Daily Archives: April 9, 2012

PaInting a Day 134

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This blog is simply an exercise in self-expression which has been yearning for an outlet for some time. It’s called TiPSI Mom because I’m joining my husband (the TiPSI Dad) in blogging about being a family of Two Parents on a Single Income raising seven kids.

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PaInting a Day 134

Easter Monday – Lundi de Paques

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Dieu qui agrandis toujours ton Église en lui donnant par le baptême de nouveaux enfants, accorde a tes fils d’être fidèles toute leur vie au sacrement qu’ils ont reçu dans la foi. Par Jésus Christ… Amen.

* * * * * *

O God, who give constant increase to your Church by new offspring, grant that your servants may hold fast in their lives to the Sacrament they have received in faith. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Resurrection, High Altar, Notre Dame Cathedral Basilica, Ottawa

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Easter Monday – Lundi de Paques

Catholicism is for the birds

Easter Monday already. With Lent and Triduum behind we move into the Octave of Easter and with the Resurrection

done

it’s hard not to think a lot about the Return.

No man knows the day or the hour of our Risen Christ’s return. I didn’t make that up myself. We do need to be alert and sober and like the wise virgins of St. Matthew’s gospel (25:1-13) keep the lanterns of faith and reason trimmed with the light of Christ burning. Their certain hope, their virtue was not in their faithful physical chastity but in their chastity to the person of the bridegroom Jesus Christ as evidence in their thoughtful preparations. The foolish virgins were indeed virgins but their intentions misplaced and the object of their hope misguided.

While no man knows the day or the hour of our Risen Lord’s return we do not need to live in fear of the end, indeed St. Paul tells us that we have not been again given a spirit of fear but of power, of love and of a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7).

Every time we make a good Confession we prepare for the return of the King. Each time we receive Holy Communion in a state of grace we make room in our being for the certain return of Christ our King. The sacraments of the Church, Her historic teachings including sacred Scripture are how I prepare for the Four Last Things (CCC 1020-1041).

The days of being moved by every wind and wave of doctrine and novel idea propped up by individual interpretation of the sacred Scriptures are for me (if you get this, feel the irony) left-behind with my conversion from Protestantism to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.

First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. – 2 Peter 1:20-21



What Christ entrusted to the apostles, they in turn handed on by their preaching and writing, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to all generations, until Christ returns in glory. “Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God” (DV 10) in which, as in a mirror, the pilgrim Church contemplates God, the source of all her riches. “The Church, in her doctrine, life and worship, perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes” (DV 8 # 1). Thanks to its supernatural sense of faith, the People of God as a whole never ceases to welcome, to penetrate more deeply and to live more fully from the gift of divine Revelation. The task of interpreting the Word of God authentically has been entrusted solely to the Magisterium of the Church, that is, to the Pope and to the bishops in communion with him. – Catechism of the Catholic Church 96-100

This is my hope in Christ and I dare not trade it in for another other passion or teaching, including those of Catholics who approach their understanding of the ‘end times’ from a Protestant, sola-scriptura position rather than from the historic, dogmatic and doctrinal position of the Christian Church, namely the living Magesterium of the Catholic Church (which includes the sacred Scriptures) whose authority is given by Jesus Christ and is exercised in his name.

Lord, hear my prayer and keep me close to You and by your Spirit help my keep my lamp trimmed and burning then, with the birds of the air, in confidence and actual peace may I make your blessings known.

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Catholicism is for the birds

Easter in Marysville

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Easter in Marysville

NDP Leader Full of Cheese

We now know that NDP leader Thomas Mulcair has joint nationality, a French passport, and has voted in French elections. I was born in Britain, and left when I was 27. But I make my living and live in Canada. So I only have a Canadian passport, and I wouldn’t dream of voting in Britain. It would be disloyal to Canada, and unfair to assume that I should have an influence on British politics. And I don’t aspire to be Canadian Prime Minister! Can you imagine for a moment what would have happened if Stephen Harper had been revealed to hold dual nationality, have a foreign passport, and have voted in foreign elections? It would have been from page news on the newspapers, and the subject of endless CBC investigations.

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NDP Leader Full of Cheese

Is an Obama Dictatorship in the Air? Predictions on the future of America.

