Welcome to my blog! As shepherd of the Catholic of Diocese of Fort Worth, my travels take me to every corner of our Local Church, around the United States, and sometimes as far away as Rome, Italy. Through the “Shepherd of Fort Worth” blog, I wish to share with you important information about our diocese, the wonderful spirit of our Catholic faith, the people I encounter, and the blessings of daily life. This blog is also available en Español.
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Rosemary Callenberg
The dust had never bothered her before, except perhaps in an abstract way on weekends. But now, as she sat in her pajamas and looked around the living room, Ellen realized that it was everywhere—on the lamps, the baby grand piano, a book of Emily Dickinson’s poetry she’d started to read last month and forgotten about. Ordinarily on Monday afternoons, she’d sit in front of Laurel Savings Bank on her lunch break and stare at the trees along Main Street, the coffee shop across the road, the white station wagon always parked on the next block. But this Monday there were no trees, no jobs at the bank. There was just Ellen, alone and unemployed in a living room coated with dust.
When she smacked the couch cushions beside her it puffed out. She played tic-tac-toe with herself on top of the end table. Halfway through her fourth cup of coffee, she picked up Dickinson and curled up in the corner of the couch to read. Cheerio, excited that he wasn’t alone today, brought his bear and tried to get her attention. But she ignored him long enough that he gave up and instead jumped onto the couch to take a nap on her feet. Eventually she closed her eyes and joined him.
Ellen woke up around three-thirty. Her feet were cold. Cheerio was gone; but there was a small, yellow puddle by the front door.
“Stupid dog,” she muttered, rubbing her eyes.
After cleaning the mess and spraying it thoroughly with Lysol, she took a shower and stood looking at herself in the mirror, her hair wrapped in a towel. Her eyes were still bleary from too much sleep. She contemplated getting back into her pajamas; but she decided there was no reason to lookunemployed. And she wasn’t sure what Geoff would think. She took a long time with her mascara.
Geoff noticed when he came in the door a half an hour later and kissed her on the cheek. “You look nice.”
“Thanks.”
He never said that when she’d just gotten home from work, too. She always looked nice for work.
Together they moved into the kitchen. Ellen pulled the Stouffer’s lasagna from the oven and brought it to the table. They sat and chewed at each other across the table. Normally Geoff read during dinner, while she would eat and think. But this evening he left his book on the counter, and there was the awkward decision of where to look: the plate, the window, the spouse.
“How was your day?” she asked finally.
“Eh. Okay. Just normal.” He shoveled a mouthful of lasagna in and chewed it on the left side of his mouth, his cheek bulging. “How about yours?”
She stiffened. She knew it was an automatic response and tried not to get upset. “Not very interesting.”
“Oh.” He chose his next bite carefully, realizing his mistake. “Oh. Well, nothing interesting happened at work either.”
Ellen nodded, but didn’t say anything. They continued eating without speaking. When she finished, she carried her plate over to the sink and paused to look out the window. That was when she noticed the kitchen was dusty, too. It lay more thickly here, on the windowsill and the angel statue that stood over the sink. It covered even the leaves of the houseplant in the corner. Somehow that was the most depressing; that even this living, growing thing gathered a layer of dead dust. She blew gently on the leaves, but most of it stayed put. Grabbing a paper towel from the rack beside the sink, she moistened a corner and dabbed at it. A few leaves came off in her hand. She hadn’t remembered to water it lately. She crumpled them and threw them in the trash, suddenly angry.
“This house is so dirty!”
Geoff coughed and looked at her. “I guess.”
“Well, that’s one good thing about this. I’ll have time to clean.” She meant to be sarcastic, but somehow it came out sounding pathetic. She laughed and shook her head.
Geoff stood up, plate in hand, hesitating to speak or move. She could tell by his face he was trying to judge how to deal with this. “Sounds good,” he said finally.
Ellen laughed again—a small, mean laugh. She didn’t look at him to see it sink in, but she listened to his feet cross the kitchen and the clink as he set his dish on top of hers in the sink. He put his hand on her shoulder. It startled her, and she pulled away without meaning to.
“Hon, don’t worry about this. Remember, I told you, it’s okay for you to be between jobs for a while. There’s no pressure.”
“Thanks.” She left the kitchen. Geoff didn’t follow her.
Ellen went into the bedroom and turned on the television. All she knew was that another day of sitting around at home would drive her crazy. Everywhere she looked, she saw dust, gathered on every surface like a sad metaphor for her jobless life. Remember you are dust.
So . . . she would start in the bedroom tomorrow.
Ellen tapped her chin with the handle of her feather duster. The sheets bunched on the bed in the shape of her own body; pairs of Geoff’s dirty socks were thrown against the wall. Piles of old bills and papers were stacked on his dresser, and hers was littered with photos of their trip to Ireland last spring and forgotten earrings. Those would have to be moved before she could even think of dusting. She wondered how the accumulation of stuff hadn’t bothered her before.
She dropped the earrings one by one into the jewelry box, which carried its own layer of dust. Brushing it with the feather duster, she deposited it on the bed. One by one she moved things: blowing gently on the photos to clean them, setting the envelopes aside for sorting, wiping off the statue of the shepherdess Geoff had given her for their eighth anniversary. Her mother had kept one just like it above the fireplace for as long as she could remember; Geoff had bought this one in an antique store.
Ellen started on the dresser itself with a can of furniture polish and a beat-up kitchen towel. There was something satisfying about the first swipe of clear wood across the fuzzed-over surface. The color of the wood was reborn beneath her hand. It was like light trapped beneath the curved dark lines of the grain.
Ellen had to admit it was beautiful, even though she hated their bedroom furniture. Well, perhaps not hate; she’d gotten used to it by now. The set had been a wedding gift from her Aunt Nicky, who was going through a divorce at the time and getting rid of things that reminded her of her ex. Ellen didn’t mind hand-me-downs, especially nice ones. She did mind her aunt, who constantly criticized her mother and confided to half the people at the bridal shower that Geoff, who loved the ballet and kept his fingernails clean, was effeminate. She also made no secret of the fact she’d always thought the dressers were ugly to begin with.
Geoff loved them, partly because they were much nicer than anything they could have afforded, but also because of the elaborate scroll work along the legs and edges, swirls and leaves and flowers. Detailed craftsmanship fascinated him. When they’d scoped out furniture at Ikea, he’d nodded silently when Ellen pointed out the simple black bed she’d liked. At the wedding, he thanked Aunt Nicky so profusely the older woman was taken aback, and responded simply, “Well, at least Bud won’t get them.” As they’d moved on to the next table to greet his cousins, Ellen had caught her smirking.
