Christmas Blur

Christmas has come and gone and it was a blur. Fun, but a blur nonetheless. In recent years, Christmas and New Year's have passed by with so much activity and traveling, that I fear I have lost the purpose of the holidays. This year, we spent Christmas with my family and all the children and animals helped me recapture the importance of this holy day.

Funk, Reprise.

Wouldn't it be nice if this post were actually about funk? It is, instead, to report that there's only one paper left to write, and then my first semester as an ES will be a matter of historical record. It will be a poorly written, inadequately researched paper exploring a fascinating question. As a matter of fact, given the time and resources, it might make a good article. Or a book, she suggested modestly.

Following completion of the poorly written, inadequately researched paper, attention can be given to the long-neglected freelance assignment. And to The job-related Web writing, the incompletion of which I was chastised for on Friday. And then, to Christmas? Christmas, the form, or Christmas the feast and observance?

Question of the Day: How to cultivate the peace requisite for true devotion and observance without sloughing off the mortgage-paying responsibilities that consume, well, most of me?

Funk.

Reticent Supervisor is also Enthusiastic Student. As a matter of fact, RS is RS so that RS can be ES without incurring additional albatrossian (I made that up) debt. However, assuming simultaneously the identities RS and ES results in an actual identity of PPP, or Pitiful Procrastinating Person. And there's no medicine for that. So there.

Cautiously Optimistic about Doubt

There is a new movie featuring nuns. Doubt debuted December 12 and I am curious to see this film. (Sure, the chances of me actually seeing it in the theaters are few. I will have to wait until it comes out on DVD or on cable.) I have read some reviews and looked at the trailer and I must confess I am intrigued, but I also have some apprehension about this movie and the images it conveys about Catholic women religious. This does not seem to be The Sound of Music, Nun’s Story, or even The Trouble with Angels. The trailer has stark images of an authoritarian Sister of Charity. (This is the community of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton whose sisters wore mourning clothes consisting of bonnet and cape. This is not a new image for anyone familiar with this community prior to Vatican II.) The trailer reveals the familiar austere ruler-wielding Sister of Charity, played by Meryl Streep, the softhearted and beautiful young sister, and the fun, new, priest who is or is not a pedophile. All represent a stereotype of the Catholic parish school that continues a common held belief about what nuns are really like. But I have only seen the trailer.

But what about the reality? Are all Catholic priests pedophiles? Are all nuns austere? As a historian of Catholic women religious (sisters and nuns), I hope for a more nuanced understanding of the work and life of the hundreds of thousands of women who were teachers, nurses, and social workers (to name a few “assignments”).

The play has been praised. There is “Oscar Buzz” for Meryl Streep and her fellow cast members. The Sisters of Charity of New York have created this page on their home page that reveals their connection to the play and movie and this, more than anything else, makes me hopeful that this maybe a worthwhile move to see. Now, I just need to find the time to see it.

Blogging as Penance

True Story: I am too zuruckhaltent to be a good blogger. I only like to air my opinions and observations if I’m fairly certain they aren’t wrong; if I can be assured that nearly everyone who reads or hears them will like them; and, not least, if I’m clear that they’re Thoughtful. Perhaps I should blog as penance for self-absorption.

Overheard Heart-to-Heart in the Coffee Shop

Blond, dissatisfied middle-aged woman to grey ponytail turtleneck woman: "It's as if I'm standing at the crux of some harmonious creative convergence." Quick, my headphones. Earmuffs. Anything.  

We Persist in Taking Ourselves Too Seriously; Or How We Became Bloggers

Prudence is, dictionary.com tells us (because we lost the magnifying glass to use the condensed print version of the OED):

1340, "wisdom to see what is virtuous, or what is suitable or profitable," from O.Fr. prudence (13c.), from L. prudentia "foresight, sagacity," contraction of providentia "foresight". Secondary sense of "wisdom" (c.1375) now only in jurisprudence (q.v.). Prudent first recorded 1382, from O.Fr. prudent, from L. prudentem (nom. prudens) "foresighted, skilled, experienced," contraction of providens. First record of prudential is from c.1400.

Dictionary.com. Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/prudence (accessed: December 13, 2008).

Having done with youth, we find ourselves somewhat “foresighted, skilled, experienced,” and beginning to look for the permanent things. To find such permanence, we concur, one must be cautious, careful, but not fearful. Like Aristotle (though not nearly as cool) we, the philosopher and the historian, aspire to filter our experiences in the world through prudence and wager that this will help us understand and find meaning in it.

So we begin. We promise not to complain about our husbands, our jobs, and the dirtiness of our houses (we hope) and instead record our witty and incisive observations for the ages.