Robert J. Ringer posted this piece today, basically affirming everything i have been saying since Obama first surfaced as a presidential contender. He has also reached the same conclusion i did: Any gambit to impose martial law in response to a manufactured crisis (read: Occupy, New Black Panther Party, nation of Islam, or any number of communist organization the Organizer in chief has cobbled together) will come down to whether American troops will take marching orders from Obama to foire on the people, or whether they will stand with the people. I believe the military would choose the latter course of action.

Is an Obama Dictatorship in the Air? Predictions on the Future of America
By Robert Ringer – Monday, April 9, 2012

Longtime readers will recall that I began warning about Barack Obama’s dictatorial ambitions before he even won the 2008 presidential election. Now, finally, more people are beginning to take this possibility as a serious threat.

Obama’s recent contention that it would be “unprecedented” for the Supreme Court to overrule congressional legislation had dictatorship written all over it. It was, quite obviously, an ignorant slip on his part.

Rather than lashing out with absurd statements like this, the Marxmeister does much better when he follows the far-left playbook and innocently feigns indignation over anything that isn’t to his liking. Or when he isolates and vilifies his natural enemies — primarily Republicans, the “rich,” and Tea Partiers.

Targeting the Supreme Court showed a lack of self-discipline in adhering to his well-planned stealth-Marxism strategy. His angry, careless remark must have given chest pains to cheerleading, brainless Obamaviks everywhere. I hear through the grapevine that even the Wicked Witch of Kansas, Kathleen Sebelius, uncontrollably blurted out, “You idiot!”

Then there’s poor Jay Carney, who appeared to be on the verge of breaking into tears while playing with his pacifier and trying to find a way to spin BHO’s idiotic misstatement. How in the world did Obama expect someone who looks sixteen years old and talks like he’s fourteen to convince the press that his boss, who supposedly taught constitutional law, was just kidding about the Supreme Court’s not having the power to overturn legislation it deems to be unconstitutional?

I will say yet again what I have been saying for more than three years: If polls indicate that Obama is going to win the upcoming election, no problem. He’ll keep flashing that fake Barry Obama grin until November 7, then move swiftly to begin unleashing a dictatorial full monty — consisting of more regulations, higher taxes, and less freedom — that will overwhelm all but his staunchest Marxist allies.

Nothing will be off limits — a national police force, instant citizenship for all third-world people who want to come to America (especially those with criminal records), forced equalization of income (except for Obama’s wealthy supporters), widespread use of tax-audits to carry out vendettas against enemies of his administration, a virtual end to oil drilling, coal mining, and gas exploration, suspension of habeas corpus, a new sedition act that will make it a crime to speak out against the government, the police, or the military … and much, much more.

On the other hand, two or three months before the election, if the polls clearly show that Obama is going to go down in defeat, I believe there’s better than a 50-50 chance of a major “emergency” magically making its appearance, convincingly manufactured in such a way as to cause the average entitlement junkie to agree that we must rally around the president and “postpone” the November elections.

Left-wing Democratic Governor Beverly Perdue of North Carolina, who is likely headed for defeat in 2012, sent up a trial balloon on this very issue last September when she said:

I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them — whatever decisions they make — to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that. You want people who don’t worry about the next election.

And during a speech in Las Vegas, Obama, railing on about the woeful economy he inherited, said that “we can’t wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do its job. Where they won’t act, I will.” That was no trial balloon. It was a clear message about his dictatorial intentions in his second term.

Americans who find it difficult to break free of their normalcy bias should think about F. A. Hayek’s explanation, in The Road to Serfdom, of how countries travel the road leading from democracy to dictatorship:

Hitler did not have to destroy democracy; he merely took advantage of the decay of democracy and at the critical moment obtained the support of many to whom, though they detested Hitler, he yet seemed the only man strong enough to get things done.

Likewise, notwithstanding his cunning and cleverness, Chairman Obama didn’t walk into a finely tuned republic and reduce it to a redistribution-of-wealth democracy overnight. The reason he and his left-wing cronies have been able to violate the Constitution as though it didn’t exist is that they are merely taking advantage of the decay of our republic into a democracy — and the subsequent decay of our democracy — that was already present when they came to power.

The Founding Fathers realized that a democracy is but a pretense for tyranny of the majority. And so did Winston Churchill, more than a century-and-a-half later, when he described it as “the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.”

