Despicable me

I opened up my email this afternoon to see an email titled "Vaping and Vitamin E." The snippet read

Hi There,  I just read the article posted in regards...

I was quoted in September (and it turns out today, too) in a couple of articles in the Washington Post about the chemicals considered possible causes of lung damage from vaping. I've gotten occasional emails since, ranging from on-the-ball analytical chemistry sales staff hoping I'm in the market for some new instruments to predatory journals hoping I'll 'contribute' an article or join their editorial board. This, I guessed from the chipper start would be more of the same, my money was on analytical instruments (the predatory journal entreaties are more likely to start with "Dear esteemed professor...")

(Double-click) Oops, nope, it's a howler!

My entire reason for writing to you today is to tell you how incredibly irresponsible and cruel you are to suggest animal testing. SHAME ON YOU. Animal testing is horrific and there is no reason an innocent being should suffer for the stupidity of people. I hate that I have to walk to the same earth as people like you who can disregard other living beings for the sake of "science". Despicable. 

Please re-think your stance as it's so undeniably cruel and wrong. There is no justification no matter how you try to spin it. I don't know how you sleep at night.

Whoa. I can almost see the whole thing crumple up and turn to ash.

I'm very confused. I'd spoken about molecular structure and properties, not animal testing. I pull up the most recent article to find I'm quoted about molecular structure and properties, not animal testing. The comment about animal testing is further down and not attributed to me.

I toy with many answers to this email.

Snark. ("I sleep just fine, thank you.")
Demanding. ("I want an apology for this cruel and unwarranted attack.")
Shaming. ("How dare you send this to the wrong person? Can't you read?")
Demanding and shaming. ("I demand an apology for your carelessness!")
None. (Probably the best option).
Flat denial. (What I went with.)

I went with denial, in part because the writer was on social media and if I could keep this from becoming a social media thing, I wanted to. But it was inarguably a mistake, and if I had made it I would not want to get flames in response. So I simply said, "not me." And I did get an apology in return.

Bonus! I've never seen Despicable Me - so now it's cued up to watch while I grade tomorrow.

Full, conscious, and active participation

Dome of St. Thomas of Villanova in Castel
Gandolfo.  Designed by Bernini in 1658.

I went to the 8:30 am Sunday Mass at the church a 100 feet from my front door.  The Church of Saint Thomas of Villanova is like a jewel set in the crown of the crater, you can spot the dome from just about anywhere (useful when navigating home!).  The church was designed by Gian Bernini, who also designed the altar of the cathedra in St. Peter's Basilica, at the request of Pope Alexander VII in 1658.  It's small — there were perhaps 80 people at Mass today and every pew was full — but airy and full of light with its high dome and clerestory windows which at this time of year, at least, perfectly catch the morning sun.

I've been managing Mass in Italian reasonably well, thanks to my Order of Mass in Nine Languages (shout out to Liturgical Press for this resource).  I had left this helpful book behind in my apartment this morning, but figured (correctly) there would be a hymnal with the Order of Mass in it.

One of the lectors went around before Mass began and handed out hymnals with the Order right up front to each of us.  Hurrah.  Ten seconds before Mass began (literally), a sister slipped into the pew next to me, reached over and took my hymnal.  From right in front of me.  She then stashed it on the shelf in front of her. Noooooo.  I need that.  I turn around to check the back table.  Nope, no helpful stack for latecomers.  No easy way to let sister know that I don't know the responses well enough to make them in Italian without that book she is not using.  Short of reaching over and grabbing it back. Which I just can't bring myself to do.

So much for full, conscious and active participation, I thought. Thankfully the Kyrie comes early in the process and (mostly) put an end to my petulance.

The homily was wonderful.  I'm certain of this because the presider was one of the Jesuit astronomers and I have heard him preach at daily Mass at the Specola (in English); he breaks open the Word with evident joy and a delightful thoughtfulness.  That and I managed to catch about 1 sentence in three.

It left me thinking, though, about how we experience liturgy.  Are we aware of how little we grasp, even when we know the responses, where the language is familiar?  Annie Dillard's riff on this in her essay An Expedition to the Poles came floating back:

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ”

Advent 1: A Little Office for Advent

My brother and sister-in-law's cat waiting
for their return.

We tend to view waiting as problematic, penitential even. And it can be.  We wait for forks in the road, to know our fates, in things trifling and significant.  This waiting can be hard, for change is potentially ahead, with all the uncertainty that brings. Will I get this fellowship? What will the test results show?

