St Blaise,bishop and martyr

To celebrate we made chocolate and chilli cookies. (You see chillis are "blazing" hot!)
St Blaise is the patron of throat ailments, and given my generous use of chilli powder (extra hot), we may yet need his intercession.

The Presentation of Our Lord

The great Blessing of Motherhood.

So a friend from school is pregnant, having her first child.

Somehow this blows my mind.

I have been pregnant 5 times myself, but in the thick of nausea/worry/tireness/worrying what people will think/wondering where baby will sleep etc. I forgot something.

I forgot that children are always an amazing blessing.

An absolute miracle.

Awesome.

Unique.

I forgot sometimes in my self-centeredness that I am participating in God's plan.

Just thinking about my friend's tiny, precious baby bought tears to my eyes. I mean WOW! This small person, already known to God. A little boy or girl, looking just like themselves. A human soul. Tiny, precious-a one off utterly new and unique.

I had the odd desire to wrap my friend in cotton wool. A former professional athlete, turned fitness instructor, I wanted to ask her should she be excercising at all-to make her sit down in a chair and hand feed her whatever she wanted.

Most of all, I had the oddest desire to bow down to her, in sheer awe of the miracle taking place inside her - a co creator with God. I mean how cool is that?, and how Blessed are us women that He allows many of us to share in His Divine plan.

If I am ever Blessed with a pregnancy again, I will let myself be fussed over, and worried about, because in spite of my neo-feminist "I can do it all myself"mindset, there is something precious and delicate about the pregnant woman. It's called a baby.

The Conversion of St Paul

I only learnt this week that St Paul has two feast days. Today we commemorate the Conversion of St Paul .We read the story from Acts, we looked at some artwork on the theme, including Caravaggio's famous picture, and then we did some art work of our own.

Making a volcano.

The old vinegar and baking soda volcano. Got this one in a kit, complete with warning leaflets and safety goggles, should things go awry. They didn't.

On Boxing day..

I cut up all the packaging from our presents and now have lots of lovely bits for scrapbooks, card making and collages, and cut down on the recycling too.

HO HO HO! Why I'm not laughing at these Santa movies.

DH and I thought we would watch a silly santa movie on Christmas eve.
I don't mind my children watching Santa movies, it is usually only light-hearted entertainment after all.
The movie ends in the usual feel good way, when the hero of the movie "moves in with" the girl.
We used to have a word for this. We called it fornication.
You'll probably enjoy this film-I did-and perhaps you'll say to yourself,"Well, the rest of it is good, so we'll forget about this bit."
With all the music, and the romantic "feeling" we get from this film, we can almost excuse it-after all-if it feels good-then its ok-right?
I think this is how we become desensitised to these things. We can excuse fornication, "because they love each other", and films like this help us to think like this.
Speaking of course, as a former fornicator, while it "felt" good and exciting, it was also kind of,well, empty, and I lost something I won't ever get back.
Ok, I know this is fiction, but this film is obviously specifically aimed at children. You have a willing captive audience for this propagana. And what sort of parent doesn't let their children see a Santa movie, for goodness sake!
Fred Claus was rated a PG, so we thought we'd pre-watch it, just in case there was anything unsuitable.
We nearly always do this now, very often for the most innocuous film. I recall another Santa movie which came into our posession, a while ago.
Now bear in mind this other film,(whose name escapes me), was rated U -which means there is supposed to be nothing unsuitable for children, and is very much aimed at children. There was an elaborate scene where the children's Mother's boyfriend, was attempting to sneak out of the house, after spending the night in her bed.
Ok. Now I get that these films are aimed at all children, including those with unconventional families, but this scene was so contrived as to be laughable. It added nothing to the plot at all. Think:start the film. stop. insert propaganda. stop. continue film.
There was no reson why this scene had to be included at all. None at all. Except to normalise these things.
If Satan stood up in your town centre, and tried to lure your children to hell, you'd avoid him, He likes to muddy the waters just enough-a little bit here, a little bit there-before you know it your worldview has changed, and you didn't even notice.
Fr Corapi says that the Devil's favorite colour is grey. And Santa is an angram of Satan-just sayin'.