Those scrolls were a great deal of trouble now. Ellen tried to clear the dust out with her fingernail, but there were cracks where she couldn’t reach it. When she stood back and looked, she couldn’t tell it was there. Just to be sure, she went to the window and opened the blinds.
The window faced south, and the sun shone directly onto the dresser. It gleamed softly. She came close to examine the scrolls; but instead she found herself lost in tracing the grain of the wood with her eyes, admiring the pattern and the way the afternoon light brought it to life.
But she didn’t leave the blinds open very long. She liked the light; but the window faced the neighbors, and she valued privacy more highly. As the slats shut, she saw that they, too, were dusty. Not a simple layer that came off cleanly, but a heavy, dirty smudge that came off in bits when she rubbed it. Ellen wondered if she could clean them without removing the blinds from the window, but decided to wait until after lunch to confront them.
She put her jewelry box and shepherdess back in their usual places. Picking up the pictures, she tapped them on the dresser like a deck of cards to align their edges, then tucked them in her lingerie drawer to take care of later. She considered the papers piled on the bed, but then turned away. That was his mess; he could take care of it. She drank the cold remains of her coffee and went to the kitchen for another cup.
That night Geoff had his book again. They ate without speaking. Yesterday bothered Ellen. She had no idea if Geoff remembered it, or if he was mad about the way she’d spoken to him. But she could almost see it laid out on the table with their dinner, and felt obligated to make up for it somehow. She spent half the meal trying to think of a creative topic of conversation, but found nothing.
“How was work?”
Geoff shrugged with the corner of his mouth. “Boring.” She watched him chew his green beans and waited for him to swallow. “Huh.” He tapped the cover of his book with his finger.
“What are you reading about?” Ellen pushed the question out. She knew the answer wouldn’t interest her.
“Since the Puritans crossed the Atlantic in families, the numbers of men to women were more equal than in other areas of the colonies.”
“Oh.” Ellen remembered when they used to talk about the books they were reading together. That was before he traded historical fiction for actual history. “It’s a book about Puritans?”
“About the correlation between the cultural differences in the U.S. and England. The places different people settled.” He took another bite without his eyes leaving the page. Ellen started eating again, ready to settle into the regular routine.
But then Geoff was speaking again, his words piling in her ears. “The families had to have a good moral character to even cross the Atlantic . . . but when they founded churches, the guidelines for membership were so strict only one person in some households would belong.” He smiled to himself and shook his head.
Ellen couldn’t tell if what he’d said was funny or not. She thought she’d expressed enough interest as could reasonably be expected, and seized the pause before he found something else to share.
“I started dusting today.”
“That’s good.”
“I also did the laundry and changed the bed sheets. There’s a bunch of junk from your dresser sitting on the bed.”
“Okay.”
“Probably I’ll dust the rest of the house tomorrow.” Ellen stared at the high-ruffed Elizabethan women on the cover of his book. Their faces looked back at her with an expression between sternness and amusement. She couldn’t decipher it. “I figure it’s a good use of my time, while I’m waiting.”
He nodded, slowly, his eyes still following the lines on the page. “Waiting for what?”
She set her fork down on her plate and looked at him. He was still reading. She picked up her fork and took a bite, grinding her teeth as she chewed. “Never mind.”
Hearing her tone, Geoff looked up. “What?”
“Just forget it . . . read your book.”
He stared at her a moment, then smoothed the corners of his pages. She could have said much worse. Her tone had communicated more than her words; she knew that. But she’d stopped herself from worse. Now he was acting injured, and it was only making her more angry.
“I know you’re stressed, hon. But I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“Nothing. I don’t want you to do anything. Just pretend that we’re normal.” Ellen hoped he’d stop talking, because she was afraid of what would come out of her mouth next.
But now he was angry. And unlike Ellen, who couldn’t stop saying things when she was mad, Geoff could—and did. “Okay.” He turned back to his book, and she collected the dishes. They avoided each other the rest of the evening.
Before ten a.m. on Wednesday Ellen had dusted the kitchen, done the windowsills that stretched across the front of the living room, and consumed two cups of coffee. By eleven she’d moved on to the end tables and lugged the corrugated lampshades onto the lawn for cleaning. When she brought them back in, she was starting to get hungry, and her fourth coffee was lukewarm. But she didn’t want to lose her momentum. She gave the bookshelf a once-over with her rag. But the dust had settled on the pages of the books themselves. She pulled them out one by one and blew on them, shaking them gently. She put them back, leaving an empty space for The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson.
Reading fell into the category of things she used to do, along with playing the piano regularly and taking walks in the evening, alone or with Geoff. Work left her too tired for those things. The way she read poetry required an active participation, or else it wasn’t worth it.
Ellen stretched to reach all the way across the piano, dusting around its curves and saving the keys for last. Random notes scattered from her fingers as she rubbed, as if they were startled at their own existence after so long a silence. She polished the highest C and sat down on the bench, rubbing the blocky gold Yamaha with her thumb. Then her hand fell and fiddled with the keys. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d last played, although the feel beneath her fingers was still familiar—the resistance and the yielding, the flow of notes like water.
Not quite like water, anymore. It was too long since she was in practice. Ellen stood up and opened the piano bench, pulling out a red music book. She flipped through it, looking at her penciled notes in the margins. One song in particular stuck out to her—the Starlight Waltz. She remembered playing this over and over a couple years ago, until Geoff, for all his patience, had asked if she didn’t know anything else.
Balancing the book in her left hand, Ellen reached for the keys with her right. The melody she picked out was recognizable, if stilted. She set the book on the music stand and opened the back of the piano, propping it up and sitting back down on the bench. She positioned her hands and oriented herself on the page of music. Then she began to play.
That evening Ellen returned to Dickinson. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten about poetry—how it seemed to take her out of her body and bring her somewhere more real, make her more herself.
Geoff read also, sitting in the kitchen with his history book. But she heard him get up and come into the living room. He wandered, standing first in front of the bookshelf, then moving as though he was heading for the bedroom, then pausing to look out the windows. Finally he came to stand in the corner of her vision, by the piano, unmoving. There he stayed.
She wouldn’t mind this, normally, although it was a little strange. She was pretty good at ignoring distractions that were part of the background. But he was just standing there.
“What are you reading?”
She looked up. “Poetry.”
“By who?”
“Emily Dickinson.”
