Elijah’s Cup: a Reminder, a Tradition, and a Memory

Posted on December 7, 2024 by Brian H. Gill

Brian H. Gill's photo: an Elijah cup we've had for years, now; make that decades. (December 4, 2024)I can’t claim Abraham as an ancestor.

My ancestors very likely hadn’t even heard of Abraham and Isaac until missionaries arrived, and I’ve mentioned that before.

I have, however, learned a bit about our Lord’s family history. That brings me to the Elijah cup my wife and I bought, some years back.

Make that decades. My wife and I got it while in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, for a brother-in-law’s wedding, which puts it in the 1990s.

Elijah’s Cup in Context

Photo: Brian H. Gill, at his desk. (March 2021)I had a little more hair then, and more of it was black, but I did and still do have a haven’t-shaved-in-years beard.

At any rate, while down in the Cities, we bought an Elijah cup.

There’s a lot of history, and even more tradition, involved in the Elijah cup’s story. Including why I should probably be calling it Elijah’s Cup.

But that’s for another time. Maybe around Easter, since Elijah’s Cup is part of the Passover Seder. Then again, maybe not. Calling the topics complicated would be a massive understatement.

The Passover Seder meal goes back to what’s outlined in Exodus 13:3–10.1 This was centuries after Joseph entered Egypt as a slave, ended up handling Pharaoh’s internal affairs, and that’s another story.

The point is that Moses had, reluctantly, gone back to Egypt — that’s yet another story — and had several unsatisfactory interviews with the Pharaoh of his era, before Egypt’s ruler told him to get out of Dodge.2

“During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, ‘Leave my people at once, you and the Israelites! Go and serve the LORD as you said.
Take your flocks, too, and your herds, as you said, and go; and bless me, too!'”
(Exodus 12:31–32)

“Remember This Day….”

James Tissot's 'Moses Speaks to Pharaoh'. (ca. 1896-1902) at the Jewish Museum, New York; via Wikipedia.Moses and the Israelites were on their way when Pharaoh changed his mind. Maybe he finally realized that they were a fair fraction of his land’s workforce.

Whichever pharaoh it was, I’ll give him credit for decisive action.

Leading a significant military force, including at least one elite unit, he caught up with the refugees. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

Meanwhile, Moses was taking steps to ensure that the folks heading for a homeland they’d never seen didn’t forget this part of their long story.

“Moses said to the people, ‘Remember this day on which you came out of Egypt, out of a house of slavery. For it was with a strong hand that the LORD brought you out from there. Nothing made with leaven may be eaten.”
(Exodus 13:3)

Millennia later, they’re still remembering that day, eating unleavened bread and re-telling the story of how they left Egypt.

An Elijah’s Cup is part of that Passover Seder. I gather that it’s the ‘fifth cup’, set for Elijah, a sign of hope and expectation: looking forward to his coming, as herald for the Messiah.

I see Elijah’s Cup as a reminder that the Messiah has come. But that’s because I’m a Christian, and think that Peter was right.3

“Simon Peter said in reply, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.'”
(Matthew 16:16)

A few more points, and I’ll get around to the time my wife and I bought an Elijah’s Cup.

First, how I see the book we call “Exodus”, AKA שְׁמוֹת‎/Shemoth/Shmot‎ (“Names”).

I think the book of Exodus is true. I also think it is not a history book, written by someone with a contemporary American viewpoint. As for what Sacred Scripture is, this is a pretty good summary:

“…Know what the Bible is – and what it isn’t. The Bible is the story of God’s relationship with the people he has called to himself. It is not intended to be read as history text, a science book, or a political manifesto. In the Bible, God teaches us the truths that we need for the sake of our salvation….”
(“Understanding the Bible” , Mary Elizabeth Sperry, USCCB)

Moses, Pharaoh —

John Martin's 'Seventh Plague of Egypt' (1823)I’ve been wandering off-topic, but there are a couple more points I want to make about Exodus, Moses, and all that.

I gather that “the modern scholarly consensus” is that Moses is make-believe, maybe based on someone who really existed, but mostly mythical.

“Scholars hold different opinions on the historicity of Moses. For instance, according to William G. Dever, the modern scholarly consensus is that the biblical person of Moses is largely mythical while also holding that ‘a Moses-like figure may have existed somewhere in the southern Transjordan in the mid-late 13th century B.C.’ and that ‘archeology can do nothing’ to prove or confirm either way. Some scholars, such as Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter, consider Moses a historical figure….”
(Moses, Historicity, Wikipedia (excerpt taken December 4, 2024))

The consensus crowd has a point.

