed rim, quarter that looks thousands of years old (dated 1940), old and new buffalo nickels, rainbow nickel, rainbow dime, glittery dime, glittery penny, blackened dime and some blackened pennies, folded dime, penny that says "39," penny with so much damage that "Liberty" now looks like "Liberyy," penny smooshed by train, fake Delaware quarter, thing that looks like a quarter with no printing on it, dime that is green on back, token from who knows where (probably a game arcade). Below are the backs of the same coins:

And here is yet another cute cake done by my coworker, the one for her older daughter's birthday this past weekend, as well as some heart cookies she made. (She also decorated the pots.) If being a doctor doesn't pan out, she could definitely get a job in cake decorating!

Side View

Front View

Heart Cookies

And finally, a patch to fight global climate change! Hardingfele put it on her blog and asked me to put it on mine. Since I believe very strongly in fighting global climate change, I was happy to do so. If you have a blog of your own, please feel free to do so as well.

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