Medieval Fun

Last weekend was Medieval Day at CUA. We all had a great time. I brought my new-to-me camera and practiced taking pictures. One of them even got published in the school newspaper! Here are a few of my favorite shots of the day.

The whole flickr set is here, deliberately obnoxiously watermarked since many of the pictures involve the faces of children.

March for Life

That was a cold day. My goodness.

 This year, I marched with the Dominicans instead of with CUA, as their schedule worked better for me. I traveled to the Mall with the friars and priests, but wound up marching with the Nashville sisters, in order to march alongside my dear friend who joined last year.

 We were closer to the stage than I have ever been before. Knowing OPs has its perks, let me tell you.

 Crowds, crowds, crowds. Apparently the crowd was quite small this year, which is hardly surprising. I honestly don't know if I've ever been as cold as I was today.

 Many buses got canceled because of snowy conditions. The roads around DC were a total mess Tuesday night.

Some people, of course, see in the low turnout a sign that the pro-life movement is waning. I do not think that is the case. The crowd is younger every year, and our spirits were high despite the cold.

 There was singing, dancing, chanting, and praying as we marched along.

 The counter protesters were not willing to brave the weather. My sister said she saw only two. I didn't see any.

 Fulton Sheen in Dutch! There were a lot of groups from other countries, including the Netherlands, Italy, Canada, Scotland, and Argentina.

 The crowd coming up the hill.

 His flag says, "Appeal to Heaven!"

A CUA sign! The worst part of not marching with CUA was not getting to carry one of their signs.

This March made me feel more hopeful about our chances of ending abortion than any March yet. We were happy and cheerful despite the cold. We are determined. We will not give up!

As I posted on Twitter this morning: Pain is a constant reminder you're still alive, but 1/3 of my generation isn't. #whywemarch

I'm engaged!

I got engaged last Wednesday!

Everyone always wants to hear the story, so here it is.

We went to Mass. We left, and on the way to the car, under a beautiful oak tree (which we couldn't see because the sun had set already), Kevin asked, "Will you marry me?" Of course I said yes!

My ring is silver with an amethyst. I'm not really a diamond person, but my favorite color is purple, so Kevin decided to get a purple ring instead. (I don't wear gold.) And no, I'm not sure why my skin looks like an elephant's ankles.

Inside, it says "friendship which has been set on fire" in ancient Greek.

We're hoping to be able to pull off a double wedding with my twin sister next summer.

7QT, Volume 16

Wow, it has been a few months since I participated in this link up! For my seven quick takes, I'll do seven photos.

 Halloween! I am a deviled egg. Kevin is a soul in purgatory.

 Fall is my favorite season. Yesterday I went walking around campus taking pictures.

 Tricolor trees! After taking biology freshman year, I now know how this works.

 I think they have to plant these beautiful bushes across from the school of architecture because it is so ugly.

 These are near the Nursing-Biology building.

 (At CUA, we have a biology building and a nursing building. The building in between them is called Nursing-Bio. Someone was super creative there.)

Here's the one that got away. I only had my phone, and it couldn't focus without any natural light. This could have been such a cool shot, with the Shrine in the background and the green and orange leaves with the CUA banner. I may go back tonight and try to retake this shot.

A bittersweet goodbye

Last Friday, I saw my friend Maggie for the last time in quite some time. This Thursday, meaning tomorrow, on the feast of the Assumption, she will join the Nashville Dominicans as a postulant.

Maggie was my freshman year roommate. Unbeknownst to me at the time, she was very skeptical about us getting along well. She was freaked out by the fact that I was one of seven, sewed my own clothes, and had been homeschooled. On the other hand, I was a little concerned by the fact that she suggested bringing a fridge and a TV, both of which I thought were thoroughly unnecessary.

 Luckily, we soon discovered that we had more in common than we had thought. I realize that becoming really good friends with your freshman year roommate in college is a total cliche, second only to the roommate from hell, but in my case it was actually true.

 I wasn't really sure what to write in this blogpost. There's so much I could say about Maggie, but I'm trying to avoid the overly sentimental.

 Maggie is always there for you, and you can tell her anything. Even if she highly disapproves of it, she will find a way to help you that doesn't just leave you feeling condemned. She can be amazingly tactful given how blunt she naturally is. (Bluntness, let me note, is a wonderful quality in a roommate, because you don't have to play mindgames to figure out if your piles of mess are annoying her--she will just tell you.)

 Maggie's family doesn't go to church as often as mine does, but her faith is stronger than mine is. Without the example of my family, I don't know where I would be today--certainly not where Maggie is. I consider her an inspiration.

 Maggie has an amazing sense of humor, and can also be amazingly naive. She can take anything in stride, and work with whatever life throws at her. She can share your sadness or your joy in equal measure. Anything I try to say about her seems to me to be falling short of who Maggie actually is.

 If the things that we love tell us who we are (footnote: T-Money Aquinas), then Maggie is a part of who I am, and it breaks my heart that she is leaving CUA.

