I just got home from a fantastic couple of days with my brother. Nothing extraordinary, but definitely nice to get away for a few days and to see him since it'll be a while before I do again. Anywho, here's a play-by-play of what went down!
Wednesday- I took off in the morning from Wichita and had a looong lay-over in Atlanta. It gave me some down-time, but it was annoying to have to keep looking at the board to confirm when I was going to get out of there. It would switch from leaving at 5:35 to 6:38 and back and forth...needless to say, I basically stuck near my gate the whole time so that it wouldn't leave without me. Oh Delta... Finally got out of there and landed in Newport News around 7 that evening. Jake picked me up, got me settled in my hotel (that was an adventure of its own, because they couldn't find my reservation!), and we went out to eat at Red Robin...yum! We caught up over dinner and he took me back to my hotel so I could get to bed.
Thursday- Jake picked me up and took me on a tour of Langley. Very impressive! Besides the airplane displays, which I always find neat, he showed me the officer's housing (which is quite impressive) and we drove by some other stuff like the NASA research center there. We went to his dorm to print off the addresses of a couple of places we wanted to try to hit up and then we ate at the golf club there on base. (Oh, they're literally right off of Chesapeake Bay! So I got to see a lot of water lol.) Our first stop of the day was at the Virginia Living Museum. There was all kinds of stuff. Besides a nature center and a planetarium, there were quite a few exhibits that were about the natural Virginia wildlife and geography, and featured there until September was a (moving) dinosaur exhibit...it kinda freaked me out whenever I would walk by a T-rex and it would move and growl right at me...um yeah lol. After that we stopped at McD's for some lunch and decided to waste some time until dinner and go see Despicable Me :D. When we went into the theatre, it was quite cloudless outside...it's been the hottest summer in a long time there...when we came out of the movie...hello massive rainfall! It was already up to my ankles...yipes! We ran to the car, made it back to base, and chilled in his room until it finally let up (with as low-lying as some of the area is, some of the cars had water up to the middle of their tires!). We went out to eat that night with a couple of his friends from work.
Friday- Busch Gardens!!!!!! This place was amazing! It's expensive if you don't have any coupons, but with Jake's free military pass and a $10 coupon we used for me, it only cost us about $50 to get in...not bad with all this place has to offer! It was split up into different European countries...Europe, Ireland, Scotland, France, New France (Canada), Italy, and Germany. Each place had it's own themed rides, themed shops with very good quality, an amazing place overall. I highly recommend it, it was a very good time. My bro and I hit up shows mostly...Pet Shenanigans (Ireland), Irish Dancing (Ireland again) and Italian entertainment (you guess :P). The Irish dancing was amazing...aaaand Jake had a good time with that lol. We got out of there around 4, which worked out well, cause we got through the rush hour traffic there fairly well. We went back to base and bowled a few rounds at the newly refurbished bowling alley. It was about time to wrap up the day, so we just watched Sherlock Holmes in the small entertainment room on his floor of the dorms.
Saturday (today)- Jake picked me up at 5:30, and my flight left about 8:00 from Newport News. Had to get off and reboard at Atlanta, and then flew to Memphis, which I liked a lot. It wasn't huge and overpowering, and they had some cool little shops with Elvis, rock & roll, Johnny Cash, and Memphis memorabilia. I flew out from there and landed in Wichita around 4pm-ish! And now just to wait for my luggage to get here lol. Overall a pretty good time!
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Patroness of Hairdressers!
So the saint of the day is St. Mary Magdalene. Basically amazing. I mean, considering the beginning part of her life is rather speculative, as there is no concrete evidence that she was the one who was the adulteress who was almost stoned to death. That aside, I think the story of her life is fascinating. And people say that women don't have a special role in the Church?!
Three things that come to mind when I think of St. Mary Magdalene:
1) Sister Mary Magdalene, IHM. I mean, seriously, she was amazing. And witty. And just cute. She was definitely the outward expression of how my mind worked...going every which way, and then suddenly serious at the funniest moments.
2) The play, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. I actually really loved the way she was portrayed. They did an amazing job with her character.