Like all democracies before it, our democracy has destroyed itself through an excess of democracy. Majority rule has evolved into a free‑for‑all stampede of citizens appealing to politicians to give them more and more of the plunder. And there is never a shortage of vile human beings who are willing to resort to meaningless slogans like “hope and change” to win over the mindless masses.

In his book Keeping the Republic, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels brings the reader face to face with reality:

History teaches us that all national greatness is temporary. Every great civilization — from the Roman Empire to the British Empire — has eventually collapsed. Americans have grown complacent in their position of dominance, but the term “the American Century” suggests how relatively brief this period of dominance has been. An ancient Roman would not have been impressed by a less-than-one-hundred-year run on top.

Decline and fall are only occasionally foreseen by those en route to those destinations, and still less often forestalled by forceful and timely action. Denial of reality is a powerful human impulse, as is the tendency to mistake the status quo for the natural and inevitable order of things.

Dictatorship and total collapse is in the air. I can feel it. That’s why it was encouraging when Lieutenant Colonel Terry Lakin, a decorated Army doctor, refused to go to Afghanistan unless Barack Obama would make his birth certificate public, which resulted in his serving six months in prison and being dishonorably discharged. But it’s far more discouraging that no other high-ranking officer has had the courage to join him.

This is an important issue, because I continue to believe that if a dictatorship starts to emerge (many would argue that it already has), it may ultimately get down to a question of whether, at the moment of truth, the military will take orders from Barack Obama or, instead, side with American citizens.

Those who chuckle at all this would do well to bone up on their history.

You have permission to reprint this article so long as you place the following wording at the end of the article:

Copyright © 2012 Robert Ringer
ROBERT RINGER is a New York Times #1 bestselling author and host of the highly acclaimed Liberty Education Interview Series, which features interviews with top political, economic, and social leaders. He has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, The Tonight Show, Today, The Dennis Miller Show, Good Morning America, The Lars Larson Show, ABC Nightline, and The Charlie Rose Show, and has been the subject of feature articles in such major publications as Time, People, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron’s, and The New York Times.

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Is an Obama Dictatorship in the Air? Predictions on the future of America.

Easter re-cap!

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Hope you all had a fabulous Easter! Here’s the kids in the their post-Vigil finery. I love the Easter Vigil, but going with 4 small kids can make it seem to last about 5 hours. I needed a good stiff drink by the time we got home!



The baskets were quickly emptied! A heck of a lot of chocolate was consumed in a short amount of time Easter morning, but they loved every minute.

I may make my children pose for pictures while wearing bunny ears!

First Easter’s are made for bunny-ear wearing!

Then in the afternoon we had a big egg hunt outside! As you can tell by their attire, it was FREEZING out! Sometimes I dream of Easter occurring when the weather is actually spring-like. With greenery and blooms and flowers. The Canadian arctic doesn’t look too springy in early April.

But the boys loved the egg hunt and got so excited every time they made a discovery! All the kids were full of “Alleluia’s” and “Happy Easter’s” yesterday, and more are coming today. I’m off to sweep up more Easter grass.

From: 

Easter re-cap!

91. Stegosaurus: Armored Defender by Kathryn Clay

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Stegosaurus: Armored Defender

by Kathryn Clay. Illustrated by Jason Dove (

US

) –

(Canada)
First Graphics

series

Pages: 24
Ages: 5-8
Finished: Mar. 21, 2012
First Published: Jan. 1, 2012
Publisher: Capstone Press
Genre: children, easy reader, graphic novel, non-fiction, dinosaurs
Rating: 2.5/5

First sentence: “Something large moves through the trees.”

Publisher’s Summary:Swoosh! Strong stegosaurus swings its tail like a club at its enemy. With bony plates on its back and a spiky tail, this big beast knows how to defend itself. Learn more about this armored dinosaur in Stegosaurus: Armored Defender.”

Acquired: Received a review copy from Capstone Press.

Reason for Reading: I enjoy this publisher.

Basic easy reader focusing on what we know about how the Stegosaurus lived. Wonderful quality realistic illustrations are delightful and add understanding to the factual text. A simple graphic interface with four frames per two page spread, narrative text between frames, and since this is a factual book without talking animals there are no speech bubbles within the book at all, making it a mix between a picture book and a graphic novel. The detail in this book is quite basic and easy to understand. Not as in depth and detailed as I’ve found in the other non-fiction titles I’ve read in the “First Graphics” series. The reading level is at the higher end of the given spread (K-3) and because of the specific topic does contain a few harder words but this would also be perfect for little ones who are reading ahead of age level. Not exactly “fascinating” but little dinosaur fans should enjoy.

