Foodie Friday: Go visit these foodie blogs
Today I thought I’d share with you some of my favorite food-related blogs. Go visit these sites and try a recipe or two. You won’t be disappointed: (more…)
Manic Monday: I wish it were Sunday
Here we are at the start of another week. It’s just another Manic Monday…
Soundtrack: Perfect for a Manic Monday, two songs on opposite ends of the emotional spectrum: Good Life by One Republic and Let the Waters Rise by Mikeschair. The latter is a Christian song that I first heard when my Cornerstone sister Lenore used it at our retreat. I just love it, and sometimes it’s a perfect fit for my mood, my day, my journey. I’ve posted it on NSS before. If you’d like to listen, click HERE.
Bookshelf: Still working my way through The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. I’ve got a couple of weeks to go. I’m hanging in there with my daily Morning Pages, and it’s finally starting to become a habit. A good one.
But…I just got a copy of The Artist’s Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom 
and, after reading the introduction, I can’t wait to start this one. I’ve decided to do it right, however. So I’m waiting until I finish the first 12-week book before I dig into the next 12-week book.
I can think of several NSS reader friends who might like this book, so if you’re in the Delmar area and want to get a copy and join me on this journey starting in September, email me and we can get a group thing going. Wouldn’t that be fun?
Blogworthy: Related to the Artist’s Rule, check out author Christine Valter Paintner’s blog and website, Abbey of the Arts, by clicking HERE.
Quotables: “What other people think of me is none of my business.” – Dr. Wayne Dyer (Oh, to be able to believe and live that one.)
Appointment book: We’ve got quite the full slate this week with Noah away at Boy Scout camp, Olivia heading to archery camp, and Chiara taking a camp called Walking the Native American Path. Add in a visit from a friend, family night at Boy Scout camp and two birthday parties on top of everything else and you’ve got one busy summer week.
Viewfinder: Here are a few scenes from the past week…
Vicky, an unbelievably beautiful chestnut mare at Krumkill Stables where Olivia was attending horseback riding camp. There were lots of horses there, but I only had eyes for this one. She looked right through me, like she was peering into my soul.
Check out this wonder of nature. A family of dirt daubers has taken up residence next to our front door. They finished the fourth tube of the nest yesterday. It’s so beautiful I don’t have the heart to get rid of it.
Things that make you go hmmm…You probably can’t read the sign unless you click on the photo to enlarge, but it says: “Construction vehicle. Do not follow.” Not “do not follow within 50 feet” or “do not follow too closely,” just “do not follow.” Well, since it cut me off, I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do. Turn around and go home? Turn right just for the heck of it.? Stop? So I did the next logical thing, I followed and took pictures.
Remembering the power of one small life
For the past few days I’ve been looking at the numbers on the calendar, growing more and more introspective as we inched closer to August 6. It was 13 years ago today that I learned that the baby I was carrying, my second baby, had died 11 weeks into my pregnancy.
With a mother’s intuition, I had known something was wrong during that pregnancy from a couple of weeks before. The day Dennis and I — with Noah in tow — went to the midwife for my regular check up, I didn’t even take the little tape recorder with me to capture the sound of baby’s heartbeat, so convinced was I that I would hear only silence. I went back for the recorder only after Dennis insisted. But somehow I knew. Because when you are a mother sometimes you just know things about your children, even when there is no logical reason you should, even when they are still growing inside you.
When we went for the ultrasound to confirm the miscarriage, we saw the perfect form of our baby up on the screen. I remember Dennis looking so happy, thinking everything was OK after all, and me pointing out that the heart was still. No blinking blip. No more life.
With that same mother’s intuition, no matter how busy or stressed I am, no matter how many other things I seem to forget as I drive my other three children to and fro, I never forget this anniversary. It is imprinted on my heart. As the date nears, I feel a stillness settling in, a quiet place amid the chaos reserved just for this baby, the one I never to got hold, the one I call Grace.
Three years ago, when I posted about this day, I talked about how Grace had shaped our family by her absence rather than her presence. I am very much aware of the fact that life would be very different had she lived. She managed to leave her mark on us, even without taking a breath. She lingers here, not only in my heart but around the edges of our lives — especially the lives of our two girls who followed her. I know them because I did not know Grace. What a sorrowful and yet beautiful impact she had on us.
So thank you, baby, for all that you were and all that you have given us without ever setting foot on this earth. The power of one small life.
Sundials and solstice disks at St. Peter’s
When I went to Rome in September, my watch stopped working on my first day in the Eternal City. My initial reaction was to run out and, through pointing and gestures and lots of “grazies,” try to buy a new one. Then I decided to take the Roman approach and not worry so much about time.
Turns out I never had to worry at all. St. Peter’s Square is equipped with its own sundial, as well as markers to indicate the solstices and even the days when the sun enters various signs of the zodiac.
From a CNS story by Carol Glatz:
Hidden among the paving stones of St. Peter’s Square there is a simple clock and calendar. All you need is a sunny day.
The 83-foot stone obelisk in the middle of the square acts as a sundial that can accurately indicate midday and the two solstices thanks to a granite meridian and marble markers embedded in the square.
Pope Benedict XVI proudly pointed out the hidden timepiece during an Angelus address he gave on the winter solstice a few years ago.
“The great obelisk casts its shadow in a line that runs along the paving stones toward the fountain beneath this window and in these days, the shadow is at its longest of the year,” he told pilgrims from the window of his library.
In fact, at noon on Dec. 21, the obelisk’s shadow falls on the marble disk furthest from the obelisk’s base, while at noon on June 21 — the summer solstice — the tip of the shadow will fall just a few yards from the obelisk. In between are five other disks marking when the sun enters into which sign of the zodiac.
A long, thin granite strip running from the obelisk toward the pope’s window and through one of the fountains acts as the meridian: a line that indicates when the sun has reached true or solar noon and is at its highest point in the sky.
The pope, in his solstice soliloquy, reminded people that the church has always been keenly interested in astronomy to help guide and establish fundamental liturgical days and the times of prayer such as the Angelus, which is recited in the morning, at noon and in the evening. While sunrise and sunset are easy to figure out, sundials could accurately tell midday, he said.
The CNS story also points out that at the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels and Martyrs, Pope Clement XI even had an astronomer build meridians to mark not only the noon hour but to “to make highly accurate celestial observations and solve complex astronomical problems.”
More from the CNS story:
John Heilbron, emeritus professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, told Catholic News Service that St. Mary of the Angels “could do things you couldn’t do with telescopes at the time” like find out precise information about the inclination of the Earth’s axis.
Heilbron, who wrote “The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories,” said the basilica’s meridian was also used “to establish a very good value for the length of the year.”
It’s fascinating stuff. And the facts once again give lie to the argument that the Church is opposed to science. Read the full story HERE.
Foodie Friday: Adding zest to life, or at least to a good salad
I was standing at the counter making a salad the other day when Chiara walked in and asked what I was doing.
“I’m zesting this lemon,” I told her.
“What’s zest?” she asked.
And so I explained how I was taking the very top layer of rind off the lemon without getting any of the bitter white pith underneath.
And then she asked the $64,000 question: “What if someone doesn’t have a zester?” (more…)