But there is the other kind of waiting, the yearning for something or someone to arrive.  We went to California to see my youngest son, who I hadn't hugged since the middle of August, and to see family up the coast.

This sort of waiting challenges my relationship with time.  I want to arrive, but once there I want time to move with the traffic on I-5 on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving.  I wait, only to wait again.  For departures. And for the next arrival.  (He's coming home in less than three weeks!  I can hardly wait. Again.)  This waiting is liturgy, a cycle that sharpens senses and soul, and slowly peels my fingers away from the things I cling too tightly to.  A Little Office of Advent.

Deserts and detachment: thoughts on my library

Trinity College Library

Paul Campbell SJ wrote today about gratitude (for cars!) and attachments, and Elizabeth Scalia has a post up with a quiz challenging readers to match books with the person who would want that volume if stranded on a desert island, and Robin is wondering about questions to ask herself as she balances at a life cusp. All of which got me thinking about my relationship to books.

I'm just off a long plane ride (the 7th in as many weeks), and the very first thing that goes in my carry-on bag is a book — or maybe several books.  Because I get anxious at the thought of being stranded somewhere with nothing to read.  I brought a book when I was in labor.  And I read it between contractions. At least at first.

These days ebooks should in principle lighten my load.  Except that I carry a charger and an back-up power stick...and a real book, just in case I'm really stuck. What do I read into this need to having reading material close to hand?  It's an attachment to be sure, and one that literally weighs me down at time. The deeper question is whether it weighs down me down metaphysically, are my books windows or doors or chairs - possessions that let light in, allow me to move to new places, or settle down with old friends, with God?  Or are they stumbling blocks, hemming me in?

While I was in Ireland a few weeks ago, I saw a beautiful bowl set into the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic near Slieve League and wondered what it would be like to live in a hermitage there. (Never mind my fear of heights and how I might get to a hermitage that was in the middle of a cliff side — that's fodder for another post about enclosures!)  What books would I pack to take?

Sagas, I think, long tangled pieces of fiction to read in front of a fire, and short stories, to hopscotch across worlds while living in this one small place.  Saints, too.  John of the Cross for the long nights and the desert monastics for the long days (or perhaps vice versa). Poetry, words that can never be exhausted.  Rilke and Rumi.  Marilyn Nelson and Billy Collins.   The Psalms.

And then I think a solar panel — to charge my iPad — and a satellite connection, and wi-fi, so I will never run out of things to read.  And I start to worry that I could never drag it all up the cliff...

Cracks are how the light gets in: Catastrophic fractures and community

"There is a crack, a crack, in everything.
That's how the light gets in." — Leonard Cohen

The picture at the left feels to me as if it were pulled straight from Leonard Cohen's lyrics from Anthem, the cracks are beautifully brilliant in the morning sun, alive with the light.

I have an entire box of these glittering stones.  It used to be my bathroom sink.  Yesterday, the sink underwent a catastrophic, spontaneous fracture.  More precisely, my sink blew up in my face.  Without warning.

I was watering the plants on the window sill and had set the succulent in the cache pot to soak for a minute while I wiped down the ledge.  I reached out to turn the water on and the sink exploded, blowing chunks of glass ten feet out the open door and down the stairs. And I screamed.

I hasten to say that it was tempered glass, and other than a few scratches on my arms, I was undamaged.  I was however, most certainly unnerved.  I stood there, amid the sparkling glass, in my sock feet, looking at the completely destroyed sink and said, "What the f--k just happened?"¹

There was this odd crinkling sound, as the glass chunks continued to fracture.

I cleared a path out of the bathroom, found a pair of shoes, corralled the cat (who wanted to investigate), then dashed to answer the phone.  It was Math Man, just calling to say hello in between golf game and afternoon meeting.  It was good to hear his voice. "Should I come home?"  No, I assure him, it's just a mess to clean up and I'm unhurt.

But what happened?  The sink and water and room were all at the same temperature, I'd just had the water on a minute before.  Nothing hit the sink, the pot had just been sitting there. Had I gone momentarily mad and smashed the sink with...with what?  No hammers up here. I did what any reasonable human being with an internet connection would do.  I did a search.  I typed in "glass sink e" at which point Google suggested "glass sink explodes."  I breathed a sigh of relief.  I was not alone.²

---

1.  The first time I ever heard Crash use the word, he hadn't realized I was in the room.  I can't quite recall what had happened, but it was definitely worthy of an imprecation.  He blanched.  I looked at him and said there were times and places to use that sort of language, and that this was certainly one of them.  Which made him blink.
2.  Community is a wonderful thing.