An historical document of a sort: Thutmosis III cartouches in the temple at Deir el-Bahari.

Whoever was pharaoh at the time didn’t see to it that future generations would remember him as the leader who deprived Egypt of a whole mess of workers, wiping out significant parts of his country’s military in the process.

I’m not surprised. Official records at the time were like today’s press releases, and the debacle described in Exodus wasn’t good PR. Not from Pharaoh’s viewpoint.

If the current academic consensus is right, and “a Moses-like figure” lived in the mid to late 13th century B.C., then about three and a quarter millennia have passed since his time.

I won’t insist on this, but maybe some records from that period got lost in what happened about a century later.

— The Late Bronze Age Collapse, George Washington, and Me

Finn Bjørklid's (?) map showing the Bronze Age collapse.Folks talking about burned cities and unburied corpses littering abandoned streets call it the Late Bronze Age collapse.

Others, discussing Homer’s “legendary” conflict involving the world’s major powers, call it the Trojan War.

These days, I gather that conventional wisdom says Homer’s epic just happened to be set around the time when civilization shattered: abruptly and messily

After the Late Bronze Age collapse, life went on. Folks endured centuries of chaos, poverty, and illiteracy. But they endured: eventually rebuilding, or restarting, their civilizations.

Think of that period as being sort of like those post-apocalypse movies. But without giant mutant frogs.

I’m impressed at how much knowledge didn’t get lost during those centuries.

And, partly because accommodating the academic in-crowd isn’t among my priorities, I figure that Moses really was Moses.

I’m also willing to think that George Washington was a real person: which seems obvious, today, only two and a half centuries later.

John James Barralet's 'Apotheosis of Washington,' based on work by Gilbert Stuart. (1800-1802)But let’s say it’s three and a quarter millennia after our first president’s heyday, the same interval that’s elapsed since a scholarly consensus says “a Moses-like figure” lived.

Okay. My hypothetical future year is 4824. Much of what’s known about the United States is based on “America’s Story”, written during the 21st century.

Let’s also say that academic fashions of this imagined future are like today’s.

Eminent academicians might say that “America’s Story” is an unreliable account, since it was written by Americans: and therefore biased. As for George Washington, he’s clearly a mythologized figure, embodying the spirit of civic virtues.

They’d point out that not only is there no documentation of the Cherry Tree Myth; but artwork depicting the Apotheosis of Washington demonstrate that this figure was worshiped, possibly as a guardian deity.4

And that’s another topic. Several, actually.

Overheard While Getting Our Elijah’s Cup

Brian H. Gill's photo: an Elijah cup we've had for years, now; make that decades. (December 4, 2024)
The Elijah cup we bought in the 1990s.

Finally, it’s time that I recall the time my wife and I, and our oldest daughter, picked up that Elijah’s Cup. Maybe our second-oldest, too.

We had some free time, enough to find a Jewish gift shop and look for an Elijah’s Cup. Three decades later, I can’t remember the name of the place.

I do remember that while we were looking around, a conversation was in progress. Another couple were discussing their options with the man who was tending the shop.

Seems that they had something specific in mind: a wedding gift, maybe. At any rate, there were two versions of this item in stock.

One had been prepared the right way, and was significantly more expensive. The less expensive item was indistinguishable from the correctly-prepared one.

I don’t know why the couple didn’t either buy the one that was kosher, or take the less expensive one, and palm it off as the real McCoy.

I also don’t know if “kosher” is the right word in this context, but never mind.

That conversation went on at some length.

Now, I’m aware of cultural norms regarding eavesdropping. But these folks weren’t making any effort to avoid broadcasting.

They also seemed unable to either (1) accept the correct item’s extra expense or (2) economize and pass off the substitute as a genuine article.

I’m pretty sure my reaction to their expressed attitude was obvious. I’ve got pretty much the opposite of a poker face. I’m not sure that I was exactly appalled, but I can’t think of a better word for how I felt.

Taking Traditions Seriously

Black Stripe's photo: A set of tefillin, made from cow hide rather than sheep hide, single leather piece, tefillin in the Ashkanazi tradition. (2013)Again, I’m about as gentile as it gets, west of the Urals and north of the Mediterranean.