He nodded, but didn’t have anything to say about this. She didn’t either. She looked back at the page without reading. He didn’t move. When she glanced up he was still looking at her, but looked away and stared at the piano. She returned to her poem.
“The piano’s open.”
Ellen’s jaw tightened. “Yes.”
There was a pause. She didn’t offer any more information. “Why’s it open?”
“Because I was playing it.” She turned the page and started reading the next poem. Beside her, Geoff picked up the music book and flipped through the pages.
“I didn’t know you’d been playing again.”
She looked at him again. “No, Geoff. When would I? Up until last week I had a job. Have you heard me playing?”
His eyebrows arched and he slowly put the book back on the music stand. “Of course. Sorry.” As he turned and crossed the room, Cheerio scrambled out from the kitchen and jumped at him. Ellen watched as Geoff stood and shuffled his feet at him, exciting the dog so much that he began to run back and forth across the room. He smiled and left the room.
Cheerio hadn’t worn off his excitement yet. He dashed to Ellen’s couch and jumped up, then back off and ran away, back and forth until she finally pushed him off and he wandered to another room, feeling sorry for himself.
Ellen turned a page and realized she wasn’t paying attention to her poetry. She was listening for her husband in the kitchen. Now and then he moved in his seat or cleared his throat. It seemed like there was a wall inside of her, dividing the Ellen that wanted to be left alone with her book from the one who wanted to go to the next room and fix things. She got up and walked into the kitchen with no idea of what she was going to say.
“It came back to me more quickly than I thought.”
He lowered his book and looked at her.
The wall was high, too high. She couldn’t see the top. “I’m definitely out of practice. But once I got going, it wasn’t too terrible.”
“Huh.” He went back to reading. Ellen watched as his eyes crossed the page: slowly to the left, a quick dash to the right.
She couldn’t blame him for ignoring her. She couldn’t erase words by pretending she hadn’t said them. One of the things she’d fallen in love with was his patience. But patience was like a rubber band that held and held until it was stretched a fraction too far. Then it had to snap. No; she couldn’t blame him for not responding to her half-hearted gesture, no matter how hard a struggle it was for her to make. Especially when she knew that she wouldn’t have, either. The weight of her own pettiness settled heavily on her chest.
She sat down at the table. “I’m sorry.”
Geoff didn’t look up. “For what?”
“For how I spoke to you.” She pulled the salt shaker towards her on the table, and pushed it between two fingers. “For how . . . I speak. And about the job.” Her voice sounded miserable. That wasn’t what she wanted; she didn’t want sympathy. She wanted to explain it to him. That she couldn’t help it. That a different Ellen saw these words coming, watched them spoken, but did nothing about it, and she didn’t know why. It was like the way he fiddled with his pen when he did the crossword puzzle on Sundays, how he couldn’t stop even when she pointed it out to him.
He laid the book flat on the table and looked at his hands. “Don’t worry about jobs, Ellen. There’s time.”
She stared at his hands, as if she could find a script there, something that made coming up with words unnecessary. But if it was there she couldn’t see it for the familiarity of the black hairs on his fingers, the half-moons of his fingernails. She took one of his hands in both her own. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, hoping that maybe, maybe those two words which she could easily repeat now that they were said would convey something, would release the frustration behind the wall.
He rubbed her hands with his free one, then—impulsively—kissed her temple. They sat together without speaking.
Ellen found a pot of coffee already waiting for her when she got up—a little later than yesterday—and it was as she was pouring herself a cup, mid-yawn, that she noticed the sun shining through a long string that stretched from the corner near the window. Angrily she turned and scanned the ceiling for others, wondering how many she couldn’t see because of the light.
No. She would not think about it before coffee. But she couldn’t help noticing, as she migrated to the living room, the clumps of grey fuzz that hung from the fan. She forced herself to look away, sipping the coffee Geoff had made for her and thinking instead about last night. About the fit of her head into his shoulder as they sat on the couch together and sorted through the pictures of Ireland she’d just dusted, now stacked neatly on the end table. They’d laughed at themselves kissing the Blarney Stone. He’d reminisced about the castles—their history, their architecture—and she’d recalled the sweeping cliffs and the green. He watched her face while she spoke; and when they stopped speaking, he leaned in and brushed her cheek with his lips before kissing her.
“And the Irish coffee!” she added. He had laughed at her, not knowing her joke arose from a need to close the moment before it broke.
Ellen knew she was lucky to have married Geoff. He was more patient than her, more loving, and did his best to understand her fears and insecurities. Early in their marriage, when she’d asked to wait for kids, he accepted it, even though she knew he wanted to start a family right away. They were young—both twenty-two—so they had time. She wanted to settle into the marriage, to build their life and move as one. She remembered that about her parents, how they functioned almost like one person. Geoff seemed to understand, though he didn’t feel the same way. But they waited, and he didn’t bring it up. He wanted her to be ready.
In the end it didn’t matter, because she couldn’t bear children. Ellen was okay at first. She knew she could be happy without kids. It was harder for Geoff. She grieved for his sense of loss; but she hadn’t actually asked him to sacrifice anything. They’d at least had several years of hoping and planning for a family.
Ellen rubbed the handle of her mug with her thumb. It felt like a long time ago when she’d lie awake, listening to her husband’s breathing after he fell asleep and remembering the names they’d agreed on for children. He never brought it up, anymore. That made sense, she supposed. She was glad if he was happy, if it meant he had forgotten, even if she couldn’t. She waited until dark to say their names, to count the years they hadn’t lived, like sheep, until she drifted off.
And it wasn’t so many years. Twelve years was long, but not in a “big picture” way. Not compared to her mother’s forty years and four children. She still called Ellen and Geoff a “baby marriage.” A relationship that hadn’t been tested by teenage kids and bankruptcy and the things her parents had come through, still smiling, still in love.
She heard Cheerio jump off the bed and shake himself. He trotted into the living room and she had to open the door to let him outside. She was wondering how she’d missed the cobwebs on the ceiling, when a thought occurred to her, and she looked at the floor. In the corners and against the walls the carpet was a greyer shade of blue. Setting her coffee on the end table, she got on her knees and looked under the couch. Underneath the dust came together in clumps.
“But who looks under the couch?” she said out loud. “Who looks at the ceiling?” No one. And if they did, maybe they deserved an eyeful of dust.
She stood up. Cheerio was waiting on the other side of the door. Ellen let him in. This was not the simple dusting she’d planned. Her shoulders were already stiff from the unaccustomed movement of the past two days, and she knew that if she started lugging the vacuum cleaner and moving furniture her back would start to hurt.
