Jacinta [hushing a child during Mass]: “That’s good enough.”
Tina the three-year-old: “No, it’s a bad ’nuff!”
FTT #13
Author: Dr. Holmes
Dr. Jeremy Holmes teaches Theology at Wyoming Catholic College. He lives in Wyoming with his wife, Jacinta, and their eight children.
FTT #12
On the way down to Denver a few days ago, Scott and I hit a snow patch on Highway 20 and went into a spin. We veered sideways towards oncoming traffic, then slid backwards across our lane towards a cow pasture and a barbed-wire fence, and then came to a stop on the side of the road pointing back toward the direction we had come from.
When I got home, I told Jacinta about the event. While it was way too much excitement to cram into seven seconds, I think it brought Scott and me closer together. “When you nearly die with someone,” I explained to Jacinta, “it makes you friends.”
Jacinta didn’t have to think even a moment about that one: “You have enough friends!”
FTT #11
I’m in Denver for a meeting of the Board of Directors of WCC. On the way in I saw a billboard off the highway that proclaimed, in large letters,
RAISED WITH COMPASSION AND WITH UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
And then in smaller letters below that:
CHICKENS RAISED WITHOUT ANTIBIOTICS
And then below that, a picture of a burrito filled with chicken bits. I don’t know what it means about our culture, but it made me laugh.
FTT #10
We had more music in the house this Christmas than in previous years. Bernadette the eldest progressed far enough in piano to play simplified Christmas carols, and the others learned how to work the .mp3 player. Tina the three-year-old has about three favorites, among which is “Joy to the World”, which in her rendering goes as follows:
“Repeat the sounding joy! Repeat the sounding joy! Repeat the sounding joy! Repeat the sounding joy! Repeat the sounding joy! Repeat the sounding joy!”– and so on.
What a mouthy thing!
Tina the three-year-old has a policy whereby she always disagrees with Papa. If I say, “You are my cutsie!,” she has to say, “No, I am mama’s tootsie.” If I say, “You are Tina,” she must respond, “No, I am Tina Ree Homes” (Faustina Marie Holmes). Just this morning, as we began a conversation, I asked her, “Are you going to disagree with Papa?” “Uh-huh!” she assured me cheerfully.
So sometimes I say things just to provide some kind of reasonable provocation for the inevitable disagreement. This evening when she asked for a drink, I told her, “I will give you a drink–on your head!”
“No,” she retorted, “in my mouth!”
“Your mouth is in your head,” I pointed out.
“No,” she said, dutifully following policy but unsure how to conclude the sentence, “it’s in my…mouthy thing.”
Ad maiorem Dei gloriam
While reading the Catechism this morning, I saw something new (to me) about the idea that the world was created for the glory of God. At least, I don’t think I saw this as clearly before.
It is not hard to grasp that God created to share his own goodness: the only other alternatives are that he created for some benefit he would derive, which is not possible, or that he created for the sake of sharing something else’s goodness, which again is not possible since anything not God is part of his creation.
What struck me this morning is the transition from there to the notion of glory. Because the greatest share of his goodness God can give is knowing and loving, and the greatest thing he could offer to be known and loved is his own goodness, it follows that the greatest share in his goodness God can give to a creature is that the creature acknowledge and praise God.
FTT #8
It’s hard to say exactly what makes a child “ready” for first communion, but in our parental judgment Regina the seven-year-old is not yet ready. She’s awfully sweet, but….
Today, for the first time in quite a while, she asked about it: “When will I receive my first communion?” To which her mother replied, honestly enough, “When you’re ready.”
“I hope I am ready while I am seven,” Regina continued. Ah, I thought, she begins to experience that desire, that thirst–ah, perhaps she begins to be ready. Casually, her mother asked why she hoped for that.
“Because,” she explained, “seven is the lucky number!”
I hope that’s right–I’m crossing my fingers!
FTT #7
My inversion table came today. It’s an impressive assembly of metal and plastic that looks vaguely like a modern rendering of the medieval rack.
That must be what inspired Jacinta to tell the kids that it is a torture device that hangs people upside down. She added something creative about a new approach to discipline and addressing bad behavior, but they never got that far. They emphatically denied that it is a torture device, and they emphatically denied that it hangs people upside down.
Once I had it assembled and they could see that, indeed, it hangs people upside down, they grew more quiet. And then when I got on it myself, they were completely set at ease.
[Blogging question: Is it redundant to italicize “emphatically”, since italics are a form of emphasis, or is that a kind of beautiful fitting of the symbol to the thing symbolized? I leave you to decide.]
Revelation and the Shape of the Church
As I read through the Catechism yesterday, I was struck by the comment that the revelation of the Trinity–the most fundamental doctrine of our faith, and the highest in the “hierarchy” of doctrine–was not complete until the mission of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. This led me to the following thought:
The giving of revelation constitutes its recipient, the Church, while the growth of the recipient makes possible the giving of revelation: the two go together. To spell out the consequences of this idea: as long as revelation is incomplete one should expect the Church to be growing and changing in fundamental shape; and as long as the Church is growing and changing in its fundamental shape, one should expect new revelation. So it was not incidental the the fundamental doctrine of our faith was revealed completely when the Church was in a way completed. Or to put it the other way around, anyone who claims to receive new public revelation is implicitly claiming that the Church is still developing toward its fundamental shape.
This led me to a further thought, which extends and qualifies the above:
The Church could not attain its entire fundamental shape before the apostles had exercised their ministry. For example, there could not be a hierarchy in the Church before there were enough converts to have multiple congregations, and Peter had to get to Rome before the Pope could be the bishop of Rome, and somebody had to get sick before the Apostles could administer last rites, and so on and so forth. So as long as the apostles were still active, the Church was still in some way in formation and new revelation was to be expected; with the completion of the apostles’ ministry, the Church had its entire fundamental shape and so no more revelation was to be expected.
FTT #6
This evening, Tina the three-year-old announced her need of “colors” (crayons). Unwilling to entrust an entire box of crayons to her at once, I gave her first the yellow one, then exchanged the yellow for the orange, and so on through the five or six crayons in the box. Finally I explained to her that she had used every color in the box. “Do you want to use one of them again?”, I asked.
“Uuummmm,” Tina mused, “I want….” She made a fumbling motion with her fingers as though trying to count something. Finally she managed to stick up a thumb: “This one!” For a moment, I was at a loss: thumbs up means what now? But in the end I decided that the thumb corresponded to orange, and I handed her the appropriate item. She was ecstatic.
After a moment, she handed the orange back and fumbled with her fingers again. “I want….” She had to use her left hand to hold down the other fingers of her right hand so her right index finger could stand up alone: “This one!” I decided that the index finger corresponded to purple. “I like purple!” she exclaimed.
Upon returning the purple crayon, she fumbled again. “I want….” Now when she succeeded in getting finger #3 to stand up alone and showed it to me, there followed an awkward moment requiring careful control of the facial muscles, but I decided that finger #3 corresponded to green and we moved on. “I like green!” she said.
And so we went, all the way through finger #5. I can only guess that her finger gestures meant something like first, second, third, fourth, fifth, although no one has ever shown her such a thing. Kind of clever of her to think it up!