But whoever was getting that item probably took Judaism’s traditions and customs seriously. So do I, for that matter, although I’m not about to start wearing tefillin: and that’s yet another topic, for another day.

The cost-conscious couple made their decision and left. The shopkeeper looked at me, smiled and shrugged as he spread his hands. Then my wife and I got our Elijah’s Cup.

We haven’t included a Passover Seder in our Maundy/Holy Thursday routines.5 It’s not that we’re against doing so. We just haven’t adopted that custom.

I do, however, see to it that I get to Mass on Holy Thursday. My wife: she gets out even less than I do. Ours isn’t the world’s healthiest household, and that’s yet again another topic.

I’ve talked about some of this before, and probably will again:

1 Feasts and a prophet:

2 asdfasdf:

3 Remembering:

4 The distant and not-so-distant past, remembering that reality has layers:

“…It’s something too many of us forget, that reality has layers. Occasionally people ask me how I can be Catholic and a science journalist. The answer is simple: Truth does not contradict truth. Both science and religion are pursuit of truth. They’re after different aspects of truth, different layers of reality, but they’re still both fundamentally about truth….”
(Camille M. Carlisle, Sky and Telescope (June 2017)) quoted in “Science, Religion, and Saying Goodbye to the 19th Century”, Perspectives (May 25, 2024)

5 Religious practices:

Posted in Being Catholic, Discursive Detours, Family Stories, Journal, Series | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Christmas With Aunt Jule and Uncle George

Posted on November 30, 2024 by Brian H. Gill
Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, via LiveNOW from FOX. (November 28, 2024)
Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (November 28, 2024) Next holiday: Christmas.

Get-togethers, family and community, are part of the holiday season.

Take Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, for example. Thousands of folks, maybe a million or more, turned out Thursday morning,1 standing in a cold New York City rain, cheering this celebration of consumerism.

I could kvetch about folks buying stuff they don’t actually need, the rampant waste of helium, or Snoopy being neither at the parade’s head nor at Santa’s side. But I won’t.

Fact is, I enjoyed an online broadcast — or is that stream? — of the parade. Watching the parade has become part of my holiday season routine.

Instead, I’ll talk about another holiday tradition I’ve enjoyed: family Christmas gatherings at the home of Aunt Jule and Uncle George. They lived, along with some of the rest of the family, in Grand Forks, North Dakota: about a two hour drive north from Moorhead, Minnesota, where I grew up.

Feelings, Memories, Moods, and Me

'Twelfth Night Merry-Making in Farmer Shakeshaft's Barn,' from Ainsworth's Mervyn Clitheroe, by PhizSharing those good times and warm feelings with you isn’t as easy as I’d prefer.

Partly because I’m a stickler for accuracy.

But mostly because I’m not among those blessed — or cursed — with HSAM.

I’ve got a pretty good memory, particularly for words and images. But when it comes to remembering specific events, or the sort of questions you’ll see on multiple-choice tests: well, I’ve learned to verify stuff I’m sure I remember. I’m usually right, but it’s the exceptions that keep me checking.

My father was the same way. He had a wonderful memory, with a gift for sharing what he’d learned: and for showing how it relates to everything else. He also had a gift for improving on his source materials.

It never, to my knowledge, resulted in distortions of fact with anything that really mattered. But some of his anecdotes and quotes were more colorful than the originals.

I’m forgetting something.

Good times.

Happy feelings.

Remembering stuff. Right.

HSAM stands for highly superior autobiographical memory, or hyperthymesia. As of 2021, fewer than 100 folks had been diagnosed with this freakishly enhanced knack for remembering not-quite-everything they’ve experienced.

Considering how many experts aren’t hyperthymesiac, I’m mildly surprised that it’s recognized as something that a few folks really live with.2 And that’s another topic.

So, much as I’d like to do a Dickens-style description of Christmas get-togethers at Aunt Jule and Uncle George’s, what you’ll see — if you keep reading — are bits and pieces I’ve pulled from that folder in my mind’s archive.