She took a long sip of coffee and went into the kitchen to rinse her cup.
Ellen heard Geoff come in from the bedroom. She turned off the news and came out to find him standing in the doorway, looking at the couch which was still jutting at an awkward angle into the living room.
“I couldn’t move it back,” she explained. “My back is bothering me.”
“You moved the couch?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Cleaning.” She gestured to the vacuum sitting in the corner. Geoff looked from it to the couch, then grinned.
“You moved the couch?” he repeated. “I didn’t realize you were taking this housecleaning thing so seriously!”
“Could you move it back, please?” she answered flatly.
He laughed. “Trust you to bite off more than you can chew.”
He didn’t know she’d taken each and every book off the shelf and dusted it individually. He could have gone on living with dirty blinds and filthy carpets indefinitely, and probably would never have noticed cobwebs on the ceiling.
Well, maybe if she were still employed, she wouldn’t mind living in filth either. She felt the sentence shaping in her head, the contours of tone and volume being shaped for a perfect delivery. She pressed her lips together, and forced the corners upward. It was a small smile—any larger and it would have been obviously fake. She turned and gave it to him. Immediately he smiled back, and lifted the couch to scoot it into place. She ignored the fact he was still chuckling under his breath.
“Thank you for the coffee,” she said.
He stepped away from the couch and squeezed her shoulder. “Alright.”
As he went into the bedroom to change, Ellen contemplated sitting down and playing the Starlight Waltz. She’d practiced more today. But she decided she wasn’t good enough for him to hear her yet.
But the weekend was coming, and she would play then.
As with any Saturday, Geoff was the first one up. Ellen listened to him shuffling around the kitchen in his sock feet. This day would look the same as always, job or no. Except that she would make blueberry pancakes . . . when she got out of bed.
Reluctantly, she got up and got dressed, opening the blinds to let in the morning. She used the mirror above her dresser to pull her hair back into a pony tail. A smudge on the dresser distracted her. Her sense of such things had been sharpened over the past few days; she must have missed it on her first day of cleaning. She rubbed at it with her thumb, and then her fingernail, but it wouldn’t come off.
She realized it wasn’t a stain on the dresser, but a shadow. She turned and looked at the window. A set of fingerprints stood out clearly on the glass. Probably her own.
“Damn it,” she said. “Damn.”
“What’s wrong?” Geoff asked from the living room.
She came close enough to the window that her nostrils fogged the glass. Smudges, dirt, stains from breath and fingers . . . and dust. How had she not seen this? What else was she missing?
“Honey?”
Without answering Ellen moved into the living room. The windows here were dirty, too. A row of dog-breath and nose prints lined the window at Cheerio’s spot, where he perched on the couch and looked out. She hadn’t seen it before because of the dust, because everything was dirty. Now she saw the light itself was soiled as it entered the room, marking everything it touched.
She knew Geoff was watching her, but he didn’t say anything. Perhaps he could hear her clock ticking, the countdown to an explosion. She left the room and went into the kitchen to get paper towels and window cleaner from under the sink. The windows here were dirty, too. She cleaned them first, then moved back into the living room.
Geoff watched her as she sprayed and rubbed, then stood up and came over to her. “Everything okay?”
She paused and frowned at the fibers the towel was leaving on the window. “There’s always something else.” For some reason the window wasn’t coming clean. She could still see the tint of dirt on it, even though she felt like she was rubbing a hole in the glass. She moved on to the next one.
Geoff rubbed his chin. “I guess that’s the way it goes, honey.”
As he spoke, Ellen realized the dirt she couldn’t get at was on the outside of the window, streaks left by rain and wind and other weather. She stood up and looked at Geoff, rubbing her forehead the way she had rubbed the glass.
“You know, go ahead and be a lazy shit. I’m trying to keep this place clean.”
She didn’t wait for the aftermath of her words, leaving the room as though she could outpace them. Cheerio followed at her heels, curious because she was moving quickly. She grabbed the stepladder out of the closet, and the wheel caught in the runner on the door. She pulled quickly and it shut with a slam that sent the dog skittering across the laminate floor. Wonderful. Now he’d think she was slamming doors. She hooked the ladder over her shoulder and made her way outside, looking straight ahead.
She started on the bedroom windows. The paper towel came apart in her hands—too much cleaner. She crumpled it up and tore off another sheet and rubbed hard. Layers of dirt came off the window, stuff she couldn’t even see from the inside, leaving the paper towels a dark and dirty brown.
She remembered she hadn’t taken a shower today. She could feel the dust in her hair, her scalp itching. She tossed the paper towel aside and rubbed her hands together, watching the dirt peel off them. She thought about two nights ago and couldn’t reconcile it with the anger she felt now. She had smiled at Geoff yesterday when she was angry. But that was canceled out now.
Ellen picked up the ladder and moved to the front of the house to clean the living room windows. Through the glass she could see Geoff sitting on the couch. He was reading his book, one hand resting on Cheerio. The dog got off and crossed the room, climbing onto the other sofa to watch her through the window. He was puzzled by the occasional squeaking of the paper towel, jumping back, then creeping close again. Before she reached the last window he grew bored and wandered off, leaving behind a row of fresh nose prints on the other side.
The door slammed behind her as she came inside. Too loud. Geoff didn’t look up. Cheerio ran into the room, and she bent automatically to pick him up. He sniffed her face as she looked at her husband, wondering how to start a conversation. She stood and stared at him until he turned a page. The windows were clean now. She could start this day the way it was supposed to go.
“How about some blueberry pancakes?” she asked. It sounded like a line from some cheap commercial, and Geoff’s role was to look up and grin at her.
But Geoff didn’t look up. His index finger slipped behind a page in preparation to turn it. The slow progress of his eyes from line to line remained uninterrupted.
Cheerio was wiggling, asking to be set down. He pulled away from her with a grunt and jumped to the floor, flopping a bit before getting back to his feet and running off. Ellen went to the window he’d left his nose-prints on, ready to spray them off, but paused, one knee on the couch. Her Emily Dickinson lay on the end table. Maybe she would read, too. Maybe, later in the day, they would read on the same couch. And then, after they had read, they could talk about their books. She wasn’t interested in the Puritans, but she could pretend to be.
She set her spray bottle and paper towels aside and picked up her book. And then she saw it. It was hardly perceptible, but it was there: a book-shaped square marking the softly collecting dust.
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Le serment du jeu de paume (The Tennis Court Oath) – sketch by J.-L. DavidDear Faithful, You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt lose its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?