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91. Stegosaurus: Armored Defender by Kathryn Clay

Responsible parenthood

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Responsible parenthood

A Truism

Hanging out with mostly girlfriends in Canada is much different from

hanging out with mostly male friends in Britain.

This is so true that I am not sure where to begin.

Many women, upon marriage, move or travel back-and-forth from one group of females, their friends and family members, to another group of females, their husbands’ relatives. This can be a very difficult, but ultimately rewarding, transition.

I did not move into another group of females upon marriage, however. My one female in-law, a lovely, quiet woman, rarely leaves her town. My husband has no sisters, but he has many nice men friends. About two of the nice men friends are married. I think it is two. Perhaps it is three.

Moving into an extended crowd of mostly-male friends instead of an extended family of men and women is not a bad thing. It is merely a different thing. And it is full of zip and vim and gin and tonic!

It does make me wonder, though, how much Wendy enjoyed being the adoptive mother of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, especially with Tinkerbell zipping resentfully about. And as much as she loved all the above, did she not, occasionally, long to say “Drat it all” to the mending and go out for cocktails with Tiger Lily?

Fortunately there are no Tinkerbells* in my life, and there are a number of Tiger Lilys with whom to have cocktails. (Wait. Did Tiger Lily ALSO plot against Wendy? If so, James Barrie didn’t have much faith in female friendship. Many men seem to think that female friendship is inherently shallow and easily upset by sexual rivalry.)

(Update) In fairness, I should reference a story in which a woman is constantly surrounded by women. The first one that comes to mind is Hotel du Lac, which is about a lot of women who would rather be with a man. And I definitely appreciate, having lived my early life among Girl Guides and schoolgirls, how refreshing it is to have men friends as well. In fact, I can imagine how grateful many women in female-dominated professions must be for their husbands, if they have any, or male relations and friends.

Anyway, I couldn’t think of anything else to write about today, so I am tossing out this delicate topic. By the way, the combox is open only to girls. I realize that painting the blog pink and posting pin-ups is not really enough to discourage all male readers, and I grieve for those long-term male readers who have contributed so much to my comboxes over the years. But don’t make me feel sympathy for Mary Daly here.

Eventually I will stop this blog altogether, and when I am asked why, I will say that I got tired of men watching us wash our handwashables.

*Tinkerbell, in this context, is the kind of woman who goes bananas when another woman shows up, displacing her as The Only Woman Around. Some women really hate having to “share” male relations or colleagues with another woman, and they make other women miserable. When I meet a woman like that, I can feel her fighting for me for possession of male attention, and it stresses me right out. I hope I am never like that myself. Or rarely.

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A Truism

The Encounter that Changes Everything

Be glad, let earth be glad, as glory floods her,
ablaze with light from her eternal King,
let all corners of the earth be glad,
knowing an end to gloom and darkness.

These words from the

Exsultet

capture beautifully the message of the Church as she announces the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Joy and light replace sorrow and darkness. This is what happens when we encounter the Risen Lord! Mary Magdalene serves as an example.

The Gospel of Easter Sunday recounts her journey to the tomb following the death and burial of Jesus. What the narrative describes of her could well be posited of all humanity. Her experience is ours.

Mary is searching for her Lord. So are all of us. The human heart seeks happiness, truth, and peace. Since only God can satisfy this thirst, this longing is ultimately a quest for God.

Mary is weeping. So, too, is humanity. Hers are tears of grief, which will come to each of us at the death of loved ones. Yet we also mourn the pain and suffering of friends, the tragedy of poverty and homelessness, or the anguish of refugees and victims of war and trafficking.

Mary is perplexed. “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Confusion and lack of understanding darken the human mind of today. Ceaselessly bombarded by multiple, rapid-fire and superficial communication, we are losing focus, and with it the ability to think deeply. Breathtaking changes in biotechnology, the capricious volatility of the markets, the fragile and dangerous state of world politics – these impact our lives in significant ways, yet are very hard to understand. Beneath all this is a widespread loss of a moral compass. Each one seems abandoned to determining for oneself what is right and wrong, which leads to societal confusion and tension. We wonder: What is happening? How did we ever get to this point?