Oddly enough, although the details weren’t like Fezziwig’s Christmas party, the general mood wasn’t all that different.3

Julekake and Lefse, Krumkake and Sandbakelse, But No Lutefisk

Traditional Norwegian/Scandinavian (mostly) Christmas foods: from https://www.southdakotamagazine.com/christmas-foods-nd-93 'Rosaaen Olson's Julekake, or Christmas bread, is a treasured Norwegian holiday tradition. Holiday Foods Heritage By Jennifer Thom Editor's Note: This story is revised from the Nov/Dec 1993 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.' https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/68293/norwegian-krumkake/ 'Submitted by SUCCESSB440 Updated on November 14, 2023' https://www.farmfreshfeasts.com/2014/12/my-mothers-lefse-christmasweek.html 'photo (c) farmfreshfeasts.com My Mother's Lefse' https://www.norwegianamerican.com/memories-that-shape-us-sandbakkelse/ 'Photo: Daytona Strong The recipe for sandbakkelse is simple; it's the exquisite thin shapes that set them apart.' (November 28, 2024)
Left to right: sandbakkelse, krumkaka, julekaka, lefse.

John Leech: 'Mr. Fezziwig's Ball'. Frontpiece for 'A Christmas Carol' (1849) From British Library, via Wikipedia.At any rate, while rummaging through those six-plus-decades-old memories, I found that I can’t come even close to calling up the sort of detail you’ll read in “A Christmas Carol”.

“…There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening came after the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The sort of man who knew his business better than you or I could have told it him!) struck up ‘Sir Roger de Coverley.’…”
(“A Christmas Carol” / “A Ghost Story of Christmas”; Stave Two / The First of the Three Spirits, Charles Dickens (1843))

That’s hardly surprising, since Dickens was making Fezziwig and the party up; along with Scrooge, the three ghosts, and the fiddler. I’m trying to put together a coherent account of a real annual event, mostly experienced as a child.

What I mainly remember is a very great many folks having a good time in an older house. Most of them, my memory tells me, were in the three rooms along one side. There’s a story about that place that I’m saving for another time.

Conversations overlapped each other, merging into a cheerfully mild roar. Just being there, enjoying all those folks enjoying themselves, was fun.

Then there was the food. Lots and lots of food.

Aunt Jule — that’s Jule with the “J” sounding like the “j” in “jam” — I’ll get back to the name in a bit — retained her Scandinavian appreciation of Christmas food: along with an enthusiasm for producing it in prodigious quantities when family came visiting.

Meet the Treats

Jonathunder's photo: 'A dozen rosettes from Otto's Bakery in Byron, Minnesota'. (2009)
Rosettes in a Minnesota bakery. (2009) Jonathunder’s photo.

Julekaka is just what the name says it is: Christmas cake. It’s pronounced “yulehkahkah”, and emphatically not for someone who shuns butter, sugar, and candied fruits.

Unlike the Christmas fruitcake that’s inspired holiday-themed jokes, Aunt Jule’s julekaka never had a chance to get passed along from family to family. It’d be lucky to last until New Year’s.

Krumkaka — it’s rather thin and stiff, so it could crumble; but that’s not what the name means. It’s a sort of Scandinavian waffle cookie. Again, like julekaka, not for the diet-obsessed; except krumkaka has no candied fruits.

You could put candied fruit in those ice-cream-cone-shaped manifestations of sweetness, but I liked them just as they were. Again, while they lasted.

Sandbakkelse — I called them “sand-buckles”. They were thickish sugar cookies, very light and very sweet.

Rosettes — that’s what Aunt Jule called them, I don’t know why she used our language’s generic name for that sort of fritter — again: very light, very sweet, very tasty. They seemed to dissolve before I got a chance to chew them.

Lefse isn’t a “Christmas” food, although it was part of Aunt Jule’s Christmas feast. It’s the Scandinavian version of potato flatbread. I don’t think I’ll ever taste lefse again.

On the other hand, my wife makes something very much like it: with wheat instead of potato, which is fine by me. But I do miss lefse.

The stuff on grocery shelves that’s labeled “lefse” — I don’t know how or why, but it doesn’t taste right: Not bad, just not right. Maybe it’s the plastic wrapping.

Lutefisk wasn’t part of Aunt Jule’s Christmas extravaganza. It’s dried cod, soaked in lye.4 I’ve never tasted it, and understand the canned stuff called “lutefisk” — isn’t.

A Name, Languages, Spelling, and Birthdays

Aunt Jule’s name, again, was spelled with a “J”. She’s as American as I am, so we pronounced her name as if it was “jewel”, with “J” sounding like the “j” in “jam”.