View original:
… Remember Fr. Ted, the priest who faced off with Kim Franke, organizer of a rally to support the sisters and the LCWR, at St. Augustine Cathedral (Kalamazoo, Michigan) on June 10, 2012?
Well, he’s back with a great video about the Second Vatican Council in response to those who protested outside the Cathedral Church of Saint Augustine earlier this month.
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Some folks have asked to use the hymn we sang at the end of Mass on Friday,
The Son of Man
. It’s under copyright, but that is a fairly easy fix for anyone who might be interested. CanticaNOVA makes
a collection of nearly 30 of my texts
available for a small charge, and full rights to copy and set the hymns for any given school or congregation are included.
I was delighted that The Son of Man was set to Newman, the tune associated with Cardinal Newman’s Praise to the Holiest in the Height, particularly during this year’s Colloquium, when the CMAA formed such a strong bond with the Blessed Cardinal’s own Birmingham Oratory. I was so pleased that we sang it on the most ecclesial of feasts, at a Mass celebrated with particular dignity and beauty by Msgr. Andrew Wadsworth, who has responsibilities in the Universal Church. It was very beautifully sung, and so thoughtfully played by the Colloquium’s organist Jonathan Ryan.
The feedback I’ve heard about last night’s hymn suggests that Catholics are ready for hymns with a good sense of poetry but perhaps an even better sense of Catholic theology. I’d like to help fill that need and would be grateful for suggestions.
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On the last Sunday before the second reading of Bill 9073 “On the foundations of the state language policy,” on 1 July, 2012, the parishes of the Kharkiv and Poltava Eparchy of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (Renewed) are to celebrate liturgies and prayers to the Holy Virgin for the protection of Ukrainians of the south-eastern regions from language discrimination. So reported the press-service of the eparchy.
The above-mentioned bill will ensure complete domination of the Russian language in the east of Ukraine.
In an interview interview on the language issue, Archbishop Ihor (Isichenko) of UAOC stressed that the pro-regime forces want Ukrainians to quarrel because of the language instead of trying to find out the causes of the failure of the reforms.
“Perhaps, it suited the pro regime forces that the residents of Donbas and Galicia would exchange offences regarding the ethnic stereotypes instead of trying to find out why, for instance, the system of social security and the railway system were ruined, where the funds allocated for Euro-2012 went, what is happening to the tax system,” said the hierarch.
According to the hierarch, “in a country dominated by the rule of the gun, adoption of any law is solely of a symbolic importance. Especially, in such an irrational area as the language policy.”
“The imposition on the society of the discussion about the languages , which is quite painful for the Ukrainian-language part of the society suffering from the post-colonial syndrome and language discrimination, can have only one real purpose, to provoke confrontation of social environments according to ethnic-cultural orientations.
However, another, hidden purpose is possible, namely, to shift the center of discussions to the irrational language field thereby protecting oneself from the fair criticism for economic mistakes,” said Archbishop Ihor.
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Kharkiv And Poltava Eparchy of UAOC to Pray for Protection from Language Discrimination
Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God, or the petition of good things from Him in accord with His will. It is always the gift of God who comes to encounter man. Christian prayer is the personal and living relationship of the Children of God with their Father who is infinitely good, with His Son Jesus Christ, and with the Holy Spirit who dwells in their hearts.
Originally from -
by
VIENNA | Wed Jun 27, 2012 10:44am EDT
(Reuters) – Austria’s Roman Catholic Church has laid down the law to its rebel priests by telling them they could not support a reform manifesto criticized by Pope Benedict and stay in an administrative post.
One priest told Reuters he had already stepped down from the post of deacon rather than renounce the “Call to Disobedience” manifesto that challenges Church teaching on taboo topics such as women’s ordination and offering communion to non-Catholics.
Another priest had withdrawn his support for the reform campaign and kept his job, a Church spokesman said on Wednesday.
He added that two or three more have yet to decide whether to withdraw their support from the manifesto from a reform group called “Priests’ Initiative” whose demands have been echoed by some Catholic groups and clerics in Germany, Ireland, Belgium and the United States.
“You can easily remain a member of the Priests’ Initiative. You must only distance yourself from the ‘Call to Disobedience’ in an appropriate way,” Church spokesman Nikolaus Haselsteiner said.
“In an average company, a department head can’t say he doesn’t care what the CEO says,” he added.
The Vienna archdiocese said on Tuesday its head, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, had told priests last month he would not appoint manifesto supporters to the post of dean and those coming up for renewal in the post would have to choose.
Schoenborn, a close ally of Benedict, has met the rebel priests, including their leader Rev Helmut Schueller. But Tuesday’s announcement was the first sign he had taken steps to rein them in.
Schueller says his group represents 10 percent of the Austrian clergy. The group has won broad public backing in opinion polls for its pledge to break Church rules by giving communion to Protestants and divorced Catholics who remarry.
Rev Peter Meidinger, who was dean in a district of Vienna archdiocese, said he stepped down from that post after Schoenborn made his options clear in a recent conversation.
“I spoke to the archbishop and perhaps you cannot say I had to choose, but I had the impression that there was no way out for me so I am stepping down and freeing up the spot,” he told Reuters on Wednesday.
PUSHBACK FOR THE POPE
Meidinger, who will stay on as a priest in two parishes south of Vienna, said he was a founding member of the Priests’ Initiative group that called for disobedience, a word Schoenborn said was unacceptable within the Catholic clergy.
“For me what is important is the Priests’ Initiative and not the term ‘disobedience’,” the priest said. “The term civil disobedience is used when the leaders are simply not prepared to listen to people.”
Reformist Austrian Catholics have for decades challenged the conservative policies of Benedict and his predecessor Pope John Paul, creating protest movements and advocating changes – such as ordination of women and abolishing clerical celibacy – that the Vatican firmly rejects.
Benedict, who for decades before his 2005 election was the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer, responded in April by restating the church’s ban on women priests and saying he would not put up with open revolt from clerics and lay people.
(Reporting by Michael Shields, editing by Tom Heneghan)
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The Swiss Catholic news agency APIC reported yesterday that Bishop Charles Morerod OP of the Diocese of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg has decided to entrust the pastoral care of the Basilica of Our Lady (Basilique de Notre-Dame) in Fribourg to the FSSP, starting September 2012. According to the APIC report, the Traditional Latin Masses now celebrated by the FSSP in the church of the College Saint-Michel and other parts of the city of Fribourg, and their pastoral activities in that city, will all be transferred to the Basilica.[NC] The central administration of the FSSP is in Fribourg, home of the recently-restored Basilica: congratulations to their wonderful priests, and to their new priests being ordained today in Wigratzbad.Photo source: Eglise catholique dans le canton de Fribourg
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Both grandma and Grandpa came to spend a few days with us last week, and they were both soon put to work….