Can you microwave duct tape?

Math Man, "Can you microwave duct tape?"

Me, "I have no idea." And I'm certain I don't want to know why he wants to know.

Math Man, "Crash? Can you microwave duct tape?"

Crash, who is production stage manager for the high school this year, is intimately familiar with the properties of duct tape. Even he was not certain.

As to why? I bought one of the enormous cold packs like they have at the physical therapists to ice my (still) aching knees. They aren't meant to go in the microwave, but Math Man didn't know that. He wanted a hot pack for his sore back, threw it in the microwave and managed to burn a couple of holes in it. Which he proceeded to duct tape and then put the pack back in the microwave?!

I've ordered a new cold pack. And one just for Math Man that will heat (safely) in the microwave.

Column: Traveling Essentials

This piece has its genesis in two blog posts: The Role of Mature Females and The Things I Carry — or don't and in the ritual cleaning out of my purse before I travel, for retreat or not.

In the end, I walked 5 some miles, traveled another 350 miles on 3 trains and 2 subway lines, carrying only what I hoped I truly needed. It was enough to know its weight the last half mile I walked, but not so much that I couldn't carry it all the way.

The full blessing poem For the traveler (from To Bless the Space Between Us by John O'Donohue) is a wonderfully Ignatian blessing for the start of retreat, or really any trip to spaces outside your usual orbit.

The photo is of the front door to the Jesuit's Eastern Point Retreat House in Gloucester, MA and my bags, packed now to return home.

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times, 3 June 2010.

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.
— Mk. 10:25

“The mature female is perfect to carry the transmitter,” the sonorous voice of the Shark Week narrator drifts through the doorway of the kitchen. The scientist in me spent a moment wondering why tracking a female shark was important to the experiment, but the mother in me knew this made perfect sense.

Of course a mature female — shark or human — would be the one tagged to carry anything. I can’t count the number of times one of the guys in my house has handed me something with the words, “Can you throw this in your purse for me?” It’s already bulging at the seams, so why not add one more thing?

Before I went away last week, I cleaned out my purse. It was both a practical and a spiritual exercise. Practical for certain, I would have a couple of long walks and three changes of trains; a light load was essential. But spiritual?

In his poem, “For the Traveler,” priest and hermit John O’Donohue suggests that a traveler

Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you ...

The clearing out of my bag was a chance to ask what holds me down, what prevents my moving in freedom.

Some Scripture scholars have suggested that the “eye of the needle” was a narrow gate in Jerusalem, through which a fully loaded camel could not pass. Like the young man that Jesus is lovingly advising about what it will take to travel the road to the kingdom of God, there is much in my purse that I would be shocked to be told to leave behind.

Like most mothers, I suspect, I have something for almost every eventuality in my bag: cell phone, snacks and water bottle, tissues, band-aids, pens and paper, sunscreen and lip balm, safety pins and paper clips, amusements (to keep the kids from going crazy) and a rosary (to keep me from going crazy). Add in the old receipts, lists of things to do from weeks ago and ... I doubt that I would fit through a narrow gate, any more than a loaded camel would.

I carry things to clean, feed, heal, communicate, record, hold together, protect, distract, engage. Stuff I think I might need in a pinch to save or be saved, stuff that creeps thoughtlessly in, slowly and inexorably adding ballast to the bottom of my bag.

Asked to empty out his treasury of stuff, the young man left shocked and grieving, and the disciples wondered if anyone could make it through the door. Jesus reassures them that while they can’t save themselves — no matter how much they have or carry with them — God, and God alone, can save them.

Emptying out my purse was a shock in many ways (the crumbs in the bottom could feed a colony of ants). But its most potent effect was the reminder that no matter how much I have tucked in there, ultimately, I can’t save myself or even those I love. For only in God is there true hope of rescue.

I shook the crumbs out of the bottom, tossed the crumpled reminders of errands long completed and put back a much pared down collection of “essentials.” No camels will be necessary to lug it along on my travels, I should be able to sail through the gates to the Boston T. The one thing I added weighs nothing; in fact it lightens my load: the knowledge that nothing I carry is essential — except my faith in God.

