Friday, August 14, 2009

Seven Quick Takes Friday--volume 46


One.
Lesson planning is a headache and makes me wish I could toss everything to the wind and join the "unschooling" community, only I am far too schedule-oriented and insecure for that. I felt a bit resentful about everything school-related falling on my shoulders and not Bret's, but then I recalled that he will have to do the taxes this year, and being self-employed since February, it is going to be a headache of major proportions. I now feel much better about lesson-planning.

Two.
I am reading Ecclesiastes in My Daily Bible, and it must be one of those books of the Bible I have sort of skipped through in the past. It is really beautiful! A love song to Wisdom...

Three.
Today would have been the 76th birthday of my father-in-law, "Dutch". He died of melanoma just five months after Bret and I married, at the age of 54, and was a really great person. A lot of him lives on in Bret. I think Dutch would have been exceedingly proud of the man Bret has become and proud of his grandchildren. He passed away early Christmas morning in 1987 in Tucson. That morning the desert was covered in a blanket of snow...

Four.
It is, of course, also the Feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe. I cannot think of this Saint, and likewise St. Teresa Benedicta (Edith Stein), without thinking of the concentration camp at Dachau...I have been to that camp, having lived fairly close to it while growing up in Munich, probably four or five times. There is a Carmel outside the north wall of the camp. The hand-carved crucifix in our school-room was purchased in its gift shop.

Five.
Gemma has infant-acne. A bad case of it. This means that it is unlikely that I will be posting any photos of her for a while. I am being vain on her behalf.

Six.
I troubled my husband, after he spent a number of hours putting up new trim in the bathroom, to move a shelf in my teaching cabinet (which meant drilling a number of holes) and to make a cross on a base to use for this wonderful craft/liturgical teaching tool. Good man that he is, he did it without delay. Then I told him I really could use a little shelf in the corner on which to display it...

Seven.
Tomorrow I make my Total Consecration to the Blessed Virgin according to the method recommended by St. Louis de Montfort for the seventh year in a row. This year I hardly managed any of the preparatory prayers. I suppose I could have substituted my normal morning prayers with those in the book, but with my ongoing battle with aridity, I try to stick to prayers that inspire me rather than those that put me to sleep, and I am sorry to admit that unless I am in a church, the litanies tend to do just that when I pray them alone. I feel so pathetic. Lord, grant me fortitude and perseverance!

Now go and visit Jen at Conversion Diary to read some other Seven Quick Takes.

3 comments:

  1. Ran across this Therese quote in my notebook the other day -- ". . . the fact that I often fall asleep during meditiation, or while making my thanksgiving should appal me. Well, I am not appalled; I bear in mind that little children are just as pleasing to their parents asleep or awake, that doctors put their patients to sleep while they perform operations. . . ."

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  2. now i know your a TRULY a kindred spirit because i found something in ecclisiasticus the other day and i have been devouring it ever since. isn't it a wonderful book? i was just a bit confused by the way that the verses in my douay-rheims were numbered differently than another bible i had....but that seems to always be the case. you can see why there are so many disagreements with the protestants and the bible....uniformity is what we NEED.

    ps. i adore those fathers of mercy.
    fr. kasey (spelling) is so GREAT!!! i have some of his cd's and i listen to them quite often.

    ok. i am really getting off here now.

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  3. Personally, I would take lesson planning over taxes any day! There are books (and templates) on lesson planning for teachers. Maybe you would find those hopeful.

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