Now, she was a “jewel” in several senses of the word, but she’d been named “Jule” because that’s when she’d been born: on Yule.

I’ve never been told why her name was pronounced “jewel” and spelled “Jule”, even though she was named for our culture’s winter solstice festival.

Folks who use English as their native language give Jule its anglicized spelling: “Yule”. But, even though that side of the family was and is determinedly English-speaking, we still pronounced words like julekaka properly. Except for Aunt Jule’s name: which we spelled properly, with a “J”. Why, again, I don’t know.

I do know that her name wasn’t “Jules” without an “s”. That’s a name French-speaking folks picked up from Latin, and that’s yet another topic. Several, actually.

About our celebrations of Yule, we knew about Yule logs — oddly enough, I don’t have a specific memory of one burning at those get-togethers — Yule singing is another blank spot in my memory, and I didn’t even know about Yule goats until recently.

And as far as I knew, at first, “Yule” was just another word for Christmas. Which, in a sense, it is: since both are part of my native culture’s winter solstice observance, and connected with our celebration of a very special birthday. Speaking of which, tomorrow is the first Sunday in Advent.

Finally, the usual more-or-less related posts:

1 Part of New York City’s Thanksgiving Day since 1924:

2 Memory, mostly:

  • Wikipedia
    • Eidetic memory (Some experts who don’t have this say that nobody does.)
    • Episodic memory (Remembering specific everyday events.)
    • Explicit memory (Remembering facts, experiences, and ideas.)
    • Hyperthymesia (Episodic memory on steroids, sort of.)
    • Implicit_memory (Remembering how to do stuff, and what things are: like how to walk, and what a cat is.)
    • Memory (It’s complicated.)
    • Semantic memory (General knowledge, experience, culture; all mixed together: it’s complicated.)

3 A Christmas classic:

4 Food, mostly:

5 A name, a season, celebrating, a goat and a log:

Posted in Discursive Detours, Family Stories, Journal, Series | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

True Gratitude: Wisdom in the Comics — Thanksgiving 2024

Posted on November 28, 2024 by Brian H. Gill
JohnHartStudios.com's Wizard of Id, by the Parker and Hart families; November 24, 2024: 'I'm grateful for people like him, who understand true gratitude.' See https://johnhartstudios.com/meet-the-artists/wizard-of-id-team/
Understanding gratitude: a good thought, from the Wizard of Id. (November 24, 2024)

Go_Bowling balloonicles at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade: a 12-foot bowling ball, 16-foot pins and Brobdingnagian bowling shoes. (November 9, 2020) via Verizon, used w/o permission. see https://macysthanksgiving.fandom.com/wiki/Go_BowlingWizard of Id’s Spook and Turnkey made a good point last Sunday.

Gratitude is an option, even when life’s bowl of cherries seems filled with pits.

Sometimes I don’t feel particularly grateful, that’s putting it mildly; but I can always be grateful, if I remember that just being alive is a gift from God: and that everything else is gravy.

Remembering to remember — that’s tricky. For me, at any rate.

Decades of undiagnosed depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and/or autism spectrum disorder, a hip that didn’t grow right, and assorted other imperfections —

Albrecht Dürer's 'Melancholia I,.' (1514) via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.I’ve got any number of excuses for fashionable melancholy. I see it’s been three years since I talked about that:

Although I’m pretty good at seeing dark linings in every sliver cloud, I don’t see the point in peddling doom and gloom.

Even if that’s become a traditional indicator of intelligence and insight:

“…the student of eighteenth-century melancholy is faced with a problem: for much of the period, melancholy was frothily fashionable, a condition that often seemed less of an illness and more of a blessing for the budding poet, wilting lady wishing to show off her latest nightdress, or anyone who desired to seem in the slightest bit sensitive or clever….”
(“Melancholy Experience in Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century,” Fashionable Melancholy, Abstract, Clark Lawlor (2011) via Springer Link)

Fashionable melancholy’s flip side, pretending that everything’s fine, doesn’t make sense, either: and that’s another topic.

