Impatience or hubris?

I took over control of my husband's bank accounts when my stepson went through a "hypo manic" phase and was wasting money.

So Sunday, on the way to Trade fair in Manila, I gave them the money (They "forgot" to tell me they'd need 10thousand pesos/200 dollars, but I had gotten extra money from the bank on Friday, so I had it).

Then, on the way out, I was told: Oh by the way, our daughter needs to pay her school tuition. This came to 700 dollars, not a large amount, but there was no way for me to get the amount on a Sunday Afternoon (ATM's have limits)

So I was the "bad guy"

I gave them the lecture about a budget (the idea seems to be if there is an expense, you get it from my husband's savings, but the profit goes into your bank account and can be used for personal expenses).

They knew about this bill for months, yet no word to me, even though I could have easily gotten the cash or put it into the checking account last week (I was in the bank twice, so no problem).

By the "gotcha", they of course can blame everything on me.

But now I feel guilty: If I wasn't sick in bed, I would have tried to figure out how to get the money, but instead it was a demand when they were ready to leave, no time to think or figure it out.

So it's my fault, but this is not the first time.

I am often told" we need 200 dollars" this weekend for salaries, but later I am told we need another 300 for something else.

And instead of coming from the profits of the business, it all is coming from my husband's hard earned savings.

What makes me even madder is that for two years, I didn't get an allowance from my husband, so I had to break into my savings for things like decent sheets, an easy chair, curtains, and snacks.

Rant done

Quantum physics and the Eucharist

Some Jesuit opens his mouth and says modern science no longer makes transubstantiation believable:
Key quote here:

Regrettably, all too frequently, the only Presence focused on is Christ’s presence in the elements of bread and wine. Inadequately described as the change of the “substance” (not the “accidents”) of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, the mystery of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist carries the intellectual baggage of a physics no one accepts. Aristotelian physics makes such nice, however implausible and now unintelligible, distinctions. They are meaningless in the post-Newtonian world of quantum physics, which is the scientific context we live in today.

The language used to describe transubstantiation does use the language of Aristotlian logic, but the concept is not one limited to pre nuclear physics.

First Things blog notes:
If one looks at the consecrated elements and asks ‘What are these?”, the correct answer (according to the doctrine of transubstantiation) is “These are the Body and Blood of Christ.” If one asks, “What do these appear to be under any empirical test?”, the answer is “bread and wine.” Basically, that is all there is to it. The dogmatic definition used Aristotelian terminology to express this, but it can be expressed without that terminology....

In short, one can explain the doctrine of transubstantiation and distinguish it from other beliefs about the Eucharist without any use of the Aristotelian apparatus. I don’t know what quantum mechanics has to do with any of this. If anything, quantum mechanics makes a straightforward connection between what appears empirically and what is “really there” more obscure than it was in Newtonian physics, and to that extent would make it easier rather than harder to affirm the doctrine.

In other words, the concept could be expressed in another way besides Aristotle's concepts...and the argument is merely a way for another attack on the church by a PC non believer.

Love

Dark Night of the Soul
St. John of the Cross

Upon a darkened night
The flame of love was burning in my breast
And by a lantern bright
I fled my house while all in quiet rest

Shrouded by the night
And by the secret stair I quickly fled
The veil concealed my eyes
While all within lay quiet as the dead

Oh night thou was my guide
Oh night more loving than the rising sun
Oh night that joined the lover
To the beloved one
Transforming each of them into the other

Upon that misty night
In secrecy, beyond such mortal sight
Without a guide or light
Than that which burned so deeply in my heart

That fire t’was led me on
And shone more bright than of the midday sun
To where he waited still
It was a place where no one else could come

Oh night thou was my guide
Oh night more loving than the rising sun
Oh night that joined the lover
To the beloved one
Transforming each of them into the other

Within my pounding heart
Which kept itself entirely for him
He fell into his sleep
Beneath the cedars all my love I gave
And by the fortress walls
The wind would brush his hair against his brow
And with its smoothest hand
caressed my every sense it would allow

Oh night thou was my guide
Oh night more loving than the rising sun
Oh night that joined the lover
To the beloved one
Transforming each of them into the other

I lost myself to him
And laid my face upon my lovers breast
And care and grief grew dim
As in the mornings mist became the light
There they dimmed amongst the lilies fair
There they dimmed amongst the lilies fair
There they dimmed amongst the lilies fair


Headsup the Anchoress...

heh one of the comments on the song notices how...erotic are the lyrics.
Yes, As the Pope points out: You can't separate eros and agape, because eros is what makes us seek the good, and when we feel loved, agape is the natural result.

Agape with Eros/love is

Sad but true

In the US and Europe, the "new church" is like "new Coke": a symbol of trying to be the "cutting edge" but in reality unwanted and now stuck in the past...

Damiean Thompson's blog at the UKTelegraph points out that the website of the "new church" looks like an ad for AARP...his parody of the group HERE closely resembles the real group HERE.

Ghosts

Standingonmyhead blog has a discussion of ghosts, exorcism and family healing.

Ironically, I have three stories about this.

One: Working in Africa, one teacher's home was "bewitched" to punish him...the kids came into the clinic in a hysterical "conversion reaction" state, so we prayed the rosary and they got better (although as a doc, later I learned about hypnosis and could "cure" it with a mild induction of hypnosis...there is a relationship between hypnosis, suggestion, the prayer of quiet, and the subconscious which one of these days I'll write about).
Well, Father went into the house and they found the hidden "muti" and removed it, and blessed the house.

Two: My German Grandmother once moved into a house in the US where windows and doors would open and shut on their own. She had a mass said for the Holy Soul, and it stopped.

Three: Catholic American Indians would frequently have their houses blessed to remove infestation of spirits. One of our clinics had one room where the lights would go off and on, which reportedly was because there was a burial sight there...and they would "sage" the Nursing home every week to keepdown the spirits of those who died there...even though many of the people were Catholic or Anglican, the priests were too modern to bless the place, I guess.

vendetta against the church

Kenneth Woodward in Commonweal says the NYTimes is fronting for a lawyer who drained the US church of money and now is aiming for the Vatican...never mind that the stories are of 40 and 50 year old cases, it's Ratzinger's fault.

Never mind that even Newsweek points out that the "abuse" of children is widespread, and occurs less in the Catholic church than in other churches or public schools...

But with all this publicity, every pat or hug will be interpreted as a grope...

And despite the NYTimes and other sophisticates in Europe and the US who want to destroy this Pope for not helping change the church into another Episcopal church, they only see themeselves as important...

They don't notice that the church, as in the past, is the church of ordinary folks, not the rich and powerful.

Jenkins in TNR:
Indeed, as the crisis quickens the wane of Europe's Catholic influence, it will help solidify the Church's new roots in the south. Membership there will continue to burgeon, and Church's hierarchy will increasingly be paved with southern clerics. When the time comes to choose someone to succeed Pope Benedict XVI, the cardinals, acutely aware of the effects of the abuse crisis, will probably consider more innovative international candidates, untainted by European connections. A Latin American pope would be a likely choice. Yet, in speculating what the Church might look like in 2050, John Allen imagines an African pope who would represent the interests of his home continent on the world stage. It is very possible that the abuse crisis will only push this scenario closer to the present day; the next time the cardinals must choose a new Vatican leader, they may ask, why not an African?