---

Defend us, Lord, against every distress so that unencumbered in body and soul, we may devote ourselves to your service in freedom and joy. We make our prayer through our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen. — Closing prayer for Morning Prayer, 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Seven Pages of Solitude

[Michelle is on retreat, but thanks to Blogger's scheduled post feature, is still inhabiting this virtual space.]

I want only seven days, seven
on which no one has ever written —
seven pages of solitude.

Rainer Maria Rilke

"I've no agenda in mind for this retreat," I confess to Patient Spiritual Director. Not that I feel I really need one. I want pages on which nothing has yet been written. A space to rest, renew and be renewed. I have no idea who my director will be — my director from the 30-day retreat has a new assignment — and no worries about it.

But I do wish there were something written on those pages about the weather. So I would know what to pack. Do I need sweaters and turtlenecks, or clothes for hot and humid days? The National Weather Service has been no help in the lead up to my departure, either. First it will be rainy. No, clear. In the 80s a few days. No, wait, it'll be California weather, dry and in the 70s. Oh, sorry, now the model says it will be chilly on the weekend.....

In the end I've thrown in a random assortment of clothing items. Layers. I can wear layers. And a raincoat, despite the current assertions that it will be a dry week.

But it has me wondering what the Spirit has on her agenda for the week? Whatever it may be, I get the message strong and clear. Check certainty at the door.

The things I carry -- or don't

About 5 years ago, at the end of an 8-day retreat (notable for the heat — it was in the high 90s, humid and the retreatants were dropping like flies) my director suggested thinking about how I entered and left retreat. He said that over the years he noticed that it seemed to take busy people three days to settle into the stillness of retreat, and by then it was time to think about moving out of the retreat! (I suspect this conversation was prompted by the fact that I appeared for our first meeting with my laptop under my arm, having sent off a piece of writing moments before, though he never once mentioned my electronic companion.)

Did a retreat begin the moment I blasted through the doors of the retreat house, dropping into the silence like a sky diver? Or did it start when I left the house, or perhaps, when I began to pack? Gradually I've come to see packing, whether for retreat or not, as a contemplative exercise. And despite my best intentions, I always take too much.

This time I'm carrying everything I need on my back and walking a significant chunk (time wise if not in distance). This should get me to pare down to the minimum. I started packing on the weekend, putting what I wanted to take along in a bin in my prayer space (an offering, as it were). I already had decided not to take my laptop along, though I do have my iPad and a wireless keyboard with me. The contents of the bin finally threatened to overflow and the discernment began in earnest. What do I need as opposed to what do I want? By 9 pm the question had become, what will fit?

Besides my laptop and its ready collection of music and software, I've left behind my travel pillow, my tea kettle, my Bible, my breviary, my knitting.... my lunch.

I finally realized that this was the first step in my retreat. Leaving behind comfort and control. I do have a Bible with me, on the iPad, it's just not my favorite translation, nor is it the well worn version that accompanied me on the Exercises. There are breviaries at Eastern Point that I can pull off the shelf, and I do have my small, British travel version along. There will be food along the way, and a way to boil water for my morning cup of tea. I'm watching my choices evaporate...as the wants are stripped away, then the needs.

And so I begin: Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.

Lost and Found

I've lost 2 pairs of prescription reading glasses in the last two months. One vanished after a day spent in a library working on an article. Somehow they didn't end up back in my briefcase -- which makes me wonder if I left them on a shelf somewhere. Will they moulder there until someone else wanders through the same spot in the stacks? And just how long might that be? I've been in some dusty corners lately.

The second pair vanished last night, seemingly into thin air. They were in my bag when we left for a student event, never used, but gone when I got home. I opened my bag but once, to check my cell phone at intermission, at which point the lenses clearly made their escape. The first lost pair was as old as Crash, and held together by prayer alone (the bailing wire having given way long ago), I didn't mourn their loss much. This funky pair, a one of a kind pair handmade in Germany, I adore. And more to the point, with almost 100 papers to grade this week, reading glasses are a necessity, not an accessory. So , I spent much of the day struggling for detachment and trying not to worry about what I would do if they did not surface (besides stock up on Advil for the inevitable headaches that would follow).

Thank heavens for Barnacle Boy, Math Man and the college patrol officer, who searched the balcony of the theater this afternoon and found...my glasses. Si quaeris miracula....

