I am enjoying my classes this semester. WAY easier than last semester. If you will recall, I decided, in my ignorance, to take all the hardest classes I could pick…at the same time. How awesome is that? I barely made it with my life…and only two A’s. But I need to give myself some slack: I was kicked out of my house and forced to move in the middle of the semester (as I recall, the same week as all my midterms). I think I’ve overcome most of the emotional scarring from last semester. I think.

 My boss last semester got herself engaged (which was wonderful) and decided to retire (which was not wonderful) which left me with no job. Out of pity her secretary tried to find me as much work as she could and kept an eye out for potential jobs in the department, but it was no use. I had to find a new job, one that would get me more than 3 hours a week (!). I am now working in the faculty copy center for 10 (ish) hours every week (and it’s where I am as I’m writing this), and enjoying it a heck of alot more. Rock on.

My boyfriend and I inadvertently (*winkwink*) wandered into a jewelry store in the mall the other day and checked on my ring size…for future reference. Oh yeah and I also tried on some rings…OK!

Those are just some basic newsbytes for you to chew on while I figure out what to do with this blog. You can probably count on me dropping the literary focus and turning it a little more personal. That way I’ll actually write in it. But we’ll see.

Time to close up!

LAT 201, Intermediate Latin, Dr. Smith - A continuation of the horrors of Latin 101 and 102. I have no idea how hard he’ll be on us this year, but the “if you don’t want to learn you can join the Army” comment does not bode well.

CAT 204, Catechetics, Bolster - I’ve heard Prof. Bolster is difficult, but I’m not too worried. He has us doing alot of work, and I have to write a 5 page paper due on my birthday, but I’m enjoying the class. He’s already had us read the entire Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum) so I get the feeling I’ll be learning alot this semester.

THE 320, Catholic Social Teaching, Fr. Pattee - This is the class I’m the most psyched and simultaneously freaked out about. I originally was not able to take this class because it was full (like, really full) and everyone wants to take Fr. Pattee for this class because the only other professor who teaches it is not particulary liked. He has us reading a Church document on social teaching and writing a paper on it every week, which means I not only get to read most of the Church’s writing on the subject of social justice, but I also have to understand them too! It’s going to be scary/sweet.

THE 211, Principles of Biblical Studies I, Dr. Bergsma - I’ve always wanted to take a class by Bergsma because he’s just so darn cool. By the end of this semester I will have read the entire Old Testament, which I’ve always wanted to do but never had the self-motivation to actually accomplish. Again, alot of work, but rewarding.

THE 310, Comparative Religion, Dr. Healy - I just thought a class on the Philosophy of Religion (which is what the course is cross-listed as) would be really neat to take, and Dr. Healy is brilliant. This will be my easy class, hands down.

THE 213, Theology of Christ, Sirilla - I took Prof. Sirilla for Christian Moral Principles last semester and loved it. It’s a night class (6-8:40pm, ouch) but he’s so dynamic it really makes the time fly by. This will also be an easy class since I know how to study for his tests already.

Ta-da!

I didn’t do much of anything productive while I was home, actually. I didn’t even beat Twilight Princess. A week after I got home, I began work at my old job (Victoria’s Secret, please don’t flog me), and pretty much worked as many hours as I could until three weeks later when I started to pack for my trip to Lake George, NY with my family (and Nick!). Then it was fun times in a gorgeous farmhouse with enough room for the Trapp Family Singers to each have their own rooms. We went to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, the Saratoga Racetrack, and The Great Escape. And now, six weeks later, I’m back at school.

To give you an idea of how often I’ll be blogging this semester, I’m taking 18 credits (6 classes) this semester instead of the customary 12-15 which, put bluntly, means I won’t have time to…well, you know. My classes are great, but they require alot of elbow grease. I will try my utmost but I can’t promise anything (I can’t even find time to make flyers for the Tolkien Society here on campus).

 That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Once I get into the swing of the semester I’ll probably have more time, so until then!

Then, the day after we get back, I am off to Maine and home!! Mom’s cooking, soaking up some northeastern sun on the slightly colder but no less beautiful beaches of southern Maine, and finally beating Twilight Princess on Gamecube. Can life get much better? I think not.

Finally, right before fall session begins and I am again immersed in a sea of classes (18 credits this semester!) I will be travelling to Lake George, New York with my family and Nick for a week of food, poker, baseball, and general Manocchia/Flewelling/Joler/O’Brien/Hardesty (can we add any more names onto that list?) crazyness. What a great way to end the summer…yes.

That’s the plan. Expect to hear from me after I’ve settled back at home. Have a great summer!

A broken ALTAR, Lord thy servant rears,
Made of a heart, and cemented with tears:
Whose parts are as thy hand did frame;
No workmans tool hath touch’d the same
A HEART alone
Is such a stone,
As nothing but
Thy pow’r doth cut.
Wherefore each part
Of my hard heart
Meets in this frame,
To praise thy Name:
That if I chance to hold my peace,
These stones to praise thee may not cease.
O let thy blessed SACRIFICE be mine,
And sanctify this ALTAR to be thine.

I particularly like the way he lays out the poem visually in the shape of an altar. Some people take issue with that, saying it’s unecessary, but I think it’s appropriate here. I’ll probably post more of his work as I read through the book. Have a great holiday!

“And let us take care that no unbaptized person taste of the Eucharist nor a mouse or other animal, and that none of it at all fall and be lost. For it is the Body of Christ to be eaten by them that believe and not to be lightly thought of.” — St. Hippolitus, The Apostolic Tradition

Hear that? Not to be lightly thought of! It’s not a right, it’s a privelige. It’s a gift reserved solely for those who know and believe it is the Body and Blood of Christ. And it is most definitely not a tool for propaganda or protest.

Respect the Holy Sacrifice. The End.

Trailer #1:

Trailer #2:

Story Behind Bella:

Bon appetit!

And while we’re promoting family members you will also want to check out my littlest sister’s blog, Something Like This. She just posted an entry on her trip to the St. Charles Children’s Home run by the Daughters of Mary Mother of Healing Love. It was her first “nun visit” and she has alot of cool stories to tell about her trip. She wants to do more visits like this, so there’ll be more cool posts about this topic, no doubt.

Oh yeah, and while we’re at it, my boyfriend Nick (Phatcatholic Apologetics) has been working all day long in the computer labs on campus, which gives him possibly way too much quality time with the computer. He’s been posting up to three entries a day, so you need to be visiting daily in order to keep up with them all.

I should create a separate category for shameless plugs just to accomodate this post.

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In his poem “California,” from the collection of poems entitled The Hive of the Saints, Dr. David Craig suggests that life on earth is ephemeral: it is impossible to find our true home among men, and therefore we are made for a far better home elsewhere. With a vision that is both introspective and incredibly perceptive he illustrates that the places we miss and the homes we long for are illusory and only once we leave that place do we conjure up the feelings we come to associate with it. The truth is that, while we are in these places, we find ourselves again wishing we were somewhere else. These realizations serve to bring us to his main point – that our true home is not on this earth, but in the afterlife.

Craig begins his poem with a reflection on the speaker’s time in Goletta, California with its “low-tide winter beach[es],” and its “wet-suited surfers” (Craig 87). His words carry a heavy sense of melancholy as he talks about his friends Craig and Gary, how they vied with each other for the honor of making the best screw, living a sort of “manufactured madness”, while hoping for a “holiness which might transform them” (87). In these two characters Craig gives us humanity. It is indicative of the human condition to live monotonously, to desire something more, and in the end to settle “for a kind of show” (87). Too often we settle for what we can get here and now, and forget that our fulfillment waits for us on the other side of death.

The speaker seems to sense this calling to something more and is restless, eventually leaving his mediocre friends for yet another place to call home: Queen Mary, California. And yet he finds himself uneasy still: “[A] place no more my own than home,/ than all the people there I never spoke to,/ than what moved me through those places” (87). What is it that moves him through these places? It is a desire for a peace which nothing on this earth can give. We are all “too far from home” (87). After telling us that his friend Craig had killed himself years later, the speaker flatly states that California was always “other” for him (88). By “other” he means that California was always something other than what he was searching for, something abstract and distant.

In light of this tireless search for peace he asks himself: What is home? Craig affirms, “[T]here’s no fiction like home–” (88), putting clever spin on the words of Dorothy in L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. He uses the word “fiction” to state even more clearly that there is no such place as that memory we consider home. He goes on further to say:

Still, I’d give a lot to be back there:
in Cleveland, near those friends who were never
as close or real as I would have liked,
near the memories we never shared, the places
that didn’t exist (88).

In this passage Craig reminds himself that what he misses is an illusion: a quaint mental image conjured to provide a sense of comfort. He looks to the familiar for contentment, realizing that he has idealized it and yet at the same time refusing to let it go. And when all is said and done, the comfort it provides is passing and the speaker finds himself still yearning for a place to call home.

To express this desire, Craig tenderly paints us a vivid picture of Lake Erie, “vast in steel blue or grey” and of “evening’s huge orange sun/ beginning to settle down, squeezing/ between blue clouds,/ and to the left, tinted skyline” (88). The speaker remembers his home in its most ideal setting, as an artist remembers a scene when he begins to paint. He draws out the best colors and composes his work from the most appealing angle, creating something exquisite from the ordinary. If only life were a painting, and those scenes that we treasure were frozen in acrylics or oils.

At the end of his poem, Craig begins to ask more explicitly the question which has been underlying the entire poem – are we really at home here? As we look back we find ourselves wishing that those places we love had never been left behind, and we long for the feelings we imagine we had when we were there. To this Craig poses the question: “Do we ever really like the places where we live/ when we’re there?” (89). Is it possible to be truly content here? Craig gives us our answer. “For a while maybe,/” he says, “but then the wishing starts all over again…” (89).

After all his introspection the speaker comes to the gradual realization that he can never find complete peace in either California or Cleveland because there can be no home for him here and moreover he will never find one. “In most traditions, this is called a grace,” he says, referring to the Christian belief that we are meant for life in heaven (89). It is a sort of blessing to be as restless as we are, for it is indicative of our ultimate purpose and the true reason for our creation, which is to dwell in the presence of God forever.