Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Stretching



Faustina is into taking her clothes off, trying to put them back on (the shirt around her waist), putting shoes on (her black dress shoes) and imitating people.

Faustina is stretching along side Mike as he gets ready for his soccer game. The other day Grandpa commented that he wouldn't be surprised if Faustina had some athleticism in her. I would not be surprised at all either after we spent a few hours at Fort Snelling State Park last night and she ran 2.5 of the 3 miles we walked on the paths. I couldn't believe it! She just kept running, and running, and running....

Blob chair


Jude is absolutely thrilled with his new seating arrangement for dinner. All he does is smile the whole time and chow about 1 lb of baby food. It works for all involved.

Retro

Faustina is wearing her Mom's dress that she wore as a little girl and Jude is sporting Grandpa Lee's hat that he wore when he was a few years old and his Dad's onesie. I love it when timeless (kind of - Mike thought Faustina looked like she was from the 18th century!)can be passed on.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Lots of 'side' time

Pretty much all Faustina wants to do is be outside. If we are inside, she asks to be 'side' (her version of 'outside') and pulls us toward the door. So, needless to say, I have a chair parked out back and in front where I can sit; as long as we are outside, she is happy. We've spent a lot of time at the park and a lot time in the burley, which I cannot imagine what we would do without. And summer has not even begun yet! I love it.



Love the falls

We are so fortunate to be so close to Minnehaha Falls. It truly is a gorgeous park and a great space for kids to explore and play. We spent a morning there a few weeks ago during Mike's Easter break, and then we biked over there last night with the kids to meet some friends for dinner. The restaurant Sea Salt is there, and I must say it is excellent food. I had a basket of fried fish last night and it was terrific.




Faustina thoroughly enjoyed some lemonade after running around for a few hours.


And this thing....we don't know what this is, but we thought it was freaky.

Easter....a bit late

The late post on Easter seems to go along with how Easter was this year. It was good, but it was a bit slow, uneventful, and without Grandma. We were fortunate to spend time with Mike's family at our place on Saturday. And then on Sunday, the Lee family went out to the cemetery in the morning and then to Grandpa's to spend the rest of the day with Grandpa, Travis, Betina and Lizzia. A pretty low key crowd. Faustina was very excited to find her Easter basket. And I must say, she was styling in her Easter outfit and Jude was a handsome fellow in his sweater vest.

We now celebrate the Easter season. Thank you Lord!



Along for the ride



This must be a baby toy scooter. Right? Nope. Not at all. It is an adult seat for gardening. The pouch that Jude is sitting in is suppose to hold garden tools. But Faustina (and Dad) got creative. Faustina loves pushing Jude back and forth, back and forth on the sidewalk. She, actually, is surprisingly good at it.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Its always Aidric

Aidric always takes precedent. These two are hilarious. Yesterday while Faustina was giving Aidric a 10 minute hug I jokingly asked,

"Are you two dating?!"

Shaking her head Faustina said, "No, not yet."

Aidric's Mom asked, "Are you going to in the future?"

Faustina nodding her head emphatically, "Ummm hummm!"

Then this morning Aidric was sleeping when Faustina woke up. In order to allow him to keep napping (in his usual manner, he curled up by the front door mat and fell asleep!), I told Faustina we could watch Peter Rabbit downstairs. Needless to say, she was very excited since she is only able to watch t.v. on very rare occasions. I got everything set up for her and was going to do some work.

She stopped me and insisted, "Mama! Sit with me and watch Peter Rabbit!".

Who could refuse?

We curled up on the recliner with Teddy and a blanket and were 'cozy' as she kept saying. What more could I ask for than a warm rainy day watching a movie in the morning with my warm bodied sweet little 2 year old daughter sitting on my lap?

Soon we heard Aidric stir upstairs so I went to get him. I brought him downstairs, plopped him in the other chair, and went to resume my previous seat with the Fauster.

"No, Mama! I sit with Aidric!"

So much for Mom and daughter cozy morning.


Sunday, April 4, 2010

The Shroud




Just watched a very interesting program on the Shroud of Turin on the History Channel. The Shroud is real!

