Mar 2
1. This week was the parish mission at my old parish, with our old beloved pastor. It was 3 nights of mass with an extended homily, but unfortunately I only made it to 2 nights because on Tuesday night I had a bad migraine.
Some of the best wisdom I’m taking with me:
-Lent is our time to go into the desert with the Lord
-A time to examine our life and detach from our creature comforts
-Fasting is about giving ourselves to God
-We fast at different levels: the level of the stomach, the level of the senses and the level of the heart.
-Ashes are our first act of humility for lent. We get dusted up and all of a sudden we’re obsessed with how big this thing on our forehead is.
-God wants to stir up dust in our lives, a spring cleaning. Lord, make of us a renovation project. He wants to bring about change, and dust means change is happening. The more dust is stirred up in my life the better.
-Ashes are evidence of there having once been a fire, a fire that has since gone out. What in my life has been reduced to ashes?
-How can I rekindle the flames? How can I bring back that fire, that passion?
– Temptations: Be careful not to take shortcuts form the cross. Look what Jesus did, why should we be exempt? Why should we expect any less?
–Am I seeing the glory, without the struggle? What shortcuts from the cross am I taking in my life?
-A prayer: That we would be more abundantly nourished by every word of the mouth of God!
Thank you for your wisdom Father Allan!
Also, in case you missed it, I updated the lent post with some pictures of our ideas in action.
2. Two ethicists writing in a prominent medical journal have argued for legalized infanticide using the same criteria that justifies abortion: “killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be.”
They call this practice ‘after-birth’ abortion. The scary thing is that these people are actually serious. The article created widespread controversy and objection, but the journal editor fiercely defended the piece.
God, help us!
The interesting thing is that this piece could actually be an important event for advancing the pro-life cause. It highlights the danger of the pro-choice attitude. Technically these ethicists are on the same page as pro-lifers in their insistence that there is no difference between a newborn and an unborn baby in the womb. They just take the logic in the opposite direction.
This is the danger of ‘choice’, these ethicists are merely following the arguments to their logical conclusion. We already have the horror of partial-birth abortion. And if infanticide is legal in the Netherlands, who’s to stop it from coming to the States, or even Canada? Perhaps no one, if we stay on this path.
People like to deny the reality of this slippery slope, but the practice of Euthansaia in Europe began much the same way: as an article in a medical journal. Mother Tereasa summed it up perfectly:
“The second we allow ourselves to become the arbiters of who is human and who isn’t, this is the calamitous yet inevitable end. Once you say all human life is not sacred, the rest is just drawing random lines in the sand.”
Think about it.
3. This week Focus on the Family had a fascinating program on the 5 love languages of Children. Our primary love language is the form of love that we feel more deeply than others. The program explained each of them as it would relate to a child, how to recognize them in our children, and how we can better nurture or punish with this information.
The easiest way to identify your child’s language is to look at how they express themselves. After listening to the program I was easily able to identify my oldest’s love language: words of affirmation. It makes so much sense. He has always been really encouraging and appreciative ‘ thank you for getting me juice daddy! I knew you could get me juice!’ So he feels most loved when we praise him. And, since turning his love language around as punishment is severe discipline, this explains why he gets so disproportionately upset whenever one of us yells at him.
Armed with this information I’ve been careful to continue to tell him he’s doing a good job on a regular basis, and to wrap discipline in his love language by telling him I still love him. However, the real results have come with the discipline. It is sooo helpful to know how to get through to him, I’ve been employing this new tactic of reversing the love language whenever I wasn’t getting anywhere with one of the kids and I’m pleased to report that it REALLY works. We usually have to fight and fight with him to get him to clean up, but a careful deliberate yell seems to snap him out of it 😀 Sometimes it does mean he is cleaning up while crying, but at least he’s cleaning up, we’ll reward and cheer him up when he’s done.
