Laughter is the Best Medicine

Interesting article by Fr. Dwight Longenecker over at Inside Catholic.

It reminds me of one of the epigraphs from The Screwtape Letters: "The devil...the prowde spirite...cannot endure to be mocked." -- St. Thomas More

Remind Me Always

Faith

"Remind me always that you have a plan for me, greater than I could ever imagine."

Hope

"Bring me light from where I thought it was dark..."

"It's hard to recall what blew out the flame, it's been dark since you can remember..."

"Hope has a way of turning its face to you, just when you least expect it."

Love

"You really shouldn't say "I love you" unless you really mean it. But when you do, you should say it a lot, because people forget and it's good for them to get reminded."

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in the wrong but rejoices in the right. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

~Corinthians 13

Pushing Daisies

"I'd kiss you if it wouldn't kill me."--Charlotte "Chuck" Charles

Sometimes, coincidences are happy, happy things. This lovely young lady sent me a video of Kristen Chenoweth singing from the 3rd episode of Pushing Daisies. I'd heard lots about the show from various friends who are devotees of the clever and whimsical. The video was the final push I needed to behoove myself to Hulu and watch the pilot-or, rather, the "Pie-lette." (See what they did there? See what they did? That's quality, my friends.)

And as soon as I watched the first episode, I was addicted. Never since When Curiosity Met Insanity have I encountered a more adorable, innocent, and endearing love story. Never have I giggled at innuendos as clever and as sharp. Never have I marveled over dialogue as clever and as hilarious. It's a winner. Trust me. Or, if you don't trust me, read on, and discover the reasons why it's so amazing.

1) The Colors

Pushing Daisies is a feast for the eyes. The colors of the world are brilliant and brightly saturated. The world has a quirky, fairy-tale-ish quality. It's endearing and charming.

2) The dialogue. Oh, the dialogue. There are a plethora of quotes that I love peppered through this post, because I simply cannot restrict myself. But in case you, like myself, can never get enough, here are a choice few:

"Just because there's a dead body doesn't mean I have to touch it."--Ned

"Just because there is vodka in my freezer it doesn't mean I have to drink it. Wait, yes it does."--Emerson Cod

"I'm sure it's just the mailman. Or a windmill-to-windmill salesman." --Olive

"That ain't a grain of salt. That's one of those blocks they give cows to lick."--Emerson

“Is it vodka?”—Lily Charles

“Water.”--Olive

“As in Russian for vodka?”—Lily Charles

"You said you wanted to know who killed me so that justice could be served. See, I don't think that "Justice" was on the menu. Maybe as a side dish, but not as an entrée."--Chuck

"It was most definitely an entrée. It was a Special of the Day. Could we drop the metaphor?" --Ned

3) The actors. They're all lovely, adorable, and witty to a fault.

Ned, The Piemaker- played by Lee Pace.

"Everything we do is a choice. Oatmeal or cereal, highway or sidestreets, kiss her or keep her. We make choices, and we live with consequences. If someone gets hurt along the way, we ask for forgiveness, it's the best anyone can do."--Ned

Ned, a.k.a. The Piemaker, is adorable, quirky, and endearingly awkward. Having discovered his unusual and peculiar talent (raising people from the dead) at a tender age, Ned has dealt with the moral ramifications and the consequences (both disastrous and delightful) of his supernatural abilities ever since. His heart is made of pure gold, which keeps him, if not exactly on the straight and narrow, at least on a more or less zig-zag path of morality. His sweet, innocent love for Chuck melts the heart, and makes you want to blubber, giggle, sigh, or hug a everyone and everything in sight.

"You don't know nothin about her except she had soft lips when she was ten!"--Emerson Cod

"That should be enough."--Ned

Charlotte "Chuck" Charles-played by Anna Friel

"I suppose dying's as good an excuse as any to start living"--Chuck Charles

Charlotte, a.k.a. Chuck is as sassy and as sweet as they come. After being raised from the dead by Ned, she's the sweetness and warmth in the Piemaker's lonely life, like golden organic honey in cup of black coffee. Chuck loves Ned, but being fiercely independent, she's constantly working on staring her own life anew, which is difficult, considering that the man she loves is the man she owes her new life to. However, if the man she loved hadn't inadvertantly killed her father, then maybe she wouldn't have died in the first place. Yeah. It's complicated.

Emerson Cod-played by Chi McBride

"In the third grade I did a report on great whites. Discovered we were a lot alike seein' as how we're both misunderstood bad*sses."--Emerson Cod

Emerson Cod: Private Investigator extraordinaire, and a regular at the Pie Hole. What sets Emerson apart from just your average hard-boiled private eye is his affinity for knitting and his hobby of pop-up book crafting. His sardonic humor steals the show and my heart. A perpetual cynic and wise-guy, Emerson slowly (but surely) reveals his soft and cuddly side over time.