3) The women that were friends of Jesus. Which then makes me think of the visions of the Venerable Anne Catherine Emerich. If you ever get a chance, you should definitely read them. Utterly fascinating. The friends of Jesus...men and women...were so spectacular.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Virginia Bound!
In a couple of weeks I'll be visiting my brother at Langley Air Force Base!
I thought it would be neat to put some fun facts here about the base.
1) It is 6 km north of the central business district of Hampton, VA
2) The base is one of the oldest facilities of the Air Force, being established on Dec. 30, 1916, prior to World War I by the Army Air Service, named for aviation pioneer Samuel Pierpont Langley. It was used during World War I as a flying field; balloon station; observers’school; photography school; experimental engineering department, and for aerial coast defense. (courtesy of Wikipedia :D )
3) The wind tunnel at Langley is located on the banks of the Little Back River and measures 434 feet by 222 feet. It opened in 1931, and was the first in the United states to be able to test whole airplanes within it.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Huzzah! New findings on Habits!
God sent the perfect book to me at the perfect time!! I finally got done with the book "Rabbi Paul" by Bruce Chilton (which I would NOT endorse) and am now on "From the Angel's Blackboard: the Best of Fulton J. Sheen". It's basically amazing so far, and I'm not even far into it. The book is divided into 3 parts: Mind, Heart, and Spirit, and have to do with his teachings from his seminars/tv show on each subject. And, as God would have it, Habit is near the beginning of the Mind! Ahhhhhh God is good! I think every other sentence I'm tempted to put as a status! Anyways, I really don't know how much is ethical to write from books without totally over-doing it, but I'll write a few of my favorite paragraphs from the Habit section. It hasn't quite clarified for me if habits are intrinsic to the human person, but it has confirmed for me that they do at least mirror your spirituality. Read on:
"How do we break bad habits and cultivate good habits? There must be a new ideal or else a revival of an ideal that has been forgotten. Without a motivation or reason, there is no impetus or challenge to change our habits."
"The psychological fact is that we act upon our beliefs. If beliefs and ideals are wrong, our actions will be wrong."
"Once we are caught in the clutches of an evil habit and travel in the direction of vice, it takes a divine power to turn us round and make us go in another direction...The mind cannot educate itself without teachers, nor can evil habits be overcome except by what is called the grace of God, which is the infusion of a Power that makes us participate in the divine nature."
"Should the breaking off of the evil habit be gradual or immediate? The answer of Our Blessed Lord is that there should be an abrupt breaking. 'If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away' (Mt 5:29). If there is anything that causes us to stumble, for example, neglecting study because of excessive novel reading, the remedy is an entire excision."
"One must put oneself in an environment suitable for the development of a good habit. The habit of temperance cannot be developed at a bar, nor the habit of study at cocktail parties. Vigilance is necessary; so is the avoiding of 'occasions of sin'..."
"Character is not in the intellect; character is in the will. Our choices, decisions, or motivations make us what we are. If our decisions are wrong, our characters will be wrong, regardless of how much we know."
"As St. Augustine said, 'Love God and then do whatever you wish,' because if you love God, you will never do anything to hurt Love."
Ironically, this chapter was an excerpt from his teaching on Love, Marriage and Children.
"How do we break bad habits and cultivate good habits? There must be a new ideal or else a revival of an ideal that has been forgotten. Without a motivation or reason, there is no impetus or challenge to change our habits."
"The psychological fact is that we act upon our beliefs. If beliefs and ideals are wrong, our actions will be wrong."
"Once we are caught in the clutches of an evil habit and travel in the direction of vice, it takes a divine power to turn us round and make us go in another direction...The mind cannot educate itself without teachers, nor can evil habits be overcome except by what is called the grace of God, which is the infusion of a Power that makes us participate in the divine nature."
"Should the breaking off of the evil habit be gradual or immediate? The answer of Our Blessed Lord is that there should be an abrupt breaking. 'If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away' (Mt 5:29). If there is anything that causes us to stumble, for example, neglecting study because of excessive novel reading, the remedy is an entire excision."
"One must put oneself in an environment suitable for the development of a good habit. The habit of temperance cannot be developed at a bar, nor the habit of study at cocktail parties. Vigilance is necessary; so is the avoiding of 'occasions of sin'..."
"Character is not in the intellect; character is in the will. Our choices, decisions, or motivations make us what we are. If our decisions are wrong, our characters will be wrong, regardless of how much we know."
"As St. Augustine said, 'Love God and then do whatever you wish,' because if you love God, you will never do anything to hurt Love."
Ironically, this chapter was an excerpt from his teaching on Love, Marriage and Children.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Emotional Chastity Part II
So far we’ve laid down the foundations for the Christian understanding of the soul/mind/emotions, and we’ve defined chastity as a virtue. Now what exactly IS emotional chastity? Well, let’s start with what it’s not. That’s always the easiest approach to determine what something is, in my opinion.
A lot of people think that virtues are supposed to change your habits. Well, kind of. That would be ideal for bad habits. What about neutral habits that aren’t sinful? There is debate over whether habits are intrinsically part of who you are. Kind of a nurture vs. nature situation almost. There’s two viewpoints that people take on it. (I’ll keep this to a pretty small, unimportant example, because I want to point out the affect of virtue on our entire personhood, not just sin.) Viewpoint 1: I have a habit of saying “like,” like, way too much, like, it’s a problem. However, that is just a quirk of mine; it makes me unique from how other people act and talk, therefore, it is part of who I am. Viewpoint 2: I have, like, the same “like” problem. However, it is not part of who I am. All my annoying habits are just there...who I am is therefore constituted into non-habits alone. In a few ways, emotional chastity isn’t setting out necessarily to change how you are around others. Some will naturally be outgoing, some will be quiet. Some will be intimate, some will just want to have fun. Chastity, and every other virtue, is not meant to erase who you are. It is meant to build your character into the person you are becoming. With grace, we share in God’s life. He doesn’t out-compete our human characteristics…He wants them perfected! Therefore, to attain virtues such as purity, humility, obedience, even patriotism, which will perfect our thoughts, habits, and desires, we must go to the Sacraments where grace is distributed. This is why St. Philip Neri says that chastity is not possible without the Eucharist! These virtues will enhance your spiritual life, which will then reach into your human characteristics. Back to the “like” example. The grace that builds virtue will help me learn modesty in speech. I may still have the habit of saying “like”, but not in professional contexts. Quirks, though they may not be sins, are still not perfections and may need some purification, but still can be indelibly part of your character as a unique human being. Emotional chastity, therefore, is not to be a virtue to suppress your outgoing nature or to keep you from being intimate, but will instead enrich your relationships into Christ-centered friendships.
Ok, so emotional chastity probably won’t change your entire persona. What will it do then? Well, back to the definitions of chastity. My favorite definition from Webster is the simplicity in design or expression. Combine that with Jason Evert’s explanation that chastity is a virtue ordering sexual desires according to real love, and I think you probably have the perfect explanation. Emotional chastity is ordering all of our thoughts of sexuality…our own and others’…and being genuine in our expressions and thoughts of sexuality. Not getting ahead of yourself, to put it simply. I think that society today makes that entirely hard for us all. We’re having education of adult content in middle school…that NEVER happened decades ago. In a Christopher West video, he explained the key difference of Hugh Hefner and Pope John Paul II. They both discovered sexuality and its expression at a key time in the 20th century. While Hefner shoved it in our faces, though, in a non-discreet form, Pope John Paul II used it to unravel the beauty of the human person. Emotional chastity is all about respecting the beauty of the human person in our thoughts.
Okay, I believe that is enough of a foundation that I can build upon it from here at some later point. Thanks for sticking through this!
Dear readers: I know my logic here may be a bit hazy, so if you have anything to correct, to add, or to revise in my writings on habits and their part in our person-hood, please go for it!
