Young Adult Spirituality: Help Is On the Way!!!!

I am so excited to announce that my friend Fr. Mark Mossa SJ has a book on spirituality for young adults that he has been working on for a long time that is available for pre-order from Amazon.   I can assure you that this book will be worth the cost, and a great help to any young adult and anyone who works with young adults. I read a few of the chapters very early in the process and was very impressed.

Please consider placing your pre-order now for delivery in August for all the young adults and young adults ministers you know.

While you are waiting for the book to arrive, Fr. Mark has a website set up:

Spoiler Alert  filled with fun posts and extra links that you can use while you are waiting.  btw: I added the website to my blogroll on my sidebar.

Pax

Yeah Right!

So as promised I took the angelbaby to see Twilight this afternoon. Ever since she became fascinated by the books I have known that they were probably not the best works of fiction around, but I let her read them, and since I promised, I took her to the movie. We did talk about how unrealistic it was as a real love story though.

We also talked about how absolutely stalkery the entire feel of the way this young man in the movie (and books) goes after this young woman is. The angelbaby was still a bit starry eyed even when the movie had begun about how "romantic" it all was, but after seeing it played out on the big screen even she had to admit that when Edward tells Bella that he has been coming into her room at night for a month to watch her sleep that that was a bit stalkery and slightly creepy.

There is something too extreme about the devotion of the protagonists, that is just a bit off for my taste. The best thing I have to say about this movie is it did give my daughter and I a lot to talk about, and there was very little sex which was nice in a teen romance. I somehow just couldn't get past the whole idea that by the end of the movie the beautiful young woman's one ambition was to be as undead as her sparkly suitor.

I suppose it could happen. In some one's imagination, just not mine. Or in reality.

Why can't someone make a realistic love story for teen age girls? Please, I beg you!

Pax

BAck in the Saddle Again . . .

So, here I am on a Sunday afternoon, reading and taking notes for a class. Is it deja vu all over again or am I really studying for a new program so quickly after graduation? AM I NUTS?

At least the first chapter of this book is extremely familiar territory, as the early mystics are Clement, Origin, Antony, you know, the guys we learned about in Early Church History. The book even gives some equal time to Maryof Egypt, Macrina, and the Mary/Martha question of contemplation vs action, so women are equally present in the early history of Christian mysticism.

I think this will probably be a quick read, and am hoping that is so, because I hear that two of the other books that are due later in the semester are a bit harder to get through, so the quicker I finish this one the sooner I can move on to the next one.

Each book requires a five-page analysis of the relevance of the material to my journey of spiritual enlightenment. My plan is to write the papers as soon as I complete the book rather than waiting until they are due (the first one is due in mid September). I am still not familiar with the reflection process that they use, and want time to work with the reflection questions and get my thoughts in line and hopefully the class discussions that are supposed to coincide with each of the books will help to crystallize my reflection, maybe. The nicest thing is that this paper isn't going to be graded, it is really more for my benefit and growth, so the deeper I can get into the process of mining the benefits or struggles from the book the better it will be for me.

I had better get back to it. Hope your Sabbath is as peaceful.

Pax

Fill the Bookshelf Meme

You are supposed to take the list and bold the books you have read and highlight the ones you would like to read. I got this from Kitchen Madonna.

This is an interesting list for the choices that are on it and for the books that were left off of it. Why, why why so darn much Jane Austen for instance and not a single book by Morris West? I am just asking? Anyway, these are my answers. If anyone wants to play they are welcome to grab a tag and play along.

1.Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen -
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - I believe I stopped at book four
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee favorite book of all time
6. The Bible – don't know if I have read every word yet, but I have read most of it more than a few times.
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte prefered Jane Eyre to this.
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman don't feel the need to read this junk
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens required in middle school
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott – ditto
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy – high school english, boring
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - not all of them but some of the plays
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier –\
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien – barelya made it through LOTR
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks –
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger -
19. The Time Traveller's Wife -
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot – loved the movie though
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell –
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald -
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams – my kids have all read it so maybe I should too
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - awesome, must read
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky -
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - possibly his best work
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll –
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis all except The Last Battle and The Magicians Nephew
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini on my must read list after seeing the movie
37. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres –
.38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne Christmas gift when I was 8 read the whole thing by New Years Eve
40. Animal Farm - George Orwell
41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown see #9
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving Have read a lot of Irving but not this one
44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery -
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
47. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
49. Atonement - Ian McEwan – want to read this soon too
50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
51. Dune - Frank Herbert
52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons loved this movie too.
53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon just read this
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac - always wanted to, never got around to doing it
66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
67. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
68. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
71. Dracula - Bram Stoker
72. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson\
74. Ulysses - James Joyce
\75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
77. Germinal - Emile Zola
78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Possession - AS Byatt
80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert the only book I read for a lit class in college, then I dropped the class
85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
86. Charlotte's Web - EB White -
87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom -
88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle some of the stories but not the entire collection
89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery -
92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
93. Watership Down - Richard Adams
94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute I liked this, but think On the Beach is his best book
96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - 9
9. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
100.The Outsiders by SE Hinton again for high school english.