Brian H. Gill's 'Thanks But I'm Stuf-.' (2021)So I’ll express my hope that you have a good Thanksgiving Day — or November 28th, if my country’s turkey fest isn’t part of your week — see if I can find coverage of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade online, and wrap this up with the usual vaguely-related list of posts:

Posted in Being Catholic, Journal | Tagged , | 2 Comments

False Mysticism, Spiritual Abuse, and the News

Posted on November 26, 2024 by Brian H. Gill
Google News feed search 'spiritual abuse'. (November 26, 2024)
Results from ‘spiritual abuse’ search on my Google News feed. (November 26, 2024)

“Vatican to consider classifying ‘spiritual abuse’ as a new Catholic crime” was in my Google News feed this morning.

“Vatican to consider classifying ‘spiritual abuse’ as new Catholic crime“
Joshua McElwee, Reuters (November 26, 2024)

“Pope Francis has asked the Vatican to study whether the Catholic Church should classify ‘spiritual abuse’ as a new crime in order to address cases where priests use purported mystical experiences as a pretext for harming others.

“A statement from the Vatican’s doctrinal office announcing the move did not name any specific cases of such abuse, but the Vatican has had to deal with several in recent years….”

After giving the Reuters article a quick read, I did what I usually do when this sort of thing happens: check out what the Church says it said.

Turns out, there’s a bit of a history there, starting with these items:

A little more checking showed me that the phrase “false mysticism” has showed up before this year. The earliest one I found was in Pope Pius XI’s “Mens Nostra”, written in 1929.

Bear in mind that I didn’t spend much time looking: that’s just what was near the top in my search results. And I was only looking for documents in my native language, English.

Updating and Clarifying the Rules: Again

This month’s “‘Foglio’ for the…” is fairly short, but includes this bit of background:

“…However, in the new Norms for Proceeding in the Discernment of Alleged Supernatural Phenomena, the DDF specified that ‘the use of purported supernatural experiences or recognized mystical elements as a means of or a pretext for exerting control over people or carrying out abuses is to be considered of particular moral gravity’ (Art. 16). This consideration allows the situation described here to be evaluated as an aggravating circumstance if it occurs together with delicts….”
(“‘Foglio’ for the Audience with the Holy Father: ‘False Mysticism and Spiritual Abuse’” (November 22, 2024))

As near as I can figure, what Reuters called a proposed “new Catholic crime” is more like a clarification of terms that we’ve been already been using.

Along with a strong recommendation that folks in the Dicastery for Legislative Texts study that part of our rules, and come up with specific ways they can be updated.

If this sounds like I’m not shocked, horrified, revolted, and ready to stop being a Catholic: that’s because I’m not.

First, I became a Catholic because I finally realized who’s got the authority our Lord gave Peter; and second — well, that’s pretty much it.

Besides, I know a little about our history.

We’ve been around for two millennia now.

Folks — clergy included — have misbehaved before. That doesn’t make it right: but it does take the edge off the blind panic I might feel, when I learn that another individual who should have known better acted badly.

And I’m well aware that we’ve been changing and clarifying the rules since day one. Good grief, some of that’s in the New Testament’s letters.

I’m just glad that, possibly because there’s so much post-election hysteria grabbing headlines, this “spiritual abuse” thing isn’t center stage at the moment.

Mentioning a Mystical Mistake

This month’s “Foglio” also mentions — and quotes — what Pope Pius XII said about another recurring problem we have.

This one isn’t so much about abuse, spiritual or otherwise, as it is about the squeamish notion that ‘spiritual’ folks shouldn’t — no, I’ll let Pope Pius XII say it:

“…It is wrong, therefore, to assert that the contemplation of the physical Heart of Jesus prevents an approach to a close love of God and holds back the soul on the way to the attainment of the highest virtues. This false mystical doctrine the Church emphatically rejects as, speaking through Our predecessor of happy memory, Innocent XI….”
(“Haurietis Aquas“, on devotion to the Sacred Heart, Pope Pius XII (May 15, 1956))

Trying to believe that God made a horrible mistake when He created the physical world isn’t a problem with me.

No great virtue, that. I like being a spiritual/physical hybrid.

And anyway, there’s the matter of trying to believe that God makes any sort of mistake. The workaround for that is insisting that there are two gods: a good guy god and a bad guy god, which has been done: and that’s a whole mess of topics I won’t dive into today.

More-or-less-related posts:

Posted in Being Catholic | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

A Change of Pace: Family Stories

Posted on November 23, 2024 by Brian H. Gill

I’m taking A Catholic Citizen in America in a different direction, at least for a while. I’ll still post something each Saturday, but will be focusing on what I call ‘family stories’.