A lot of people think that virtues are supposed to change your habits. Well, kind of. That would be ideal for bad habits. What about neutral habits that aren’t sinful? There is debate over whether habits are intrinsically part of who you are. Kind of a nurture vs. nature situation almost. There’s two viewpoints that people take on it. (I’ll keep this to a pretty small, unimportant example, because I want to point out the affect of virtue on our entire personhood, not just sin.) Viewpoint 1: I have a habit of saying “like,” like, way too much, like, it’s a problem. However, that is just a quirk of mine; it makes me unique from how other people act and talk, therefore, it is part of who I am. Viewpoint 2: I have, like, the same “like” problem. However, it is not part of who I am. All my annoying habits are just there...who I am is therefore constituted into non-habits alone. In a few ways, emotional chastity isn’t setting out necessarily to change how you are around others. Some will naturally be outgoing, some will be quiet. Some will be intimate, some will just want to have fun. Chastity, and every other virtue, is not meant to erase who you are. It is meant to build your character into the person you are becoming. With grace, we share in God’s life. He doesn’t out-compete our human characteristics…He wants them perfected! Therefore, to attain virtues such as purity, humility, obedience, even patriotism, which will perfect our thoughts, habits, and desires, we must go to the Sacraments where grace is distributed. This is why St. Philip Neri says that chastity is not possible without the Eucharist! These virtues will enhance your spiritual life, which will then reach into your human characteristics. Back to the “like” example. The grace that builds virtue will help me learn modesty in speech. I may still have the habit of saying “like”, but not in professional contexts. Quirks, though they may not be sins, are still not perfections and may need some purification, but still can be indelibly part of your character as a unique human being. Emotional chastity, therefore, is not to be a virtue to suppress your outgoing nature or to keep you from being intimate, but will instead enrich your relationships into Christ-centered friendships.
Ok, so emotional chastity probably won’t change your entire persona. What will it do then? Well, back to the definitions of chastity. My favorite definition from Webster is the simplicity in design or expression. Combine that with Jason Evert’s explanation that chastity is a virtue ordering sexual desires according to real love, and I think you probably have the perfect explanation. Emotional chastity is ordering all of our thoughts of sexuality…our own and others’…and being genuine in our expressions and thoughts of sexuality. Not getting ahead of yourself, to put it simply. I think that society today makes that entirely hard for us all. We’re having education of adult content in middle school…that NEVER happened decades ago. In a Christopher West video, he explained the key difference of Hugh Hefner and Pope John Paul II. They both discovered sexuality and its expression at a key time in the 20th century. While Hefner shoved it in our faces, though, in a non-discreet form, Pope John Paul II used it to unravel the beauty of the human person. Emotional chastity is all about respecting the beauty of the human person in our thoughts.
Okay, I believe that is enough of a foundation that I can build upon it from here at some later point. Thanks for sticking through this!
Dear readers: I know my logic here may be a bit hazy, so if you have anything to correct, to add, or to revise in my writings on habits and their part in our person-hood, please go for it!
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Emotional Chastity Part I
I know I mentioned that I want to discuss emotional chastity and its implications, but first I should give a little background into what it is and its impact in my life. I was first introduced to the concept on our senior year retreat at St. Mark's parish. In the girls' session, the speaker, who was a Carroll grad and is attending Benedictine, gave Sarah Swafford's talk on Emotional Chastity (http://jamieleigh126.blogspot.com/2009/10/emotional-chastity-love-emotions-taylor.html). I needed it so badly at that point in my life. I just remember sitting there with my friend and we kept looking at each other going...yup, we needed this!!
And so began my summer of being introduced to all these concepts of emotional chastity and courtship and just waiting...just waiting. Why this hadn't been introduced to me sooner in high school, so I could've avoided some heartache, I'll never know, but God's timing is perfect.
Problem is, now that I'm so on fire about emotional chastity, I want to share my thoughts on it with other girls...but usually, I have NO idea where to start, other than referencing the previously posted link to Sarah's talk. It's not like there's a ton load of books written primarily on the subject. The thing is, with my interest in philosophy, I've taken some time to figure out the philosophical implications and whether chastity has anything to do with the emotions. I think it's good to have this kind of a solid footing on the subject before I try to introduce this to other young women. Here is a bit of what I have written previously:
First one needs to address the body-mind problem. What is the relationship between the body and the mind? Why is this an important question (What issues hinge upon the answer to the question?)? Well, our mind is made up of: consciousness, rationality & logic, and imagination. Body, in this context, is referencing our brain...the neurons, nerves, cells, chemicals, and cortex that make up what occurs in the brain. Common sense tells us the two are linked, but how so? Descartes' view is that the body and mind are two distinct substances, and that the mind has causal power over the brain, just as the brain has causal power over the mind (that is, when the body is hungry, the brain tells the mind to think food, and the mind in return can stimulate the brain to begin moving towards food...in a simplified kind of way...). The materialist view is that the brain produces the mind...moderate materialism stays with the middle ground that the mind might exist, but it depends on the physical brain for its existence, while extreme materialist thought is that the mind is completely physical (composed of, caused by chemicals). Okay, why in the WORLD did I just spell all that out? Questions of immortality, limits of science, the existence of God, the notion of the free will, artificial intelligence, and the "paranormal" all have to do with it!!!!! In short, we need to know how our thoughts and bodies are linked if we are to determine how we believe in the movements of thoughts.