The ability to discipline effectively has been huge! Time outs have never been that effective for either kid; often they just play in their room. The author Gary Chapman said you can usually identify the language as young as 3 or 4, but I’ve been doing the same trick with my 2 year old who’s language, given his attachment to nursing, is either ‘physical touch’ or ‘quality time’. He’s pretty cuddly so I’m leaning to the first one. This past week I’ve found a clear slap on the hand has really improved his behavior as well.
If you want to figure it out for your own child, the 5 languages are: words of affirmation, physical touch, quality time, gifts and acts of service.
4. This week I took my 3 year old for his first dentist check up. When we got out of the car in the parkinglot seeing all the cars, he remarked ‘traffic is CRAZY!’. 😀 He was pretty pleased with the toys in the waiting room and he actually did really well. He let the dentist look at his teeth and do a cleaning, without any crying or whining, though he did start asking, ‘ am I all done?’ before it was over.
At our dentist they have posters in the ceiling panels to give people something to look at. 🙂 I’ve sat in this chair many a time…
Afterwards he poured over the entire box of toys for over 10 minutes before finally selecting a red jumping frog.
I left him to play in the waiting room under the watchful eye of the receptionist while I had my check up. He didn’t think she had enough work to do, so he employed her to read books to him.
It was a nice outing just the two of us, and Mummy is really proud of her big kid being so cooperative 🙂
5. Dh and I, at least on my part, have had a pretty great week. We’ve been helping each other out and largely getting along. It has felt like we are understanding each other. When DH took all the kids last Saturday I went for a walk in the woods and had some quality alone time with God. During that time my head was able to catch up with my heart and God also revealed a way that I had been unknowingly hurting my husband. After that deep realization I am grateful to say I have not done it since And without that branch of negativity in my thoughts my heart has stayed warm towards him despite the ups and downs, and it is a wonderful feeling, to have been able to still see the good in him, and thus to easily love him.
6. Well, I thought I was getting better pictures. They are definitely crisper, but a lot of the ones I thought were good are actually dark and grainy in places when I view them on the computer.
It’s probably something with the ISO, but I haven’t had the chance to figure it out just yet. Is it possible to have grainy dark patches because the ISO is too high? Or am I just used to dark grainy pictures from the auto settings, when really I actually want the photos to be brighter than what I’m accustomed to?
This..
should actually be this:
which to me on the camera looks too bright.
7. Today we have a playdate with the family I met at the 40 days for life vigil. We’ve since found each other on facebook and discovered each other’s blogs, and have been planning to get together for a while. We are going to drive to them and she’s already offered to feed us lunch, so I look forward to all getting to spend the day together. They are close to an hours’ drive away. She also has all boys so far. 🙂
I’m so proud of my little nephew with his dentist check up. 🙂
Higher ISO will make photos more grainy but shouldn’t make them darker. In fact, it should lighten them up a bit. I noticed that you are focusing on your shutter speed and ISO, but is your aperture open as wide as it can be (F stop should be at the lowest number)? This will let in more light and will create that really nice bokeh (blur) in the background. Truthfully, this is where you really notice the difference in a good lens. A photographer’s camera doesn’t play as much of a role in a good picture as a good lens does.
Another thing you can consider doing is putting your camera in either aperture or shutter speed priority mode. This will allow you to be semi-manual, dictating your ISO, your desired exposure (this will brighten up the pictures if you set this right), and either your aperture or your shutter speed. The camera will determine how to get the best photo using whichever one of these settings you haven’t chosen to prioritize.
Fascinating.
First I know f-stop is the next thing to experiment with but I didn’t know it affected the lighting… However, I haven’t figured out how to change it on my camera… I think I need to locate the manual, (unlessI can find it online. )
Never heard of the priority thing.. might be a good compromise.. I wonder if mine has that option…
I always thought a good lens is mostly just a bigger one (ie lets in mroe light)
I’m sure the receptionist was more than happy to have a little one in her lap to read to.
Yes she loved it, read him the same book at least 3 times! 🙂