Grandma reading stories and playing with the grandkids…
…and Grandpa doing manual labour, and helping daddy to make a patio area!
We spent a very memorable afternoon with them at the chalk pits..
We looked for fossils, collected stones, ran around…
and were, as always, very sad to see them go!
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My friend’s declaration about elections is the point of a line in Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion: “It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” Translated for our political season: “This is what you elected.”
It should be clear to most people that you get the politicians you deserve, and 54% of Roman Catholics voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 election. Now they are faced with health care that will force them to either comply with the law or follow their conscience and break the law. Catholics who really are Catholics, that is.
Someone recently said to me we must pray for Americans during this fortnight of prayer called for by their bishops. I wanted to reply “we are already there in Canada”. We lost our religious freedoms years ago, but no one seems to be aware of it. Our health care covers all sorts of things that violate Christian ethics, and we pay for all abortions with our tax dollars.
We really must vote by conscience, and stop choosing the lesser of two evils. That presumes that we really understand what evil is, and which of two things is the more evil. The right to life is the fundamental principle on which all the rest of our freedoms and rights stand, and to ignore that principle when we vote gets us exactly what Americans now have: the most pro-abort, anti-family president they have ever had.
Vote him out next November.
Excerpt from -
“Sandwich Day” is one of my favorite episodes of 30 Rock. On the set of The Girlie Show, “sandwich day” is “the most magical day of the year,” says the slovenly writer, Frank. It’s the day when the Teamsters treat the staff to sandwiches purchased from a Brooklyn deli whose location is kept a strict secret. When the greedy staff eats Liz Lemon’s sandwich, she flips out:
The writers beat the Teamsters in a drinking contest, get a new sandwich for Liz, and she tries to bring it past TSA security at Kennedy airport (long story). Told she must leave the sandwich because the dipping sauce exceeds 3 ounces. She must decide between the sandwich and the ex-boyfriend she is trying to chase down.
“Leave the sandwich?” Liz gasps, “Leave the sandwich?”
Determined to bite off more than she can chew, Liz opts to try for both. Standing in the security line, she flips open the dipping sauce and proceeds to devour the sandwich while the TSA agent remarks, “you’re choosing a sandwich over a man.”
“I can do it!” Liz Lemon chokes out between bites, “I can have it all!”
Disgusted, the TSA worker says, “God, lady, you’re eating foil!” and lets her through.
The thing that always strikes me about the show is that Liz Lemon, in her quest to have it all, rarely find joy in anything. She longs for things — a baby, a relationship, a sandwich — but she commits to little beyond the food because everything else costs so much, requires so much of her. She knows, instinctively, that she can’t have it all.
But because she is constantly checking off all the things she must do before she can officially “have it all” and therefore be happy, she takes joy in almost nothing beyond her work. Everything beyond work is hard, but sandwiches are easy; they require nothing of her.
I thought of Liz Lemon this week, as I was reading some of the responses to Anne-Marie Slaughter’s piece in Atlantic Magazine in which she posits that women still can’t have it all.
Nancy French says men can’t either, while over at Black, White and Grey, sociologist Margarita A. Mooney argues thatwomen can’t have it all, but we could have it better with an interesting chart.
I thought Elizabeth Duffy had the most thoughtful take on the issue:
As a Catholic woman, I’ve realized time and again that—as I reject the contraceptive bedrock of feminism—there really is no place for me in this debate. But I sort of enjoy watching it from the outside, seeing the different ways that “choice” becomes a stumbling block rather than the cure-all it was meant to be.
On one side of the divide, choice has drawn some stay-at-home mothers into a competitive quest for maternal perfection: choosing to forgo work in favor of family becomes its own kind of career, proving to ourselves and our peers, over and over again that we’re fulfilled, that we’re making enough of a difference in the world—with our excellent food choices and our homeschooling and the super kids we’re producing—to topple any mere career ambition. “We’re doing just fine, thanks, as you can see by the pretty pictures I’ve posted on my blog!”
On the other side of the divide, evidenced by Slaughter’s article, choice makes women incredibly puzzled about their roles both at work and at home. Is there a balance? If so, how do I get it? I know, let’s talk about changing work policies, and getting more women into the highest levels of their profession so that they can effect change from the top down. In other words, let someone else solve the problem, so the onus isn’t on women to make their own brutal choices for or against their families.
Having a choice is a huge responsibility, and the schizophrenic tone of this conversation suggests that women feel more burdened by choice than liberated.
Read it all and share it with your friends. An interesting conversation for the weekend.
No, we can’t have it all; the whole idea is a come-on, like the shiny product you crave because it is marketed so slickly. All “you can have it all” does is make people ask, “then why don’t I?” and then look to the government to create artificial means toward that end. It makes women doubt themselves, question their lives and feel dissatisfied with their choices, their gifts, their accomplishments. The idea that one can have “everything” and give up nothing is just a lie. As Chesterton said, “when you choose anything, you reject everything else.”
It’s one of those uncomfortable truths. If I choose to blog all day long, I reject being with my family in order to live within my own thoughts.
If I choose an abortion in order to pursue “having it all”, I have rejected a human life in order to pursue mere ambition.
If I choose ideology over faith, I have rejected eternity, for a passing moment.
We cannot have it all. But if we did, we’d still want a ham sandwich.
UPDATE: No, you can’t have it all, SSPX
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Today, I’m honoured to be posting over at The Kennedy Adventures about
. I really appreciate bloggers like Dianna Kennedy who share their homeschooling stories, because I’ve been through homeschooling as a student but I’m sure it will be very different when I become the teacher! If you’re thinking about homeschooling, drop by Dianna’s blog or feel free to ask me questions about my experience.
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Life of Raymond Lull- a Fourteenth Century Illustration
Raymond belonged to the noble Lull family and was born at Palma on the island of Mallorca in 1236. At a very early age he became a page at the royal court; and before he was 30 years old he had been advanced to the position of marshal and high steward to King James of Mallorca.
For several years he followed the lead of other courtiers, serving the world and vanity. But God in His mercy soon led him along a better path. On the feast of St. Francis he heard a bishop portray in vivid terms the contempt of the world and the love of Christ with which the Poverello was imbued. For some time past Raymond had perceived in himself the desire for nobler things than human honors. So he recognized in the bishop's sermon the call of God to forsake all things and to win for Christ the infidels on the northern coast of Africa.
Without hesitation Raymond followed the call. He resigned his offices, left the royal court, and founded a college in which missionaries, particularly those who belonged to the Order of Friars Minor, should receive the necessary training in the languages of northern Africa. He himself joined the Third Order of St. Francis, and for nine years retired to the solitude of Mt. Randa in order to prepare himself by prayer and study. God favored him with much heavenly inspiration and granted him extraordinary knowledge so that, in spite of his numerous undertakings he was able to write admirable things about the most difficult questions in philosophy and theology.
Raymond then made long journeys to Rome, Avignon, Montipellier, Paris, and Vienne, in order to interest the Holy Father and the various potentates in the work of conversion and the founding of seminaries for missionaries.
In 1314, at the age of 79 he himself undertook a missionary expedition to Africa. It was destined to be his last journey. While preaching the Faith of Christ in the public square at Bougie, a group of fanatical Mussulmans seized him and stoned him. He was bleeding from countless wounds and left for dead in the market place. Genoese merchants took him aboard their ship in order to give him burial in his own country. During the voyage Raymond regained consciousness for a time, but when the ship arrived near Mallorca, he breathed his last.
A very great concourse of people gathered for his burial in the Franciscan church at Palma in Mallorca where he had joined the Third Order. Soon miracles were reported as occurring at the grave of the glorious martyr. Pope Leo X beatified him, and Mallorca chose him as its special patron.
ON THE GREAT VALUE OF CHRISTIAN FAITH
1. As soon as the eyes of Blessed Raymond were opened by the word of God and interior grace, he perceived that all material things are nothing when compared with the inestimable treasures of the Christian Faith. For 9 years he retired into solitude in order to make a thorough study of the Faith by reading religious books, by meditation and prayer, and he spent his great fortune, and even life itself, in order to bring this precious blessing to others. St. Augustine held the Faith in like regard when he said: "No amount of wealth, no treasure, no honor, no worldly advantage is greater than the Christian Faith." Faith alone teaches us the true value of things; for worldly knowledge is subject to error. Whatever the Christian Faith teaches is infallible truth, for "he believes in the Son of God, who has the testimony of God in himself" (1 John 5:10). This testimony alone indicates the true value of all that is material and eternal. He who judges these things in any other way is eternally deceived. -- Have you valued your Faith accordingly and revered it as a teacher?
2. Consider that the Christian Faith is also the greatest consolation in all our earthly sorrows. Here on earth it often happens, and God's wisdom often arranges it thus, that an honest and God-fearing Christian is visited with great troubles and difficulties and misfortunes, while unbelievers and the godless seem to fare well and everything they undertake seems to succeed. But if you are deeply imbued with the Christian Faith you will recognize in all the sorrow that comes your way the seeds of a rich harvest which awaits you in eternity. Filled with interior consolation, you will then say with the Apostles: "I know whom I have believed, and I am certain that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him, against that day" (2 Tim 1:2). If calumny and persecution come upon you, and it appears that the whole world has conspired against you, but you adhere firmly to the principles of the Christian Faith, you may say confidently: "This is the victory which overcomes the world, our faith (1 John 5:4). -- Thank God for the gift of the Christian Faith. Have you used it well in the time of sorrow?
3. If the Christian Faith is so inestimable a blessing, how concerned should we be to preserve it without stain and to strengthen it! Our Faith is weakened and often lost through association with unbelievers, through the reading of literature that is hostile to the Faith, through conceit and adverse criticism of the truths of our Faith. Be on your guard, therefore, to avoid these snares, and pray often and fervently that God may preserve the Faith in you and permit you to be more and more imbued with it.
PRAYER OF THE CHURCH
O God, who didst adorn Blessed Raymond, Thy martyr, with zeal for the salvation of souls and the spread of the Gospel, grant us, Thy servants, that through his intercession and mediation we may faithfully preserve unto death which we have received in Thy grace. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
from: The Franciscan Book Of Saints, ed. by Marion Habig, ofm., © 1959 Franciscan Herald Press
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Last Sunday,was the feast of John the Baptist. This is a figure that’s been an inspiration for me over the years for his ability to call us out of our comfort zone, and call us to a life of radically following Jesus. June 24 therefore is more important for me because of it’s religious and spiritual connotation and not so much for it’s cultural political ones in Quebec. It has a way of renewing my journey in ways that only Easter and Christmas usually can! Last Sunday was no different as I found myself in a bit of a ‘rut’ that day, and was in the end rather renewed in spiritual energy because of the Mass at the local parish. Some of you may pick up on the “renewed energy” bit, and may wonder ” were you in need of renewal? That” , you may conclude ” might imply that you weren’t doing so great to begin with. What’s wrong?”
Not a heck of a lot is wrong, but something is a little off. To put it mildly, I feel a bit disconnected from reality here. My entire world consists of studying, a language -which is a process I find frustrating to begin with- and visiting great Jesuit works without really being involved in them. So I’m part of the community simply as a student and as an observer of the culture. I’m comfortable with the 2nd role more or less, but not with the first, which often leaves me frustrated. I always swore as a Jesuit that I would never be ‘just’ a student, and usually, our vocation would not permit it. We have apostolates and encounters with people that permit it us to be Christ to the world while we busy ourselves with studies. Here, my blogging and responding to people’s blogs has helped me do some ‘ministry’ but I’m not in my element.
And this is to be expected. Part of language learning and immersion is that you need to feel like you don’t belong for a little while until you fully adapt to the language. And that won’t happen soon for me. This means that very often, there’s a lot going that I’m missing out on -jokes, cool conversations, good homilies during Mass etc..). At first, I was rather inspired by the language of the Mass, which is so strongly oriented on Justice. It still inspires me,however, the general feeling is one of disconnect. Logically, if one is surrounded by people that he doesn’t understand, the disconnect is kind of inevitable. There’s all kinds of conversation that go on around me daily that I know I won’t understand, so often, the reflex is to just stop listening. Which is a shame.
It’s only this past Sunday that I realized the negative influence this ‘disconnect’ has had on me. The thing is, I’m still very social, and have many both inside and outside this community. And I am committing myself to the task of language learning as much as my little heart will allow me to ( I’m doing my best, and I’m not completely miserable doing this, but I’m not thriving either). That’s not the issue. The issue is what happens to me when I start not caring about the conversations happening around me, or even the words during the Mass. My tendency is, the moment a word is said that I don’t understand, I just go into my bubble and stop caring about what’s being said. For someone who derives inspiration and joy from the Mass, this is indeed dangerous. I’m afraid it’s even affected my prayer life a little. Although I’m a bit disconnected, I am still spending most of my time in a Spanish environment, trying to wrestle with what people are telling me and to learn crazy verb tenses. It’s exhausting, and at the end of the day, it’s easier for me to ‘watch my tv shows’ than pray. Thankfully, it doesn’t happen too often that the former usurps the latter, but often enough that I was starting to feel concerned about the negative way I’ve responded to this challenge to my Jesuit life.
Sunday started off as an example of a day spent resting, kind of half wasting away. Not a very inspiring day. Even going to Mass in the afternoon was kind of a drag. But the parish here is not. It’s a parish with a pretty solid youth group that does all the music. They’re only about 15-20 youths involved, but they carry the Mass on their collective young shoulders. There were so many lovely songs that spoke about being present to God in the moment, making ourselves available to his loving grace, allowing his freedom take over our life. This is all stuff that I know I should be doing, but like I said, I’m not necessarily in my best element these days. So what this youth group, this parish and it’s energy gave me that day, is the courage to face my demons, and overcome them, by returning to the basics: The simplest elements of my faith teach me to always be praying, no matter what I’m doing, but to always reserve a good hour or so for God, so that the bond between us can grow. But in order to do that, I need to be open. And not just be open to God. To the whole Venezuelan experience. To see where how God appears at many levels of my daily life. In a way, THIS is how I become more loving, and more open to justice in our world. This is how I heed John’s call, and prepare the way of the Lord. It was nice to hear that call again, and to understand what it means for my life.
This is the greatest grace of the moment for me: Yes, I know I’ve been struggling with prayer, and with my work here. Nevertheless, though I’m not 100% committed, I see every day as an opportunity to give more and more of myself. Rather than looking at my struggles as opportunity for defeatism, I see it as an opportunity for growth. One might almost say, I thrive on the struggle, because I know it will bring me to a better place. Again..nothing new. However, as I’ve learned time and time again in my Jesuit life, every experience reminds us of old lessons that we need to re appropriate for ourselves. Re appropriate. I hope y’all know what I mean by that. It’s one of my favourite words, but I’m not so good at explaining it!! I can, reclaim would be a synonym. We’re never done learning something, as the lessons need to be adapted to new experiences, and can help us become more free with every new challenge we face.
Poco a poco, nuestras luchas nos llegan a la libertad. (little by little, our struggles lead us to freedom! I was almost able to say that perfectly. Didn’t conjugate the verb well! There’s a shocker!!)
Peace to you all
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Collect of the Day
O Almighty God, by whose grace and power thy holy Protomartyrs of Rome triumphed over suffering and were faithful even unto death: Grant us, who now remember them with thanksgiving, to be so faithful in our witness to thee in this world, that we may receive with them the crown of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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My
brother took my kids with their favorite treasures and toys to a
print shop (years ago!) and made this photo-collage with a photocopy machine. They made 11″x17″ photo-collages and they are so cool to look at…capturing the interests of the kids at the time.
This technique of making photo-collages is really fun! They
collected and arranged different colorful items and place them carefully on the glass of a photocopy machine. (Don’t scratch the glass!)
They covered all the items with a thick blanket or towel to block
the light, because the scanner cover will not close on top of the 3D
items.
They printed on 11″x17″ paper and had them laminated!
Voilà! A cool I Spy picture!
Great idea for custom placemats!
I have been making some Catholic I Spy photo-collages with my home printer/scanner, inspired by Crafolic’s Catholic I Spy.
Watch for an upcoming Catholic I Spy Link-Up party to share your own!
The
one thing I have noticed with my scanner is that some of the 3D items
get a little fuzzy. I think it must have something to do with depth of
field, as the scanner is used to copying images on flat paper, right?
I have a couple different themed photo-collages that I will be posting…
I think that these will lend themselves perfectly to:
placemats (laminated 11′x17″ color copies) How cool would that be…to have custom “My favorite things” or “My favorite Saints” placemats for each person at the dinner table?
postcards (printed as 4″x6″ photos at Walmart)
Quiet Bag Church book
(small photo album)
(We are currently sold out of The Cathletics Club Quiet Bag at the Arma Dei Shoppe, but please leave a comment if you are interested in more info!)
Car book (8.5″x11″ prints in plastic sleeves in a binder)
Scrapbooking (printed on photo paper, capturing interests of each child each year) or Scrapbooking the Sacraments
Wall Calendar (month by month!) Be sure that you are subscribed to equippingCatholicfamilies.com to receive our monthly I Spy…Months!
The first one will be released on July 1st!
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The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
by William Joyce. Illustrated by William Joyce & Joe Bluhm (
) –
Pages:
56
Ages: ALL
Finished: Jun. 17,
2012
First Published: Jun. 19, 2012
Publisher: Atheneum Book for Children
Genre: children, picture book, fantasy, books about books
Rating: 5/5
First sentence: “Morris Lessmore loved words.”
Publisher’s Summary: “The book that inspired the Academy
Award–winning short film, from New York Times bestselling author
and beloved visionary William Joyce.
Morris Lessmore loved
words.
He loved stories.
He loved books.
But every story has its
upsets.
Everything in Morris Lessmore’s life, including his own story, is
scattered to the winds.
But the power of story will save the
day.
Stunningly brought to life by William Joyce, one of the preeminent
creators in children’s literature, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris
Lessmore is a modern masterpiece, showing that in today’s world of
traditional books, eBooks, and apps, it’s story that we truly celebrate—and this
story, no matter how you tell it, begs to be read again and again.”
Acquired: Received a review copy from Simon & Schuster Canada.
Reason for Reading: Like everyone else I was enchanted with the short film when it came out and linked it on my blog and FB right away. When I saw the book was out I just had to read it!
An absolutely wonderful, whimsical story for book lovers of all ages. A delightful story that just lets one become enraptured with the celebration of books and the story they tell. And even though this “book” is available in true book form here, as a movie, on an ereader and originally as an ipod app, it truly honours the traditional book form in all its ancient glory. The story is joyous and yet slightly bittersweet, leaving one with the feeling that no matter what happens in the future, true books will always be with us in our heart of hearts. We just won’t let them go!
And for your viewing pleasure please watch the Academy Award winning short:
Source:
167. The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce
