The Little Drummer Boy Returns!

This kid has the music in him! This was the first sitting ever at his cousin's drum set. Watch how he rests the sticks after playing. A natural!!

Rain Rain Rain

Just close your eyes and listen to the first minute or so of this video and you'll swear you're in a summer thunderstorm. I love it.

Pio, Something Smells!

PREAMBLE: Before we even begin today's reflections, I have something to smell you, I mean tell you. One of the coolest things about Padre Pio and the way God likes to work lies in the acclaimed "odor of sanctity" that often follows the holy ones. Yes, believe it or not, when God allows miracles to pour forth from His beloved saints, they are sometimes associated with fragrances. Therese is roses, and Padre Pio is often known by the scent of... tobacco. This to me is beyond awesome. Tobacco.... brilliant. "For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not believe, no explanation is possible." Today the Church celebrates the Feast Day of one of her most beloved and most misunderstood sons... St. Pio of Pietrelcina. Born on May 25, 1887, he died on this day in 1968, and today is still affectionately known as Padre Pio. I say he was misunderstood, but more accurately I mean missed. This is simply because so much attention was given to the miracles that Jesus let flow through his hands that many missed the simple truth of who he was; a quiet man of extreme austerity who praised, loved and served Jesus and the Church passionately his whole life. He hated the attention the miracles brought. It's like the image of a man pointing to food and the dog stares at the finger instead. "Look at the food, not my finger!" I think that was perhaps his greatest cross in life. People coming to him looking for some fireworks or a show, or to cut a piece of his robe as a souvenir... yes, they did. They did it to St. Francis of Assisi too. Heck, they did this to Jesus! And perhaps I should stop saying "they" - we do too. "God, give me a sign! Prove Yourself to me!" Well, maybe our intentions aren't always that extreme. We just want recognition or affirmation, right? Maybe something merely tangible is all. And the funny thing is, God is quite willing at times to oblige! Wasn't everybody flocking to Jesus for cures, and didn't he cure many bodies? The woman with an illness of 38 years came to Jesus in a crowd of starstruck followers and she said "If I could just touch the hem of his garment, that would be enough." And she was right, it was enough. But for Jesus, as for his followers like Padre Pio, the enough wasn't enough until he got both body and soul, mind and heart. In a word all of us. So why did God allow so many miracles through St. Pio's stigmatized hands in 1950's and 60's? Maybe He will use anything and everything when the timing is right to get our attention? What follows is an excerpt from EWTN's special section on St. Pio for today's feast. Let's celebrate the extraordinary wonders of God today, and wonder how we can become more like Him in our often ordinary daily life. Bilocation and Odor of Sanctity The phenomenon of bilocation is one of the most remarkable gifts attributed to Padre Pio. His appearances on various of the continents are attested by numerous eye witnesses, who either saw him or smelled the odors characteristically associated with his presence, described by some as roses and by others as tobacco. The phenomenon of odor (sometimes called the odor of sanctity) is itself well established in Padre Pio's case. The odor was especially strong from the blood coming from his wounds. Investigation showed that he used absolutely no fragrances or anything that could produce these odors. The odors often occurred when people called upon his intercession in prayer and continue to this day. Among the most remarkable of the documented cases of bilocation was the Padre's appearance in the air over San Giovanni Rotondo during World War II. While southern Italy remained in Nazi hands American bombers were given the job of attacking the city of San Giovanni Rotondo. However, when they appeared over the city and prepared to unload their munitions a brown-robed friar appeared before their aircraft. All attempts to release the bombs failed. In this way Padre Pio kept his promise to the citizens that their town would be spared. Later on, when an American airbase was established at Foggia a few miles away, one of the pilots of this incident visited the friary and found to his surprise the little friar he had seen in the air that day over San Giovanni. As to how Padre Pio with God's help accomplished such feats, the closest he ever came to an explanation of bilocation was to say that it occurred "by an extension of his personality." - (visit here for full article)

Faith Database.... Wow.

I just learned about this fantastic new resource through Catholic Exchange. I would have scratched it right up, but the Mac version isn't out until next month. Check out the video intro on the website here.

• 2000 Years of Christian History
• 10 Bible Translations
• 88 Council Documents from all 21 Ecumenical Councils
• 400 Early Church writings
• 165 writings from the Doctors of the Church
• 74 books from John Henry Newman
• 112 books from GK Chesterton
• 1300 Papal writings/encyclicals
• The Old Catholic Encyclopedia (1200 entries and 5000 images)
• Many classics including Gibbons' "Faith of our Fathers," Thomas a Kempis' "Imitation of Christ" and John Paul II's "Theology of the Body"
• 1000 Bible Art Images
• Over 100 Bible Maps
• Illustrated Church history
• Search Catechism and Code of Canon Law
• Some of the Over 1500 Featured Writings Classics Apologia (Newman)
• St. Thomas Aquinas (The Summa)
• St. Augustine's Confessions
• Irenaeus' Against Heresies
• St. John Chrysostom's Commentaries
• and more!

What Amazes You?

So we closed off our vacation in NY last week with Holy Mass and the traditional Byrons Family Blowout Breakfast at Benny's Mexican-American Diner (you can have salsa with pancakes). I love Byrons Family Blowout Breakfasts (hereafter named BFBBs). Basically, they involve the peaceful takeover of small eateries by the Byrons boys, girls, babies, big and tall uncles and wonderfully affirmative aunts.... and Grandma and Grandpa B. You need (and we often exceed) at least a dozen souls for an official BFBB. Tables are pieced together like Tetris blocks, wait staff quail, menus get flipped and decorated with classy drawings, and the cooks run out of eggs real quick. This Sunday, Taylor Man (my 13 year old nephew with a rapier wit) was perusing the comics section in between his pancakes and Pepsi when I noticed the "Zits" column. I took it home with me and here it is above, thanks to the power of our HP scanner. If you click on the image it will become muy grande (which is Benny's for really big). (The other image in this post is Trogdor, The Burninator, who needs no introduction, expertly drawn and labeled on the back of a placemat by SB and TG, respectively). If you're a consistent reader of this blog, you can see why the above comic caught my attention. A teenager is dragged across the globe and shown some of the great wonders of the world, and he simply sighs, moans, groans, or slumps through it all. It takes a trip to the cell phone boutique kiosk thing at the local mall to rekindle his sense of wonder. As they say at Benny's.... "aye ya yai!" * Now I get tantalized by technology and geeked out by gigabytes myself, as you may well know. And my daily walk can be a slippery slope into "technolatry" if I'm not careful. These days, it's become hard to imagine life without Mr. Google, or cell phones, or the 150 billion e-mails we "MUST READ AND NOT DELETE!" that zip out every day across the planet (and that is an accurate number)... but the question remains, what truly amazes us? Takes our breath away? Reminds us of our place in the Great Chain of Being? What wows you? And let's keep our examples unplugged. Here are a few of mine: - the iridescent shine on the backs of Japanese Beetles - feeling the rush of wind and not knowing exactly how it forms and how it found me - getting caught in heavy rain when hiking up north through balsam firs and pine trees. Rain splattering, dripping, dropping all around us, and the scent of the wet woods was intoxicating - incense hanging in a church and how it can conjure up so many things and so many feelings. It's a SMELL! - a baby's fingernails - reciprocated love "Faced with the sacredness of life and of the human person, and before the marvels of the universe, wonder is the only appropriate attitude." - Pope John Paul II ___________________________________________ * I'm not sure if they ever really say that at Benny's.

Walking the Walk

I was driving down the road the other day, and it was one of those off the beaten path kind of roads mind you, when I noticed a group of young people walking down a non-existent shoulder, carrying a crucifix and a Papal Flag. This merited investigation. This is not something I'm accustomed to seeing on the back roads of Delaware County, PA.

It turns out that these five young people were college students on a special kind of pilgrimage, walking (get this) from MAINE to Washington, D.C. They are known as Missionaries of the Eucharist and their goal is to take the Theology of the Body to the streets! Yes... it's amazing.

Here's the mission statement from their website:

"This summer a group of Catholic young men and women will be walking from Maine to Washington DC trying to build a culture of life and love. Their mission? To proclaim the beauty of the Catholic faith, through the lens of the Theology of the Body, with their words, hearts, and bodies."

So I quickly parked the car and walked a little stretch of the road with them. We exchanged some Catholic small talk, discovering that we were six degrees from Christopher West, and I mentioned that I would post a little blurb of a blog about them.... so here it is! Please check out their wonderful website and spread the word about this awesome and inspiring mission!

The Missionaries of the Eucharist website...

We walk throughout the day to be a witness of love. We are grounded in prayer-we pray with our lips, our hearts, and our bodies. In walking an average of twenty-five miles per day, we offer our fatigue as a gift of love to Christ and the people we meet. Our walking is both sacrifice and prayer.

World Youth Day Stats

Some pretty neat stats on what's going down Down Under: SYDNEY, Australia, JULY 16, 2008 (Zenit.org) - Some 225,000 youth are participating in World Youth Day, which began Tuesday and will end Sunday with a closing Mass that could gather a half million people.The organizers report that 125,000 of the young pilgrims are from countries other than Australia; another 100,000 are from the host nation. The event is the biggest and most multinational ever held on Australian soil, even more so than the 2000 Olympics. (wow. my emphasis) The United States is the foreign country that sent the most pilgrims, with 15,000. Youth Day organizers have provided these statistics as well: An estimated 8,000 volunteers are assisting with the activities. Some 2,000 priests and 500 bishops and cardinals are present; 500 chasubles were made for the prelates and a stole for each of the priests. One million hosts for Holy Communion were made and 120 bottles of wine will be used for the opening and closing Masses. Pilgrims will eat 3.5 million meals and 232,000 candles will be used during the event. About 100,000 young people are sleeping in 400 schools and parishes and 10,000 in Sydney Olympic Park. About 100 actors are involved with the Stations of the Cross performance. Australia has approximately 5.12 million Catholics in 1,363 parishes. This is approximately 26% of the population. It has 28 territorial dioceses, four dioceses of Eastern Catholic Churches and one military diocese. The greater Sydney region, with its four dioceses, has about 1.5 million Catholics. The Archdiocese of Sydney has almost 600,000 of those in some 141 parishes with 480 priests. There have been three previous papal visits to Australia. In 1970, Pope Paul VI went; in 1986, Pope John Paul II; and in 1995, the Polish Pontiff went again, beatifying Mary MacKillop. www.zenit.org

Nerd Alert - iPhone Update 2.0!

I know.... I know. It's beyond cool.
Learn more here.

"With the iPhone 2.0 Software Update, your iPhone will do even more. Extend its capabilities with innovative applications you download directly from the new App Store. Get push email, calendar, and contacts from your Microsoft Exchange server at work. And use great new features in Mail, Contacts, and other applications. Free in the next update."

Did they say free?

A Carpet for the King

There are only two parishes in the country, that I know of, that have this tradition. (If anyone has seen it elsewhere, please drop a comment!)

For the Feast of Corpus Christi here at St. Francis Church in Franklin, NC, a Eucharistic procession will be led over a stretch of"sawdust carpets" - beautiful images from the Sacred Heart to the Holy Family laid out in dyed sawdust onto chalked grids as big as cars. What an amazing process. Families have been plugging away all afternoon and in just under an hour Fr. Matthew will lead us in Evening Prayer, then into the procession. Only the priest with the Blessed Sacrament raised high can walk over these works of art. A carpet for the King Who has become our very food; the Bread of Eternal Life.

(More of these incredible works of art are being uploaded to the "My Mac Web Gallery" link in the links section to the right. Once you're there, click on the North Carolina album)

Drinking Deeply

On this past Divine Mercy Sunday, sitting in the little church of the Assumption in Maybrook, New York with my wife Rebecca and her parents, two of the eight brothers and sisters, and a mob of nieces and nephews all around us, I got zapped. It was right at the line in the reading from 1 Corinthians 2....

"Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him."

I looked around at the little munchkins that call me Uncle Bill. I thought of my morning talks with my father-in-law on everything from philosophy to movies to the Faith. I thought of the tremendous love that flows from the Tabernacle, streams down from the Altar and breathes out from from the woman whose hand I held even tighter as this awareness and this awakening came toppling over me like a waterfall.

"Do you want a tissue?" Rebecca asked as the Gospel reading began.
"Heck no," I smiled.

I wanted to feel this a bit longer. It's not every day God gives you the salty taste of joy. In charismatic circles it's called the "gift of tears." I remember an old Irish Christian Brother who once told me, "Let the tears speak, Willy, let the tears speak."

I squeezed Rebecca's hand even tighter. How did I get here? What led me to become a part of this new family? Where was this torrent of love and emotion coming from? I just showed up at Church, part of the ritual of a Sunday. Who knew I'd get zapped?

"Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him."

In this Cosmic Dance, I find my steps directed here, now. What lies ahead lies in His Heart, what lies behind (and what a long and winding road it seems to me now) lies in His Mercy... His Divine Mercy. So why fear? Why complain? Why do anything but drink deeply from the font of grace in the sacrament of this present moment? God will provide, prepare, and put in our path the things we need, just as we need them.

As I sat there after Communion, in that Divine Bear Hug of He and I in the Eucharist, I thought of that Divine Mercy that has always been so near, ever since the heartaches and the sadness and the longings of my youth. He it was Who moved behind the curtain of my days, shone behind the star I watched outside my window, whispered behind the curtain of great paintings and great writings, from Van Morrison to Vermeer, cathedrals and the cornfields of Northampton. The Divine Mercy is God's own Heart, glowing, breathing, beating with Warm Love behind this earthly veil of flesh and bone, earth and sky, houses, hills, and the people I have come to know in this walk.

In all of this that lies behind and before me I pray.... Jesus, I trust in You.

Man Attacked by Flowers Survives, Barely

Thursday night, Rebecca and I made a visit to our local parish church for a little adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. We both recognized that we need to do this more often; to pour out our troubles to the Lord, just as a Hannah did in the Temple so long ago. Funny how I deliberated before we made the decision to just do it. There was the Freshmen retreat to plan, grading, a plane ticket to order for next Saturday, grading, the bug in my podcast that I can't seem to fix, (but I still love you iTunes!) and there was some grading.

In the end we just went to Him, and of course, it was awesome. And that's all He wanted... for us to go, in the midst of our busyness or "tiredness" at the end of a long day; to come to Him when we are weary and heavy-burdened. And guess what... He gave us rest. For just a few minutes, we did nothing but BE with Him, and pray.

One of things I love about the Easter Season is the INSANE amount of flowers that explode into the sanctuaries of churches all over the world after the Resurrection of Christ. The world may hate us and persecute us just as Jesus predicted, but I know that, secretly, at least the florists love us. (I wonder if they intentionally look for shop space next to Catholic churches? They could survive just on lily and poinsettia sales!)

As we knelt down to unpack our hearts before the One Who knows them best, an odoriferous wave of delight poured over us. It was crazy. There were flowers under the altar, over the altar, popping out of the pulpit, pouring out of the pews, climbing up the choir loft... and all of them screaming with pistils and petals waving "Watch out world! He is RISEN!"

So we just drank it in, sniffed it up, basked in the pungent scent of New Life in the Garden of the Resurrection.... and there we prayed for Life... life to the full. We can't wait for kids. CAN'T WAIT. And it brings to mind a line from Blessed Mother Teresa: "Saying there are too many children in the world is like saying there are too many flowers."

In our hearts, as in our church this Easter season, there can never be enough flowers.

Is God a Big Meanie... or Something Else?

I don't know why but it seems so many of us still hold a 7th grade image of God in our minds. Maybe it comes from the misconception that Christianity is "all about rules and commandments and this is a sin and that's a sin and man, what's left... GOSH!" (insert Napoleon Dynamite accent).

Remember the movie Pleasantville that showed sin as being the great liberator, the thing that brings fun and color and woohoo! to life where the boring, rigid, dress pants wearing self-righteous only see black and white? Ugh... what a twisted movie. As twisted as sin.

Ooo there it is! Sin... that nasty three letter word is the quick answer as to why we have to struggle and work and sweat it out to get the true image of God back into our cloudy heads. Sin has distorted our vision; it tricks us into choosing lust for a pleasure over the love that we know really satisfies. It's that slippery slope that always and everywhere puts me first instead of the Other, like kids pushing around for "first" on the sliding board of life.

The scandalously beautiful truth of God as a Lover, as the Youth of Eternal Summers and the Ancient of Days (you go Van Morrison), has still not taken root and traveled deep into our hearts. WHY?

A COUPLE OF GUESSES

#1. LAZINESS..... You see, rules are easy to follow, easy to break, easy to water down, and build back up again. But when someone says "I love you" right in your face.... ooooo. We have to respond in a whole different way. It's become personal. I have to get up off of the couch and do something, be someone... for someone other than me.

#2. FEAR..... What is the first thing Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden when they broke off their personal covenant relationship with God? They were afraid, so they hid themselves. Sin tells us that people are only out to do one of two things to me: manipulate or dominate. They can't honestly be thinking only of my happiness, can they?

"Hark! my lover - here he comes springing across the mountains, leaping across the hills. My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag. Here he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattices."
- Song of Songs 2:8-9

Maybe all along God has been peering out at us, not to check up on us and see if we've screwed it up yet so He can toss some lighting bolt of suffering at us, but He's looking through the lattices of the walls we've built up like a Romeo looking for his Juliet...

In the Christian tradition, the Song of Songs (the book that's right smack dab in the middle of the whole Bible) has been interpreted not just as love poetry between a bride and groom, but as the ultimate Love Song between Christ and the Church. The saints and mystics saw it more as the union between Christ and me. Where the two become one flesh, where Divinity marries humanity! It was their favorite book.

"O my dove in the clefts of the rock, in the secret recesses of the cliff,
Let me see you, let me hear your voice,
For your voice is sweet, and you are lovely."

Don't we all, tough guys to tenderfoots, sweethearts to the old and soured, wooed and wounded hearts, all long for this kind of love? This intimacy? To love this way and to be loved?

"On my bed at night I sought him whom my heart loves - I sought him but I did not find him. I will rise then and go about the city; in the streets and crossings I will seek Him whom my heart loves."

Are we afraid of what we might find? Are we too lazy to make the move into this dark night? Perhaps God is bigger than the Big Judge with the Book of Rules we once envisioned Him to be. Perhaps God is less a featureless cloud of bright and biblical proportions and more like the Love in our dreams and our quiet walks and wanderings on the way home from school, down the empty alleys from the pub, the club, and the movie halls where we paint our dreams in high density and shocking intensity. Maybe God's love is bigger than we can possibly ask or imagine.

If we seek, we will find.

"Have you seen him whom my heart loves? I had hardly left them when I found him whom my heart loves. I took hold of him and would not let him go..."

Just Watch....

The Human Experience

In a certain sense, I think it's never been so easy to evangelize, share the Good News, because never before have we had such bad news. Never before have we strayed so far from our roots, from human dignity, from a sense of purpose and a sense of wonder. They say it's always darkest before the dawn, and in the midst of shadow even the tiniest spark burns like fire. When all around us rises a cacophony of lies and fear and deception, the truth suddenly stands out so clearly. It's like the move from a smoky, crowded room onto the porch where wind and rain catch us up in their wet and misty swirls. If we only knew the right words to speak to draw souls out of the noise and haste! What would it take to wake us up and return us to the essence of being human? A film like the Human Experience is so ripe for our times. In the words of Pope John Paul II: "Faced with the sacredness of life and of the human person, and before the marvels of the universe, wonder is the only appropriate attitude." - Pope John Paul II I think the boys from Brooklyn have done it again, and this is only my take from the trailer! I am eagerly awaiting this film, and from what I read on their site (Grassroots Films) it seems the screenings are winning people over as well. It can't come soon enough for me! From Grassroots Films of Brooklyn, New York comes THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE - the story of a band of brothers who travel the world in search of the answers to the burning questions: Who am I? Who is Man? Why do we search for meaning? Their journey brings them into the middle of the lives of the homeless on the streets of New York City, the orphans and disabled children of Peru, and the abandoned lepers in the forests of Ghana, Africa. What the young men discover changes them forever. Through one on one interviews and real life encounters, the brothers are awakened to the beauty of the human person and the resilience of the human spirit.

You Might be One Holy Harmonica

When I was a kid, Dad would occasionally pull out his $5.00 harmonica and play us a tune; some rousing Irish jig or lullaby or Red River Valley. We thought it was pretty cool, and I guess that's what stirred me into playing the Irish tinwhistle.

Now as a kid, these two instruments, I have to confess, seemed to me more like glorified kazoos than orchestral implements. But then I heard Paddy Maloney play the tinwhistle, and that $7.00 piece of metal and plastic took me to the Aran Islands and beyond... to Tir na Nog.... to windswept rocks and crying gulls.

There's a line from Shakespeare that has a character pondering the power of the violin.... "Strange", he muses, "that sheep's guts should hail men's souls from their bodies."

Amen to that!

Now as a Catholic, I have daily encounters with ordinary stuff (water, wine, bread, oil) that's been supercharged and divinized by the God Who took on our flesh and became one of us. So it's not a puzzle for me to see melody flow through the muddy hands, and music from the makings of wood and steel, brass and pipes. It's incarnational! But a harmonica?

Enter Buddy Greene. He plays the harmonica like you've never seen. Now if he can play music like that through a little piece of camp fire chotsky, what wonders can God do through ridiculous me? The catch is... I have to let Him pick me up and send His Holy Spirit whistling through.

For Mary and for Us

On a darkened night 12 years ago, I first heard the Ave Maria by Franz Biebl, performed below by the Smoky Hill High School Symphonic and Chamber Choirs. When I first heard it performed, it was sung by the St. Charles Schola, a well trained group of seminarians who knew their Latin well! I had just wrapped up two years of studying the mother tongue myself, so it was with a deep sense of awe that I sat in my pew, after taking the Son of God into my heart in the Eucharist, and took in also the words of the Angelus sung in Franz Biebl's piece.

I was completely blown away that night. It was one of those wow moments that change your life, add a layer of gravitas, lift you up to a new plateau, shift the paradigm, and adjust the focus, so that suddenly what you thought you clearly knew about God and Life and Yourself was blown to bits and reconstituted before your very eyes; clarified and reconfigured, better than you imagined it ever was.

The most stirring moment of the song (captured more in the seminarian's singing when I first heard it) was at the verse "et Verbum caro factum est... et habitavit in nobis" - and the Word was made flesh... and dwelt among us...

The voices hushed to a whisper and I felt the air electrify, angels hanging in deep amazement. She said yes!! Mary opened the door to the Bridegroom and let Heaven into her heart! No longer holding our breath, no longer in exile, we find the Savior has found a home in Mary, and through her now He comes to us in every Communion. What Adam and Eve had lost, Jesus and Mary have revealed! God wants to dwell among us, and better still, within us! He wants to be all ours and us all His! So let us speak with Mary that great consent. "Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum." - Be it done unto me according to Your Word. How's that for a New Year (and a New Life's) resolution? To open the gates to Divinity, to redemption, to healing, to mercy...

What a wondrous God we have, willing to pour Himself out into us weak and so often clueless creatures, for the sake of Love, for the rescue of our captive hearts. Come Lord Jesus!

The Christmas House

Do you get all goosey when you see Inflatable Christmas Lawn Art? Does the glow of lights on an otherwise drab house set your heart pumping? Do you find yourself driving the long way home from work in the winter just to catch some extra yuletide wattage? Well we've got the house for you! Getting there is a real journey, but for those intoxicated by Christmas lights and 6 foot Frostys, you can't beat the "CHRISTMAS HOUSE."

It's nestled, oddly enough, on a dark street in a quiet little town called Washingtonville, NY. The house to the left has a porchlight and a wreath, the neighbor to the right is cloaked in shadowy shrubs. But it would take a city of Wal-Marts to beat out the brightness of the CHRISTMAS HOUSE!

And that's just the outside of the house... Every room inside is loaded to the gills with Christmas doodads and whatzits. Classic stuff too; trains, little villages, a hall of thematic trees like the Irish Tree, the Sports Tree, the Penguin Tree, and... the Creepy Singing Tree Which Has Lips and Big Eyes (my personal favorite. I'm not going to explain it to you. Just go! You'll find it downstairs and to the right. Or should I say, it will find you!)

Yesterday, before heading home from NY, my wife, myself, and a bunch of the family made a pilgrimage to this mecca of music and lights. It's open from December 20 to the 30th, from 7pm to 9pm, so time is running out if you want to make the trip!

The CHRISTMAS HOUSE: It's mind-boggling, it's sensory overload, it's Christmas on steroids! The Palmer family will greet you, dressed all in North Pole attire. And donations are gratefully accepted to help offset the electric bill, which I would guess is somewhere between $139,082 a day!

PS - the CHRISTMAS HOUSE happens to be a beautiful family tradition for many in the area and beyond, dedicated to the memory of Christopher Palmer, who LOVED Christmas like craaaaazy, as you'll see. Check out a rough little snatch of video I took below...

Random Stuff I've Been Meaning to Share

1. iPods are amazing.
2. Podcasts are FREE... and amazing.

What's an iPod? Well, officially, an iPod is a portable media player (music, videos, movies, even photos) designed by Apple and about the size of a pack of gum. It was first launched on October 23, 2001. I have a video iPod that now holds EVERYTHING... family photos, music from Springsteen to Mozart, John Cougar to the Crouching Tiger soundtrack! Talks by Peter Kreeft, Bishop Sheen, Scott Hahn, Christoher West, Scripture readings, episodes of Lost, Scrubs, the Office! Gregorian Chant, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Barry Manilow (yes, real men listen to Barry!), U2, Dave Wilcox, Greg Brown, Charlie Brown Christmas Album, Movie sound bytes that make me laugh, and... and.... lots of stuff! Like podcasts....

What's a podcast?
A podcast is like a broadcast, only one that you the listener can actually control. You can pick it, play it, pause it, or peruse it at your leisure. You can listen to a podcast just like you listen to your music on an iPod or Zune or MP3 player, or even on your computer at home (you don't need an iPod to listen to a podcast!)

Podcasts come in boatloads of different shapes and sizes. And a great place to find them is at iTunes, which ANYONE can download for free from Apple (even if you own a PC and not a Mac).
Here are some categories of podcasts:

Arts, Business, Comedy, Education, Games and Hobbies, Government and Organizations, Health, Kids and Family, Music, News and Politics, Religion and Spirituality, Science and Medicine, Society and Culture, Sports and Recreation, Technology, TV and Film.

And here are some of my favorites:

Daily Breakfast, voted the #1 Catholic podcast with Fr. Roderick, a priest of Holland. It's a 30 minute mix of theology and technology, music, movies, TV series, history, health, inspiration and more!

Catholic in a Small Town, a fun, lighthearted podcast from Mac and Katherine, a young Catholic couple from a small town in Georgia, talking about movies, entertainment, family, Catholic Stuff, and parenting.... pretty much everything!

Pray-as-You-Go, a new prayer session is produced (roughly) every day, lasting between ten and thirteen minutes, it combines music, scripture and some questions for reflection.

Meditations from Carmel, brought to you from the Order of Carmel Discalced Secular at the Carmel of St. Joseph in St. Louis, Missouri. "As Carmelites living in the world, we listen to hear the whisper of God in the silence of our hearts. We seek Him, who we know loves us, and contemplate His wonders."

CoffeeBreak Spanish, aimed at total beginners, learn a wee bit of Spanish with your latte from two Scottish podcasters! How cool is it to learn Spanish with a Scottish accent, I ask ye?

Then there's Fr. Roderick's "Godspeed" video podcasts, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic Short Videos of octopus eating sharks and stuff like that. I mean seriously, is this not cool beyond words?

SO... WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE PODCASTS?

Share the wealth! Post a comment below!

Grace Upon Grace

Well, I'm blogging while my Immaculata students take their final exam. Is that irresponsible? Heck no, 'cause they're a group of amazing young people who can take a test despite the feverish click and clak of these keyboard keys! Yeah!

It's been an awesome experience, teaching at a University level this semester. And the provident convenience of Immaculata U. being just 7 minutes and 32 seconds from Malvern Prep was another convenience. I'm looking forward to next semester already, though the Christmas break will be nice.

This was a course on Marriage and Family, with a strong emphasis on the Theology of the Body. We read the thoughts of Pope John Paul II, Mary Healy, Christopher West, we critically watched film clips, listened to popular music, and had discussions on the meaning of being human, the reason we are alive, the battle between love and lust. What better way to spend a Tuesday night from 7:15 to 9:45 I ask you!? To be honest, being home with Rebecca would have been better, but she has been amazingly supportive and so encouraging of me in this vocation of teaching. And despite the long nights, I'M LOVING IT! When you find your passion, your passion finds a way. And teaching theology, gazing wide-eyed into the Mystery of Mysteries Who is not a dry dogma or a program but a Person, is my passion!

What will it be like in 10 years, 20? I feel I'm just a baby teacher in many ways. But the Truth and the Goodness and the Beauty are what lead me on. In the words of one of our Malvern teachers, Mike Rawlings (whom I believe is quoting Alison King) a good teacher is not a "Sage on the Stage, but a Guide by the Side." That's what I hope to be more and more.

Fire, Frost and Gold

This is the season! Even in the rush to work, I'm sure you've been captured by the beauty in the fields, the forests, the city blocks lucky enough to have even a few trees. They are passing through their death throes, shuffling off in a blaze of glory their leafy cloaks... and lifting up their branches to embrace the winter chill.

It's beyond beautiful.

So yesterday morning on the way to work, I stashed the camera, and as I pulled onto Malvern's campus, the sun peeked up from the eastern rim of the sky and poured out fire on the sleepy earth. I took a few pics beside the edge of Black Friar Pond. The page to view them is here. Enjoy! And keep your cameras ready.... this weekend looks like the peak!