Basically, here is a summary:
1. Shroud is not painted or hand produced.
2. Shroud could not have been forged in any way at all.
3. The images are made from blood.
4. The blood patterns could have only been made from a real person who suffered the wounds; the flow is perfect with gravity (as attested by a real coroner who examined it)
5. The wounds line-up exactly with Gospel accounts
6. The Shroud lines up perfectly with the blood stains on another famous cloth, The Sudarium of Oviedo (the cloth first used to cover Jesus' face after the crucifixion)
7. The Shroud, when analyzed by a team of physicists, produced 3D elevation that could not have been created by any forgery.
8. The pollens in the Shroud reveal plant fibers from all of the places reported to have held the Shroud in history, starting in Jerusalem
9. There is a new document from the Knights Templar which accounts for a period of history when the Shroud was unaccounted for; we now know it was in the hands of the Templars
10. The carbon dating of the Shroud done in the late '80s was bogus. A piece of the Shroud which was a medieval restoration was used. This has been verified by many scientists
11. A Hungarian illuminated manuscript accounts the Shroud about 150 years prior to the faulty carbon-dating from the '80s
12. No one knows how the human face and other parts (not the blood) were imprinted on the Shroud; it is believed that it was caused by immense light or heat by scientists... could this be the process of the Resurrection?
13. The Shroud contains 3D imagery in 2D format, which means that it was actually on a human being's face. Likewise, it is unknown how the 3D data was imprinted on the cloth.
14. It is clear that this article contains the burial wrappings of a crucified and scourged man from the first century A.D. It also matches up with another famous burial cloth. Likewise, it would be rare for a person to be scourged and crucified, and Jesus was a unique case as Pilate attempted to free him. In addition, the Shroud accounts for the pierced side; another rarity for a crucified man as the point is the long, agonizing suffocation. It is amazing that the Shroud, along with the Sudarium, has been almost perfectly preserved for almost 2,000 years.

The Shroud is real! Very cool.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

True medicine of immortality does exist... in baptism


EASTER VIGIL

HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

Saint Peter's Basilica
Holy Saturday, 3 April 2010



Dear Brothers and Sisters,

An ancient Jewish legend from the apocryphal book “The life of Adam and Eve” recounts that, in his final illness, Adam sent his son Seth together with Eve into the region of Paradise to fetch the oil of mercy, so that he could be anointed with it and healed. The two of them went in search of the tree of life, and after much praying and weeping on their part, the Archangel Michael appeared to them, and told them they would not obtain the oil of the tree of mercy and that Adam would have to die. Subsequently, Christian readers added a word of consolation to the Archangel’s message, to the effect that after 5,500 years the loving King, Christ, would come, the Son of God who would anoint all those who believe in him with the oil of his mercy. “The oil of mercy from eternity to eternity will be given to those who are reborn of water and the Holy Spirit. Then the Son of God, Christ, abounding in love, will descend into the depths of the earth and will lead your father into Paradise, to the tree of mercy.” This legend lays bare the whole of humanity’s anguish at the destiny of illness, pain and death that has been imposed upon us. Man’s resistance to death becomes evident: somewhere – people have constantly thought – there must be some cure for death. Sooner or later it should be possible to find the remedy not only for this or that illness, but for our ultimate destiny – for death itself. Surely the medicine of immortality must exist. Today too, the search for a source of healing continues. Modern medical science strives, if not exactly to exclude death, at least to eliminate as many as possible of its causes, to postpone it further and further, to prolong life more and more. But let us reflect for a moment: what would it really be like if we were to succeed, perhaps not in excluding death totally, but in postponing it indefinitely, in reaching an age of several hundred years? Would that be a good thing? Humanity would become extraordinarily old, there would be no more room for youth. Capacity for innovation would die, and endless life would be no paradise, if anything a condemnation. The true cure for death must be different. It cannot lead simply to an indefinite prolongation of this current life. It would have to transform our lives from within. It would need to create a new life within us, truly fit for eternity: it would need to transform us in such a way as not to come to an end with death, but only then to begin in fullness. What is new and exciting in the Christian message, in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, was and is that we are told: yes indeed, this cure for death, this true medicine of immortality, does exist. It has been found. It is within our reach. In baptism, this medicine is given to us. A new life begins in us, a life that matures in faith and is not extinguished by the death of the old life, but is only then fully revealed.