Cool. Thanks for sticking with me. Now, we know that Christians obviously take Descartes' stand point, more or less, that the mind is separate...otherwise, the soul could not separate at death to enter the afterlife. Kinda problematic. So the brain can affect the soul, and the soul can affect the brain. Awesome. Now this is where we can get into cool things such as virtues and how Jesus has saved us...basically legit! Now, if the body and mind are linked, it means that sin crosses from one to the other. Any spiritual activities really (the brain patterns of spiritual people that have been studied are prime examples) affect our bodies…maybe not that we can tell right away…usually it comes out in our habits. Habits show so much of who we are and what we believe…even the smallest habits. Virtues come into play here.
Virtues (Latin: virtus) find their origins in Greek and Roman civilization. One can find Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle praising virtuous men. They were personal values that every citizen was supposed to strive for, qualities that would civilize the world. Included were virtues such as bravery, dignity, frugality, and truthfulness. Indeed, these spilled into literature, with protagonists personifying many of these heroic qualities in their struggles against evil. The same virtues spilled into Christianity early on. Faith, hope, and love are seen as the greatest theological virtues, and the cardinal virtues include fortitude, temperance, justice, and prudence. For the Christian, virtue takes human characteristics already present and strengthen them, sanctify them, make them Christ-like.
Chastity is a virtue. Chastity is defined as: “abstention from unlawful (or all) sexual intercourse; purity in conduct and intention; restraint and simplicity in design or expression” according to Merriam-Webster. According to the Church, it is: “a virtue (like courage or honesty) that applies to a person’s sexuality. It means that you take all of your sexual desires and order them according to the demands of real love,” (taken from Pure Love by Jason Evert). So chastity already reaches into the body and mind (we’re seeing a connection here with the body-mind problem…if the mind were dependent on the body, then chastity would only deal with the body). Chastity is not a “giving up” virtue. You’re not giving up sex (we are sexual beings, anyways), you’re not giving up promiscuity…it’s a gain of purity, independence, and self-control. Indeed, chastity, such as the theological virtue of love, affects just about every other virtue. If one is not chaste, then it is hard to discipline one’s self in matters of food, clothing, money…you get the picture. It’s important from the start to discipline ourselves to be chaste. It has been said over and over that denial of the body aids in denial of sin…this is where the practices of fasting and penance come into play. Sorry, back to chastity. Most people already understand the meaning of physical chastity, because that is identical to abstinence. But chastity overrides abstinence in that it does have the emotional content that abstinence does not.
To be continued...
And so began my summer of being introduced to all these concepts of emotional chastity and courtship and just waiting...just waiting. Why this hadn't been introduced to me sooner in high school, so I could've avoided some heartache, I'll never know, but God's timing is perfect.
Problem is, now that I'm so on fire about emotional chastity, I want to share my thoughts on it with other girls...but usually, I have NO idea where to start, other than referencing the previously posted link to Sarah's talk. It's not like there's a ton load of books written primarily on the subject. The thing is, with my interest in philosophy, I've taken some time to figure out the philosophical implications and whether chastity has anything to do with the emotions. I think it's good to have this kind of a solid footing on the subject before I try to introduce this to other young women. Here is a bit of what I have written previously:
First one needs to address the body-mind problem. What is the relationship between the body and the mind? Why is this an important question (What issues hinge upon the answer to the question?)? Well, our mind is made up of: consciousness, rationality & logic, and imagination. Body, in this context, is referencing our brain...the neurons, nerves, cells, chemicals, and cortex that make up what occurs in the brain. Common sense tells us the two are linked, but how so? Descartes' view is that the body and mind are two distinct substances, and that the mind has causal power over the brain, just as the brain has causal power over the mind (that is, when the body is hungry, the brain tells the mind to think food, and the mind in return can stimulate the brain to begin moving towards food...in a simplified kind of way...). The materialist view is that the brain produces the mind...moderate materialism stays with the middle ground that the mind might exist, but it depends on the physical brain for its existence, while extreme materialist thought is that the mind is completely physical (composed of, caused by chemicals). Okay, why in the WORLD did I just spell all that out? Questions of immortality, limits of science, the existence of God, the notion of the free will, artificial intelligence, and the "paranormal" all have to do with it!!!!! In short, we need to know how our thoughts and bodies are linked if we are to determine how we believe in the movements of thoughts.
Cool. Thanks for sticking with me. Now, we know that Christians obviously take Descartes' stand point, more or less, that the mind is separate...otherwise, the soul could not separate at death to enter the afterlife. Kinda problematic. So the brain can affect the soul, and the soul can affect the brain. Awesome. Now this is where we can get into cool things such as virtues and how Jesus has saved us...basically legit! Now, if the body and mind are linked, it means that sin crosses from one to the other. Any spiritual activities really (the brain patterns of spiritual people that have been studied are prime examples) affect our bodies…maybe not that we can tell right away…usually it comes out in our habits. Habits show so much of who we are and what we believe…even the smallest habits. Virtues come into play here.
Virtues (Latin: virtus) find their origins in Greek and Roman civilization. One can find Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle praising virtuous men. They were personal values that every citizen was supposed to strive for, qualities that would civilize the world. Included were virtues such as bravery, dignity, frugality, and truthfulness. Indeed, these spilled into literature, with protagonists personifying many of these heroic qualities in their struggles against evil. The same virtues spilled into Christianity early on. Faith, hope, and love are seen as the greatest theological virtues, and the cardinal virtues include fortitude, temperance, justice, and prudence. For the Christian, virtue takes human characteristics already present and strengthen them, sanctify them, make them Christ-like.
Chastity is a virtue. Chastity is defined as: “abstention from unlawful (or all) sexual intercourse; purity in conduct and intention; restraint and simplicity in design or expression” according to Merriam-Webster. According to the Church, it is: “a virtue (like courage or honesty) that applies to a person’s sexuality. It means that you take all of your sexual desires and order them according to the demands of real love,” (taken from Pure Love by Jason Evert). So chastity already reaches into the body and mind (we’re seeing a connection here with the body-mind problem…if the mind were dependent on the body, then chastity would only deal with the body). Chastity is not a “giving up” virtue. You’re not giving up sex (we are sexual beings, anyways), you’re not giving up promiscuity…it’s a gain of purity, independence, and self-control. Indeed, chastity, such as the theological virtue of love, affects just about every other virtue. If one is not chaste, then it is hard to discipline one’s self in matters of food, clothing, money…you get the picture. It’s important from the start to discipline ourselves to be chaste. It has been said over and over that denial of the body aids in denial of sin…this is where the practices of fasting and penance come into play. Sorry, back to chastity. Most people already understand the meaning of physical chastity, because that is identical to abstinence. But chastity overrides abstinence in that it does have the emotional content that abstinence does not.
To be continued...
Monday, July 5, 2010
July 5th Gospel
I always loved this passage (Matthew 9:18-26), particularly the homilies and explanations on it. There's another passage in the Bible that speaks of this incident when the woman touched His cloak and He turned around to see who it was, but His disciples could not figure out who He was talking about. Then she fessed up that she had touched the cloak to cure herself. The whole story is just fascinating. Did Jesus "feel" the power going out from Him? How do you explain something like that? He knew who was coming to Him for what purposes. That's just so amazing! He knows people's hearts before they even have the courage to confront Him face to face about what is in their lives. That's why Confession should, in theory, be easier for us to approach...you're asking forgiveness for actions/thoughts He already knows occurred! You're not shocking Him. There's a quote by St. Augustine that goes, "In failing to confess, Lord, I would only hide You from myself, not myself from You." May we always reveal ourselves to Him with the faith of a child!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)