Si quaeris miracula

Si quaeris miracula...

"If thou seekest miracles..." So starts the responsary for St. Anthony of Padua, invoked by Catholics for 700 years as the saint who could see that lost things were found. I like the traditional prayer -- composed by a contemporary of the good friar -- far better than the bouncy rhyming versions that seem more popular in this century:

Tony, Tony,
look around.
Something's lost
and must be found!

This morning, when I sat down to work on the book, I went to pull out the current version of the outline for the book, which I've scribbled notes all over and which I did NOT have a copy of. (Yes, I know. There are two kinds of users, those who've lost data, and those who will. Back-up.) No, I didn't re-file it. No, I didn't accidently clip it to any of the research notes I'd been working on on Friday. (Can you hear me getting more frantic?) After I found myself searching the recycling bin, I got a grip and decided that it would either resurface or not, but that I could better spend this time writing rather than rummaging. If it didn't resurface, the jottings were all in my brain, I shouldn't worry. (Right.)

I settled down to write, and did have a productive day. But as I headed out to a doctor's appointment late this afternoon, abandoning the debris of the day on my desk, I thought of my mother, who would have said, "pray to St. Anthony." (She, too, did not favor the rhymes.) Part of me thought it silly to pray to find the outline, by no measure -- even in my own life -- is it a tragedy or rises to the level of necessitating divine intervention. Still, when last I met with Patient Spiritual Director, we had a conversation about praying for one's own needs, as well as the needs of others. Any grace that might come my way as a result, was not depriving anyone else. Perhaps I could practice what was preached. So I briefly turned my thoughts to St. Anthony and asked that he might intercede with the Lord God in retrieving the outline from whatever dimension it might have fallen into, and headed out the door to see my doctor.

An hour later, I'm back in my study, shifting gears from writing to course prep. As I pick up the folder with my notes for the current chapter, what do I find neatly placed underneath it? The outline. I swear I picked that folder up multiple times. All I can think is that it must have been stuck to the bottom of the folder...but I offered a brief thanks to Anthony nonetheless!

And today is Tuesday - which is the traditional day to petition St. Anthony in Padua (not that I knew that before I sat down to write this....).

---

Why is St. Anthony the patron of lost items? It would seem a disgruntled novice left the monastery, taking with him St. Anthony's psalter. Not only was the book itself valuable, but it contained St. Anthony's handwritten notes for his conferences and sermons (sound familiar). After fervent prayer for the psalter's return, the contrite novice brought it back.

And while I'm at it -- why Tuesday? It's the day they brought his body back to Padua, where he had wanted to be.

Responsary of St. Anthony

If, then, thou seekest miracles,
Death, error, all calamities,
The leprosy and demons flee,
The sick, by him made whole, arise.

Ant: The sea withdraws and fetters break,
And withered limbs he doth restore,
While treasures lost are found again,
When young or old his help implore.

All dangers vanish from our path,
Our direst needs do quickly flee:
Let those who know repeat the theme:
Let Paduans praise St. Anthony. (repeat antiphon)

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. (repeat antiphon)

V. Pray for us, O blessed Anthony,
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

The Touch of Sound

These 'monks' are too funny! But there is a bit of irony here, too. I'm on vocal rest - not speaking. It's interesting how much you can get done in the public sphere without speaking. The pharmacist quickly figured out what was up, and put my stuff aside so when I came back I didn't have to ask for it; the checker at the grocery store was miffed that I wouldn't give her my card number aloud -- but for the most part, you can do what you need to and say nothing in response (just smile and nod or not) and no one seems to notice.

I'm still going to morning prayer, since I feel fine. The pastor noted yesterday that they were "giving me voice" (another colleague teased that perhaps we should have a "silent Office in deference to" me...hello, if I wanted a silent office I could stay home and pray it with Fluffy!). Sound is tactile, air physically hits your ear. So to hear the words prayed, even if I can't pray them aloud, lets me engage a bit differently. To listen, is to let yourself be touched. Maybe that's what happens when our words are stripped away...

Foundational Lessons

About this time last year I was starting to get things organized to leave to make the Spiritual Exercises. During the Long Retreat by 3:30 am, I would usually be just finishing my last contemplation of the "day." Tonight I'm up at 3:30 am contemplating - drawing once again from the Exercises, this time the Foundation and Principle and indifference.

