Gaudete!

(To our e-mail subscribers: this post features a video, which can be viewed by going to the blog itself)



Painting: Benozzo Gozzoli, Os Anjos em Adoração, detail

Beware of the Blog!

Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday to me!
This blog's five years old now...
Oh, how can that be?!

It can be, I guess, because on September 20, 2011, I sat down and started clacking away at a keyboard, and a teensy little spot in the blogworld was carved into place.

No one who happened upon that first ramble had a clue of the secret I'm about to tell you now, here on this very screen. Which is that I wrote while shaking in my blogboots. I didn't even do e-mail at the time. I knew nothing about the big wild world of the Internet. I'd felt "nudged" for months to blog, but I barely knew what a blog was. I had never even read one, so how could I have gotten such an idea?

Considering the fact that anything involving the Internet was a mystery to me (and I really wanted to keep it that way), I had begun to think this wild notion THAT WOULD NOT LEAVE ME ALONE might, in fact, be an inspiration from God. 

I could at least give it a try. Except that I didn't. I had gone through the spring and summer of that year trying to convince myself that I must be mistaken, it was just a silly idea. And all the while the thought kept following me around like a puppy. It lodged in my mind like a melody, like one of those tunes you just can't get out of your head - and in fact an old song popped in to keep "reminding me" that I was being chased by a strange notion. The song's lyrics, which I found amusingly appropriate for what I was feeling, sneaked into my brain and (when others were not within earshot) out of my mouth. Because my husband and I once had a "retro" jukebox loaded with old 45s and this record had been one of them, I knew the words to this theme from a campy 1950s movie. So for months, as I drove or cooked or sorted laundry, I found myself constantly singing this - but with one changed word.

All you have to do is change the last letter of the title and you'll know just what I was fearing five years ago. It's a fun tune, not spooky, from surely one of the campiest films ever made. 

Shall we check out what I was humming as I wrote that first blog post five years ago? 

It's a splotch! A blotch! 

BE CAREFUL OF THE BLOG...





(to our e-mail subscribers: this post features a video, which can be viewed by coming to the blog itself)

(disclaimer: any other videos that may come up after the song entitled "The Blob" are not chosen nor endorsed by me)

Veni, Veni, Emmanuel

Just This Once

Mothers can't help it.  When they run into nearly forgotten YouTube videos with one of their children in them... and even with a photo of said (teenaged) child showing off a newly caught fish... Mothers gotta throw all of their "this is not a deeply personal blog" ideas out the window.  Just this once.   

A mother might remember nearly miscarrying a son.  Fretting and worrying and dismissing others' well intentioned but painful "assurances" that "there can be plenty of other children."  (but I want THIS one ... I already love THIS one... don't they understand...?).  The intense joy when that very son arrives at term, full-voiced and healthy.  The even more intense joy as "Frankie" grows up to love and serve God. 

A mother remembers a little boy's concerns about not wanting to go to Heaven "cause there's angels there, and angels are girls - YUK!!!"  A mother looks at all-grown-up Frankie and thanks God for his faith, for his family, for all of the years.

No, this is not a family blog.  Most of my family members prefer it that way.  Only one is a total extrovert-to-the-core, and it is he who had one half-second of fishing "fame" in a music video, back when he was a teen.  No, Frankie was not singing in it (except with a group around a campfire), but golly - in that one split-second, could he FISH :)!!  Fishing is one of his favorite things to do even now.

The singer in this music video is Chris Rice (who also wrote the song "Go Light Your World," famously recorded by Kathy Troccoli).

Playing backup guitar is singer Michael W. Smith.

The one-second-fisherman is Frankie - who by that time had made his peace with girls :).   
It's his picture on the still shot of the video before you click on it, at least on the one that shows up when I see it.  He's older now, as I write this, but in this picture he bears a striking resemblance to a little boy I once raised.  Can time really have flown so fast?  I sit and stare.

Anyway, today is Divine Mercy Sunday, and I think the song's theme is appropriate.

Besides that:  mothers can't help it.   Just this once.

(Gratefully linking this post to Memoir Monday at Campfires and Cleats)

(This post is linked to Catholic Bloggers Network Linkup Blitz)

Still

Painting: Johansen Viggo, A Christmas Story

What's It All About?

Only in God

When it's all Been Said and Done

Painting:  "David" by Frederick Leighton

The Road Less Traveled

I was a bit beside myself today to find this video.  To hear one of my favorite poets reading his own work, with the emphases he had in mind as he composed it, is a rare treat for me.

Is this everyone's favorite poem?  It certainly is one of mine. 

I found this at Our Journey.  There are several poetry "readings" over there!





"He guides me in right paths for His Name's sake."  (Psalm 23:3)

"Since the blood of Jesus assures our entrance into the sanctuary by the new and living path He has opened up for us through (the veil meaning His flesh), and since we have a great Priest Who is over the house of God, let us draw near with utter sincerity and absolute confidence..." (Hebrews 10:19-21)

"I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life..."  (Jesus in John 14:6)

(William Bliss Baker painting in US public domain)

This post is linked to Catholic Bloggers Network Monthly Round Up  

Moments of Autumn Grace

Scents of apple and cinnamon fill my house.  The morning was heavy with storms, dark as night.  I savored sounds of rain while it lasted.  Now, not ready to give up a sense of rainwashed, tea-soothed, quilt-warmed coziness, I turn to my favorite music of all time.  

If there were theme music to my life, this would be it.  Why?   I don't exactly know.

I just know that this piece of music somehow finds its way into every corner of my memory.  Into every shadow of my dreams..... 










This post is linked to Catholic Bloggers Network Monthly Round Up 

(apples photo by Nancy Shuman)