"The truth ain't like puppies: a bunch running around and you pick your favorite."--Emerson

Olive Snook-played by Kristin Chenoweth
"I spent so much time praying, I've run out of things to say. I'm having awkward silences with God!"--Olive Snook

Olive Snook. No one sassier. No one more passionate, ridiculous, well-meaning, and downright bewitching. Pipsqueak develops from an tag-along and odd-man-out in the Piemaker-Chuck-Emerson trio to an essential part of the Pie Hole family. Olive harbors a not-so-secret love for Ned. While other men appear in her life throughout the series, they are but little strikes of a match on tinder compared to the flame that Olive holds for Ned. Olive strikes up an unlikely friendship with Chuck's spinster aunts, providing them with a link to the outside world, pie, and lots of tender love.

“Did you tell them I was alive?”--Chuck
“Kinda think that would make their little heads explode. What was that rhyme? "I scream, you scream, we all scream 'cause you faked your death!"—Olive

The Narrator. Voiced by Jim Dale.

"Chuck, you’re the only human being I’ve ever made alive again to stay."--Ned
"He lied."-- The Narrator

Hilarious. Snarky. Sentimental. Amazing.

"In her own way, Olive identified with the plight of the abandoned pie. It was meant for someone who, without a little effort, would never be with the one it was meant to be with."--Narrator

4) The Quirky Combination of a Fairy-Tale and a Whodunnit

"So a kiss is out of the question?" --Chuck

"I've lost my train of thought."--Ned

Think of it as a twist on the Sleeping Beauty tale: only the touch of a handsome prince/piemaker can awake the beautiful princess from her eternal slumber. But, there's a catch. If the prince/piemaker ever touches his true love again, she'll fall asleep again, but this time the prince is out of luck. Nothing will ever awake her again. This fractured fairy-tale is juxtaposed with crime-busting activities, and the solving of slightly gruesome murders, led by Emerson Cod. While Chuck waltzes around in beautiful dresses, and has the disposition worthy of any Disney Princess, she eagerly forces her way into Emerson an Ned's crime fighting gig, and sets out to solve mysteries with the pluck and determination of an Agatha Christie sleuth. Ned is everything a prince in a fairy-tale should be. Except that if he kisses the princess, she'll fall down dead. Ned's and Chuck's happily ever after is happy, but nonetheless teeming with adventure.

"You can't die of evilness."--Emerson Cod

"Happens all the time you do something mean or hurtful to someone like tell a secret... Bang! You're dead."--Chuck

"Or Bang! You're not really dead you're just pretending to be dead while other people who think you're dead are heartbroken"--Olive

"Or Bang! You talk too much and you both go wait in the car. "--Emerson

5) PIE.

"Well, it's pretty much I bake pies and wake the dead. I live a very sheltered life."--Ned

The whole series revolves around a pieshop where a handsome piemaker bakes succulent, picture-perfect pies. Pies are a backdrop, a plot device, and in general a theme for the series. If you're a pie fanatic, then you should love the show already. If you haven't discovered homey comfort and piquant quaintness that is pie, this show will reveal to you all the beauty of pie.

You've had enough convincing. Do yourself a favor, bake a pie, and sit down with a slice to watch Pushing Daisies. It'll make you very, very happy.

"Oh, everyone wants stuff. We wake up everyday with a list of wishes a mile long and maybe we spend our lives trying to make those wishes come true, but just because we want them doesn't mean we need them to be happy." --Ned

"What do you need to be happy?"--Chuck

"You."--Ned

Expect the Best

An interesting article in the Wall Street Journal comparing the parenting approaches between "Asian parents" and "Western parents". The author lays out a basic difference in the two views, namely that Asian parents expect the best and get it and that Western parents reinforce the idea that their children will be loved and accepted whether they succeed or fail, and then proceeds to champion the "Asian" approach. It's an unusual take, not least of all for the fact that it acknowledges, stereotypes aside, that there are two different cultures here, and they do have a crucial difference between them. I'm not actually sure what I think about it: I can see a certain appeal to refusing to accept failure as an option -- a you-can-and-will-do-it attitude that inspires the child to succeed -- and then ingraining that view; it certainly seems to have worked more than once in the past. But at one and the same time I think that it must be acknowledged that not everyone is cut out to be a chess master or a violin maestro, and refusing to accept this possibility could be devastating for that less-than-perfect child.

"A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.

[...]

All the same, even when Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough."


Read the rest here.

Live Like We're Living

(^Best C.S. Lewis quote ever. So I thought I'd start with that. Because if you like nothing else in this post, you're gonna come away with at least something. :))

I popped in to check in on our blog today. Why? Because I should be reading The Iliad. But I'd rather blog. And as I wandered through all the posts that I have half-written, I decided not to post any of them.

But rather to post this, a charming and moving little video that I discovered this morning, because it's been on my mind the whole day. Because it warms my heart, and makes me want to dance for joy. Because if we all lived like this, we'd all smile a lot more, and laugh a little louder. Because living each day, finding the joy and the impeccable beauty in every single moment, is awesome.