Finally, Mary does not recognize Jesus. She fails at first to grasp the truth of his presence, even as she addresses him. The same can be said of our world today. In society there is a widespread eclipsing of God from public life. Even in our personal lives we can act as if God is not present, or does not exist, even as we profess belief in him. Have we in fact stopped believing that the Lord is truly present with us?

Everything changes when Jesus calls Mary by name. The search ends; tears of sorrow become tears of joy; confusion gives way to clarity. This is what happens when we encounter the Lord and recognize the signs of his presence. We know that we are known; we know that we are loved; we know that we are safe. From this encounter with the Lord arises a deep peace that the world cannot give. “Peace be with you,” were the words Jesus spoke to his apostles. He speaks them also to us.

Exsultet! The Lord is risen! He is with us! Be at peace.

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The Encounter that Changes Everything

Chick Happens

Silas sat at the top of the stairs this morning outside our bedroom door, sniffling.




What’s the matter, honey?


The chicks aren’t pipping.

Dejected boy.

Well, they aren’t due to hatch until tomorrow of the next day. It isn’t time to worry yet. And if we don’t get any chicks this time, we’ll start a new batch. It will be okay. Sometimes things don’t always work out. But it will be okay.

I’ll go back down and listen.

He will sit for hour after endless hour by the Hovo-Bator in the next forty eight hours, listening.

What seems like only seconds later, I hear him pelting up the stairs. He’s hyper-ventilating.

I heard them! I heard them! I HEARD THE PIPPING!

Well, if that didn’t get everyone all het up. Rosebud and Huck bolt down the stairs. Seconds later they come pelting up the stairs, herdlike. They all three are hyper-ventilating now. WE HEARD THE PIPPING!

Sparky is almost ready to leave to earn our daily bread, he cannot leave until they have him hear the pipping. They yank and drag him to the Hovo-Bator so he can hyper-ventilate, too. We will get a report hourly from now until the chicks hatch on their progress.

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Chick Happens

Heretical Hymns, World Music, and Keeping Your Job?

Below is a sneak peak at some of the morning breakouts we have to look forward to at this year’s

Sacred Music Colloquium

in Salt Lake City. Remember that if you register during the Octave of Easter a copy of Dr. William Mahrt’s

The Musical Shape of the Liturgy

will be on its way to you in the mail.

Sister Marie Agatha Ozah, HHCJ, Ph.D.:

Gregorian Chant and World Music: Tensions and Solutions for the Liturgy

Chants are some of the oldest religious music genres of the world, and their centrality in Buddhist, Hindu, Judaic, Christian and Islamic worship cannot be over emphasized. In the Christian Church alone, one can name Byzantine, Ethiopian, Anglican, and Gregorian chants, for example, as indispensable vehicles of religious worship. This lecture explores the significance and uses of chants in some world religions. It will focus specifically on Gregorian Chant in the Roman Catholic liturgy.

The traditionalism and canonicity that Gregorian Chant enjoyed for centuries was disputed by the Second Vatican Council, which encouraged the use of other forms of world music as backdrop in the liturgy. The introduction and use of world music in the liturgy has fostered the continuous decline of the use of Gregorian Chant, an issue that has become a cause of concern among sacred music scholars. The dilemma of whether or not the Roman Catholic liturgy is a common ground where tensions can be resolved persists today.

Kathleen Pluth:

Vernacular Hymns: The Good, the Bad, and the Heretical

Although sung Propers are always the best choice for the Mass, parish musicians are still often called upon to select hymns for Mass, devotions, and the Liturgy of the Hours. Choosing among the various options can be a daunting task. This lecture begins with an examination of the importance of hymns in the Church from apostolic times, preceding the Reformation by many centuries. Then, individual hymns will be sung and analysed for their usefulness in teaching and evangelization, focusing primarily upon textual and theological considerations.

Matthew J. Meloche:

Maintain and Strengthen Your Position and Program

This practical course will show you how to maintain and strengthen your current position and program, whether you are music director of a large parish or direct a small choir. Special emphasis will be given to changing the direction of a program, with positive advice for how to do so while keeping your leadership role secure.

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Heretical Hymns, World Music, and Keeping Your Job?

Fr. Barron comments on Andrew Sullivan’s Non-Threatening Jesus