Notes from a Catholic marriage
Bernadette the twelve-year-old: “Dinosaurs like -”
Isaiah the nine-year-old: “Dinosaurs don’t exist! They’re extinct!”
Bernadette: “Dinosaurs will eat anyone who says that!
Isaiah: “Hah! That’s proof that they don’t exist, because I said it and they didn’t eat me!”
Bernadette: “They didn’t hear you.”
Isaiah: “Yes they did!”
I took the kids to the city Easter-egg hunt. It took place on Holy Saturday, but I have a complicated and Jesuitical theory to explain why that was OK.
All the eggs in the city hunt are plastic. Most contain little stickers or rubber trinkets; some contain numbers, which can be turned in for little prizes; and one egg, the golden egg, is redeemable for the Grand Prize–a bicycle or something. It’s a madcap, five-minute event, with people running everywhere.
As happened last year, Tina only picked up one egg. She got her one egg, put it in her basket, and stared at it happily–unable to comprehend why everyone else was rushing around to get more eggs. Her aunt took pity on her and had one of the cousins share, so Tina came home with two eggs.
When we got home, Tina began insisting that I cook her eggs. She had already opened the eggs and discovered the rubber trinkets; the other kids tried explaining that the eggs are plastic; but she only became more insistent that I should cook her eggs. So finally I distracted her, hid her plastic eggs, and cooked up a couple of regular eggs.
And after that she was happy. No wonder she didn’t understand the rush to gather more and more eggs: who could eat that many?
[P.S. I think the election of a Jesuit to the papacy elevates my rationalization to a “papal theory.”]
As I recently mentioned, I bought a book for the Triduum about the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. The author mentions at one point:
Prior to opening the [second Vatican] Council, Pope John XXIII made a pilgrimage to Assisi, where he placed the Council under Saint Francis’ special patronage and prayed that he who was called “the father of the poor” in his own time would intercede for the Church so she would recognize herself once again as a Church “of the poor and for the poor.”
This seems to be where Pope Francis got his tag-line. Anyhow, since JPII’s pontificate was all about enacting the Council, and BXVI’s pontificate was all about correcting wrong understandings of the Council, it seems to me no surprise that Pope Francis’s name and schtick would have do with the intention behind Vatican II.
Inspired by Pope Francis’s emphasis on serving the poor, for the Triduum I bought a book about the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. After reading the chapter about feeding the hungry, I did notice how often I get snacks for the kids.
Just as I turned the page to begin the chapter about clothing the naked, Tina the three-year-old appeared in the door–entirely naked. “Papa,” she said, “I can’t find any clothes!”
I suppose with regard to my own kids it’s more of a work of justice than a work of mercy.
I took the kids to confession on Good Friday. We had a plethora of priests this Triduum: Fr. Dave was in the confessional to the right, Fr. Andy in the confessional to the left, and Fr. Sieker had set up shop in the cry room.
As we waited in Fr. Andy’s line, a college student came out into the church and signaled to me. When I approached, she pointed out the door and whispered, “Fr. Sieker is in the cry room.”
I couldn’t resist: “Is he OK?”
Tina the three-year-old has left behind the innocence of youth and entered the stage of wanna-be stealth. She recently entered the kitchen on her way toward the back door, carrying a bundle awkwardly wrapped with a towel. She stopped to get Jacinta’s attention.
“Mama,” she said, “I don’t have any scissors.”
I have been cyber-silent for the past few days in honor of the Triduum, but life has not ceased to be funny. So I need to toss up a backlog of posts.
A small funny: Tina the three-year-old continues to call any park a “parking lot.” So when we recently walked past a yard with a swing and slide, she called out, “There’s the parking lot! There’s the parking lot!”
Tina the three-year-old gets more three-years-old with time. She looks for excuses to insist on having her way. One recent trend has been to insist that one particular fork is her “salad fork” and therefore cannot be used for main dishes. (We have never made such a distinction at our dinner table, so I have no idea where she is getting this.) Whenever Jacinta makes a salad for herself, Tina will shout, “I’m getting my salad fork!”
Yesterday, Jacinta made herself some eggs for breakfast. As usual, Tina wanted to partake of the bounty, and went to get a fork. “This is my egg fork!” she announced–and ever since she has refused to use that fork for anything but eggs.
Happily, we already have one fork identified as the “dinner fork,” so we don’t have to go buy a potato fork, a meat fork, an asparagus fork, and so on.
Yesterday, Teresa the five-year-old went on a brief kick of identifying eye colors. “My eyes are brown!” she announced, and then, looking at me, “Your eyes are blue!”
Tina the three-year-old could not be left out. Staring intently into Jacinta’s eyes, she exclaimed, “Your eyes are … white!”
Then, looking at me, “Your eyes are … white!”
Jacinta asked, “What color are your eyes, Tina?” “Um … white!”
I suppose it’s a hard concept to grasp: why we call my eyes blue and Jacinta’s eyes brown when there is so much–well, white in there.
Following up on my previous post about Arvo Part, I should report that I have listened through his “Passio” a couple of times now. It is a setting of the passion story from John’s Gospel. So here’s where I am as of this moment (no doubt it will be different next week):
1. The music hangs around the words very much like Gregorian chant with a kind of organic incorporation of instruments, which strikes me as an attractive thing.
2. The general tone of the whole thing is brooding and sad, but yields to a brilliant major chord at the end, which emphasizes the joy of the resurrection. That’s a nice effect.
3. The entire piece avoids the tonic until the end. While other voices go various places, the voice of Jesus almost always begins and ends on the same note, namely the fifth above the tonic. This keeps up until the very end, when the the voice of Jesus descends to the tonic at the words “It is finished.” Very, very nice effect.
4. It is a monotonous piece. I think it would take a long time to be able to hear a snatch and know instantly from the music (as opposed to the words) what part was playing. Put another way, Part’s setting does not make it so that when I read a certain part of the passion a particular musical memory comes to mind. The tone and melody and so on do not change from scene to scene; there are occasional variations in motif, but they are very occasional and I have not been able to tell that they are related to the meaning of the text.
A couple of weeks ago a friend told me that Arvo’s setting of the passion just didn’t “stick” for him. “No, it sticks,” I responded, “that is, in my throat.” And that’s no longer true. I don’t find it offensive; it is nice in many ways. I am not yet at the point of thinking it brilliant. But I can keep listening to it for Holy Week without reluctance.