I know I've mentioned the Book of Awesome multiple times. But I think it bears repeating. It's truly beautiful. It's a little reminder that today we've been granted 86,400 seconds to spend as we please. And it's a challenge: How are you going to spend your 86,400 seconds?

God's given us those precious seconds, He's given us 86,400 opportunities to immerse ourselves in the dance of life, to love someone, to make them smile, to laugh, and to seek out the beautiful and awesome.

"Too much of a good thing is wonderful." --Mae West.

(^ And I end, as I began, with a quote. Clive may have had better morals than Mae, but this sassy lady said some wickedly hilarious (and insightful) things. This quote explains why I listen to songs like this on repeat. Can't get enough of it. :) )

The Charming Young Lady

I just talked to someone today....who talked to a priest (Fr. D no less)...who told her:

We need charming young ladies.

Brilliant.

This idea is my theme of the day (or since I got it this afternoon.)

Having a charming* personality is needed in our society. It is precisely related to true modesty and true virtue.

*Coffee may aid in the attainment of such a characteristic :)

Heavenly Music

During the Christmas season the masses are bombarded with a multitude of jingles, ditties and songs that abound in good cheer, merriment and roasting chestnuts. However, the glitter and gayety of these songs that blast merrily away in shopping malls and on the radio lack what makes this season truly joyful. While it may make us all wriggle with delight that “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town”, it cannot fill our souls with the joy and awe of Christ’s birth. ‘Christmas cheer’ and ‘gifts of the season’ are glorified and celebrated for their own sake without the slightest hint toward the greatest gift that was granted to mankind, that of salvation from our sins and the gift of eternal live with God. Without the birth of Christ, there would be no Christmas season. Without the joy and grace rendered to us by Christ and his birth there would be no cause for celebration. In the hustle and bustle of Christmas preparations, buying gifts, putting up decorations and baking cookies we all too often forget to prepare our souls for this holy season. The Savior of the world is born, let us all raise our voices in joyful praise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS3vpAWW2Zc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXkgqpVVpTg

Magic

Magic.

Being lost in your own world. With music. On a bus.

Going from home to home.

People surrounding you can't hear the strains of Wagner in your ears.

The dark of the night world is lit up by the starry streetlights and cars.

The straining of the violins breaks your heart.

Advent, Week Two: What are you giving up?

Did you know that the average person does not give things up for Advent? Well, when a small, uninformed person like myself begins to discover this, what does she do? She promptly tells everyone she knows to give stuff up, of course. Then, they don't.

That's ok, however. She now has material with which to write a blog post. Basically, I am just curious, do you give things up for Lent? Think of this as a survey. No pressure to respond, but if you could respond, I'd love to hear your opinions.

Now the Second Week of Advent.This week has (unfortunately) had a stronger ring: only a few days left until finals. Those pesky little cumulative tests. Ah, the joys of college! Yet, only one week until its all over. So, happy studying and Adieu.

Advent: Week I

Subtitle: How God's Really Good About Telling You What You Need To Hear When You Need To Hear It.

Today I walked into Mass feeling frustrated and disoriented. There's so much in my life that I'm not excelling at, that I want to happen now, events and situations that I want to occur instantly. My perpetual impatience was getting the better of me again. I went in, thinking: "How long, God? Why does everything in this life take forever?"

I was wrapped up in my own self-pitying interior monologue, when the priest started his homily with the sentence: "We are here to engage in subversive activity." I snapped out of my trance and paid rapt attention from then on-I was intrigued. What subversive activity were we engaging in exactly? His answer: Advent. Essentially, his homily was about the absence of Advent in our society. Our American society is in an obesity epidemic, yes, but the real epidemic, the root of all these problems, is the epidemic of perpetual adolescence. We have lost all sense of self-control, of self-denial, of delayed gratification. We have to have whatever we want and whenever we want it-a.k.a. NOW. We have an awful difficulty telling ourselves "no" or even "not now, later."

Clearly, he continued, a culture that has this attitude has no use for Advent. And a culture that lacks the foresight to look to the good in the future, even when the present is glum, lacks hope. When he said that, the sadness of our current cultural situation struck me. How awful and how true-our culture is a culture that lacks hope. We grasp onto whatever immediate pleasure we can because all too soon the moment will pass and we'll be left empty again. Human beings simply can't live hope-it's human nature to always be able to look down to the end of the dark tunnel and see that light. Our culture has lost the light of hope-we're lost in the darkness of the tunnel. What an awful idea-a life void of hope.

As I listened to these words, I realized they were exactly what I needed to hear. My own outlook had been sadly lacking in hope, trust, or any sort of virtue besides adolescent impatience. God's timing is the best timing, and although it may be difficult for me to always follow, He knows best. Thus, my new Advent resolution is to join the subversives, and cultivate an Advent-like attitude of patience, trust, and hope. Engage in subversive activity: celebrate Advent!

Countdown to Christmas Day:

22 days