We should not fix our desires
on health or sickness,
wealth or poverty,
success or failure,
a long life or a short one.
For everything has the potential of calling forth in us
a deeper response to our life in God.
Our only desire and our one choice should be this:
I want and I choose what better leads to God's deepening his life in me.

From the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, translated by David Fleming, S.J.

I spent a chunk of today in the ER, working hard - and not terribly effectively -- to move air in and out of my lungs. These lines kept bouncing through my head "we should not fix our desires on health or sickness." Could I really say that in all honesty about this experience? I desire to breathe deeply, I want my voice back. When all the drugs kicked in, the sense of relief and gratitude was exquisite. But I certainly was not indifferent, I know which end of this experience I desired.

A week or so ago, Paul Campell, SJ posted a wisdom story on the People for Others blog. A young man seeks wisdom from a hermit, who pushes him face down into the river. When he comes up gasping, the hermit asks what he wanted most at that moment. "Air!" (I can relate.) “Very well,” said the master. “Go home and come back to me when you want God as much as you just wanted air."

I'm still not indifferent, but maybe I have an inkling of what it means to want God like air.

Secrets of Book Writing

My big sabbatical project is writing a book - about how scientists think. I've been working on this steadily since the fall. I was about half-done (ca 40,000 words done anyway) when I wrote the introductory chapter. I tell my students that writing can clarify your thinking. This did - although what is clarified was that the way I had structured the book overall could have been better. So now I am engaged in serious verbal carnage, ripping apart 6 chapters and reassembling them according to the new plan.

The day I began, an ad appeared on my Gmail for "how to write a book in two weeks" -- sometimes those ads cut a little too close to home! As if? If only!

On deck for the coming week: finish an essay tentatively titled "topophilia" for Nature Chemistry, column for the Catholic Standard & Times and two chapters for The Book.

Check the seat pocket in front of you...

for any personal belongings - and large pieces of chewed gum left by previous passengers which may be stuck to them.

Contemplative Cat

Fluffy joined me for my nightly round of meditation a couple of days ago. Folded up on the rug beside me, her continuous purr evoked the ringing of a meditation bowl. I followed the sound into the stillness.

As I settled in the next night, she padded softly across the floor of my study to the nook I use as a meditation space. I waited expectantly for her to settle into her spot on the rug and to hear her purr signal the start of our sitting time. Oh dear... Fluffy is in a carnivorous mood, not a contemplative one! She pounced on my feet, upturned in lotus. I unceremoniously removed her. She came back. I patiently escorted her out and firmly closed the door. She clawed at the door. At which I point I surrendered any idea of sitting in silence, retrieved her and prayed night prayer while she played with the ribbons in my breviary.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread

Having made a joyful noise unto the Lord last night at the vigil Mass, the celebration of the Nativity of the Lord at my house unfolded gently this morning, and for the first time in years I did not celebrate morning prayer alone as the dawn broke.

The boys got up and helped me get the breakfast ready: orange juice, tea, and homemade cinnamon buns. Gifts were opened and enjoyed (my favorites - Math Man 's gift of an e-book by one of my favorite authors; Crash's Nerf dart gun - along with lessons in how to shoot it; and the Boy's kit to construct a robot from coins - the first time he's ever shopped solo for me with his own money).

Crash wanted loaves of "Wernersville Bread" (actually Brother's Bread from Secrets of Jesuit Bread Baking - a gift from my father years before I ever visited the old novitiate); Barnacle Boy lusted after his own favorite, the yeast rolls from Fannie Farmer. I manged to get a batch of each made this afternoon, juggled around the rest of the cooking. Twenty minutes before dinner was due to be ready, as I opened the oven to slide the rolls in, I knocked the pan with the two loaves off the stove top where they had been rising. The pan flipped and both loaves hit the floor. I could hear the oof as they deflated - right along with my pride in my ability to juggle multiple cooking projects.

Crash and I picked the now seriously unleavened bread off the floor. By some miracle both loaves were on the dish towel I'd covered the pan with, so we reformed them and left then to rise a third time. (There's a parable here I'm sure...) The third time was perhaps not quite the charm, the loaves are a bit flatter than usual, but Crash professed his delight with the outcome nonetheless.

Disaster?

I think the hard drive on my laptop may have crashed. I last backed-up before I left for the August travels. As my Carmelite friend would say, "detachment, my dear". Sigh....