Pax

Happy Accidents

So we have been reading Exiles on the Korrektiv Summer Reading Klub. The reading has been very stimulating and I have greatly enjoyed the book.

The discussion at Korrektiv turned to who should be cast, should the book ever be made into a movie. While Rufus from Korrektiv thought that the part of Gerard Manley Hopkins should be played by the fine American actor Casey Afleck, I thought that he might be better portrayed by a Brit, and suggested Sean Biggerstaff (if you haven't been living under a rock this last decade you have seen him as Oliver Wood in the first two Harry Potter movies at least).

I had seen him originally in a beautiful movie directed by Alan Rickman, and starring Emma Thompson and her mother Phyllidia Law called The Winter Guest. He was about 14, and stole every scene from the other kid.

What I found out from his IMDB sheet was that he had made an indy film in 2006 that was all the rage but because of Gradual School I didn't watch many indy movies that year. It went right under my radar. Anyway, I went over to the local Blockbuster here in paradise and thanks to our dear friends here who have a card I checked out Cashback and mrangelmeg and I watched it last night.

The basis of the story is that Ben, the main character breaks up with his girlfriend and it causes him to have insomnia. Since he can't sleep at night, he gets a job on the night shift of a grocery store where he learns to see the beauty of the world around him in his attempt to simply make it through his interminable eight hour shifts without going insane. In the process he meets another woman who helps him to see that there beauty and hope in every moment of your life, you simply have to be aware of them and take advantage of them.

So, thanks to being aware of even what might seem to be the most insignificant piece of information that came through my processor this week I had a very interesting evening watching a movie that I really enjoyed.

And I still think that Sean Biggerstaff would make a better Gerard Manley Hopkins than Casey Afleck.

Pax

What Are You Reading? AKA Join the Fun

Don't waste your summer watching Soprano reruns or Reality Television. Pick up a good book and prove to the world that as a matter of fact, Catholics do read. Go to this website, choose one of the finalist books and join the Catholic Summer Reading Program.
The selection of books is amazing, and I want to extend a hearty congrats to Internet pal Matthew Lickona's wonderful Swimming with Scapulars for garnering the top spot with such huge competition.


After just a week ago bemoaning the fact that I didn't have time to read anything but Philosophy for the next two months I gave myself a break and picked up one of the finalist books Cosmas or the Love of God yesterday and read about a third of the way through. It is so beautifully written that I enjoyed every minute. My only problem was that I had to resist picking up my pencil to underline passages and take notes in the margin. Which I suppose isn't a bad thing and I may just do that the next time I read it. Yes folks you read that right, when I enjoy a book I actually read it more than once.

I am going to add the link to my sidebar to encourage all of my two loyal readers to read one of the books on the list. I haven't read all of them myself but I am familiar with most of the authors, and they all look very intriguing.

The website gives links to discussion questions and if you scroll to the bottom there is a link for a summer reading sheet for kids that they can use this summer to broaden their horizons and then get a prize.

Our prize at the end of the summer is having read great literature for and about our awesome faith tradition.

Pax

Doing My Bit to Spread the Word

Matthew Lickona at Godsbody has put out a challenge to spread the word and rally more people to join us, so that we can break the stereotype that Catholics Don't Read.

Join the Summer Reading Club

Korrektiv has chosen Walker Percy's insightful parody of the self help genre;

Lost in the Cosmos

as their selection for the summer reading club this year.

Having been turned on to Walker Percy by the very same bunch (aka Korrektiv) and having loved everything I read by Percy last fall, I heartily recommend this. I actually purchased a copy and have it in my hot little hands and am going to begin to read the introductory assignment this evening since mrangelmeg is off on a short overnight business trip. I have already listened to the Peter Kreeft Lecture (trying for some brownie points here.)

So, go to your nearest library and borrow a copy of this book, or better yet, go to your nearest bookstore and buy a copy so you can write in the margins like I do. (Or used book store if you need to save a few bucks. I bet you will find a copy. It was printed as a mass market paperback more than once over the years.

Join us. It will be fun, you will meet new Internet friends and expand your vocabulary and learn a little bit about yourself.

Pax