To this some, perhaps many, will respond: I certainly hear the message, but I lack faith. And even those who want to believe will ask: but is it really so? How are we to picture it to ourselves? How does this transformation of the old life come about, so as to give birth to the new life that knows no death? Once again, an ancient Jewish text can help us form an idea of the mysterious process that begins in us at baptism. There it is recounted how the patriarch Enoch was taken up to the throne of God. But he was filled with fear in the presence of the glorious angelic powers, and in his human weakness he could not contemplate the face of God. “Then God said to Michael,” to quote from the book of Enoch, “‘Take Enoch and remove his earthly clothing. Anoint him with sweet oil and vest him in the robes of glory!’ And Michael took off my garments, anointed me with sweet oil, and this oil was more than a radiant light … its splendour was like the rays of the sun. When I looked at myself, I saw that I was like one of the glorious beings” (Ph. Rech, Inbild des Kosmos, II 524).

Precisely this – being reclothed in the new garment of God – is what happens in baptism, so the Christian faith tells us. To be sure, this changing of garments is something that continues for the whole of life. What happens in baptism is the beginning of a process that embraces the whole of our life – it makes us fit for eternity, in such a way that, robed in the garment of light of Jesus Christ, we can appear before the face of God and live with him for ever.

In the rite of baptism there are two elements in which this event is expressed and made visible in a way that demands commitment for the rest of our lives. There is first of all the rite of renunciation and the promises. In the early Church, the one to be baptized turned towards the west, the symbol of darkness, sunset, death and hence the dominion of sin. The one to be baptized turned in that direction and pronounced a threefold “no”: to the devil, to his pomp and to sin. The strange word “pomp”, that is to say the devil’s glamour, referred to the splendour of the ancient cult of the gods and of the ancient theatre, in which it was considered entertaining to watch people being torn limb from limb by wild beasts. What was being renounced was a type of culture that ensnared man in the adoration of power, in the world of greed, in lies, in cruelty. It was an act of liberation from the imposition of a form of life that was presented as pleasure and yet hastened the destruction of all that was best in man. This renunciation – albeit in less dramatic form – remains an essential part of baptism today. We remove the “old garments”, which we cannot wear in God’s presence. Or better put: we begin to remove them. This renunciation is actually a promise in which we hold out our hand to Christ, so that he may guide us and reclothe us. What these “garments” are that we take off, what the promise is that we make, becomes clear when we see in the fifth chapter of the Letter to the Galatians what Paul calls “works of the flesh” – a term that refers precisely to the old garments that we remove. Paul designates them thus: “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing and the like” (Gal 5:19ff.). These are the garments that we remove: the garments of death.

Then, in the practice of the early Church, the one to be baptized turned towards the east – the symbol of light, the symbol of the newly rising sun of history, the symbol of Christ. The candidate for baptism determines the new direction of his life: faith in the Trinitarian God to whom he entrusts himself. Thus it is God who clothes us in the garment of light, the garment of life. Paul calls these new “garments” “fruits of the spirit”, and he describes them as follows: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal 5:22).

In the early Church, the candidate for baptism was then truly stripped of his garments. He descended into the baptismal font and was immersed three times – a symbol of death that expresses all the radicality of this removal and change of garments. His former death-bound life the candidate consigns to death with Christ, and he lets himself be drawn up by and with Christ into the new life that transforms him for eternity. Then, emerging from the waters of baptism the neophytes were clothed in the white garment, the garment of God’s light, and they received the lighted candle as a sign of the new life in the light that God himself had lit within them. They knew that they had received the medicine of immortality, which was fully realized at the moment of receiving holy communion. In this sacrament we receive the body of the risen Lord and we ourselves are drawn into this body, firmly held by the One who has conquered death and who carries us through death.

In the course of the centuries, the symbols were simplified, but the essential content of baptism has remained the same. It is no mere cleansing, still less is it a somewhat complicated initiation into a new association. It is death and resurrection, rebirth to new life.

Indeed, the cure for death does exist. Christ is the tree of life, once more within our reach. If we remain close to him, then we have life. Hence, during this night of resurrection, with all our hearts we shall sing the alleluia, the song of joy that has no need of words. Hence, Paul can say to the Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, rejoice!” (Phil 4:4). Joy cannot be commanded. It can only be given. The risen Lord gives us joy: true life. We are already held for ever in the love of the One to whom all power in heaven and on earth has been given (cf. Mt 28:18). In this way, confident of being heard, we make our own the Church’s Prayer over the Gifts from the liturgy of this night: Accept the prayers and offerings of your people. With your help may this Easter mystery of our redemption bring to perfection the saving work you have begun in us.

Amen.