I take some comfort, though, in knowing that she is not abandoning us, because she will be praying for us, and she is not going alone, because we will be praying for her. You can bet that the minute she is allowed to receive visitors who aren't related to her, I will be standing on her doorstep with a bag of M&Ms and the Sixtus CD. Maggie will be greatly missed, but I cannot doubt that she will be happy as she follows the will of God.

 

 Do not trust the stars that sparkle,

Stars will blink and fade away.

Do not trust the scent of roses,

Roses bloom and then decay.

Put your trust instead in someone

Who will always be sincere.

Sharing in your every smile,

Sharing, too, in every tear.

Prepping and packing

...because I can't think of anything better to do the week after three days in the hospital than take a 5am train to a city full of food you can't eat, can you? Seriously, though, I am so excited. I am going to get to see the pope, and get him to bless my rosary! (And some other stuff, but those are presents, so shhhh.) I'm solving the food problem by bringing nuts and hard-boiled eggs with me, and on Sunday night I'll probably scrap the gluten-free diet for the evening so I can eat pasta carbonara.

The last few days have been a whirlwind of activity, since all my friends are leaving. We went out to dinner several times, which left rather more of a hole in my pocket than I thought it would, and we spent an evening at a carnival. As my friend Alex said, "On a scale of one to Mexico, how safe do you think this is?"

There were several typical carnival rides, but there were no rules about how to behave on them. So people were standing up on the swing boats. On the swing merry-go-round, you will notice that my friends are facing me in several pictures. This is because they twisted up their chains before the ride started, and then shoved and pushed each other to make sure they kept spinning for the whole ride.

It was a good evening, or rather set of evenings, and a fun week. After I get back from Rome, though, it will be nice to relax a little bit.

7 quick takes, volume 10

1. Thank you all for the prayers! The final diagnosis was an infection/inflammation of the intestines which my body was fighting off on its own. Therefore, no medical interventions were needed (except a pain drug which is illegal in the US. Ha.)

2. I am now on a temporary diet of easy to digest food. On a lactose and gluten-free diet, that basically means rice, applesauce, and carrots. Yay. However, I think it also includes Fanta, because soda is the easiest thing to keep down if you're sick to your stomach, so it must be easy to digest. And also the doctor left it up to my discretion how long I should follow this diet for.

3. A little over half the people in my program are going home this weekend, which is sad, especially since a lot of the ones I got along best with are leaving. But I suppose this is life, and I will make the best of it. I now have offers of free places to stay all over the US. Road trip, anyone?

4. We had a goodbye party yesterday. I was voted "most likely to have a dozen children" and Kevin and I were voted "most likely to get married."

5. We held our party at the Seepark, where there are so many waterfowl. Since it's summer, there were oodles of baby waterfowl. I saw baby coots, grebes, mallards, and one cygnet. Possibly also a nest of baby moorhens--they were red on top like moorhens, but it looked like a coot was taking care of them.

6. and 7. Pictures of baby birds!

 Not all baby birds are cute. Some look like space aliens.

 A baby coot watching while its parent dives.

 A mama mallard sitting on her babies.

 Coots have strange, strange feet.

 This poor cygnet. He is so clearly going through puberty.

 Baby mallard!

 I threw in this random sparrow for good measure.

 A grebe. They are hard to photograph because they don't stay on the water for very long.

 Two baby coots fighting over an apple.

A baby grebe. They're striped!

Head over to Conversion Diary for the rest of the takes!

7 quick takes, volume 9

1. I haven't posted, because not much has been happening that's terribly interesting.

2. On Tuesday, Kevin turned 21. We didn't really celebrate much, since it was in the middle of the week. But I made sesame chicken and chocolate cake, and that was good fun. We shared the cake with a roommate and his boyfriend and there was still a huge amount left over.

3. Wednesday we had our farewell dinner for the study abroad program. Those of us in University courses aren't leaving for another six weeks, and they threw us in with another IES program who we never see (because they don't speak German), so the farewell part kind of got lost. But it had free food, so no complaints.

4. Thursday was the All-American Barbecue at the university, sponsored by the international club. Everything was almost-but-not-quite right. I did get a picture of me wearing the uniform of the local American football team, and Kevin won the pie eating contest. That was funny.

5. Everyone I know is frantically doing large amounts of work before the semester ends. I have two papers due, one of which is ten pages and one of which is eight to ten pages. The ten page one is onto page ten, and I am not sure it can really get longer. Combined with the fact that I can write German much faster than everybody else on the program, I have so much more free time that it makes me feel kind of guilty. Oh well.

6. Apparently the score I got on the placement test at the beginning of the year was the best score the teacher has ever seen. I learned that on Wednesday night.

7. My seasonal allergies have only just showed up. I had thought I had escaped them by switching continents, but apparently the terrible weather here just delayed them. Speaking of weather, we skipped spring. We went from where-is-my-winter-coat weather to I-wish-I-didn't-value-the-virtue-of-modesty weather. Sigh.

I'm writing these while drinking my coffee, so if they don't make sense, you can find ones written after coffee at Jen's blog.

Orthodoxy and heterodoxy: 7 quick takes, vol 8

1. For some reason, questions about heresy keep popping up all over the place recently. And they all seem to lead me to the same thoughts.

2. It all started with reading the book, The Name of the Rose, which a good friend recommended and lent to me. The book is set during the Franciscan controversy, about whether Jesus had things, and whether Christians should have things, or whether they were required to live in poverty, and what that all meant anyway. One of the characters in the book made the point that the majority of people who get caught up in heretical movements are not trying to be heretics. An inspiring preacher comes along who talks about dedicating your life to Christ, so you follow him. And then it turns out his theology is all flawed and so he and you are both heretics, but you are just a medieval farmer, so you had no idea about theology anyway! You're a Cathar, because that's who came by, not because you're actually deeply committed to Catharism. I thought this idea was super interesting, and probably true.

3. Then, in my Medieval Mindset class, we talked about the same time period. My teacher advanced the theory that St. Francis was canonized so quickly because the Pope was worried that people would follow St. Francis rather than him, and so he canonized him to tie the St. Francis followers into the Roman Catholic Church. Now, to me, this sounds a little crazy, especially if you think that canonizations are divinely inspired. But what was very interesting was how much some heresies overlap with other, orthodox, traditions. The line between heresy and orthodoxy is so very thin in some places!

4. In my theater class, we discussed and saw the play Daniel Stein. It's based on a book which was originally in Russian, which is loosely based on a real person. Anyway, the story is of a Jewish man who works as a translator for the Gestapo in WWII. After he uses his inside knowledge to help a Jewish ghetto, he has to flee. He hides with Catholic nuns, becomes Catholic, and then a Catholic priest. He goes to Israel to try to found a community like the original church in the first century, before Judaism and Catholicism became so different from each other. However, he gets into all sorts of trouble with the church, because part of what he does is reject Church doctrines (like the Trinity) that were solidified in later centuries. These conflicts never get really straightened out because Daniel dies in a car accident. Nevertheless, it's interesting to me that what got Daniel into trouble was not so much his beliefs as his lack of beliefs.

5. A side note to a paper I am writing is the heresy of Joachim von Fiore. He wrote a book attacking Peter Lombard and his doctrine of the Trinity. Then he sent his book to the pope, to get an opinion on the orthodoxy of his opinions so he could know if they were in line with Church teaching. And, too bad for him, the Fourth Lateran Council condemned him and his book, and said that Peter Lombard was correct. It did praise Peter Lombard, though, for checking.

6. Yesterday, a friend of mine and I were discussing religion and the Church. (This is the same friend who recommended The Name of the Rose. He and Kevin and I have some awesome deep discussions. He also might be reading this, so hi!) Anyway, he started to ask a question, prefacing it with the two caveats that one, he hoped this wasn't offensive and he didn't mean it offensively, and two, he knew it might be hard for me to answer this question objectively, so I was prepared for some tricky theology question or something. But the question was, aren't there some popes and bishops throughout history who have done some really evil things? To which, of course, the answer is yes by any moral standard. My father likes to say that given the people who have led the Church in the past, the fact that she still exists is a testament to her divine guidance!

7. But what it all comes down to, I think, is authority. Does the Church have authority, or not? If the Church has authority and is inspired by the Holy Spirit, then you follow her. If not, you don't. The line between orthodoxy and heterodoxy is fine, but the line is there. To a regular person, it's so hard to sort out. For God, it's easy. I would hate to be a Protestant and have to figure everything out by myself. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have the Church to guide me in my theology, especially in my metaphysics.

May Bible Verse Photography Challenge

Ok, challenge number one seems to have been trying to do something with the formatting, which decided to throw a temper tantrum and then be unfixable. (What are the defaults on these posts?) I gave up and deleted the whole post and am now starting over. Here is the verse:

"And I commend enjoyment, for man has no good thing under the sun but to eat and drink and enjoy himself, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of life which God gives him under the sun." Ecclesiastes 8:15

Here are my photos:

I was invited to participate in a wine tasting with a friend and his family. We tried eight wines. One sparkling wine, three whites, three reds, and a dessert wine. All were local. The winery is fun to tour because they are an experimental winery which is working on "shaping the wines of the future," as well as training new winzers and winesalesmen. They showed us their current experiments with a netting to protect the plants from hail and a different way to prune the vines. The last red they gave us was the best wine I've ever had in my life, but it cost 29E per bottle. So I didn't buy it.

In terms of photography, does anyone have a good website to recommend that will teach me how to make better use of my camera? I can use the presets (like "auto" and "fireworks") but I'm sure the camera is capable of doing more, since it lets me customize almost every setting. Is there a website tutorial that will teach me how to do this, or do I have to get a book?

Head over to Flowers Round The Cross to see the rest of the photos!