Freeswimmingness achieved again. This time, it looks like we can absolve mom and dad — some of them are getting sucked into the filter. Time to look into an alternate filter.
Yet again, lost the last batch (are mom and dad snacking on them? It seems likely). New batch hatched this morning — I almost saw it, I must have missed them by about five minutes.
I couldn’t resist commenting on Mark’s noticing protesters about trained chickens. And indulging in a moment of schadenfreude in learning via Google that Buckey Egg Farm owner might be jailed for contempt — although further reading indicates jail time probably won’t happen for this scoundrel.
In the unsung heroes department, find Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. What this man managed to do with a mere handful of troops and no support in World War I is simply astounding. Even more astounding is the respect he kept from his African troops and his British foes after the Great War (when he was destitute after a failed political career, it was British soldiers who collected money to provide him a pension).
Karen Marie Knapp, who saw much more of the Bishop’s conference than I could hear, tells me that when the motion (for episcopal penance) was reintroduced, that the bishops did agree to a day of fasting and abstinence in reparation for their faults and set the date as August 14.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they’re doing that much. But do the math, this is 1/270th of the nine months of penance that Abp. Flores proposed.
While I’m not a moral theologian, and I don’t know how to quantify penance, it seems to me that a single day of fasting fails to address the gravity of the bishops’ failure and complicity in this terrible scandal.
… is my basic thought in listening to the EWTN coverage. With the exception of a few glimmers of light struggling to break out here and there, it seemed depressingly political and non-spiritual. (Yes, I know, everything should be done “decently and in good order”, but one would hope that the successors to the Apostles ought to know that parliamentary procedure is a servant, not a master.)
Most inspiring moment: the bishop (Abp. Flores?) who rose up and called the entire body of bishops to remember that this is not just a matter of poorly-coordinated policies, but that this is sin that has offended and pained Jesus greatly, like unto his Passion. And called the bishops to enter a nine-month period of pennance, with holy hours and fasting and prayers, to begin to make things right.
Most depressing moment: Although this proposal received an immediate second, it was not part of the approved agenda, and was therefore tabled. Discussion then turned immediately to the utterly mundane and administrative matter of the division of once province into two.
(OK, so the justification of this is that they needed to get the provinces in administrative order so that some lay oversight board with representation by province could then be filled ASAP. Still. It shouts to the world, to anyone with ears to hear, that most of the bishops Just Don’t Get It™.)
Anne Wilson notes a Washington Post article on “alingual” children.
All I can say is: God have mercy.
No, I can say one more thing: this is not limited to children of immigrants. I have witnessed this myself. The Children of Television are not all the children of immigrants.
I cannot comprehend this. I feel like I spend so little time talking with my children, yet the numbers show that I’m actually way ahead of the national curve, and they are all wonderfully expressive and verbal. (Giving us the “problem” of getting them to stop talking sometimes …)
We have achieved free-swimming status and survived it for the last day! Three cheers for the smallest small fry at the Frey house!
Following a link from Doug’s blog, I find RazorMouth and the essay Victory by Infiltration or Isolation? (“Why the impulse to split is wrong and why staying the course is right”) by P. Andrew Sandlin. I would normally take this as encouragement to stay and fight the good fight within the Episcopal church regarding our current struggles with the “human sexuality” question and (even more profoundly) the wholesale abandonment of the faith in any recognizable form in exchange for Spongian/Jesus Seminar secularist mushiness.
On the other hand, I’m also reading Steve Ray’s book, Upon this Rock: St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome in Scripture and the Early Church. And it occurs to me: Sandlin’s essay is practically a Catholic apologetic tract. I mean, if it’s a Bad Thing™ to leave and start a new church rather than stay and fight for reform, shouldn’t we apply that same logic to the efforts of Martin Luther and John Calvin?
Still alive; still in the “wriggler” phase. Hopefully, they’ll be freeswimming in a day or two (and not simply become Protein Pills™ for mom and dad).
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