Be Not Idle

As usual, I’m freaking out (especially since some of my usual first-week material had to be recreated). I will be blogging more on weekends than weekdays.

I cannot seem to load my reviews onto it. I will try to e-mail myself from college or the library and see if that works.

And in that spirit, evidentally, my history professor came up with the following:

 ”Mary Magdeline was from a wealthy family. Her uncle, Joseph of Arimethea, was wealthy enough to afford a very good tomb. He was also friendly with Pontius Pilate so…”

And that’s where my note-taking ends because it wasn’t even remotely funny anymore. I have absolutely no idea where he gets this crap from. He also lectured today (and previously) that “inferential reasoning” and “most Jewish scholars” say that Jesus definitely was married or the Saducees would have attacked him. 

I give up. I’ve asked him about his sources, and he lent me a book written by a University of Michigan instructor in the ’50s with footnotes that wouldn’t pass muster in a high school student’s essay today. (For example, a comment that Buddhist missionaries obviously influenced the religious environment of Jesus’ time leads to this footnote: Gospel of John.) No chapter, no verse - and no explanation linking Buddhist thought with that in the Gospel.  The book also treated Gnostic writings as equal to Book of Tobit and such. 

I promised myself I wouldn’t even bother to ask him for sources anymore, especially since other students roll their eyes and today mutter “There she goes again.” But when he peppers his talks with dirty jokes and “On the History channel I saw…”, I want to scream.

As a young minister, I was asked by a funeral director to hold a graveside service for a homeless man who had no family or friends. The funeral was to be held at a new cemetery way back in the country, and this man would be the first to be buried there.

I was not familiar with the backwoods area, and I soon became lost. Being a typical man, I did not stop to ask for directions. I finally arrived an hour late. I saw the backhoe and the open
grave, but the hearse was nowhere in sight. The gravediggers were eating lunch. I apologized to them for my tardiness, and I stepped to the side of the open grave. There I saw the vault lid
already in place.

I assured the workers I would not hold them up for long. The workers gathered around the grave and stood silently as I began to pour out my heart and soul. As I preached about ‘looking forward to a brighter tomorrow’ and ‘the glory that is to come,’ the workers began to say ‘Amen,’ ‘Praise the Lord,’ and ‘Glory!’ The fervor of these men truly inspired me. So, I preached and I preached like I had never preached before, all the way from Genesis to Revelations.

I finally closed the lengthy service with a prayer, thanked the men, and walked to my car. As I was opening the door and taking off my coat, I heard one digger say to another, ‘I ain’t EVER seen nuttin’ like that before, and I been puttin’ in septic tanks for t’irty years.”

Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan shudders & says, “Oh, sh**. She’s UP!”

I should have read it before I went to the first day of my summer college class, when I was confronted with how common anti-religious rudeness is and how it takes strength to deal with it in a charitable way. (More on that later.)

I made it. And, strangely enough, this is the FIRST year that I’ve been home by 5 pm, grades in, exams filed, and supplies put away. 

Three teachers retired, which has meant that two of my favourite hall-mates are leaving. Ruth gave me a Christmas tree for my classroom (yes, no one’s ever made a fuss about Christmas decorations in this public school) and let me rummage through her “garage sale” tables. I snagged a Michigan pennant from Mr. S. 

I won’t be teaching English next year, which is a blessing. There’s nothing quite like a literature lover trying to convince sophomores that Shakespeare is great and John Proctor wasn’t a stupid guy for choosing to die for the truth.  I try not to think about the writing aspect. I try to comfort myself that at least my students will be able to express their fact-challenged opinions with better grammar. 

I am going back on Monday to grab some books and start preparing lesson plans for next year. I’ll be teaching a brand-new class, plus revamping my current Spanish classes. I’m excited about it, actually.  

Baloney is flattery laid on so thick it cannot be true, and blarney is flattery so thin we love it. - Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

Be ever engaged, so that whenever the devil calls he may find you occupied.”— St. Jerome

Lately, the Devil has had to take a number. I am so swamped with work, and it just keeps getting deeper…

“What I find fascinating about the United States is that they began with a positive concept of secularism. This new people was composed of communities and people who had separated from state churches, and they wanted to have a secular state which would open possibilities for all the confessions and all the forms of religious expression. It was an expressly secular state, and it was directly opposed to a state-church. It was secular precisely out of love of religion, for the authenticity of religion, which could be lived only in freedom. Thus we find a state that’s expressly secular, but favorable to religion in order to give it authenticity.” - Pope Benedict, emphasis mine

I often read or hear people talking about the Separation of Church and State as if it were a way of clamping down on religious expression. I suppose some are ignorant of our history. But sometimes it’s obvious that they willfully ignore evidence that the Framers had no such intent. The Founding Fathers had experienced the European model of governments repressing all but state-approved expressions of religion.  

The Pope mentioned the new problems in American secularism. No doubt he’s aware of a tendency for secularists to cite Jefferson’s “wall between Church and State” as evidence that Americans shouldn’t allow their religious beliefs to enter the public square.

To the contrary, Jefferson was reassuring the Danbury Baptists (a religious minority) that their religious liberties were an immutable right.  According to their letter, the state of Connecticut granted ”religious privileges” to the Danbury Baptists and ”we enjoy (them) as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights.”

Jefferson wrote that ”…I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.” 

He said nothing about Americans being prohibited from acting on their beliefs or following their consciences in the public square.

I tried going to Roman Catholic Coffee and instead, I’m getting re-routed to something called the Cabin Cove, which seems to be a knitting website.  What gives? Has Dominic left the Church to start his own cult of crochet? Or is it something more sinister?

 Perhaps he’s been kidnapped by a group of needle-wielding neo-gnostic gnitters! If so, it’s time to let loose the albino assassin-monk…