It’s not that I’ve lost interest in science, history, and all that. When there’s something more-than-usually exciting going on, I’ll write about that. But mostly, I’ll be sharing memories and thoughts of a distinctly less nerdy sort.

I’ve got a few reasons for this.

Why I’m Doing What I’m Doing: Converting Memories to Writing

I’m in my mid-70s. The good news is that now I’ve run across more ideas and lore than I had, back in my younger years. The occasionally-frustrating news is that I’m not as energetic as I was then.

Those ‘science’ and ‘history’ posts, the way I do them, take time. Particularly since I’m not an ‘expert’: so I verify what my memory tells me, and do research to fill in the blanks.

I’d like to try my hand at digital art again, and write stories that have been on back burners, both of which are time-intensive efforts. Getting caught up on my Sky & Telescope reading is a ‘to do’, too.

Finally and importantly, my oldest daughter said she’d like me to start recording or writing down ‘family stories’ — anecdotes I’ve shared over the decades. I got started on that last month.

It’s a matter of priorities and limitations. There’s a consensus here that writing down these ‘family stories’ is a good idea, and I agree. Plus, I’ve only got so much time and energy to work with.

So I’ll share some of what I wrote last month, and keep on converting parts of my memory to these written anecdotes. Being committed to having at least a few ready each Saturday should keep me on-task.

Hope you enjoy these. I’ll do what I can to make that possible.

Getting Started: Cats, Homes, and an Incendiary Stove

Our cats were ‘indoor cats’, but old Boots was with us when we lived at 818 (10th Street South, Moorhead). My folks and I called it “818”: “eight-eighteen”. Then, when we moved to 1010 South 16th Street, Moorhead, that house was “1010”: “ten-ten”.

Anyway, Boots is the first cat I have more than a single memory of.

My memory of Dusty, my mother’s cat — I think she had Dusty before she went to college. Dusty stayed with my Grandma and Grandpa Hovde in Hillsboro, and was back with my mother by the time we were in 818.

My mother and father lived in an apartment when they first came to Moorhead, a place where the landlord ‘saved money’ by putting pennies behind the fuses. That cut down on the cost of replacing fuses, and resulted in a spectacular but not catastrophic kitchen fire when the — I think it was the stove that shorted out.

At any rate, their next place was 1215, a house on the near south side of Moorhead. It might have been 1215 2nd Avenue South, but at this time of day: I don’t remember.

Where was I? Cats. Homes. Incendiary stoves. Right.

Racing Into a South Wind

I think I remember seeing Dusty’s legs, while someone was doing physical therapy with me on the dining room floor of 818. I’d have been — probably a toddler at that point. That’s the only memory of Dusty I have — a nice little grey cat, I understand.

Dusty went the way of all flesh. Poetic, that, but moving on. Then my folks decided they’d get a kitten, picked from a litter — I’m not sure where. They picked the liveliest of the bunch, a big little kitten: dark grey with white “boots”, belly, chin, and nose. After some discussion, which I remember being made part of, the name “Boots” was chosen.

Boots may, or may not, have been part Maine Coon cat. Whatever his ancestry, he grew into a big fellow: a longhair with the ‘majestic’ feline personality. We joked that he may have regarded himself as a human, or didn’t realize that he was a cat.

Boots was mostly an ‘indoor’ cat, but we let him out for part of each day. The signal that it was time to come home was a whistle: very high-pitched.

One day, it must have been summer, because I was walking home with Dad — I think it was around noon.

We were near the north end of the block where 818 was, walking south, when I heard the cat whistle blowing. Or, rather, heard the whistle being blown by my mother.

There was movement to my left, in the front yard of the house we were passing, just behind a low hedge or border planting.

Rapid movement: Boots, leaping over the hedge, diagonally, headed south. South-southwest at that moment, actually, his fur streaming in the south wind. And then he was on the sidewalk ahead of us, racing toward 818.

I treasure that memory.

Another Memory, and Distractions

I’ll wrap up this week’s post with the usual link list; this time another ‘family story’ post (“Sledding With My Dad: Good Memories” ), and a look at what’s been distracting me this year:

Posted in Being a Writer, Being an Artist, Discursive Detours, Family Stories, Journal, Series | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments